Interview with Jay Braun
honest and raw

When you look at Jay Braun’s bio, you get the sense that he likes his music honest and raw. Which recent artists do you think of when you hear those adjectives? Maybe John Spencer Blues Exlplosion? (Jay’s worked with them). How about Mooney Suzuki? (Jay’s been known to pick up bass duties in that band). Maybe you’re thinking about Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers (Jay recorded and produced their album, then joined the band on guitars). In his Williamsburg studio, Melody Lanes, he recently recorded two albums that have been getting some well deserved attention. First being the aforementioned Shilpa Ray release “A Fish Hook an Open Eye”, Second being Sean Bones’s rocksteady and ska flavored release, “Rings”.

Jay: oh boy... are we rolling yet?

Michael: always rolling jay

Jay: HAHA good good.

First off, can give us a little bit of your background, you used to work at The Magic Shop right? Is that where you got your start in engineering?

Jay: No, I got my start on a reel-to-reel 4 track my brother Justin bought in the early days of the Negatones. Our band was recording in other studios with other engineers and we didn't feel like the results sounded like 'us', so we figured we'd have to take matters into our own hands for better or worse. We had both taken a night-school production class at a local SUNY school, so we had that to go on. Didn't work at Magic except for my own stuff or if a band brought me in there to work with them. I did some gigs out of Water Music but that was pretty freelance, like when Ted Young was busy next door with a big band sometimes I'd get the call for the local indies.

But yeah, we started on a 1/4" four-track; we needed to do it ourselves. Those early recording days were before Pro Tools had caught on so when we'd ask an outside engineer to run our vocals through an amp and they'd roll their eyes because it was 'so much trouble...'Now you could slap a plug in on it, but I'd still rather run them through an amp...

You found that guys just wanted to do it by the book?

Jay: Well, I suspect nobody had actually read the book anyway...
We were listening to a lot of bands that were doing it themselves and the sounds that they were getting were more along the lines of what we were trying to do

What type of bands?

Jay: The Grifters, Fugazi, Brainiac... always Brainiac. Brainiac's recordings just sounded so fucking crazy. The energy of the recordings always matched the vibe of the band. Oh yeah, and Blues Explosion. Mustn't forget them. That guitar or organ solo in 'Afro.' I'm still not even sure what instrument that is but it's like twice as loud as the rest of the track.

Was that before or after you worked with them?

Jay: Way before. They were really one of the reasons I started getting into recording. That solo, it was so loud, nobody was doing stuff that sounded that 'out' and 'wrong' back then. It was ballsy. I wanted my recordings to sound like that. That JSBX record was crucial to me.

So JSBX had played a big part in your ideas and sounds, how was it that you actually came to work with them?

Jay: I was working on a record with Judah's (Bauer, JSBX guitarist) girlfriend at the time and she told him that I was good to work with.
He was trying to finish a solo record that needed a lot of Pro Toolin'. We hit it off and I kept bugging him about getting them to throw me some work. He'd say “never gonna happen”. Eventually I saw the bulb go off and John called me up and asked for a mix CD of stuff I had done. I never thought I'd get the gig so I gave him a mix of the most insane stuff I could find and he really liked it. So, Russell gave me a track to work on, and he said to me 'I take it you're not a remix guy so I'm giving you a straight-ahead rock track.' That pissed me off, and I was like 'I'll show you a remix' and I went to town on it, chopped it to bits, added horns and electronics and it turned out to be one of their favorite tracks. ... so that's how I got that gig.

(Notices the interviewer’s G-Chat status)

..why do you have ‘Electric Avenue’ in your status? Are you listening to it? That track gives me the chills.

One of my friends band's teased it a few weeks ago, it's been stuck in my head ever since. It’s a catchy tune!

Jay: When Sean Bones and I were discussing his record I brought that track up.

How so?

Jay: I wanted to try and get Sean to sing more from the chest and that's a good dancehall-esque example of that. He said he loved that I name-checked that record. It was a good start for us.
When Eddie says 'GOOOD GOD!' its so right on. The delivery in that song is flawless. What a great cover. I have to put that in my little notebook of songs to cover.

Speaking of Sean, let’s get a little bit on that album, did
you track it at Melody Lanes?

Jay: yeah, to 16-track tape. 2".

It sounds like an analog record. Did you bring it into Pro Tools at all?

Jay: It was an instant transfer, actually, I was running Pro Tools simultaneously and it was hitting the tape and then bouncing right off the playback head into the computer a moment later.

