John and I started kicking around the idea of doing remote recordings for people and bands based on a one inch MCI 8-track that John had bought and said, “The beauty of this machine is that it’s portable.” After seeing the machine, I had to laugh. It was big, awkward, and heavy, although it would technically fit in the back of a station wagon. And as far as a professional multi track tape machine, it is portable. But, it wasn’t working very well after sitting un-used for many years. Nonetheless after thinking about it, I started to think that this idea could maybe work and be really fun. I started working on the machine. First, every connection; wires, cards, MOLEX, or anything else, was cleaned with Deoxit cleaner. I wanted to get to every part of this tape deck that I could and try and make it as new as I could. We had a ¼” two track MCI that had pretty much all the same parts, so that became our parts machine. After a while, The old MCI was brought back to spec, and with some help from a great tech, Krieg Wunderlich, the deck was looking in pretty good shape

I had been looking for someone to try this whole remote thing out on, and a place to do it, for a few months. Some friends of mine in a band called The Stragglers seemed like a good fit. After talking with them about it I left it with, “And we just need some place to do this,” when Erik said his family had a cabin up Highway 50 near Emigrant Gap. So it was on, and we set a date to record an album there.

But, the tape deck was still not 100% ready, and the start date was fast approaching. I talked to John about just doing it with my laptop and abandoning the whole 8-track thing. But, he asked why go through all this trouble to do a remote and then use a “guitar center” rig? That would kind of defeat the vibe of the whole project, and after thinking about it, I knew he was right. The tape deck will work.

Other Gear I ended up using:

Mics: Vintage Neumann CMV 563’s, Soundelux U99, Beyer M160 and Coles 4038 ribbons, Shure SM-58’s and 57’s, Sennheiser 421, RED FET body and Neumann M7 capsule.

Mic pres: Chameleon 7602 Chinese Neve channels, UA 6176, Ampex MX-10 vintage 4 channel stereo tube mixer, Skip Simmons Modded Bogen tube pre, Trident A-Range channels, Grace M-101 and a Summit TLA 50 compressor.

I use our Allen & Heath 16 channel mixer to monitor with along with our Adam A7 speakers. I also took a Peavey Valverb tube spring reverb for fun.

Having only three days up there, Bobby Jordan (bass), took on the producer’s role and worked out what we needed to do for each song. We had a folder with notes for each song, which was a huge help and made getting so much done in a short time possible. Erik Hansen (Vocals, Guitar) and Skip Allums, who was helping out and making a short film of the record, showed up the first day around 8 or 9 in the morning. The plan was for us to get there early that day, and the rest of the band would show up that evening when we had every thing set up, and we would get a song or two done that first night. We had Erik’s Toyota 4X4. Apparently the last bit of the road was 4-wheel drive only. We quickly realized all this gear along with the three of us would not fit, but Erik had a “this will work, we’ll get up there” kind of attitude. So Skip drove his car up too, and we planned to make a few trips in the 4X4 and leave Skips’ car when the trail got rough.

We make it up there in an hour or so, left Skips car down the mountain, and we all headed up to the cabin. The trail got crazy, real 4 wheeling rock climbing shit, it was really nuts! All the gear and the tape deck were banging around and Erik was yelling, “I can’t slow down or we’ll get stuck, hold on!!”

We finally got to the cabin with us and the gear in one piece. The cabin had been shut down for the winter, so we opened the place up and started to load in gear. The setting was just awesome, with nothing but trees and a creek near by. I set up my gear by a window over looking the back of the cabin with the creek about 100 feet or so away. We were set up by the afternoon, and started testing out mics. Erik had one song, Aristoteles and Eudoxus, that was just acoustic guitar and vocals. He said, “Lets do this one right now! It will only take an hour!” The song had 2 guitar tracks, and two vocal tracks. Erik did them all in one take, and we added two more vocal tracks, and that was it, the song was done. This was the first time I used the Ampex MX-10 for acoustic guitar and it sounded great. By this time, Bobby and Garin Casaleggio (Drums), got in, and we started to set up for the whole band. By dinner I was set up to track, and after we ate, we tracked a few more songs. Every thing was tracked to the MCI, and it was working perfectly. Every one tracked in a circle. The bass amp was our Ampeg B15 fliptop, with some pillows in around it to keep the bleed down. Acoustic guitar and vocals were scrach, after each song, we would lay down keeper guitar and vocals. Being out in the woods, we could leave all the windows and doors open in the cabin. Once in a while some birds or wind would get on the tracks, but that was okay.

