Mr. Hewitt
Tell me about some of the artists you’ve worked with. You just did the Heavens record with Joe Steinbrick and Matt Skiba from the Alkaline Trio.
Yes, they’re awesome, really fun guys. I had talked about this record with Matt during the Alkaline Trio’s Crimson record that I recorded. There was one song where he doubled his vocal an octave down and it was just the two of us in the room and I said, “That’s a really great vocal range for you. You should maybe think of doing songs specifically like that.†He said, “I’ve got a whole other record like that.†So I told him, “If you ever need help with that record call me.†Right after that he introduced me to his friend Ben Lovett, whose record I went on to mix right after recording the Alkaline Trio. Ben is quite a character, and he wound up producing and chopping and engineering and creating a lot of atmosphere, and in different parts he sang. He’s one of those “I-hate-you-because-you-play-everything†kinds of guys. Ben and I got along really well mixing his record, and then they started the Heavens record in his house in Mount Washington. He’s got a great little home studio in his basement. When it came time to mix they called me up, and it was really fun because I’d never mixed anything like that before with beats where they wanted it to be played in a club with really loud drums. I’d mix it to where I liked it, which is with drums fairly loud to begin with, and Ben would come in, “No, no man. Drums loud!†So, we’re sitting there together finishing the mix and I’m pushing and pushing and I think I turned the drums up four dB and he’s like, “That’s it! That’s bangin’! Put it on the big speakers!†There were a lot of creative sounds going on in there, just completely unorthodox recordings of all kinds of things. So it was really e-rethinking the traditional guitar/bass/drums scenario and rethinking what role those instruments played in the music and how they were to sound and how I was to balance between them. Joe Steinbrick specifically said, “I don’t want this to sound like a punk rock record. Don’t make these guitars sound like Alkaline Trio. I want them to sound a little softer or maybe a little quieter in spots, not as clear and defined. It can be a little dirtier, a little more dark sounding.†It was fun to put a lot of reverb on them because I had just come off the Chili Peppers record, where not many effects went on that record as a whole. The Heavens said they wanted to have things like the Depeche Mode, New Order and Cure vocal sounds – lots of reverb, lots of delays, lots of effects. It was really fun to have a lot of creative license with that.
Cool. And then Tom Petty’s The Last DJ – that must’ve been a fun record.
That was really a fun record. That was the second record I did with Jim Scott as his assistant. George Drakoulias was producing that and since then we have become really good friends. That guy is amazing. He’s another guy who plays all rock instruments and he knows a lot and he just brushes it off as if it’s nothing. He’s reserved about his opinions, but then he’ll really get in there and give you one when it’s necessary. I think the guy is supremely talented and incredibly smart. He’s a bit of a goofball. He loves to have fun and he’s very sarcastic with a really dry, biting sense of humor. The band was obviously sick – ridiculous musicians – and they cut everything live all together in the room. There was one song that they were having trouble with and George hired a Pro Tools guy to come in and chop up Steve Ferrone’s drums, but he was a hip-hop guy. All he did was put it on the grid. Tom came in and said, “No, that sounds terrible. What did you do to it?†George hired another guy and he did the same thing. I was in the back of the room – the assistant – and I said, “Well, let me have a shot at it.†I had no idea how to use Pro Tools. I knew how to turn it on and open a session and that was about it. I had done maybe one or two sessions on Pro Tools for a friend, but made him do all the mouse work. So I stayed all night for several nights in a row just trying to figure out what I was doing. If you go about it with a musical ear and not your analytical eyes, it’s not that hard. I figured out a few things to where I could get around, and I did some edits and I played the song for them. I don’t even know if I actually really did anything significant to the tracks. There were a couple of things here and there where it seemed the band wasn’t locked together, so I tweaked them a little bit. That song just didn’t gel, so it didn’t make the record. Later, Tom did a vocal on a song and he said, “You know I’m a little sharp on that, but I like that performance. Hey Ryan, can you fix that?†So if it was a little sharp, I’d tune it down a little bit. Tom said, “That’s fantastic! I didn’t know you could do that!†He had never really experienced Pro Tools before because he was always very tape-oriented, and if it wasn’t right they’d just play or sing it again. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he’s right on because he’s a phenomenal singer. George then turned to me and said, “All right, go tune all the songs.†So I stayed all night for several nights in a row figuring out how to tune vocals. George had me go at it with the idea that we’d tune in, make it perfect and then play it for Tom. Whatever he didn’t like we’d throw away. He wound up not liking most of it because it was unnaturally perfect to him, but we did use a few fixes here and there. So, that’s how I figured out how to use Pro Tools.
Were you using Auto-Tune or something like that, or were you just using the pitch change plug-in?
Yeah, I was using Auto-Tune. It was an immense education and just a fantastic way to fall into things.
How about Blink-182?
Oh, that was a really fun record. Jerry Finn happened to be working at Cello doing an Alkaline Trio record. We had met in passing in the halls when I was in the back room working on a John Frusciante record [Shadows Collide With People] with Jim Scott. Jerry kept walking by the door and he’d stop in and shoot the shit, talking about cars, gear and whatever, and we got to be friends. One day I passed him in the hall and I said, “Will you listen to this record I did and tell me if it sounds good, if I did anything good on it because I just don’t know.†He was like, “Yeah, I’ll check it out in a couple of days.†It was the first thing that I did completely myself – recorded, mixed, produced. I did it for free for this random band that was referred to me by some friends. A couple of days went by and we kept seeing each other in the hall and he didn’t mention it so I’m thinking, “Oh, it just sucked.†He came in the next day and he said, “That thing sounded great! Where did you do it? What did you use?†We had an interesting conversation about that and then a month later he called me and he said, “Hey, do you want to do a record together?†Before I even asked what it was I said, “Yes!†“Okay, we’re going to start in February. We’re going to do it in San Diego in a house. It’s going to be five days a week. So let’s talk next month and we’ll sort it out.†“Hey, by the way what band is it?†I asked him. “Blink-182,†he replied. I was like, “Holy shit, you’ve got to be joking!†I was freaking out. We went down to do that record in this big mansion that they had soundproofed and it was one of the best times I’ve had making a record. Those guys are so much fun and despite what they say or what people think about them, they’re very talented musicians. They played every note of that record on tape. That’s one thing that Jerry’s really particular about – everything goes to tape, [though] vocals and keyboards and such went to Pro Tools simply because it was easier. Setting up in a house like that, where it’s not supposed to be a studio, was the most incredible thing ever. Everything about the control room was wrong. Everything about the tracking room was wrong. There were parallel walls. There were all kinds of weird reflections going on. But we just used it to our advantage or tamed problems and made everything work. I’m really proud of the sounds that are on that record because it was a lot of work to get them. We had to move amps from room to room to find the right sound and try different mics and put gobos in different places. It was really, really fun.
