A legend of indie pop, Chris Stamey made his name with the dB’s, Sneakers, and as a solo artist. In the late 1970s he formed his own label, Car, that released his own albums and the fabled Chris Bell single “I Am the Cosmos,” and frequented the CBGB scene alongside Alex Chilton. He has since played with the Golden Palominos, Bob Mould, Yo La Tengo, Matthew Sweet, and Freedy Johnston.
Stamey’s
career as a producer flowered in his native North Carolina, where he opened a
studio in 1996. His recent credits include Alejandro Escovedo’s A Man Under
the Influence and Le Tigre, the self-titled debut project from
former Bikini Kill leader Kathleen Hanna’s current group. In whatever spare
time remains, he serves as a kind of godfather to the Raleigh roots-rock scene,
working with the likes of Whiskeytown, Hazeldine, Thad Cockrell, and Tift
Merritt.
Following
a long day spent recording with Caitlin Cary (ex-Whiskeytown), the soft-spoken
Stamey talked about the view from behind the board, his latest projects, and
the magic of making records.
HARP: Describe your studio.
STAMEY:
It’s called Modern Recording. It’s the usual small studio in the lower part of
an old house here in Chapel Hill. There are rooms in the house that are
sonically correct, and rooms that just sound funny. So if you’re avoiding the
same digital reverb programs that everybody’s sick of hearing, you can go in a
hallway or in a bathroom.
I also work at other places. For the
Flat Duo Jets record (Lucky Eye), we went to Muscle Shoals. I did the
Caitlin and Alejandro records at the Fidelitorium, which is Mitch Easter’s
studio.
On your website (www.chrisstamey.com) you write that you use vintage gear but the
latest digital recording and editing technologies. Why?
With a
reel of analog tape, that’s fifteen minutes for $200. So when the red light
comes on, people tend to freeze up. [But with digital,] I can keep the tape
running all the time. I record when they’re screwing around, when they’re
rehearsing, and that’s when the best stuff happens. You can capture great
performances which are often very fleeting.
The Alejandro record never saw tape
at all, and I think it sounds good. I know some of those performances would’ve
never been on that record if it hadn’t been for what you can do now.
Can you give us an example?
Well, “About
This Love” was completely made up. It was only about 35 seconds long, but we
really loved that little piece of music. We kind of reassembled it and made
this four-and-a-half minute piece out of it. We did some other overdubs and he
wrote verses, but all the basic musical pieces came from that very short
moment.
How did you get your start as a producer?
Mitch
Easter and I had what we called a studio, a four-track outfit, in maybe 1971
here in North Carolina, and recorded mainly our stuff. Then I apprenticed with
Don Dixon--I really just followed him around. That was in 1974, ‘75.
When I started playing with [Alex]
Chilton in New York, the record company had a deal where we could go into a
studio in Connecticut and pay like $5 an hour. I learned from doing it with
Alex.
As a producer, how would define your role?
I like
it when a recording expresses a composer’s intent. I work with a lot of
songwriters, and I try to keep it true to their intent and cut out things that
are superfluous or contradictory.
I’m real active. I’ll say, ‘These
words are wrong,’ or ‘Everything is great, except for this one thing.’ Or
‘Nothing is right, except for this one thing. The tempo’s right, the tempo’s
wrong, this chord is great but you’re blowing it here.’
And sometimes I’m wrong. But
I think that all the elements have to stand up and be counted and defend
themselves, and at the end you end up with a stronger record for it.
For example?
The
second song on the Alejandro record, “Rosalie,” we initially recorded much, much
slower, and there was a long section where Alejandro read letters. It’s this
beautiful recording, but near the end of our tracking I said, ‘Look, we’re
gonna re-cut this track.’
We rearranged it on the spot and I
just gave hand signals for all the chords. There was a woman who’d come by and
offered to cook for everybody that night, and I got her to engineer while I
went out there and conducted everybody through it. We got a really interesting
take that fit a great place on the record, but still had the same meaning as
the song [had] before.
Are you a gearhead?
It’s a
privilege to be able to do nothing when you have the right gear, so I do really
like good gear. I’ve got an old Neumann mike here, a 1947, serial number 2007,
and it’s fantastic. I can do a track on the Hazeldine record where I just have
that mike on, and we make a record.
How is producing others different from
working on your own stuff?
A lot
of people go through this madness when they’re making a record. But I get the
thrill of working on the music without going through that. And it’s rewarding.
When everybody involved in the project lights up because it’s going in the
right direction, it’s really personally satisfying.
When I was making records of my own,
maybe it would take three weeks or two years or whatever, and then I’d be
touring or doing interviews. But what I really like is making records. I get to
make a lot more records this way.
What producers have influenced you?
I think
Scott [Litt] is the biggest. Scott’s great.
I’m enamored of Tony Bongiovi,
because he’s a link between both the Motown tradition and Jimi Hendrix. He
created the Power Station studio in New York, and there was a whole scene
there: Scott was there, Bob Clearmountain, Neil Dorfsman. There was sort of an
anti-California attitude, like "Let’s make a record now." You
went in and did what was necessary. The motto was, "Squash it and hose it
and let’s get the hell out of here."
Bill Scheniman was a Power Station
engineer; he worked on Bruce Springsteen’s records. Bill says that when he
first started recording, all he wanted to do was be in the studio, because
that’s where the magic happens.
I think he’s right, and I really
believe that’s why I like helping people make their records. Sometimes you just
hook up these wires and people tune up and then it’s real magic, not
Spielberg magic. The air kind of crackles, and you have this magic thing called
a record.
§
FIRST ALBUM HE PRODUCED: Chomp,
by Pylon, 1983 (with the dB’s Gene Holder)
§
MOST RECENT CLIENTS:
"Moltheni, from Bologna, Italy. It’s very hard-edged, loud rock. The guy
is a good poet--best as I can tell. I don’t really follow Italian."
§
ALSO: "This band Air
Guitar. A husband and wife team from Durham, North Carolina, although
originally from Baltimore. Some of it’s a little like Smokey Robinson and some
of it’s a little like the Eurythmics. It’s all drum machines and
synthesizers."
§
BABE IN THE WOODS: “I did
this record I really like by a woman named Tami Hart. If you want to pigeonhole
her, she would be like a 16-year-old lesbian Kurt Cobain. But the concept of
the second take--well, I don’t think anybody had explained to her that you
could do more than one.”
§
ON SCHEDULE: Stamey’s summer
is booked. He’s working with Caitlin Cary, Le Tigre, and the Butchies.
[First
published in Harp,
Fall 2001]