We would make our meals together and eat outdoors on the deck table, hang out at night, have a drink and go to sleep. This was the one of the coolest, most fun records I’ve ever done. After being up there for a few hours, the remote idea all started to made sense much more than it did in the months previous getting when we were getting everything ready to do this. Having only 8 tracks and being in the same room as the band was awesome. And not to open the can of worms that is tape vs. digital, but having only an 8 track tape deck did seem to make me get into the music more. I had to focus on the songs and sounds instead of working with Pro Tools on a computer.

We finished all the tracking and packed up, left the cabin behind and headed back to Sacramento to unload all the gear. In the next few weeks a few things were added; a Hammond organ on one song, and Erik’s sister, Jeannie, recorded vocals on a few songs.

A few weeks later we mixed the record in the main studio on our API/Neve console. -Bryce Gonzales

The Stragglers on Myspace

www.thehangarstudios.net

When we first got an e-mail from Noah Georgeson regarding this record, the band was looking at doing something in Mexico. I would have been stoked to go to Mexico, but I was concerned about the challenges of being so far away from the resources of the studio and even a major city with a Guitar Center. In the end, Dev’s manager, Aram Goldberg from Lookout Management, asked us to look into options near the ocean in Northern California. After I sent him a few links to available rental houses in Bolinas, it was decided to focus on doing the record there. Bolinas is a cool little town just North of Stinson Beach that’s reached by an unmarked road that snakes along the Bolinas Lagoon estuary for a few miles before it reaches town. Anytime CalTrans puts up a sign marking the turnoff, it seems to mysteriously disappear so now they don’t even bother. I was pretty familiar with Bolinas as I’ve been surfing there quite a bit. I’ve enjoyed some pretty amazing sunset sessions there in the winter, with the moon coming up over the southeast side of the coastal range, the sun setting in the west, and San Francisco lit up across the bay.

Bryce and I met Aram and Devendra in Bolinas on Halloween day of 2008. Sure enough, they got lost and missed the unmarked turnoff and with the notoriously bad cell phone reception in the area, it took us a bit of time to hook up. But, we looked at a few houses and were all pretty much in agreement as to one of them and a few weeks later we were on.

We pretty much went straight from the Devil Makes Three record to Devendra’s record. The gear never came back to The Hangar, but went straight from the DM3 house to Bolinas. Pete and Lucia were nice enough to help us drive everything up to Bolinas in their big panel van, but we still had my Mercedes wagon and Bryce’s Volvo wagon loaded with gear too!

Besides the 1 inch 8 track, we were also providing all the instruments except guitars and a complete monitoring set-up.

Once the details of the record started to firm up, I was on the phone and e-mailing with Paul Butler who was producing the record. Paul is based on the Isle of Wight in the UK and is in an amazing band called The Bees. From the first time I talked with Paul, I knew this was going to be a great project to be involved in. He was just one of those super nice people that you immediately get along with and take a liking to. It had been really great to re-connect with Dev as well, as I hadn’t seen him since he was at the Hangar mixing his Cripple Crow record with Noah and Thom Monahan. I had somewhat forgotten how enthusiastic and almost larger than life he can be. Dev can really brighten up and fill a room. As I discussed the details of the recording with Paul more, a list of equipment began to emerge.

Besides the usual mics and pres, some of the gear we were taking to Bolinas included:

-Our RCA tube mixing console. This is the same type of board that was at Sun Studios. Paul was really into the older vintage gear.

-The 1 inch 8 track

-Our Hammond organ and Leslie cabinet

-Several Guitar amps, including several of Bryce’s custom built amps.

