A Conversation with Joe Henry (continued)

JH: We did that a lot on Scar, actually, when we recorded the orchestration. Even though we had an orchestra there, just to cover ourselves we put up the big beautiful [Neumann U-] 47's. But pretty much all we used of the orchestration was recorded through a Victrola horn with a [Shure] 57 in it.

PM: [laughs]

JH: Like if you listen to the strings on the song "Stop"--a lot of people ask me if it was just a really unique Chamberlain, because it sounds fucked up, but it's the real orchestra playing. Husky just recorded it backwards through a horn.

PM: It really does sound like a Chamberlain. That's amazing.

JH: But that's an idea he got from Edison. There are old photos of Edison recording, where he's got all these big horns in different shapes and sizes and lengths, and he's recording sound. It's one part of how Husky thinks.

PM: Unbelievable. What kind of a dude is he? How old is he and stuff?

JH: Oh, I think he's maybe 36 or so. And he's from Iceland.

PM: Get out!

JH: He grew up some in Boston, and lived some in Iceland when he was a kid. He's a very unusual character.

PM: And so where did you run into Husky?

JH: Well, Husky cut his teeth as an engineer. He was a second engineer to Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom for about eight years.

PM: Holy jeez.

JH: He was camped at the Sound Factory, which is my favorite studio in L.A., for eight or nine years with them. But I met him through Craig Street, when we were starting to make Scar. Street had just made a record with Husky. And I forget how he met Husky--I think through Tchad. I guess his regular guy wasn't available. And he was really blown away by Husky, because he has such a unique point of view, and by the record that they made together right before, like two days before we started Scar. Street said, "You know, this guy is really unbelievable, and he's really cheap."

PM: [laughs]

JH: "I can't believe how interesting he is. I'm not sure we shouldn't hire him to do this record." I had somebody else in mind, somebody that I'd worked with before. And so I came down to this session, and they were working on a Manhattan Transfer record, which I couldn't care less about.

PM: [laughs]

JH: But I heard these rough mixes that Husky did, and it didn't matter to me that it was Manhattan Transfer, it was something just organically unbelievable that was going on, something sonically brilliant that was happening.

PM: Wow.

JH: And so I said, "We should hire this guy to record the record." And then, by the end of the first day, it became completely clear to me that he was so inherently responsible, as much as anybody else, for what was happening, I knew that he should also mix the record--because nobody was going to understand what he was putting on the tape and what we intended to do with it if it wasn't him.

You can't record that way and then hand it off to somebody and expect them to make some kind of sense out of it. I mean, with Scar we didn't use any Protools at all, but we--oh, well we did on the instrumental song. But it was just the way that he put forth a point of view. I mean, most engineers that I know would record something with as much fidelity as possible. They'd say, "Well, if you want it to be kind of fucked up sounding, we can do that when we're mixing. But it's my job to make sure that it gets on tape in a pristine fashion." But Husky's thought is just like when a guitar player makes a choice, "For this song I'm going to go through this amp and use these pedals, and that's what you're going to get. If it's not working, I'll try something else."

PM: Right.

JH: What he chooses is going to influence how everybody is hearing what's happening, and they're going to play accordingly. So Husky listens to a song like the musicians would and starts treating sonically what he's hearing, so that people are hearing back a treatment of an idea. For instance, on the Richard Pryor song on Scar, the way that he treats the kick drum--Brian Blade played it that way because of how he heard it. Brian heard Husky treating it that way and then said, "Oh, if that's how you're going to use it, then I'll play it like this."

PM: [laughs]

JH: "If you're going to put it on the middle of the track with that kind of prominence, that kind of tone, then I'll play this way." And it's a revelation to consciously realize that if you don't commit those ideas to tape, you can spend the rest of your life trying to chase them down again. You'll be saying, "What was happening that day when we heard that? We were listening back and it was so amazing, but now where is it? It's not on tape anywhere." I've been in this situation a million times where something is happening in tracking that everybody responded to, and that's why you thought it was a take in the first place, but you get back to mixing it weeks later and you're going, "Where is it?"

PM: [laughs]

JH: "We heard it." But those treatments are all gone, they were all temporary. You've been monitoring with those sounds, but not committing any of it to tape. So Husky's whole thing is that, if you allow him to do it--I'm sure not everybody does--but if you hear that sound, that's what should be on tape. If the piano miked with a Victrola horn was the sound that we loved, that better be what goes on tape. That's how it happens.

PM: Amazing. Well jeez, Joe, you've been so generous with your time, I hesitate to take any more.

JH: Well, it's not a problem, Frank. It's my pleasure.

PM: How much you gave me on the processes on these different records, it's fascinating. I've never had anybody talk so extensively and so inside the process, and I'm sure a lot of the readers will really, really dig it.

JH: Oh, thank you.

PM: I had a host of other questions, but I'm not going to get onto them, because this is just too cogent and too stream of consciousness beautiful. It's great.

JH: So you don't want to know Madonna's shoe size or anything.

PM: [laughs] I guess we're just not going to get into that, unfortunately.

JH: Very good.

	print (PDF)
	listen to clips
	JoeHenryLovesYouMadly.com
	anti.com
	puremusic home
	archives