MI: Do you ever play on any of the albums you’ve produced or engineered?
DA: Yes. On Strangefolk’s first album (Lore) I made a little cameo appearance and I play a fair amount of The Dude of Life’s new album. That album is sort of divided in half, since we started it three years ago and then stopped. Now were going to finish it.
MI: Is the album going to feature the members of Phish , like on Crimes of the Mind?
DA: Probably less than half the material will be Trey (Anastasio), Mike Gordon, me, Fishman, Aaron Hersey, and Phil Abair. The rest of it is going to be with Dude’s new band, Great Red Shark. So, those guys are coming back up to record a few more songs, and then I’ve got to polish up the ones we did a few years ago with Trey and Jonny. Then, mix it, master it, and send it out there. It’s coming out on Phoenix Rising, and I think it’s due to be released in May. It will be done in February.
MI: Is Phoenix a newer label?
DA:They’re sort of a newer label put together by a couple of seasoned executives from other major labels who are tired of the disposable music that is out there and are pursuing the music they really love. One used to run sales & marketing for Elektra & EMI; another ran the catalogue division at EMI, a third partner ran the Knitting Factory’s record label, and another invented progressive rock as a radio format and was the largest live recording engineer in the country. It’s run by Tad Flynn who has a lot of ideas about forming an artist cooperative to get as much cross fertilization amongst their artists as possible. They have got a lot of interesting projects including the new Kingfish record (featuring Weir & one Garcia track), the new Foxtrot Zulu record and the Dude of Life record. They also accumulated a massive collection of classic live pre-FM master reels of everyone from Aerosmith to Zappa which they intend to be mining (as well as broadcasting over the internet). They’ll have distribution in stores through DNA and on the internet.
MI: Now, you were one of the members of The Dude of Life’s band a while back, right? I remember seeing you with The Dude at Mama Kin in Boston about four years ago. Why has the line-up changed?
DA: Well, Trey (Anastasio) asked me to put together a band behind him so he could go out on tour and so I did. It turned out to be Fishman on drums, because Phish was on a break. So, it was Jonny, me, Aaron, and Phil. We were the original Dude of Life Band for the first three or four tours, and the first tour was really a lot of fun and really something. We had the boys from Phish along with us for some shows too. But, it was becoming hard for me to drop the studio and go out on tour. Not that I don’t like doing it, you know?
MI: So, what recording projects are you working on right now?
DA: I just finished Phil Abair’s solo project, I’m mixing an album for Freebeerandchicken, I’m finishing The Dude of Life, and I’m working on some soundtrack stuff for a film with this guy Brian Johnson who is this “esoteric” percussionist. I really enjoy working with him because he comes up with all this unusual stuff that no one else does, and he does film work. I’m working on an album with Ernie Brooks, who is a x-member of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, and keyboard player from The Talking Heads. They were sort of this pre-punk new wave band back in the ’70’s. A lot of people were inspired by them, like The Ramones and The Talking Heads. In fact, I just re-mastered one of the “Modern Lovers” albums from the early ’70’s for a European label. That band instigated the new-wave punk thing back then. Also, I’m working on my own stuff, whenever I get the chance. I also finished up Blind Man’s Sun at the end of the Summer.
MI: You’ve worked on the one of my favorite band’s two albums, Strangefolk. How did you guys hook up and what’s it like working with the Strangemen?
DA: The first album, Lore, came about when they called me up and asked me to do it. I didn’t know them personally, and we became fast friends, hit it off, and we get along real well, and I can sink my teeth into their music. As we went, I just ended up taking on the job of co-producer because they did need the guidance and the objective critiquing. People need that in the studio because it’s hard to critique yourself when your right in the midst of it, and it’s all subjective. So, yes, I ended up engineering and co-producing the first album with them, and they came back for the next one, Weightless in Water, which I was contracted to produce.
MI: When I play cuts from Weightless at The Wetlands, it sounds great over the speaker system. I especially like the sound on “Westerly”. How do you feel about the end product?
