From Tape Op: Issue No. 13

Experimenting is good.

The bottom line is just getting things to reverberate. I gotta feel like the wood is vibrating. When Joey’s playing the acoustic bass you can walk right up to it and put your hand on it and feel it vibrating. When we were on tour on with the Dirty Three I just had to walk up to Warren’s violin and put my hand on it.

How important do you feel the recordings are, as aesthetic, to your records?
I try to think of the recording process as another band member. The silent band member. Doesn’t watch, just listens. Depending on what machine you record on it can give your album a totally different vibe.

The Black Light... unlike Spoke, you did at Wavelab. What was the main difference in terms of your involvement?

We’ve worked with Craig and Nick Luca (Wavelab engineer) so much. Those guys are so used to us that a lot of times they set us up with a few mics and say “Alright, we’ll see you guys later.” During the Friends of Dean Martinez records and the Calexico records we’d be engineering ourselves. Craig and Nick would help get the basics and we’d jump in and do overdubs.

Would they help you mix?

Yeah we would all mix together. It was hard because the budget was minimal. We were kind of pushing our limit as far as time in the studio. Not only that... there is a certain natural time that feels good to be in a studio and if you go over that it can pretty devastating. If you’re going over and over on a take it can completely ruin the song. You might as well call it a day and go and get some Mexican food. Go watch the sunset and come back later that night or the next day. The tape doesn’t lie, it’s going to play back whatever you do. On the The Black Light we wanted to have a little better sounding recording. Spoke is a different vibe, more like a home vibe.

So you don’t necessarily have a preference?

No, it depends on the song. What you want to paint.

If you had had more of a budget for those records would you have wanted to spend more money and go into a big time studio?

No. Wavelab moved recently.

Oh really? So now what does that mean?

That means no more trains on the recordings. Right next door there was a dance studio. So a lot times we had to wait for the train to go by, and then wait for the dance class, or go over and say “Hey we’re going to record this song could you just hold off for five minutes.” Sometimes they would sometimes they wouldn’t.

So did Craig get a nice new space?

It’s still a nice size room. He’s built a small dry room. He doesn’t have a wall for the control room. It might be nice to have some separation from mixing. Right now it’s pretty open and we like it.

Have you tracked a lot in there already?

We did a project with this guy named Jean Louis Mirat from France. And then I did some stuff with Doug McCombs of Tortoise. We got a great vibe, great sound. Just set up some mics, sat around in a semi-circle, threw up a couple baffles, and it all went to tape.

Do you and John always start recording with the two of you playing live?

Yeah, well we just try and get a good take. With The Black Light I decided I wanted to try and do some stuff at home so I borrowed a 4-track and did some rhythmic stuff. I wanted to break up the songs and the huge amounts of orchestrations with really simple, monotonous things. To put you in the trance state. John came over one day and picked up the bass and I hopped on a pot or a pan or a shaker and recorded a couple of songs like “Fake Fur” and “Chach”.

Is there a lot of improvisation on The Black Light?

Yeah, but I wanted to go more away from improvisation and into orchestration and arrangement.

Like the “Where Water Flows”? It is so beautiful.

Just vibes, guitar and cello on a 4-track at home. Sometimes on these records there’s a lot of stuff. There’ll be like an accordion, old world, Italian waltz. John has been doing that for a while because that’s his roots. There’s a tradition that comes through on each record. It’s got that flavor. For me it’s like the Spaghetti in the Spaghetti Western. We have all these different styles. Sometimes I think we could do a whole record of stuff like “Where Water Flows.” I wanted to utilize all these different instruments we’ve been collecting, like marimbas, vibes, mandolin, the accordion. Here where we live it’s called Barrio Viejo. Some of the oldest buildings in Tucson are right here. So you have a lot of old Mexican families here, the music blaring on Sundays. The family coming by, the low-riders crammed with kids. The life down here breathes a completely different kind of breath. At times you can lose yourself. Am I in Mexico or in America?

So how did the whole Richard Buckner connection work out for his record Devotion and Doubt?

We were all down at SXSW a few years ago and Buckner came to our show and John checked out his show. We had met JD Foster [producer and ex- True Believer, etc.]. I had heard about him through Craig so I was really interested in meeting him. They liked what we were doing. We enjoy playing with other people because you really get to focus in and listen to that person and back them up.

What was JD’s role in terms of your playing?

He was great. I really liked the way he was inside of Richard Buckner’s songs. He knew everything about the songs. He did his homework. Also, he really made us feel that he liked us as people and that he liked our playing. There was no such thing as a mistake. JD was like a conductor when we were doing takes.

Again, it was all done live?

Yeah.

Did JD encourage all that sparsness and space or was that Richard?

I think a lot of that record has to do with Richard and JD getting in the car. Driving to Texas, driving to Tucson. Being in New York. Those guys have a great rapport. We’re only on a few of those tracks. Which is so beautiful. When you hear the band come in it sounds so great. Then, just like leaving a town out here in the desert, you drive away and you’re in the middle of nothing. Like an instrumental that’s like maybe 30 seconds long just fits in so perfectly between two songs. Bridging songs together by way of transitional snippets or sketches.

Yeah you guys do that on the Spoke record.

Yeah, an ice cream truck in the barrio.

I asked John this too, what is your perspective on indie vs. major, no budget vs. budget?

I think indie is more realistic. At the same time it’s nice when records get out there. But in the major label process of putting records out there it seems like the people that end up working on your album have no clue as far as who you are and what you do. That to me is a big sign. It’s like “Ok, there’s someone selling my record that doesn’t know jack shit about where we come from or what we like musically or what we like aesthetically.” Whereas Quarterstick/Touch and Go is the best label I’ve ever worked with. They’ve got their shit down. They’re the most friendly people and most honest and sincere people. And they’re putting out great music.

Are you happy with what happened with the new Giant Sand record?

I still haven’t heard the final mixes. V2 has a certain criteria that they want to see met with the Giant Sand record. They want to get it out there as much as possible. So they need something they feel they can work with. That was where I had to step back from that whole process because it just feels very strange.

And the new OP8?

I just talked with Lisa Germano yesterday to say hello. Talk about studio save. That girl, she knows what’s going on. I learned so much from her approach. I mean she kind of took the bull by the horns. Like getting in there at 11:00 every day. We were all like “Let’s get there at noon... alright lets go get some lunch.” She really helped us with the discipline. You know “Move on, next thing... great take John let’s go. Howe, I want you to do this... ok that sounds great.” There was this woman in the studio that has got everyone wrapped around her finger. She’s learned a lot from the recording process. When we worked with her it showed. This was when the machine ran at both 30 and 15 ips. She would do things like on “It’s a Rainbow.” She got this old accordion down from the wall and played the bass notes... sitting down on the ground... recorded it at 30 ips and then put it back down to 15 ips. It was like a bellowing organ. She’s a master of getting vocal sounds. Craig would get things set up and she would come in and do her own vocals. Seems like that works better.

What’s next?

Well there’s some touring to do as Calexico, the new OP8, the new Giant Sand is coming out so we’ll see if there are any tour dates with that. There’s Bundy K. Brown of Isotope 217, Pullman and that whole Thrill Jockey circle of friends. He did a mix of some of our stuff. He got Doug McCombs of Tortoise and Rob of Isotope to play on it. It’s really ambient. It goes off on that tangent. So we’re working on a B side to that. r

contact Calexico c/o: Our Soil, Our Strength, 2509 N. Campbell Ave #335, Tuscon, AZ 85719

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