-A monitoring set-up with a small Allen and Heath mixer and some Mackie ___ powered monitors.

-Wade Goeke at Chandler limited arranged for us to use one of his EMI limters and EMI channel strips.

-Paul liked the UA 6176 so much, that we arranged with UA to get a 2-610 mic pre in as well.

-a spinet piano was rented from a piano store in Santa Rosa.

The goal of the record was to record to the 8-track tape machine and then dump the tracks into Dev’s ProTools HD system. But, as we began the set-up it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to fly. The ‘Control Room’ was in the breakfast nook which opened up with a set of double doors out to a porch. This is where everybody went to take a smoke or ear break. The weather during the day was initially beautiful, sunny and warm in the mid 70’s, which was amazing for mid November. But at night it got pretty cold and dropped down into the low 40’s and high 30’s. The poor tape machine with all it’s MOLEX connectors couldn’t take it and was totally intermittent all the time. We also suspected that the power was a bit flaky and that we might have some bad tape. There was a hot tub at the house, and whenever that got turned on, the tape machine would go crazy. Later Bryce checked the wiring and determined that the voltage dropped quite a bit whenever the hot tub got turned one. Whatever, it didn’t really matter. In the end we abandoned the tape machine after about a week and went straight into Pro Tools.

A few other interesting insights on the gear:

-A few days before the load-in I was talking to Paul and he realized the RCA didn’t have any pan pots. It was mono and pre-dated stereo by about a decade! Paul however was pretty concerned about no pan pots especially in the context of the 8-track. I mentioned this to Bryce who is the type of person who can make almost anything happen. “Well, I have a few leftover channels from a Chandler mixer. I might be able to hook them up to the compressor power supply, figure out a summing network and find some transformers for the output.” This was about 24 hours before the load-in. When I came in the next day, Bryce had done it! There was a custom built Chandler mixer with a 4 by 2 and 2 by 1 option, six channels total. And it worked! Throughout the recording, Bryce was constantly coming up with solutions like this, such as passive XLR summing networks to sum two mic pres to one recording channel.

-One of our Fairchild 663 optical compressors along with Bryce’s Ampeg B15 flip top amp became the key to the bass sound.

-Geoff Daking had sent us two of his new Mic Pre One’s to try out on the recording and these got quite a bit of use on acoustic and electric guitars. The variable high pass filter was really useful as a rudimentary EQ and in dealing with odd room acoustics. Bryce did a review of these in Tape Op #__

-Our now discontinued Soundelux U99 became the lead vocal mic of choice. This mic always sounded pretty good, but we had recently re-tubed it with an old Telefunken ___ tube and now it sounded pretty amazing. This beat out several other vintage Neuman mics.

-The folks at Cascade sent us a few of their ribbon mics to try out and these saw a lot of use as well on drums, piano and guitars. The stereo X-15 Mic was great on piano and drums and the VinJet and Gomez saw a lot of use on drums and guitars.

-After a week or two, Bryce and I were headed back to Bolinas to check in. Paul had asked about getting some smaller amps and speakers for the guitars. The house just couldn’t take the volume of the louder amps without bleeding too much into other microphones. Bryce had built a small 4 watt amp into an old Realistic mic amplifier that sounded great, so we took that along. He also mentioned that he had a six inch speaker but it didn’t have a cabinet. He was busy with bigger jobs, do I found an old wooden fruit crate and with a jigsaw, some plywood and bit of glue made a small cabinet for the speaker. Based on the name on the box, we called it the Sambado & Sons speaker. Paul later told me that the amp and speaker got used for most of Dev’s guitar tracks on the record. We still have the Sambado & Sons speaker and it still gets a lot of use here at The Hangar.

