What were the first projects you produced?
I've always been reticent about producing, because it's a heavy responsibility. So, for years, young bands that didn't know any better would ask me to produce their records, and I would say no, because it's like taking someone's life into your hands. What I started doing production-wise was for movies, because if a movie fails, it's not going to be because of one song. But if musicians fail, that's another thing, especially for the young ones. I wrote and produced the rockabilly songs for a John Waters movie called Cry Baby, and I wrote and produced music for a very underground film called Border Radio. It was All-son Anders' first movie.
Which came first;1 The song "Border Radio" or the movie?
The song came years before the movie, and the movie had nothing to do with the song. The movie budget was extremely low, and I did mainly instrumental, ambient tracks. Actually, one of the ambient tracks off Border Radio got picked up and was used in Wall Street. I got more money for that than the entire recording budget of the Border Radio movie. Work like that got me more used to taking control in the studio. The first thing I did where I was like "Hey, I want to produce you" was a guy named Sonny Burgess.
So his record with you, Tennessee Border, was the first album you ever produced?
Yeah. Well, with the Blasters, we kind of gang-produced our first two albums. With the first album, we kind of got by, but the second one definitely suffered. The album suffered, our careers suffered, everything suffered. We just wouldn't listen to other people. If you're a genius, then maybe that's a good thing, but if you're just some schmoes from Downey, that's not the right thing to do. I produced Sonny because we did a gig together and I thought, "He still has it, and I know how to do this." 
How did you meet him?
A friend of mine, Jack Smith, in Rhode Island, had one of the best rockabilly bands around at the time, and his wife flew me and Sonny out for his birthday. They had this party at a club, and Sonny and I played together. So, I went to Hightone, who I had just done my first album [Blue Boulevard] for, and I kind of sheepishly said [in a small voice] ''You guys maybe interested in maybe a Sonny Burgess record?" I talked them into it, and I enjoyed the whole process. It was extremely low-budget, and it was rehearsed, recorded and mixed in five days.
So, you recorded at Normandy Sound in Rhode Island because the band was there?
Yeah. The tunny thing is it was the same studio and the same engineer, Phil Greene, who did all the New Kids on the Block and Marky Mark records. He was so happy to be doing Sonny. The whole session, he was going, "My God, live musicians. This is such a trip. I haven't seen live musicians in years."
Is that how you like to work in general, live in the studio?
It depends on the music. For rockabilly, I think live with an overdub here and there-95 percent live-is the best way to capture it. There's that quasi-rockabilly that comes out of Nashville now; some of it's real good, but you can definitely tell they start from the drum track up, and everything's layered and perfectly in tune, and all the parts are worked out. But for real Sun Records-type rockabilly, it's got to be live, and somebody's got to be making a mistake.
Do you involve yourself very much in technical/equipment decisions? 
I have a couple of engineers that I trust. Mark Linett is the one I use the most. In regard to Big Sandy, we
would get in discussions about modern technology vs. old technology- heated discussions. What was your stance? My stance is that, well, if you listen to Gene Vincent records that were cut in the same room where we did Big Sandy, that was state-of-the-art sound for that time period, and those records still sound incredible today, whereas with the Sun records, you could tell that they were recorded in a very small room with a 1- or 2-track machine. I think it's important to get the best mic you can, the best board you can, the best room you can-the state of the art that's available.
How did you get hooked up with Big Sandy?
I'd seen them around for years. They were, at one time, more of a rockabilly trio, but they were great in all their incarnations. After I'd done the Sonny Burgess record, I'd been out on tour with one of my own records and ended up at some gig at the Palamino. It was a Hank Williams birthday gig, and everyone was doing Hank Williams songs, and Big Sandy did "Weary Blues From Waiting," and that was it. It was like "I really would like to have a record of that." And at that time, they were sort of progressing away from rockabilly into hillbilly боп, which is kind of this proto rockabilly sound, and not many people understand that sound. Not that I do, necessarily, but maybe I do more than your average person.
What is the difference between rockabilly and hillbilly боп?
