The Dirty Heads, the Huntington Beach, CA band riding high on the success of their debut album, Any Port in a Storm and single Lay Me Down with Sublime singer Rome Ramirez, is using Pro Tools for their entire creative process.
Veterans of the road, the band has spent several years touring and building a following, and as singer/guitarist Dustin “Duddy” Bushnell explains, they’ve been together for even longer. “Jared (Watson), Jon (Olazabal) and I went to high school together, and we always played for fun,” he says. “We never really formally started a band, we just recorded stuff and people started hearing it.”
In those days, Bushnell says, their recording options were far more primitive. “When we were in high school I had a studio set up with a 12-channel mixer and a 4-track minidisk recorder. We’d record live to two tracks and use two more for overdubs.”
Now the band uses Pro Tools for everything, from writing and demos to final album mixes. “I’ve got a Pro Tools LE rig on my laptop,” says Bushnell. “Lots of times I’ll just sit home with an acoustic guitar, and if I have an idea I’ll record it and bring it to the band. Since we’ve all got Pro Tools LE rigs, any of us can take an idea we recorded and pull it into each other’s sessions.”
It’s a process that worked well in writing and recording their current hit, Lay Me Down, says Bushnell. “The way that song unfolded was really so organic. We actually wrote the chorus a couple of years ago, and never did anything with it. Then Rome was over the house one day – he’s an old friend we’ve known for years – and we were just jamming on guitars in the back yard, and the song just came together. It was so cool, we went into the studio and recorded it the next week.”
Pro Tools compatibility is also an asset when it comes to the studio. “We do all our recording at 17th Street Recording in Costa Mesa,” says Bushnell. “They’ve got a Pro Tools|HD system there, and we can bring any ideas or sketches and load them in with no problem. Sometimes the tracks from a demo might even end up as part of the record.”
As Bushnell observes, the spontaneity of their songwriting calls for flexibility, and Pro Tools delivers. “Pro Tools really fits with the way we work,” he says. “It’s great to be able to record an idea and be able to quickly try lots of different beats and loops over it. It’s so immediate – the program doesn’t get in the way of the creative flow.”
And Pro Tools also fits well with the band’s busy touring schedule. “Being able to use Pro Tools on the bus or in the hotel is awesome,” says Bushnell. “Just a little MBox and boom, you’re a recording studio. The program has pretty much everything you need to do a whole record – all the effects plug-ins, guitar preamps, everything.
With their newly expanded audience, the Dirty Heads plan on spending a lot more time on the road. “It sounds obvious, but we’ve gained a lot of new fans now that we’re being played on radio,” says Bushnell. “We want them to get to know the Dirty Heads as a live band, not just a song on the radio. So we’ll probably be writing most of the next album on the road. It’s a good thing we have Pro Tools.”
