This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
Robert Smith is a seasoned producer, engineer and mixer who runs Defy Recordings in New York City. A musician and avid record collector since the age of 11, Robert got his start in the music industry when he moved from his home town in upstate New York to New York City in 1986 and immediately threw himself into the studio. He got his professional start at Green Street Recording studio – known in the 1980s as the home base for Def Jam Records – and had the opportunity to work frequently with Jam-Master Jay and Run DMC as well as with Public enemy and R&B legend Allison Williams. From there, he went onto work at the Hit Factory and also Power Station Studios. During that time, he made records with an array of artists across many genres, including Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, David Sandborn and Luther Vandross. Robert also helped start and grow a multi-media company where he worked on post production on film scores and major commercials with clients such as Reebok, Coca-Cola, Oil of Olay and Proctor and Gamble. Eventually, he decided to return to his love for music and focus on Defy Recordings.
Recently, I talked to Robert about his experience in the music business, some advice he has for folks that want to get involved on the production side and why he feels persistence and fearlessness are the keys to success for anyone that wants to achieve real career longevity.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, Robert. How did you come to be an engineer and producer?
RS:
I moved to New York City from upstate New York in 1986. I’ve been a huge record collector since I was about 11-years old. I’ve never done anything else but immerse myself in music since then. I’ve been very lucky to have been at the right place at the right time. I began working at many studios around town starting in the late 1980s, and it just grew and grew, and here I am, still doing it.
Who are some of the people you’ve worked with during the course of your career?
RS:
One of the first people I worked a lot with was Jam-Master Jay of Run DMC. The first studio I worked with was Green Street Recording, and it was pretty much the unofficial home base of Def Jam Records. For the first year of my career I was working in the same studio as Run DMC and Public Enemy. Def Jam also had a lot of R&B stuff like Allison Williams, Orange Juice Jones, who were keeping us really busy. My first recording session was 24-hours long. And I thought, “How am I going to do this?” But it was amazing.
Then I got a job at the Hit Factory. And that meant working with artists like Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Mariah Carey. I worked a lot with her right before she got her record deal. At the time, everyone was at that place.
From there, I went to the Power Station where I worked with David Bowie, David Sandborn and Luther Vandross. The only people I didn’t get chance to work directly with who were recording there were Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, though I did talk about fish with Springsteen once when we were looking at a fish tank. That’s about as close as I got to it.
I went freelance from there. And I tried something a little different by starting a multi-media company with two partners. We did post production on film scores and big commercials for advertising. Our clients were Reebok, Coca Cola, Oil of Olay and Proctor and Gamble. We did a lot of movies, like the movie Waitress with Keri Russell, which did really well. I did that for about five years and then decided to go out on my own again. We were fortunate because our multi-media company got big pretty quickly. By the time I left, we had 20 employees and two floors of a building. But I wasn’t really interested in meetings; I was still all about the music. So, I decided to re-focus on that side of it and continue what I really love to do. And I am fortunate to still be doing it in this day and age.
It sounds like you didn’t spend much time as a performing musician. You just got right behind the board.
RS:
Yes. Before I moved to the city, I played bass for a while in a band and I was also a DJ. But I liked the tech side of it and was definitely drawn to that side of the glass pretty quickly. It’s not like I moved to the city and played with bands; I moved right into the studio, and that was pretty much it.
And you’ve been at it from 1986, to 2011. Are you doing more production or engineering these days?
RS:
I’m probably doing more engineering and mixing. I produce on average about five albums per year. But I’m working every day on mixing, mastering and engineering.
You’ve been around for 25 years making records. I’m sure a vast number of the people you started working alongside are no longer in the business. What did you do that other people didn’t?
RS:
Many have been long gone. It’s an insane business. I guess you could call it a business with an incredibly bad business model. What I mean by that is that if you’re looking to have a career, have a family, buy a house, go on vacation and have a 401K, this is not the way to do it.
I get students all the time asking me what it’s like. I remember an email I got from a high school student in Arizona with what looked like a standard-issue questionnaire in it including questions like, “How many hours do you work per week?” And I thought, “I don’t know … Zero, to 100?” Those questions are more for someone that works in a bank. This has never really been a job. It’s way more of a “life” than your standard-issue career where you look forward to your retirement. For me, it’s just been about persistence. And also, I wouldn’t know how to do anything else. I’ve been doing this for so long that it’s what I do and who I am.