DA: Well, if I do the next one, I would go about it a little differently. We didn’t leave much time for pre-production on “Weightless” and that created a lot more work after the tracking stage, and I had to go back in and do some doctoring and fixing. I also had them come back in to re-cut some things as a result. But, I’m happy with it. I’m always critical of my own work.
MI: Any artist is critical of their work. Is it hard for a producer to listen to the finished product, after it’s been pressed because you notice new little things all that you would have done differently? For example, a vocal level being too high or low?
DA: Absolutely. For example, when I first heard the third track on “Weightless”, I thought the shaker was too loud. Then a few months later, I realized it wasn’t so bad.
MI: Who are some of your favorite record producers?
DA: Well, Daniel Lanois, I really like him, but he is developing sort of a formula now-a-days. He produced Peter Gabriel’s So, Bob Dylan’s new album, Time Out of Mind, which just won a Grammy, and Emmy Lou Harris’, Wrecking Ball. That album really shows his approach to putting records together. When Daniel Lanois produces an album, you are LANOISED! He really does impose his style on you, whereas other record producers don’t want to do that. They want to bring out the best in the artist and they don’t want their personalities showing up on an album. Someone like Don Was. He’s more invisible. He just sort of sits back there and makes sure all the performances are good, and says something when he should. He doesn’t start playing guitar and changing things to suit his style, you now what I mean? Of course, how can you not like George Martin? I’ve got to say that when he started throwing “strings” and stuff on things when those Beatles albums came out, he started to annoy me. But, I’ve got to say in hindsight, he really did some great stuff.
MI: What’s your favorite Beatles album?
DA: That’s a tough one. I would have to say Revolver. That’s the one I listen to the most. I like The White Album, there are parts on there. I like Abbey Road, there are parts on there. Sometimes I put that album on and I like it a lot and sometimes I put it on and there are things about it that I don’t like. But, Revolver stands out the most to me. A couple of months ago I put it on and listened to that song, “And Your Bird Can Sing”, and I went Wow!! Listen to that. And that opening guitar line! I’m curious as to who wrote that, whether it was Lennon, Harrison, or George Martin. Actually, something interesting about the Beatles, you know when you hear all those nice horn and string parts and melodies on those Beatles productions? People think it’s George Martin that composed them, but it was actually Alfred Hitchcock’s soundtrack composer. George Martin said this in an interview, and I was surprised.
MI: You know, the thing that strikes me about George Martin, is the fact that he’s so clean cut, wearing sweaters and collared shirts, and he’s very “old school”. And here you have him working with The Beatles, these long haired, out there guys that were experimenting with drugs, and playing this ground breaking music. It just seemed like an “unlikely” match, yet the end result was so perfect!
DA: Ya, it was quite a juxtaposition, you could say. Plus, I don’t think that Martin had done any band albums before The Beatles. He had done classical stuff and comedy albums, like Peter Sellers.
MI: Do you think that the recording process was simpler back then because you had less technology to work with than you do today?
DA: Well, you can say that there’s a lot more options and distractions these days, but actually I think it was a lot more challenging back then. For example, George Martin and The Beatles were working with two and three track machines. If they were doing “sub-group bouncing”, like recording all the music on one track or two tracks, then bouncing them down to one, they had to record all the vocals on another track and bouncing them down, then do the lead vocals**He had to do all these sub-mixes as they were recording, and had to live with them. It wasn’t like they could go back and fix things later, like you can today. So, yes, I would say it was more challenging back then. However, One thing they had back then, that you can hear, is they used to record on 1 inch, 4 track tape, and you would get this bigger, richer sound. Now we put 24 tracks on 2 inch tape. To equal the bandwidth and frequency response that they had back then, you would need six inch tape! Were “squeezing” 24 tracks onto 2 inch tape, whereas they were putting four tracks on one inch tape. And, you can hear it. On those Beatles albums, the vocals just come out and it sounds bigger. It’s still done sometimes these days. Bruce Swaydee, who produced Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, likes to record drums and bass on 2 inch 16 track tape because it sounds better. Then he’ll lock his 16 track up to his 24 track and do everything else on the 24-track.
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