So you can get the sound and saturation of tape, but still the convenience of working in a computer?

Jay: Right. We had done it on the 1/2" 8-track for Sean's EP and it
worked great.

The Sean Bones album seems influenced by Jamaican Rocksteady of the 1960's. Did you do anything on the engineering side to accentuate those qualities?

Jay: Oh yeah. Especially on the drums. We'd listen to reference tracks off Sean's iPod and mess around with mic placement and EQ until we could dial in something close, then pull back what we did just enough so that we were being responsible recorders. Ryan (Sean's drummer) also did stuff like put a t-shirt over the snare in some songs. Of course, a lot of those sounds came as much from Ryan's playing as anything we did in the control room.

You have a bunch of outboard processing in the studio, do you use a lot of that in your production?

Jay: Yeah. I don't want to sound snotty but I think plug-ins can get pretty boring. Not that I don't use them when appropriate, but they can lack a lot of the grit and character of something in the real world. I don't usually mix in the box. I go out of Pro Tools into the console, and once you're analog you may as well get to some fun outboard stuff. Like I said, I'd rather run a vocal to an amp than run an amp simulator a lot of the time.

You also recently finished up Shilpa Ray's latest record.
She's known for her incredibly dynamic and unique voice. Were there any tricks you used to capture her performance?

Jay: Yeah, we put up a (Shure) SM57 and she sang live with the band. Really tricky. Most of that record are live takes, and some of them are first takes. That was how I proposed we do it, because she vibes so much off the band, and she was like, 'Really? We can do that? Awesome!' To prevent her harmonium from leaking onto the vocal mic I blocked it with this wooden and foam contraption I taped together and it all came out great. She is game for pretty much anything like that, whatever it takes to capture the energy. I think we make a good production team, she is great in the studio. Total pro.

I remember a few years ago (I think it was assisting with you on Kapow) Someone was laying down vocals and was half joking but also trying to work out a part, I laughed a bit, you stopped me and told me to try to not laugh at theartist, it either will hurt their confidence or make them lose focus. That always stuck with me.

Jay: I can't believe I was that authoritarian. I don't remember that, but yeah, you know, do whatever you gotta to make the vocalist comfortable and confident. One thing I like to do, if the music calls for it and the vocalist is game, I hook up a mic that rejects a lot of what isn't in it's proximity (like a SM57) right in the control room and crank the music through the control room speakers, no headphones.

A lot of people like singing that way because it feels more like they are at a rehearsal or a show instead of in a fish tank with cans on, which is how studio vocal recording can sometimes feel. I don't worry too much about the leakage, in fact I can usually still compress going to tape if I want and it comes out fine. Really, it’s all about that performance, it's more important than anything else.

Do you have any general words of advice/ philosophy to someone who's reading this interview on how to make a better, more musical record?

Jay: I read a fortune cookie once that said 'if you can't be good, be careful.' I think they meant something totally different, but as far as recordings go, its a good guideline. Here's an example: I'll get something to mix that someone else recorded and it sounds like someone slapped a compressor they didn't know how to use on the snare track, probably because they'd heard something like 'a good thing to do is to put a compressor on the snare.' But they didn't know how to set it, so the compressor is pumping out of time with the snare and the track is useless. If they had done nothing to it, it would have been a perfectly usable snare track. You can get an awesome sound by moving a mic around. You don't need to do any more than whatever you think you have to do so long as it sounds good and is giving you that warm feeling in your belly.

All that said, the flipside is that one of the best things about this process is there are no rules, what works for one person or group will not work for someone else and if you have the time and resources and you can afford to experiment, you should follow your bliss and go nuts.

Can you give me a little history on your studio, Melody Lanes?

Jay: The studio is an ongoing project between me and Toshi Yano (Firey Furnaces, Kapow, Violent Bullshit) and Justin (Negatones, Adam Green). After moving from one place to another we rented this huge garage and built out the space into a 4-room studio with help from Matt Verta Ray's (Heavy Trash) crew. I treat the control room like my office; I come here pretty much every day to work on stuff, even in between outside jobs. I can't keep away. This whole complex is great; there is a very productive vibe here. Scott (Rosenthall, Class Actress) runs the building, there are rehearsal spaces down the hall and I have become friends with a lot of those people, now I work with some of them and even get to gig out or sit in with them on Moog or guitar. I'm a pretty lucky guy.

Jay is teaching a recording class at 3RDWARD in Williamsburg. Visit 3RDWARD.COM/CLASSES for more info. www.jaybruan.com