Let me reverse the question. What were some of the traits of the guys that didn’t make it?
RS:
I don’t know why, but that’s a tougher question than I might have thought it would be. With those guys, a lot of it had to do with family stuff. Once you get married and have kids, it’s a little harder to justify being up until four or five in the morning every night, getting home when it’s sunny out and then having to come back again early evening. It’s an “all in” thing. If you really want to do it, you need to really immerse yourself in it. The people that didn’t hang in always treated it like a job or a part-time gig. They were around for four or five years, but then they just got out. If you want something normal and stable, this isn’t the job for you.
Let’s talk about the musician side of things. Because of your long list of credits, you must get approached often by relatively unknown bands. Other than somebody that can string together a good handful of sentences and has a high-quality recording – which is of course the X-Factor – are there things people should do to prepare before reaching out to you that will make their project more desirable?
RS:
Sure. The biggest thing I miss from the major label days is the filtering process. If you were signed to Columbia in 1990 and in front of me in the studio, it meant you had passed the test; you had dealt with the A&R guys, the managers and had recorded the demos. By the time you got to me, you could generally write a song and sing, because back then we couldn’t fix your performances as much as we can now. I knew you were at a certain quality level, because no one would’ve invested that kind of money in you as an artist unless they thought they could get it back. I miss that side of it, because there are so many artists I get approached by now that don’t know that process. There is an unprofessional side to it now, which means there is a lot of grooming I end up having to do that I didn’t have to do before because a lot of it had already been taken care of: how to sing in tune; how to really play an instrument and all those things you would do if playing music your job. When someone hasn’t had that kind of experience, I have to groom them towards that, which can be a lot of extra work.
That makes it sound like your job description has shifted and now includes making up for people’s lack of shedding time and education.
RS:
Completely. It seems like part of my job now is to have a chat first and say, “Here’s what we’re going to do today.” There’s always some kind of story involved. The benefit of my experience is that I’ve seen just about everything. So, when someone comes in and we’re having a terrible time, I’m able to steer it some way; I can apply an antidote. I think that’s why I’ve been really busy too, because I’ve been fortunate to come up in the days of tape, and I’ve been around some really classic records and know how to get the right sound because I was there at the beginning. In that sense, it’s been great. I’m still young enough that I can relate to younger artists. But I’ve been around enough that I know how to edit tape and what people talk about when they are thinking about the “golden days” of analog and a certain sound.
Along those lines, for people wanting to perfect their craft behind the glass, there are a lot less opportunities like the ones both of us had coming up. There are a lot less studios in business. What advice would you give to somebody that has a pirated copy of Pro-Tools and are trying to figure this out on their own? How can they compete with an education with the guys out there that knew analog?
RS:
The advice I always give is, “Find a mentor.” I was really fortunate to have learned from all the best people on the planet. The guy who was a mentor for me for the first two years was buddies with Queen and was one of the engineers on “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He shoved me into this. It’s that whole idea of throwing people into the deep end and seeing if they can swim or not.
I have an example. A kid from Texas wrote me, and she wanted to come to New York and be a producer. She was 19, and I said, “You probably shouldn’t do that right now, because all you’re going to do is come here, clean toilets and try to find a job. You’ll barely be able to eat and pay your rent.” And she had never been in a studio. I said, “What you should do is stay in your town, find somebody that owns a studio and learn everything you can from them. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be up against kids that have come here from all over the world and have done that. You’re going to be behind right from the start.” So, I advised her to master it in her home town by learning from someone with a studio and learning to be better than they are. Then, she can come to New York with a leg up as opposed to with no clue at all. And no one had ever told her that.
I’m continually surprised by how often people just don’t get any sound advice at all.
Getting to know musicians in the studio as you have for days at a time, what advice would you give artists about relationships with management and labels? Can you talk about any pitfalls to avoid for aspiring musicians and musicians just coming up?