About two weeks in, Paul had to go back to the UK for some touring with The Bees. Paul and the band had got along great with Bryce, so they asked him if he could fill in while Paul was gone which led to Bryce spending most of December in Bolinas and recording almost all of the basic tracks for the album. Bryce had some pretty good stories to tell when he got back to Sacto:

At that point we we’re still getting sounds and exploring the sound of the cabin. The drums sounded great in the corner of the living room but only had one sound, really lively and crazy, and after a few songs, we had to change something. Devendra, Noah and I listened to some songs to bounce ideas around on what to go for. Some one played Neil Young’s Out On The Weekend, and I said “We can do that.” So I moved the drums out to the middle of the room and put the Cascade X-15 over them, and we had it. We did the drums in that spot for the rest of the recording, but did change mics around, like putting the CMV overhead instead of the Cascade, and also used some old cheap mics of Devendra’s.

We moved Devendra’s Guitar amp into the closet of his bedroom, which was right off the main living room, with a Beyer M160 on it. When we did a song he played acoustic guitar on, he would sit on the floor by his bed mic’ed with a the Cascde X-15 ribbon using just one side, and a SM-57 for scatch vocals. Noah’s guitar was in the bathroom with the Cascade Gomez on it; the amp could be louder in there and I could move the mic away from the amp and closer to the tub if I wanted more room reverb on the guitar on a song. Piano was either the Cascade stereo mic right in it, or a pair of 414’s on the back, or all four and a room mic at the top of the cabin.

On the track First Song for B, Devendra played the piano and I was really into it, so I said “Lets do that one now.” Devendra said he didn’t know if we should, as he’d tried it before, but it didn’t turn out right. I figured I had a good idea of what would work for this one, and I just liked the song a lot, so I said “Lets try it the next day, and if it doesn’t work, oh well.” This was the 5 mics on the piano and it sounded great. It fit what the song was needing and it made the record as we did it.

We settled into a nice work flow rhythm. I lived with Lucky (Remington, bass) and Noah (Georgeson, guitar) when he was in town in a second house down the road from the recording house we could walk to. Bolinas was weird. We left our cars with the keys in them unlocked so if any of us needed to go somewhere, you just took a car. I would get up in the morning and walk over to the main cabin, and we would record vocals first thing. Devendra wanted to cut vocals before he started talking a lot and using his voice. We got good at talking to each other with out actually talking. Then we would do some full band stuff, maybe some over dubs. By the afternoon, we would take a break. Devendra and I going to the skate park up the road and skate for an hour or so, while the other guys would surf or play basketball.* As night would fall, we would track more full band, vocals or whatever needed to be done. It felt like we were getting a lot done, but it never felt rushed. The Stragglers sessions had this same kind of feel.

* I don’t think I would want to surf at Bolinas. It’s part of the area known as the Red Triangle and is a breeding area for great white sharks. One morning while walking down to the beach, I found a 3 foot long dead shark on the beach!!

The town was fun. My room over looked the ocean and San Francisco. I would walk down almost every morning after breakfast to drink my coffee and sit on the cliff and watch San Francisco wake up for the morning.

Most of our cell phones didn’t work very well there, and mine didn’t work at all, and only started to work on Lucas Valley Road near Nicasio. So like clock work, if I went back to Sacramento, I would hit Lucas Valley, and weeks of messages would start to pile up on my phone. We had the internet at the main cabin, but not at the other one. But it was okay, we could hang out and relax, play with Luck’s boston terrier, Charley, and entertain our selves. It was nice, but only seeing five people for weeks on end, morning, day, and night, did make it a little uneasy to be around a lot of other people, like going into San Francisco. Once Devendra and I had to go to Guitar Center for something, and after five minutes Devendra and I both looked at each other and he said, “I think this place is making me sick, we have to get out of here.” I had to agree with him.