Rockabilly is more aggressive and doesn't swing. It's more white ритм-н-блюзовый of 1954. Hillbilly боп has elements of that; it can be aggressive, yet it swings. The first album I did with Big Sandy [fumpin' From 6 to 6] was pretty much a hillbilly боп record, but I think the new one is country swing. A good example of hillbilly боп would be Bill Haley when he had a band called The Sadcllemen, before The Comets. It was basically the same band, except that for The Comets, they fired the steel player and added a saxophone, and they turned the drums up. The beats involved in hillbilly боп are more western swing and pure swing beats; the boogie feel swings a little bit more. It was more of a late '40s, early '50s sound.
Swinging is something that has not happened in rock 'n' roll in a long, long time. That a band would specialize in it is, to me, one of the things that makes Big Sandy unique in the field. When I play rockabilly, my physical inclination is to thrash it. I'm more of a Sun-influenced player. Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys know all those records, and they've been through that, and they've found their own sound. Most rockabilly groups don't swing, and these guys really swing. I guess that's the word for today.
What's the process you use in the studio with Big Sandy?
I don't have to do a lot. I've produced four records this year, counting their new one. With the others, like with Chris Gaffney and Tom Russell, we would start with acoustic guitar and build from there. But with Big Sandy, when they came in, they'd already learned the songs fairly well.
I help with arrangements, meaning anything from guitar and steel lines to drum figures. But really, in a way, I feel more like their Sam Phillips-it's kind of to create a mood in the studio. On the first album, especially, they were very timid. They were kind of in awe of being in Capitol Studio B, because it's a legendary studio. One thing The Blasters wouldn't have copped to was we were frightened to death in there. A studio can be a very intimidating place for live bands, and none of us had had a lot of studio experience, so we would argue and fight about the smallest, most ridiculous thing. I wanted to make sure that kind of thing didn't screw Big Sandy up.
The years that I've spent since The Blasters, doing sessions or producing or recording my own records, taught me that the best way to handle the studio is relax and tiy to make your natural sound appear on those big speakers in the control room. So with Big Sandy, that meant a lot of pep talks, just creating an atmosphere where they would feel comfortable. And then it was a lot of takes, deciding on the take, and maybe as a take developed, working on the arrangements. I viewed my role as interpretive, between them and Mark Linnet, who engineered the records, to make it so the sound was fairly modern and yet reflected the way they wanted to be presented.
It really comes down to pulling some drama. Sometimes in older songs, or songs written to sound old, arrangements can be very monotone. Everyone hits a certain level and stays there, and especially with a band that's as quiet as Big Sandy it's really just a matter of changing a bass part, or having the drummer going from a closed hi-hat to an open hi-hat, and we'd do a lot of things between the guitar and steel, maybe have the guitar do the solo first instead of the steel.
Sometimes what you bring to a production is your own music-like Sonny Burgess recording "Flat Top Joint" or Chris Gaffney recording "Help You Dream." The Gaffney version of "Help You Dream " has a similar honky tank atmosphere to The Blasters' version, but it's a lot sweeter. How did you effect that?
Of all the songs on that record, that one went through the most versions- about four states of existence. Chris wanted to do "Help You Dream," and to me, the lyrics fit Chris' personality and fit the record, but I didn't want it to sound like The Blasters' version. And in a way, I felt that The Blasters' version was penultimate, because how can you top the Jordanaires? [Gene Vincent's backup vocalists, who appear on The Blasters' version]. So we tried several different approaches. We tried a pseudo lounge-y jazz kind of approach. We tried a slow, slow, slow, slow country ballad approach, and none of it was working, so I got it kind of back into the honky tonk groove.
The Blasters were always more of an ритм-н-блюзовый band. So, when we would play country-ish, we would play country like an ритм-н-блюзовый band would. With Chris, I decided to make it real country and real early '60s, kind of Winn Stewart-ish. Donald Lindley, the drummer, came up with the idea of putting bongos on it, because that would be such a late-'50s, early-'60s kind of country-Nashville way of being contemporary. Once we caught onto that groove, it was just the layering of things on top of it.
Chris' record was started with just him and me and acoustic guitars. I'm proud of that record, because I helped him on his songs: rewriting them with him, getting rid of verses, moving bridges here or there...So the whole record-though I don't mean to sound egotistical-is partly mine. I feel I'm an actual part, like I could not be removed from the record, or the record wouldn't exist the way it is.