RS:
It’s tricky. It seems like now everyone that used to be in the music business before is now just a consultant. Because the money is now in those types of positions, we’ve all had to figure out ways to use our experience to still get some kind of income and still do what we do. There are those guys that still call themselves managers, but maybe they haven’t really managed. You just have to be really careful and not be too anxious to sign your life away. Throughout the history of music there are stories of people signing contracts that don’t know what they’re doing. And the next thing they know, they’ve signed away everything. It’s been like that from way back in the day and continues to be that way today. An artist will actually have success and then realize they don’t actually own a song or will just get a couple thousand dollars.
Yes. Jacob Slichter of Semisonic wrote a book, So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star, and he described the traditional relationship between label and artist as “rock & roll sharecropping.” And he was right.
RS:
Yeah. There were stories back in the day where the guy would find an artist and give him a couple hundred dollars and a Cadillac. And the artist thought, “Wow, I’m a pop star now.” Little did he know he wasn’t going to see a nickel of record sales that ended up sometimes totaling millions and millions of dollars. You have to be really careful of being that make promises and say, “I can make this, this and this happen.”
I had a friend who actually got onto The Voice, and right before she was going to get on a plane to go to L.A. for six weeks, she got a contract – and thankfully she read the fine print – that said that whether she won or lost, this company would own everything she did for seven years.
That’s the Viacom and American Idol model.
RS:
She actually has had some deals in the past and already had stuff going on, so she decided not to do it. I think if you have nothing going on, you should go for it. But you just have to be really careful and read contracts carefully as opposed to just signing because you’re so anxious to become a pop star. We’ve also heard the stories about someone signing an artist and then putting that person in a box for two years while they figure out what to do with the person. Then all the other interest goes away because the artist is already signed.
It’s pretty amazing what they’ll do. Atlantic was known for this. They would sign an artist from the Southeast and do what I call the “shiny shirt treatment.” The band would get signed and celebrate. Then they would stop doing everything that made them interesting to the label in the first place, and the publicist would say, “You know, you would look better in shiny shirts.” They would give everyone a shiny shirt and take new photos, and then nothing would ever happen. It’s very sad.
Do you have any parting words of advice?
RS:
The people that make it in this industry don’t have any choice. It’s built into them, and they are just so talented that it can’t be denied. In the end, it really depends on how badly you want it. If you just want to come into the studio and do it for a couple years, it’s not going to work. I’ve never seen anybody just dabble and find success. The ones who have made it are “all in” from the very beginning. You don’t have a choice. It is what you’re meant to do.
There is one word describes all the people I’ve seen that have had success: fearlessness. The fearless people always do well. The ones that question and pause are the ones who are still sitting and wondering what happened or asking, “Why isn’t anything happening?”
To learn more about Robert Smith and the work he does, please visit the Defy Recordings website.
Thom Russo is a 13-time Grammy® Award-winning engineer, producer and mixer. He first developed an interest in audio production as a conservatory student at Northwestern University studying percussion and theory, when he spent as much time as he could in recording studios around Chicago learning the ins and outs of different technologies and production tools. He started his professional career working on everything from jingles to classical, jazz and R&B projects at River North Studios in Chicago, eventually accepting a staff position at Larrabee Sound, one of L.A.’s largest recording studios. After he had built up a repertoire of experience, he branched out on his own and got picked up by Nettwerk Producer Management. During the past two decades, he has worked with major artists such as Michael Jackson, Babyface, Prince, Audioslave, Eric Clapton, Ke$ha and Johnny Cash, songwriters including Rhett Lawrence (Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey) and producers such as Teddy Riley, Bruce Swedien and Rick Rubin.
Recently, I got to sit down with Thom and talk about his career in the music industry, some advice he has for those that want to get into professional audio production and a few tips for artists trying to choose the right engineers, producers and mixers for their projects.
Thanks for taking some time to talk to me, Thom. Tell me a little bit about how you got started in the music industry?
TR:
I was a musician for a very long time. The short of it is, I decided to take the path of studying music at a higher level. I was conservatory trained at Northwestern University. I realized that I was gravitating towards modern music production. That was something I randomly started to be attracted to, which I guess isn’t any different from any kid who is listening to a lot of music when they’re growing up. It was convenient for me to get a heavy music education while going into something that was more modern technical musical production.
