From The Desk Of Nathan Larson And Nina Persson: Alan Weatherhead

“We’re going to party like it’s 1699,” sings Nina Persson on Colonia, the second album the Cardigans frontwoman has released under the A Camp name with husband Nathan Larson (Shudder To Think) and Niclas Frisk. As the lyric and album title imply, the ornate Colonia is loosely based on the theme of love in the time of colonialism and is inspired by cabaret and musicals from the ’40s. Larson and Persson—king and queen of Colonia—are guest editing magnetmagazine.com all this week. Read our Q&A with them.

Nathan And Nina: A Camp has worked with some awesome people on both sides of the studio glass. One who sat on the side with the things with knobs is my man Alan Weatherhead, who mixed and recorded our first album and mixed Colonia. (Our pal Geoff Sanoff recorded Colonia, and he deserves his own post.) We met Al through Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous. Al was (and is) working out of a groovy studio in Richmond, Va., called Sound Of Music. Mark had been looking for a chance to work with him and spotted this A Camp record as a chance to do so. Al is a great, even-keeled guy with the kind of temperament that is perfect for a recording situation, plus he’s a very intuitive musician, which serves him and the artist he’s working with well. Al has worked as a musician and engineer/mixer for lots of projects, including Sparklehorse, Cracker, Trailer Bride, Clem Snide, Camper Van Beethoven, Magnolia Electric Co. and his current band Hotel Lights, to name but a few. Al was cool enough to let us ask him some stupid questions via email and respond. Read all of it after the jump.

What is the coolest thing about your adopted home of Richmond these days?
Weatherhead: Richmond is definitely on the upswing compared to when I first moved here. There are more music venues and art galleries, and people don’t talk about the “war of Northern aggression” as much. There’s a lot of American history around this area, and it would be great if it didn’t all have to be refracted through the Civil War prism.

What is the wackest place you’ve ever been in your hometown of Milwaukee?
I can’t say too many bad things about a great place on Great Lake, but I’m going to go with Winterfest. In Milwaukee (a.k.a. the city of festivals), any excuse for people to get together, grill food, drink beer and see bands is a good one, and I’m down with all of that. But, they used to have one outside in the middle of winter. Remember, this is Wisconsin. It’s zero degrees out, there are huge piles of snow everywhere, and it’s probably not a good idea to stay outside for very long. But here’s an outdoor festival, featuring an ice-skating rink and bands in a heated tent. They don’t do this anymore.

How’d you come to be at Sound Of Music?
I came to Richmond about 12 years ago, shortly after Sound Of Music moved to its present location. I knew the then-studio manager from Milwaukee (where I had recorded some things but never actually worked in a studio), and they needed a live-in intern. I moved into the basement for about nine months. By the end of that time, I was actually working on records, which was great because that’s what I wanted to do. And it would have taken longer if I had moved to L.A., New York or Nashville. This was before computers had taken over, so things were a lot different. There weren’t many options outside of the aforementioned cities.

You are, of course, a musician yourself. When you’re recording a band and, say, the bass player is sucking ass, have you ever jumped in there and told him or her to have a seat and rocked the bass yourself? If not, why not?
No. If people ask me to play something, I’ll usually do it but I wouldn’t take an instrument out of someone’s hands. Generally, people can play their own music but band dynamics are pretty complex and sometimes someone’s playing is a little behind the curve. In those cases, I’d say it’s better to roll up your sleeves and try to get it as good as you can because the alternative is that this guy is going to have to play his record to people and be like: “This is my record and some other dude’s playing bass.” That’s pretty harsh.

Dream setup: If you could track and mix on absolutely any gear in the world, what would that setup be? In terms of board, monitors, at least five microphones, outboard gear and environment.
This is a very Utopian question. I’m a firm believer that good musicians playing good instruments will always trump any sort of gear, but since you asked:
Console: Without getting too specific with model numbers, I kind of like APIs over Neves. Definitely a bunch of racked Neve channels on the side, though.
Monitors: NS-10s and a mono auratone for not telling lies, but also how about some amazing giant system in the walls—designed, built and installed by someone German who would usually consider designing anything for a mere recording studio an insult to their abilities. Maybe some dynaudios for the middle ground.
Mics: This would be a long list as there are so many great mics that I’ve never used so I’ll stick with what I know. Telefunken U47, B & K 4011,07, Coles 4038, Neumann U67, a bunch of regular stuff: 57s, 414s, 421s.
Outboard: Fairchilds, 1176’s, 33609’s, Distressors, 160 vu’s, one of those transient designers, anything that looks like it came out of a battleship, a good reverb chamber and plate, echoplexes and space echoes. This could go on.
Environment: Definitely some crazy Led Zeppelin farmhouse or castle on a Scottish loch.

Nightmare/depends-on-your-perspective scenario: What is the absolute minimum you would need, in terms of gear and space, to record a full band? How shitty could it get before it became impossible?
See above. You let the genie out. Things will never be the same.

What are you ideal working hours, assuming it has to be at least eight hours a day?
Ten to six a.m. or p.m. Depends on the band.

Do you think analog studios will survive the next 10 years, as digital stuff gets cheaper, smaller and better sounding?
Hopefully. You can make recordings so many different ways today, but there will never be a substitute for people playing together in a proper room with good microphones. That said, even for a great band, playing music together is not easy. You read one of those Beatles recording books and it’s like: September 5th. Tracking resumed for a new George composition titled “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” with take 25 (out of 40) being deemed the best. That’s the fucking Beatles! Granted, they had the luxury of doing that many, but the fact that they got to the bottom of every idea and performance is what makes those records so great and timeless. It’s easy now for people to play one good verse and one good chorus and paste it wherever they need to—a luxury I’m sure the Beatles dreamed of—but it’s never the same.

Worst thing about the ’90s popular music in terms of sounds.
At some point, people decided that triple tracking distorted guitars and scooping out a bunch of frequencies made it “heavy,” and that became the standard. This not only sounds terrible, it makes no sense. Also, the whole drum loop in the verse with real drums in the chorus thing (and don’t forget those shitty distorted guitars when you get there) doesn’t really sound as fresh today as people once thought it did. Unfortunately, both these things still happen all the time.

What’s the most overused instrument/recording technique in so-called “indie rock” today?
Well, there are always exceptions, but there’s two that usually get under my skin. First, having oohs and/or aahs instead of an actual chorus. You’ve come this far, just finish writing the song. Also, starting a song with a needle-dropping-on-vinyl sound effect. I mean, maybe when CDs first started replacing vinyl that was funny or clever or something, but today, what are you trying to say? You’re old school? Somebody is going to have that on an iPod and be like, “You’re blowing my mind. This is a record? What?” You realize it’s 2009 and this has been done at least a million times, right?