Steve on the Phone: “Van Nuys, 91405” Edition [J Roddy Blog Archive]

This post was originally published on the old J Roddy Walston & The Business blog in 2009. It was written by Steve Colmus. I’m reposting it here for archival purposes.

Hey All, Long time, no hear. That’s all because of some big happenings that have gone down in our camp lately The biggest, by a country mile, is that we recently signed to Vagrant Records, home of our friends Murder by Death and the Hold Steady (as well as Paul Westerberg, my Hero of Heroes). We couldn’t be more stoked or more proud. Vagrant will be releasing our next record – more on that below – and helping us pay for a fancy press agent to get us that full page spread in Highlights we so richly deserve. The younger market is key. But the first step in the plan is making a record, and so we flew out to L.A. the day after Thanksgiving and spent eight days in Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, CA, with Kevin Augunas (whom we recorded with back in May). We did 15 songs in a little over two weeks out there, and I took a few pictures along the way. Here are the best:

These are the vines hanging from the front of Sound City, and Shivaun, who’s managed the studio for the last 18 years. Shivaun would use her smoke breaks to regale me with stories about all the weird stuff that’s happened there over the years. She told me a guy was working his first session there when the L.A. riots rolled up the street and everyone had to barricade themselves in the studio overnight. Two years later, that same guy came back in, and the 6.7 Northridge Earthquake hit eight miles away, nearly collapsing the place. Hopefully he’ll never be back – God clearly doesn’t want him finishing that record. Just inside the front door, there’s a wall of gold and platinum records that’s neigh unbeatable:

Nirvana “Nevermind”

Fleetwood Mac “Rumors” (as well as “Fleetwood Mac”)

Weezer “Pinkerton”

Tom Petty “Damn the Torpedos” (and “Hard Promises”)

Dio “Holy Diver” And, my picture of it didn’t turn out, but this too:

Good company.

This is the live room, where we tracked nearly everything. It has the feel of a glorified rehearsal space, replete with giant coke-vision cityscapes on the walls. Throughout L.A., it’s lovingly known as “Sound Shitty,” because, compared to some of the other top-end studios in town, it’s kind of a dump. But that’s intentional: The main room has sounded so good for so long that the owners don’t want to replace anything for fear of altering the acoustics – not cracked and chipping floors, nor stained ceiling tiles. When we recorded at Ocean Way back in May, I might have preferred to eat off the floor because it was probably cleaner than my hands; at Sound City, they have rat traps in the isolation rooms. Shit is real. [Note the uneven wall along the right-hand side. There are no parallel walls in the room, to minimize echo.]

This is the old Neve mixing board that’s been installed since 1972. I had a heady moment on our first day in the studio, looking down on the board and seeing all the numbers rubbed off these faders with age, and thinking about all the famous hands and records that contributed to that. Then the engineer told me that Stevie Nicks spilled so much cocaine into the board, that she shorted it out.

This is the late-60’s Scully 16-track tape machine we used. It sounds amazing but it was a finicky beast, and it did everything it could to annoy us – like letting the tape go slack every time it was rewound, so that someone would have to walk across the room and re-tighten it by hand before it could be played back. Every. Single. Frickin’. Time. After eight days, I was convinced that Greg, the engineer, was going to be the first man to blow out a rotator cuff making a record.

Billy lays down some Wurlitzer on “I Don’t Wanna Hear It.”

With all that bad mouthing about the live room, the rest of the studio was quite cozy. This is the den, where I spent most of my time when we weren’t recording. The caftans hanging from the ceiling really gave it an opium den vibe.

This is the kitchen, lovingly set up for dinner. We all ate together every night, and those were some of the best times out there. We covered all the good stuff – the L.A. riots, 9/11, the stock market collapse. I think we finally worked our way up to unrequited high school loves by the time we left.

Billy and amps.

My headphone mix.

This is Billy, Kevin (Augunas, our producer) and Rod posing for the cover of Gentleman’s Ennui at a villa in Santa Monica. Our friend Sam Jones was here photographing Pierce Brosnan for Esquire, and he invited us down to check out the scene. After demolishing what was left of the catered spread – with vague permission – we got to meet Pierce for a brief moment. As I shook his hand with my right, I had a handful of mini pretzel sticks in my pocket with my left. He cut such an imposing figure in his designer suit, near-military posture, and proper English accent that Billy and I completely wussed out about telling him that we watched part of “Mama Mia” the first night we were in town.

On the night after we finished recording, we finally had our first proper night off in the city. We spent part of the night at The Dresden, where we threw out a bunch of requests to Marty and Elayne (made famous in Swingers). They didn’t appreciate them very much. I requested “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin, which Marty promptly crumpled up and threw on the floor, saying “We’re a jazz band – we want jazz songs.” So we sent him back “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More” and “Mama’s Little Baby Loves Shortening Bread” which got no response. We ended the night at our friend Bryan’s house in Los Feliz, where this was the view of Hollywood from his back deck.

And again the next morning. And that was that. There’s no release date on the album just yet, but it’s looking like May or June. You’ll be hearing from us long before then. In meantime, we’re playing a massive New Year’s Eve Spectacular at the Ottobar tomorrow night, along with the Egg Babies Orchestra, Young Sir Jim and Hollywood, MC’ed by comedian Doug Powell. We’ll be doing some one-offs through February, and then there’ll hopefully be much more news to report for March and beyond. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. Steve