I entered Northwestern in percussion and theory. I was a keyboard player my entire life, but my major was in theory. It happens in the arts a lot of times, where people say their education was wasted. But I can gladly say that was not the case for me. Just as I think actors will go and learn Shakespeare and then never use it when they are out in the working world, there is something of that language in the delivery of that that they use, and it’s the same with me. There’s something of the language I learned while I was an 18-year old kid that I use daily, if not consciously then subconsciously.
I know a lot of people that don’t believe in a formal music education. But I think you need to know the rules before you insist on breaking them.
TR:
It’s exactly that. I think it’s certainly something where you should know them and then should break them. That said, I don’t think it’s for everybody. But a lot of times it can be, specifically for a guy like me. I knew I loved the art form, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. After I started to educate myself more and hang out with different types of people in different genres. Through that I found myself stumbling into a recording studio when I was 20-years old in Chicago. That was the first time I’d had an experience with it, and it was like the Holy Grail seeing everything happen. My head exploded, because at that point I thought, “Wow, this is how things are made.”
This was before I was working. I was just a kid playing in bands and spending a lot of time in headphones listening to everything. My choice of styles was always very diverse. I listened to Pink Floyd, Steely Dan and Prince and sometimes heavier stuff like AC/DC. But I didn’t know how stuff was made until I started hanging out in the studios and started being a fly on the wall as much as I could. I started completely from the bottom, up, which kids still do today. I recommend it highly. I was getting tea and running errands for folks just so I could hang out and see how things were made by professionals and semi-professionals.
What was the first studio that gave you your shot at being a working engineer?
TR:
It was in Chicago. I started an intern program at a big studio in downtown Chicago called River North Recorders. While I was finishing up my education I was spending three or four days a week for four or five hours a pop down there, not only getting tea for folks but really learning the ropes. My days were easily 15-16-hour days between going to class and riding the subway to get there. But it was great. I was super hungry, and it made all the difference in the world, because immediately I took a job there as a staff engineer when I got out of school at 21-years old. It was great. I didn’t know anything. The studio is no longer in existence. But I was working on as high-profile projects as could be done in Chicago, which consisted of a lot of commercial and advertising work like jingles, etc.. It was buttered up next to whatever was going on in the Chicago scene then, which was a lot of industrial, house and some R&B. It was very interesting, because my education in terms of modern music production was getting a huge bath there, because the work was so variable. One day we’d be doing a full band for a McDonald’s commercial, and then I’d be working with some crazy music project. It was very interesting and diverse, which is great.
I worked there for a good three or four years before I wanted to gravitate towards one specific side of music production, which was really records. I was mostly interested in making records and going into that actual field. So, I started to visit L.A. and poke my nose into different people’s business in recording studios out here. Luckily I had made enough professional connections while I was in Chicago that folks hooked me up with different individuals at different studios here in L.A. My resume was stacked up enough that for some reason, it was the right place right time. I got job offers from Larrabbee Sound and Ocean Way Recording, which were both big studios that needed help at that time. And my education had been one where I had my chops together. I chose Larrabee, and before I knew it, I was 25 or 26 and had a job at an enormous recording studio in L.A., and I made the move.
And was there a specific record that really jump-started your career?
TR:
Within the first two or three months I was at Larrabee, there was a guy working in the studio next door to me named Michael Jackson. And he was working on a record called Dangerous. It’s laughable how lucky this was, and it would’ve been lucky for anyone. I bumped into him in the hallways along with all the other cats that had been working on it, which was Bruce Swedien and Teddy Riley. Everybody was already on the gig, because he had been working on the record for three years at that point. It was something where we just got to talking, and he just said, “Why don’t you come on board to help us out, because we have more than enough to do right now. I got pulled into that boat and worked on that record for about a year and a half. And that even turned into something that was more bizarre for a young guy that had just come to town. Not only was I part of the engineering team on it, but then Sony Records was getting super frustrated that the record wasn’t getting done, and there was a huge deadline, and it had to be put out in September. And it was June, and everybody was saying, “We have to finish these mixes and these vocals.” And Michael was still writing lyrics on at least three quarters of the record. So Bruce, the executive producer said, “You have to go with Michael to this other studio, which is Record One in Sherman Oaks and sit with him for the next month and a half and record all the vocals.” And that’s what I did. Again, I had been in L.A. for about four or five months at that point. It was certainly one of the most bizarre things that had ever happened to me, but in a good way.
