Sound Tech
by Tom Walters
Tom Walters, former studio manager and engineer at White Crow Audio, interviews local studio owner and highly regarded recording engineer, producer, and guitarist Dan Archer.
TW: Let's talk about Archer Studio. You have some beautiful analog equipment. How do you feel about the analog versus digital debate?
DA: That's a big question. Personally, I'm an analog guy. It's like the difference between video and film, or, to put it into terms that I'm more familiar with, the difference between a tube guitar amp and a solid state amp. One has warmth and resolution, the other is more sterile and grainy. There are applications where one may be preferable to the other or when one can complement the other. Digital will be quieter and have more dynamic range, but I hear a loss of depth and ambience that translates into a smaller and more clinical sound. People bring in their ADAT recordings to mix or overdub and I can pump It through my toys and improve it, but dumping it to analog first is even better.
TW: You use digital.
DA: Yes, the format that I have I use for editing, mastering and many other things. I'll also use it for locking up to the analog multitrack for comping and cleaning up tracks, putting things in tune or flying tracks around.
TW: So, Dan, what's going on?
DA: Well, I've had an entertaining summer. I'm producing and playing guitar on the next Dude of Life album. I did a movie soundtrack with Page McConnell of Phish. Jon Fishman has been in the studio producing and playing on the next J, Willis Pratt record. I've been tracking and mixing an album for local jazz heroes Science Fixion and I've been mixing the new Wild Branch. Motel Brown, Strangefolk and blues antihero Zoot Wilson are coming in for the Archer Studio treatment.
TW: How would you describe the music of J. Willis Pratt?
DA: You've heard of 'Easy Listening'? Well I call this 'Difficult Listening.'
TW: You recorded Phish's Lawn Boy and the Dude if Life with Phish albums (both on Elektra.) How has the Dude of Life record done?
DA: I believe we've done about 50,000 with the Dude of Life. And when we made that album it was pretty much like spontaneous combustion. This new one we're putting more time and effort into.
TW: Who's playing on this one?
DA: Phil Abair on keys, Aaron Hersey and Mike Gordon on bass, Jon Fishman and Kenny C. on drums, myself and Trey (Anastasio) on guitars. And we'll have a horn section, pedal steel and a Dixieland band.
TW: Sounds great. I heard that Glen Robinson has been working at your studio.
DA: Yes, he was in here with Slush recently and it came out great.
TW: Your studio sounds really busy. What else is going on?
DA: I'll be working on a new record with Ernie Brooks that is going to be produced by Jerry Harrison ( keyboardist for Talking Heads and very successful producer of mega-sellers like Crash Test Dummies and live.) I met Ernie in Paris which he's been based out of for the last few years. He's a gifted songwriter and he has a deal with Warner Brothers. He was in the original Modern Lovers band with Jonathan Richman and David Robinson of the Cars, and later he and he was later in Jerry Harrison's Casual Gods. (Editor's Note: Casual Gods played Burlington a few years back.) Jerry and Ernie collaborate on songs. I worked on his last album with him. When I got involved, a lot of the tracks had already been worked on. Tapes were coming from Paris, New York and Milwaukee. He gave me free rein and I ended up stripping some songs down to the drums and totally reconstructing them... redoing the guitars, bass, vocals and Hammond B-3. They will be coming up here for the next album. For some of it we’ll take it out to the record plant in Sausalito, California, where Jerry is living. I've also got Rick Price of the Georgia Satellites coming up from Atlanta to work on his solo record, which is a fusion of punk and bluegrass-- that should be interesting.