I first worked with Matt about 5 years ago. My old partner Glen and myself had just left Catherine North and had found ourselves working out of a real shit-hole in the North end of the city between Barton and Burlington St. It was definitely a memorable spot. Bob Lanois had a great name for it...maybe it was shithole...anyway, you couldn't grab lunch without passing a prostitute, a pile of ashes from someones attempt at an insurance scam and the Hells Angles compound, which was ironically across the street from the Brinks security headquarters. As shitty as it was though, we were surrounded by other artists and the spot was fairly well priced, kinda, not really... it was a start.
While making Matt's record Glen and I moved to yet another studio. Things at Shithole had gotten unbearable and promise after promise had been broken. This is no slight on the artists that had been trying to organize the building...it was the landlord. No air conditioning was bad enough...then the installment of a transformer in our actual studio was the tree trunk that broke the camels back, Ill never forget walking in and seeing the electrician working without any notice. Try making records with a constant buZZZZZZZZZZ going on. We left and created Vibewrangler studio...my favorite part of this story was when the landlord hit us up for a cleaning charge after we moved out, what a guy. I told him we would be happy to pay if he was interested in giving us a couple thousand for the loss of work, the inconvenience and whatever else I could think of at the time.
Vibewrangler was a fresh start. It was a huge room and there was a great buzz of positive energy from everyone involved. Over the course of several months we had a bunch of great musicians come in and play on Matt's record. Tone Valcic and Bill Dillon to mention a couple. This early part of the Vibewrangler thing was definitely the best time for it. We had a lot of great parties, made some cool records and really bonded with a lot of people in the Hamilton Music scene. The problems, limitations and realities of the Vibewrangler situation didn't have room to settle in yet because everyone was having such a great time.
So that all started five years ago. Since then Matt has become a good friend of mine. We have spent many nights stumbling through Hamilton together, usually laughing at something ridiculous. He is really good at making seemingly normal experiences have a cartoon-ish and surreal quality to them. Matt was one of the guys in my bachelor party, I will never forget being at the roulette table with him and winning $600 on the first spin...I wont get into details but we had an epic night, not Sheen epic, but epic none the less. I have gotten to know his family quite well and he has an opinion that I really respect.
How the land lies started about a month before a single mic was set up. Matt sent me track listings and lyrics through email and would explain the inspiration for the tunes. He told me what he was listening to and we bounced around many different ideas for how this would recording unfold. This is a fairly personal record for Matt, its incredibly sincere and honest and Matt wanted to make sure that was properly represented. When we originally spoke about the kind of band and accompaniment that would be used we were going over board. "we can have this girl sing here, and that guy play trumpet there" Then I got an email from Matt that made the most sense, "I want this to feel like I am jamming in my buddies garage with friends...actually I only want close friends to be involved in this record and I want to do everything in your studio, not at another". I have designed my current studio to be extremely comfortable and focused.... so that is exactly what happened.
Before we laid down the beds Matt and I spent a couple evenings having drinks and getting comfortable. Really it was 70% hanging out and 30% recording. You can't force honest music...especially when you want to do it right the first time. So we talked, brainstormed and came up with a plan.
We recorded the beds for 6 songs in one day. The main reason that we were able to do this was because Steve Mckay (Bruce Peninsula) and Billy Holmes (Dark Mean) are two of the most talented musicians that I know and not only that but we have all known each other for years. I remember being in grade 5 and going over to Steve's house after school and eating peanut putter and celery while playing some computer game. I haven't known Billy for nearly as long, but I have spent more time in the studio with him than anyone else, well, aside from Jon Daly. Additionally, Billy, Steve and Matt all went to the same high school and recorded Matt's first record together. So yeah, good people and good communication...things go easily.
For the recording I rented 4 1272's preamps from Tristan Miller. Tristan is a young Hamilton guy that has a gift for electronics and a passion for audio. He has designed a very faithful reproduction of the Neve 1272. The pres were used to cover the drums. For overheads I used my Neumann KM184s. The front of kit mic was a vintage Neumann 87 that went into an aggressive 1176. The hi-hat was a beyer m160, high tom had a 421, low tom a sm7 and the kik was a German d12. And last a 57 on the snare.
The drums were a mix between my beat up Yamaha stage custom and an Ayotte floor tom. The cymbals were all K darks. It sounded as far as you could get from an L.A drum sound, perfect. The bass went direct into my Chandler tg-2...it is my modded Fender jazz bass. Matt normally plays a Fender acoustic however, for recording his buddy Chris Houston lent him an old '63 Harmony. It has a beautiful sound and is a true classic. You can't really get a better guitar.
The rest of the record went in a completely logical yet totally unorthodox way. Every musician has their own preferred method of working and a big part of producing is being able to recognize these things and to adapt. Matt is very sensitive to the tone/vibe of a session and recording. Its gotta have the right mood. But, I dont want to give you the wrong impression...this isn't some eccentric pretentious thing, he doesn't need the right incense or only red m&ms in order to work. He usually just needs to "bless the room", have a coffee and when he puts on the phones hear a mix that takes him to the right place. That can be a challenge when your making a record because your only working with whatever pieces of the puzzle you have created up until that point, and when your working with a three piece....half the pieces are missing. So his portion of the recording was combined with the mixing process. That way when he was cutting the vocals and guitar...the band sounded as happening as I could get it at the time and he could let go.
Mixing, if your not into tech talk you might as well skip this paragraph. ...lets start with the drums. As usual the first thing to do was to throw away half of the mics. I use the kik/snare/toms/and overheads. The hat and FOK 87 really didnt help anything. Although, if this was a mono recording I could have probably gotten away with only having the 87 and kik. Anyway, like the Dirty Nil, the overhead sound is the overstayer and the airfield. Because this is a folk record I wasn't as aggressive with the compression however, there is still a fair amount. The snare ran through the transient designer and the distressor. Most of the time I was using the TD to add sustain to the drums, however in a couple songs I wanted it to be tighter and dryer. We had a lot of fun with delay on the drums. I used the soundtoys echo plug in to create modulating repeats or sometimes a subtle shuffle in the background
The bass went through the massive passive and 1176. I had boosted a lot of lows originally when tracking....most of which has been completely rolled off by now.
My goal was to find a sound that would allow for the playing to really speak. We wanted effects but definitely didnt want to hide the sublties of what everyone was bringing to the table. To put it into more specific references I wanted to hear the things that I hear on my favorite Paul Simon records...like every little ghost note of Steve Gadds playing....but also, use verb and effects to create a oneness to the record, to take you to a diffrerent place even though you will never notice it and to pull everything together in a professional way. As raw as the mixes are there is some extremely tripy things going on with effects that were being triggered by the acoustic.
There are still a couple little tweaks that I have in mind...but the record is pretty much done and just needs to be mastered. I wouldn't normally consider mastering my own stuff but for this one I am... Ill probably call in a second set of ears to help me...but thats still to be decided.
Matt is a crazy and ambitious bastard. However, all things consider it went extremely well and smoothly...I actually think Matt struggled a little bit to realize that things were rolling along so easily. Throughout the making of this record I have really wanted to make it the right thing out of respect for the fact that this guy is a one man show thats going to be troubadour-ing his way across North America for the next year and this recording is going to be a large part of what defines him as an artist. Its was an privilege to be working with all these guys and to be responsible for documenting it for others to experience.
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