And after you had a Michael Jackson credit, I assume doors started opening left and right.
TR:
They really did. And I was young, didn’t know anything about the business, but I definitely had my technical chops completely in line. I was nervous. But I was more nervous about how I was going to interact on a personal level. I knew that whichever format we were recording to – and we were on tape at that time – whichever console, etc., I was going to be okay. Truth of it is, and this is certainly something kids should know about: Getting your technical chops together should be a primary focus; because that’s something you learn, and then you just forget. It doesn’t matter where you are or how you are; as long as your chops are really together in every genre and format, you’re going to be ahead of the game for sure. You should never be thinking about, “How or why or when do I do this?” It should be something that is rote.
When did you make the leap from house engineer to being out on your own?
TR:
It was a very natural thing where so much work started to come my way that I decided to go on my own. This was about 15 years ago, and now it’s a little different. There are now such a small number of people that are staff engineers, doing what I did in house. Now when artists are making big records, they’re usually seeking out individuals who are independent contractors. After realizing that being on staff was holding me back, I went out on my own. I started mentoring under a lot of great people, like Rhett Lawrence. I worked with him for a lot of years and started to co-produce with him and work on his tracks. He was spending a lot more time songwriting and working on melodies and lyrics, and I’d be working on beats for him and mixing. It became a lot more of that than it was spending time working with anybody that would show up at the door.
Once I was an independent contractor for long enough, I started to seek management, and they were seeking me out at the same time. I started working with Netwerk Music Group; I’ve been with that company for about eight or nine years. And the first project they recommended me for was with Macy Gray, who I ended up completely hitting it off with. We worked on a couple of projects together.
You’ve had a phenomenal run and have bounced through word of mouth from being a kid in a studio, to a studio engineer, to a guy that has now been running his own business for a lot of years and has serious professional management. You alluded earlier in your story to the fact that you knew nothing about the business. We all start in this business with a lot of other people at the starting line. The numbers end up being significantly thinned out as time goes on. What is the difference between someone like you, who has carved out a career – other than chops, which are a given – and someone who fell by the wayside?
TR:
After you learn all the stuff that is pretty obvious – the technical skills and musical skills – you have to get around something that is less obvious, but needs to be learned: the people skills. On a day-to-day basis, I have to deal with this entity called “artists.” Beyond just dealing with this entity called “artists,” I have to deal with this entity called “music business people.” A lot of times I’m in the middle, and a lot of times I just have to play good cop/bad cop. It’s a balancing act.
I think the most important thing is always keeping your eye on the finish line. That means that one day when the artist isn’t feeling something and doesn’t want to sing, you have to find something else to push the project along to get it ready for a strict June 1st release.
So, to be successful, you need to be able to deliver, regardless of obstacles or excuses.
TR:
And that’s only one side of it. The other thing is, you have to be very patient. And this is a rule in life too, but you have to try not to take things personally. Very frequently I’ll be in a circumstance where I’ll hand a mix, song, track, etc. over, and it’s great, and I think it’s going to change the face of modern music. But it’s not received for whatever reason. Or I’ll go for a gig that I don’t get. If you take everything personally, it’s a very difficult industry to be in. That’s the truth about the entertainment industry in general. It can be very fickle. The most important thing you have to realize is that it’s not about you; it’s about the music.
What advice do you give to young engineers, since there aren’t as many big studios anymore? It seems like a lot of stuff is happening in home studios now, and the educational opportunities in the last 10-15 years have diminished significantly for a lot of reasons.
TR:
A lot of guys I’m running across now seem to have the same problem/shortcoming. First and foremost, it is good for any young person out there to have a good education of just audio. It sounds boring, but it is integral to understand the way things worked way back when, when there were big consoles and when there was tape – the way things worked in Motown and even before that. You even need to know how things were made when the Beatles made Abbey Road. To understand that makes our world of computers that much clearer and better. I do meet a lot of guys now that have never really set foot in an actual recording studio. For me, that is such a strange thing. I consider myself lucky, because I was coming up when I got to see all old school stuff. And then the old school stuff went away, and now it’s the new school stuff, which isn’t really going to go anywhere. I really believe that this is how records are going to be made ad infinitum, for the rest of history. I can also say it’s impossible to say that the big studios will all go away, because technically that is impossible. There will always be a need for super high-end, class A, high-fi environments of that nature; because obviously, audio needs to be captured, be it an orchestra, rock band or solo vocalist. My sweeping comment is that you need to have an education to understand the history of the technology that you’re using.
