BR: The lyrics to some of your songs at times will read of desperation or a broken soul – but then when you listen to the actual songs, they come across sounding almost wistful or sweet. I’m not sure how you do it, but you do. “Estimate x 3” is an example of that: the lyrics read fairly harsh, but the tune itself is like an up-tempo do-wop number.
WJ: Yeah; that song definitely has a feeling of being hollowed out – and even some desperate moments, I guess. But at the same time, I wanted it to keep a hopeful melody and not come across too heavy-handed. “Estimate x 3” was written on the guitar, I believe. It’s not a soul song, but I definitely wanted it to be recorded in kind of a soulful way with a little reverb and a roomy-sounding guitar – not unlike an old Eddie Hinton record or something like that. The end part kind of opened up with the little falsetto wandering line and the handclaps and everything … that’s the thing that kind of took it over the top. It was just a fun pop song.
BR: My note on “Only In My Double Mind” says, “The biggest drum in the world.”
WJ: (laughs) That was written on a distorted bass guitar. I had a bunch of overdrive pedals and I was running the bass through a Blues Junior amp to make the rhythm track. Then I wrote the music over that. It came together really, really quick.
BR: Another note: “A wall of sound, but it’s way in the back of the room.”
WJ: Definitely. (laughs) It was fun for us to try, because it was one of the few situations during those sessions where we did say, “Okay – let’s create our usual wall of distorted guitars.” But it was a real fun one, for sure. I know it sounds like we’re just beating the crap out of everything, but there are hardly any cymbals in the song. We were going for this more kind of “60s psychedelic” sort of thing where we relied more on the floor tom rather than beating the crap out of cymbals.
BR: I mentioned the Tele earlier; your solos are always interesting to listen to and you have a good handle on your tone. The solo midway through that song is a good example: there’s no fat; you get right to the marrow. It may be a smaller amp that’s cranked, but on the record it comes across as hideous amounts of power that you’re able to keep reined in … but if you didn’t keep the heel of your hand close to the strings, the thing would explode. (laughter)
WJ: Well, I’m glad you think that. (laughs) A lot of people think we record with these giant amplifiers in the studio, but we don’t. We’re recording through very, very small amps, cranking them up all the way and putting minimal effects on them. A lot of times we rely on the natural overdrive of the amps – maybe there’s one or two pedals involved, but mainly it’s a case of very small amplifiers cranked up to the hilt.
I’m not the kind of player that can play a fancy 32-notes-to-the-bar guitar solo anyway – I rely on big, long notes that hopefully make their own music as the thing starts to feed back a little bit.
But, yeah – we’ve always gotten what we think are the best results in the studio by using small amps so far.
BR: Do you have some favorite go-to amps?
WJ: A few. Early on – say, from ’96 to just a few years ago – we used a little Fender Pro Junior. I mean, the thing’s got two knobs on it: “tone” and “volume” – that’s it.
BR: Don’t you just love stuff like that?
WJ: Jeez – I really do, you know? The thing just gave us what we wanted in a lot of situations. And then there’s the Blues Junior that I told you about earlier. Sometimes we move up to bigger amps like a Reverb Deluxe or a Vibroverb or something like that.
We’ll stack up a big wall of amps and just flip them all on in the morning when we come in the studio to let them warm up. They’ll just be sitting there with their tubes glowing while we go down the line from amp to amp to amp, plugging and unplugging the guitar until we find what we want for a sound on a particular song. That’s what works for us.
BR: Great – don’t change a thing. And don’t be worrying about the “32-notes-to-a-measure” stuff, either.
WJ: (laughs) Well, I might as well not, because I’m not ever going to play it. (laughter)
BR: There’s a live vibe to “Solid States” – was it cut live?
WJ: I believe that’s one of the ones Matt and I cut live with his drums and my guitar right out of the gate. That’s another one of the songs written on distorto bass with a little drum track. I wanted a real, bouncy, almost “Werewolves of London” feel to it, which is, I’m sure, very obvious. That’s what we were going for.
BR: “Shadow Follow Me” has a cool mix – Scott Danbom’s piano is so delicate, yet it’s right there in front of everything.
WJ: Yeah, isn’t it? (laughs) We talked about that a lot during mix time. Much of the record was mixed long-distance with, you know, hundreds and hundreds of e-mails talking about mixes … it’s a difficult way to do it, I must say. That piano you speak of came up a lot in our conversation. At first we were a little nervous about having it sitting right there in your ear, but now I’m glad that we did. It’s such a sparse part and the notes that Scott played are so important and so crucial – but also so minimal – that we agreed to have it that high up.
BR: It works well – it does just what it sounds like you were after.
WJ: It’s a pretty simple collection of sounds that aren’t all heaped up on themselves. It becomes really important to make sure that the few elements that comprise the song speak exactly in the best way that we can make them. Scotty made the song in so many ways – he’s really the hero of that one, in my opinion.
BR: Nice, nice work.
WJ: I’ll pass that along; he’ll be happy to hear that, man. I think he’ll be proud of that.
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