What goes into producing a record and doing it well for you?
Blood, sweat and tears. A lot of hard work and making the bands do a lot of hard work. It’s typically a pretty long day at my place and it’s all work intensive. It’s basically a whole series of decisions that we make along the way that lead us to, hopefully, a great end product, but there’s a lot of second-guessing, like the changing of a melody or trying a different lyric. I think that as long as you’re conscious of everything the whole time – paying attention and listening, and making sure it sounds the way you want it to sound – I think you’re good. A lot of stuff gets fleshed out in pre-production, which is about a week of every record for me, where it’s sort of set up band practice style and we’re going through the songs and changing arrangements, and changing melodies, and changing keys, and changing drum parts and sort of just making the songs work. And then, of course, every band is completely different from one another so you have to step outside yourself too and make sure you’re doing the right thing for the band. None of my records sound the same because I’m always like, this wouldn’t sound good on Panic[! At The Disco], but it would sound great on Cute Is What We Aim For, or whatever.

Is it difficult to adapt from one band to another and recognize what it is they need?
Yes! And that’s all about people. Of course there’s a musical element to it, but half of pre-production is getting to know each other and getting to know what kind of record the band wants to make. Nine out of ten bands that I have come in here have a strong vision and know exactly what they’ve set out to do, and if I know that going in, I can sort of adapt my process to it. If my vision is a little different, then we talk about it and figure out where the compromises lie and we go ahead. But it’s definitely hard and I don’t really take much time off between projects so I’ll be finishing the mix on a six-week record and then I’ll have a new band in the next day and I’ll be like, “Oh my god, this is a mellow band and the last one was freakin’ screaming,” so sometimes it’s a little jarring for me. 

That must be pretty draining, too.
This is true, and I also work alone so I’m doing all my editing by myself, so the band’s day is about 10 hours and my day is about 15 or 16. I start early in the morning on my laptop fixing drums or tuning vocals, just sort of fixing stuff, and then I’m tracking from 12 to 9. There’s so much time involved in the process that I don’t really look up sometimes to be like, “You know, these guys don’t sound like that,” so you have to keep yourself in check.

What would you say has been the most challenging record that you’ve produced thus far?
Have you guys heard of a band called Boys Like Girls up there yet? That one was really tough. The toughest ones are the ones that come out the best – I don’t know why that is. I think when the bands are just so awesome and so talented, the sky’s the limit and you have to get there somehow. I think I was working 18 hours a day, every single day, on that record. It was just crazy. Panic was obviously really challenging. [During] Panic we didn’t take any days off and those were really long days too, I think we did that record start to finish in like four or five weeks.

What made those records challenging though? Was it a question of faulty song structure, rivaling visions, or were you just striving for perfection?
I think it’s more the last one. It’s usually when the band and my visions are really consistent and we come up with this lofty plan in pre-production and we’re like, “Oh my god, it would be great if we did this, and we gotta change this chorus, and put acoustic guitars here,” and we’re just sort of bro-in down and talking about what the record’s going to feel like, and then, we have to go perform it all. And of course we’re all perfectionists and we want everything to be in tune and on time so tracking is pretty painstaking and I’m punching in little notes here and little notes there. You just get to this point where you’re not going to compromise any of that, you’re not going to compromise that vision that you had, but at the same time that vision is so grandiose that it’s tough to make it there. 

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