Would Craig be rolling tape all the time? Yeah. Sometimes he would have a DAT going. Something un-tangible happens. I think John Coltrane may have said it once: “You will always play different when the tape is rolling.” When we were recording the Glum record Malcom Burn would say “ Yeah that was great do it again.” And we just couldn’t. I would think I’m a lame-ass drummer. I can’t come up that grove we were just playing. A lot of times a producer won’t take no for an answer and you’ll spend the whole night working on the song and it’s really just a waste of time. Are you good at knowing when that’s happening? No. I’m not. There were times when I thought a take was really good and it sucked. In that Memphis session (for the new Giant Sand record), we did a take, then did a second take, then a third. And we all agreed that the second take was the best. Then the engineer rewound the tape and went past the second take and we were listening to the first take. We were all going this doesn’t sound like the second take but we were all diggin’ it. It was a happy accident. We listened to the second take and it really sucked. So do you and Joey both have studios in your house? No. I’d like to. The Spoke record was done on 8-track that the Friends of Dean Martinez had bought. It was in Joey’s apartment for awhile and then in mine. Just two microphones. This house I’m living in now has an amazing sound. It’s got 14 foot ceilings, all stucco inside. It s just a regular brick house. It has this weird hallway, you know? Rooms with lots of doorways leading into this hallway with this high ceiling. Lots of room for notes, sounds, to go off into a little corner and circulate. You put mics around in different corners. The drum sounds, specifically the kick, are all so similar. You can tell it’s the same drummer. But there seems to be a specific mic approach too. Is it something you picked up from Craig or is it the way you like to hear your kit? I got into this thing where I didn’t want to have anything in my drum. I got this Ludwig kit about twelve years ago that has this sound. I think it has something to do with the fact the the shells are thin. When you hear the Ludwig, the bass drum opens up. It’s an open sound. You’re hearing like this subsonic reverberation. You’re feeling it more than you’re hearing. It’s just a double headed bass drum with no hole cut in it. I think a lot of it has to do with heads too, made in the 60s. Does a lot of that sound come from the warehouse at Wavelab? Yeah it’s a great sounding room. And in the house here too, it sounds really good. There are some things about that Spoke record that I like better. More open. You hear the air. The drums sound incredible on the first song on the Buckner “Devotion and Doubt” record. Especially the kick. Yeah I think that was a first or second take. You have to give Craig credit too. He would just go with that. He’s got a lot of enthusiasm and energy. If it’s not happening he’ll just move mics around and put them in different parts of the room. He’s not like “Take the front head off, blah, blah, blah.”
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