To get very specific with an example, say you’re in your Digital Audio Workstation and you pull up an equalizer or compressor, and you know how that plug-in works. But do you really know how the original worked? You can learn what the model does in the computer, but you have to understand that it’s just a model. And it’s a great-sounding model. And it’s fascinating and unbelievable, especially for a guy like me, that stuff like this sounds as good as it does. And it’s also extremely convenient, hence the nature of the business right now. It’s great for me, because I can be working on three or four things at a time.
You also have a lot of perspective on the musician side of things. What should artists have already prepared before they even start knocking on doors of engineers, producers or mixers?
TR:
Preparation is a broad topic, but I tell a lot of young bands the same thing. And a lot of times they don’t believe it. Very frequently folks are shy about playing me their very rough, sonically trashed-out demos. And I can say with a resounding scream that it’s never something I’m looking for. I’m not looking for something that sounds like a record already, because that’s the easiest thing for me to work on. I can make something like that sound great in a matter of hours. But for musicians, the best thing to do is have your best foot forward in terms of songwriting and be as specific as you can be about your goals. I don’t care if you’re a solo artist or a band. The most important thing is to know what you want to be. Not that you need to necessarily categorize yourself, but put what you’re going for in your mind. And that can be a million things with a million different influences. I think the artists I gravitate towards the most when it comes to people I want to work for are the ones that really know what they’re about, and have done their homework in terms of being an artist. You should have an established identity and a goal, and you should be able to present a bunch of records you like the sound of.
And you don’t want to have to turn around to a band and tell them what they want, especially in the age of the internet where all this information is readily available.
TR:
Absolutely. If you’re a big, thick rock band, but you want a record that sounds like Gnarls Barkley, then cool. That’s what you should be going for. But you need to have that in your mind and your language when you talk about what you’re looking for.
What advice would you give to artists that are trying to select an engineer, producer or mixer? How do they find people of quality like you?
TR:
They really just inquire. I like that in the past couple years, bands are just starting to inquire to me. What I can tell anyone is, don’t be afraid to approach veterans. We’re just out there looking for great music, just like everyone else. Sure it happens sometimes that the labels call me and say, “Hey, I’d like you to work with this person.” But 50% of my work now is bands and artists that contact me and say, “Hi, I heard your stuff. I really want to work with you.” And that’s great. I can also tell you that all my compatriots that have been in the industry a long time feel the same. They’ll tell me, “This artist approached me and is great, and I’m going to start working with them.”
If you want to learn more about Thom Russo and his many projects, check out his website. You can also go find him at Nettwerk Producer Management.
Tim Latham is a Grammy award winning producer, engineer and Mixer. He has worked with Lou Reed, Brittney Spears, the Black Eyed Peas, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, the Fun Loving Criminals and countless other artists. He has been doing mostly mixing projects of late and was kind enough to take some time to speak to me after a overseeing the mastering of one of his latest projects while at Sterling Sound.
Tim thanks again for your time. As someone who has been in the business as long as you have been I was hoping you could tell me what you wish more artists would do before asking you to mix a record and then hopefully find out a bit more about how you have built the career you have today.
TL: Well, for recording purposes, hire an engineer. Always. Don’t let your friend who knows how to use Pro Tools be the engineer. You can find someone in engineering school for $20 an hour, even on a budget. It is money wisely-spent even if it’s going to be recorded on an M Box. You need a set of ears there.
You get a lot of files that are poorly recorded?
TL: Often everything needs to be replaced, and I have to re-do the drums. Any beginning band should spend money making their demo or record- it’s worth it.
Did you start out as an artist?
TL: I started off as an engineer and gopher.
What was it that got you sitting in front of the board eventually?
TL: I have no idea. You make your luck and create your breaks. It’s just a matter of how you take advantage of them when you get there.
You were at Battery when you started doing records?