On New Years Eve everyone came to town. Our friends lived close to us in a house just a short walk away. Lucky and I went into town to the little store and tourists were filling the small one block downtown and sticking out like a sore thumb, but not really caring that they did. As we came out of the store, the chronic locals drinking at Smileys, the bar across the street, had all come out of the bar and were yelling things as tourists were getting our of their expensive cars like “hey, why don’t you come over here and buy me a drink!” I told Lucky lets head back, this is getting ugly. We recorded that day, and then had a small party. Andy Cabic went over to DJ at the other house. Their DJ mixer crapped out, so Andy and I rigged up a little PA mixer to the turntables that worked really well. The party was packed and a blast. I don’t remember how I made it home, but some how everyone made it back at one point and by the morning, all of our friends were back and the house was full. -Bryce Gonzales

In the end, the record got finished about one week ahead of schedule so everybody in the band and at management and the label was pretty stoked! Paul took the tracks back to his studio on The Isle of Wight to begin mixing. I was able to visit him that spring on Easter Sunday and heard a few of the mixes which sounded amazing. Especially after a few pints in the local pub overlooking the ocean! But, ultimately, it was hard to mix without Devendra around so Paul flew to Los Angeles to finish mixing. Before the record was released in October of 2009 (just a week shy of one year to the day from Halloween when we first went to Bolinas) Daniel Lanois ended up mixing a few songs too. We think it’s a great record and we’re stoked to have been involved. -JB

Devendra Banhart on Myspace

Devendra Banhart on iTunes

www.thehangarstudios.net

Our second Hangar to Go location recording was with The Devil Makes Three. The band already had a home studio in the basement of their Davis, CA house about a block away from the UCD campus. I met with Pete, Lucia and Cooper and we discussed the idea of doing a recording there and decided to again use the 1″ 8-track machine. I went out to the house about a week later to scout out the basement, and found a cool set up in their old craftsman bungalow they were renting. They already had a separate room set up for recording but it was small and the ceiling’s were closed off and lower than the rest of the basement. The other part of the basement was more open and had the floor beams exposed overhead, so I felt that room would sound better and have more diffusion with all the wooden beams overhead. We also had discussions about what type of sound they were looking for on each instrument. Back at the hangar, I sketched out a floor plan and a mic list and sent that over to the band for their input. One of the concerns was getting a good sound from the standup bass. Lucia felt it had never been quite captured correctly. I thought it would be a good idea to let the band try a few different mics out in advance of setting up the session and loaned them three different mics I’d had good luck with on standup; a Shure 330 ribbon mic, an EV shotgun mic and a Sony ECM 50 lavalier condenser mic. It turned out the Sony ECM 50 stuffed into the F-hole with a little bit of foam was the winner. Cooper also tried the Shure ribbon on his Banjo and was so stoked on that mic, he bought one of his own. So, we started the session with a solid plan.

The band has a nice big diesel step van, so the day of the setup they showed up at the Hangar and we loaded up all the gear. It took most of a day to get everything set up and get good sounds we were happy with. The Beyer M-___ ribbon sounded great on Pete’s guitar and the figure 8 pattern and the two baffles we brought from the studio helped minimize bleed. Our Soundelux U-99 which we retubed with a Telfunken NOS tube sounded great on the vocals. Cooper hung with the Shure 330 on banjo and Lucia used the ECM 50 for the bass. After aligning the tape machine, most of the setup went pretty smoothly. The bass was the only thing that still gave us some trouble. Then we patched in the Joe Meek 6Q as a compressor and that nailed it. Even Bryce who disses the Meek on general priniciples said the bass sounded great when he mixed the record a month later. We had another 330 that got used for overdubs. One key element was a Blue Type A tube body with a B4 Spherical Omni capsule that is a replica of the old Neuman M-50’s which were popular for orchestral and string recordings. We had the band set up live so they could see and hear each other without using headphones and they were relatively set up the way we envisioned the final mix in terms of panning. The B4 was dead center in front of the band and picked up a little bit of everybody and the room ambience. Again, Bryce was stoked on this track when it came time to mix and it figured prominently in the final album. After about 8 hours, I left the band to themselves after carefully labeling everything and making sure they knew how to thread and use the tape machine.

In the end, Bryce had to stop by the next day and help them out for a few hours with the tape deck, but after that they recorded the entire record themselves and finished a day ahead of schedule. I went back over to the house and we transferred the tape into Pro Tools. 96% of the record was tracked to the 8-track machine but they had a few overdubs they still needed to do and these were done in Pro Tools.

-John B.

The Devil Makes Three on Myspace

The Devil Makess Three on iTunes