Did you bring this project to Hightone?
Yeah. They had done one record with him before. It was produced by a guy named Wyman Reese, who had done a great job, and they used Chris' band that he plays bar gigs with, but I knew that there was something missing.
When I did King of California, Greg Leisz, who produced that and who had clone sessions with everybody on earth, helped me on my vocal, and that was such an eye-opening experience that I wanted to get Gaffney, who's such a brilliant singer, in a position where his vocals could really shine.
Do you have any plans for new projects, productionwise?
Well, I just did produce, arrange and perform the theme for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie. It'll be out in February. It's the theme from the show, but I arranged it to be kind of this rockabilly meets surf meets free jazz meets outer space meets The Byrds, meets The Turtles meets corny sci-fi guitar sounds. And I'm trying to back away from producing, because what happens is I tend not to write songs, but there are a couple of projects I'm interested in. One is this band from Austin called The De-railers. And I may be doing a record with Scott Kempner, who used to be in the Del Lords, but that one's still iffy, because he wants to do it in New York, and I want to do it in L.A.
The great thing about independent labels is you can do whatever you want, more or less, but you have budgetary limitations. And as a producer, it gets weird because you call in a lot of favors. I try to work with great engineers, and they, rightfully, want to get paid for their value. So, sometimes it comes down to "Well, man, I have to get a hotel room if you cut it there."
I've heard you refer to Hightone as "the politically correct Hightone Records label." Why is that?
Just because they let me do what I want. When Tom Russell and I had the idea to do Tulare Dust, we could have sold that to a bigger label, but I have a certain loyalty to them. The music they support is the kind of music that I like. If I was signed to Joe Schmoe's Big-Time Boffo Major Label, I don't think I could go to them and say, "Hey, why don't you give me some money to do Sonny Burgess?" or Big Sandy or Chris Gaffney. Normally, no one would let these people make records, but there is a market out there for this stuff. So for me, as a novice little producer, it's like "What a workshop."

Chris Gaffney

Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys
SWINGIN' AT CAPITOL
Engineer Mark Linett has been working with Dave Alvin since 1987, when he recorded and produced Alvin's first solo record, Romeo's Escape. Since then, he's been the recording and/or mixing engineer on several of Alvin's releases and production projects, including the latest from Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, Swingin' West.
The recording was done in Capitol Studio B, which is equipped with a Neve 8068 console. But to achieve the optimum old-timey Big Sandy sound, which Linett describes as "Bob Wills, circa 1950," Linett brought in one of two 1962 Universal Audio tube consoles that he owns".Almost everything went through that little 12-channel tube board," he says".We recorded 16-track, 15 ips, and the record was cut live, including vocals, except for a couple of patches here and there, and we overdubbed the fiddle part, because the fiddler wasn't available for the sessions. But we did use automation; I admit it."
Linett says he used two tracks each on guitar and pedal steel, with one of each going to the UA, and the second track of each to the Neve. Another vintage touch: Big Sandy's vocal went to an old RCA 77 microphone, and then through a Neve preamp. Linett says that the RCA sounds good, gives them the olcl-fashioned sound they want and affords enough isolation to be able to record live.
For the recording, Linett brought in KRK 7000 monitors from his own studio, Your Place or Mine Location Recording, which was where the record was mixed. Your Place or Mine is fitted with a modifed API 2488 board with Flying Faders. Linett says he also prides himself on having "a tremendous amount of really vintage equipment, and I like to combine the two, both for Dave's records and a number of other clients, including Brian Wilson, who actually recorded in the '60s on some of the same equipment I now own." (One of Linett's UA consoles came out of United Western Studio 2.) "We kind of run the gamut between having a /2-inch, 3-track machine all the way up to a 48-track Sony digital."
Linett, whose client list also includes Randy Newman, Rickie Lee Jones, Los Lobos and others, says that he enjoys working with Alvin because "I appreciate the artist-as-producer approach. As a singer and player himself, and a songwriter, he has a good sense of those things, and to me the record is more about the music than about which mic you choose. And Dave is most often working in an idiom that I personally like to listen to, so it makes it very pleasurable."

back to the BLASTERS