TL:
I first started working in the studio in 1986 in Boston as a gopher guy. I didn’t know anything about anything. While I going to school, I was engineering in the studios trying to figure out what I was going to do. I graduated knowing that I know nothing, which I think was my greatest strength – being aware of how little I knew.
So how are you sourcing new clients lately? In your situation I am guessing the records you have made are like business cards?
TL: It is tight right now. It’s tough for everyone. I am relying on long-term clients and the other producers I’ve worked with for years. For all of us, the bulk of what we do – all our records are business cards. Most of my clients now are international.
And you’re doing mostly mixing?
TL: I’m about 95% mixing. I have no interest in production. We did a couple records with Fun Loving Criminals and now, I feel like you kind of set yourself up wearing every hat like that, if you’re a producer, engineer and mixer. If there’s something wrong with the record, there’s only one guy to blame. The engineer can blame the producer or the producer can blame the mixer, but when you’re wearing all three hats, if the record doesn’t sell, it’s your fault and you’ve got a Scarlet Letter. It’s very taxing. It’s a left brain/right brain struggle.
What is your advice before getting into the studio? How much pre-production do you recommend a band do before working on their record?
TL: As much as you can possibly get away with. I’ve seen more time wasted in the studio. The majority of time – about 80% — I spent in the studio was a waste of time. I’ve seen having pre-production meetings in the studio, bands not having their crap together before they get there, sometimes they get overwhelmed by being in the studio for the first time, which is understandable, but you need to make practice runs. Go to the local studio first. Be prepared.
Do you find that people with home recording gear and some recording experience are better prepared?
TL: I think they can speak the language. Sometimes it’s actually more hurtful than helpful. A little knowledge in the wrong hands is dangerous. You just get questions every step of the way. I’ve been doing it for 23 or 24 years, and this person has had a home studio for a week.
Musician Coaching: Any advice picking producers, engineers and mixers?
TL: Listen to your favorite records, even older records. Listen to your mom and dad’s records. If there’s something about those records you like – you may not even be able to articulate what it is – but you like those records. That’s how I thought as an engineer. I listened to records that I liked and asked myself, “How on earth did this record come together like that?” It’s not just about the songs, it’s the record itself. That’s what really piqued my interest in it. You can draw from all of those, but listen to the bands you kind of sound like. It’s kind of that easy. Don’t go with the first choice or the guys who sold the most records. Go with the records you like the most.
I also have A&R people just come out and say, “My God, the records that you worked on sold so many records.” I could sit here and try to take credit for that, but it’s impossible. I mean, I had something to do with it, because it wouldn’t be the same record if I did not work on it. The songs would be the same, and the artists would still be the same but it still wouldn’t be the same record. But to say I’m responsible for this record selling X number of records is just ridiculous.
I take what I do very seriously, but I don’t take myself too seriously. Coming up assisting and interning, seeing miserable heaps, I wondered who would possibly want to spend all this money being around a miserable heap like this? I said, “This is ridiculous. You’re getting invited into people’s dreams and you’re a miserable heap.” I wouldn’t want to sit next to some of them on a bus. If you become a good “knob jockey,” what separates you is how you get along with people.
Do you have a Web site?
TL: It’s in the works. More people find me through All Music and stuff like that. I have set up links on my Myspace for now.
Do you have any general artist advice? Are there other mistakes you’re still seeing?
TL: I don’t want to sound corny, but it is the new frontier. The old way doesn’t fit anymore. The mistakes people make are not knowing their inabilities and not having the right people around them to steer them in the right direction. I’ve seen plenty of times where younger bands have a best friend’s friend that has a business degree and is going to be their manager without having any clue as to how the music industry works. And he’s just making mistake after mistake after mistake. And I’m not saying that going with one of the larger management firms is by any means exponentially better, but it’s definitely better than having somebody who is completely inexperienced with the industry.
If you’re not properly represented, nobody will ever take you seriously, or even if they do take YOU seriously and they take the music seriously, if you have somebody who is representing you who is an inexperienced person, you’ll never get over the hurdle. The money is harder to get to. The people who are easy to deal with are the ones that are going to get the money, the contacts and get their music placed in a movie, music, in advertising or in a video game. If you are being represented by someone who has zero you are making it really difficult on yourself.
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If you need your record mixed, you can contact Tim Latham
