A Conversation with The Moore Brothers (continued)

PM: Tell me something, please, about your label, Plain Recordings.

TM: Plain is part of a larger organization called Runt. And Runt is mostly a distribution and a reissue company. They've reissued hundreds of obscure jazz records, folk records, '70s rock records, all sorts of stuff. Now, the guy who's sort of the head of this whole company, Filippo [Salvadori], he has all these little labels--Water, Four Men With Beards--and one of them is Plain. So they're little subsidiary labels, I guess. And Plain has the first Cat Power record, it came out on that. Also some My Bloody Valentine reissues, and us.

PM: Interesting. So how did Plain get on to you guys?

TM: We just noticed two fellows hanging around the back of the--there'd be five people in the audience a couple nights, and they'd always be among them. They were coming around, a couple shows in a row. And they asked us if we wanted to make a record. At the time we were happy with Amazing Grease, Scott Kannberg's label. But Scott had moved out of town, and we were looking for some sort of change. And they offered to actually give us a little money to work, which is something.

PM: Imagine that.

TM: Yeah, right. We'd never heard of that before.

PM: [laughs]

TM: We took the bait.

PM: Definitely. [laughs] Let's see. Oh, let's talk a little about how Murdered was made, and where, and with whom, because that's all interesting.

TM: Yeah. Well, Filippo gave us a little budget to work with. And he asked us if we knew anybody we'd like to record with. And we were friends with this guy Jhon Renoir, who's actually the grandson of the filmmaker, and the great grandson of the painter, Renoir. So I had met him through another mutual friend. He's a really fun guy. He lives up there in Grass Valley, which is next door to Nevada City.

PM: Right.

TM: So we asked Filippo if that was okay if we did it there, and we went and did it there.

PM: Wow. So what kind of a guy is Jhon?

TM: He's a very precise sort of analog personality. I don't know how to explain it.

PM: Is he very old-school when it comes to audio?

TM: He is, very much so. He hates Protools and the like.

PM: Big fat tape, like two-inch?

TM: Two-inch, probably, I think. Yeah, we don't know anything about that, so it's good to work with somebody who does care about sound, because we're just completely obsessed with songwriting and melody, and then after that we have no clue.

PM: So do you know at all what he may have been using for microphones? Did he put great care into the placement thereof?

TM: Did he put so much care into the placement that we felt a little worried about what he was doing?

PM: [laughs]

TM: We're so used to recording for free that we do stuff--and "Okay, can I do a harmony of that vocal?" They give us the mic, we do the harmony on the vocal, we hear it and say, "That's good" and go on. But we'd tell him, "We'd like to put a harmony on that vocal." And an hour later, he'd tell us, "We're ready." We were kind of worried. So we spent a lot of time on mic placement. That was the first time someone had done that for us this way.

PM: So when it comes to the old-school approach, I mean, that is exactly what it's all about.

TM: It's all about mic placement, isn't it.

PM: Completely, in that mode.

TM: Well, that makes me feel a lot better, Frank. I know we spent our money wisely, then.

PM: Yeah, he's the guy, if that's where all his time and energy went.

TM: He is the guy. I recommend him highly.

PM: And this facility that you were at, it's his place, his house?

TM: No, it's a friend of his, Brandon's house. And they're sort of a team. Brandon didn't do much work on our thing, so it's all Jhon. But Brandon has a family, and then on the property, Jhon built the studio and bought most of the equipment. Jhon is, I think--I don't know how he finances it, but I think part of life he's poor, and then he goes and sells one of his great grandfather's sketches to a museum and ends up with $100,000, and lives off that for--and he also makes money, I'm sure, with the studio thing.

PM: But that's an incredible story. [laughs]

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