vttom
13 September 2010
My wife pointed me to this interview: Mike Ragogna: Monday Will Never Be The Same: Conversations With Goo Goo Dolls' John Rzeznik, DAvid Gray and Josiah Leming http://www.huffingt…
I'm posting it here because the first couple of Q&A are interesting from a recording/mixing perspective. After that the interview goes in a totally different direction, tho.
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For those who don't want to click the link, here's the relevant
For those who don't want to click the link, here's the relevant part:
A Conversation with The Goo Goo Doll's John Rzeznik
Mike Ragogna: Is it true that you almost finished your new album Something For The Rest Of Us in '09, but then decided to work on it a little more?
John Rzeznik: Yeah, we got the final thing and we listened to the mixes, but we kind of got the feeling that it wasn't right yet. So, we went to the record company, and they were like, "Yeah, take some more time. Make it better." So, we went back in the studio and tightened things up. We wrote another song, recorded some things, and remixed the whole album, and this is what we've got.
MR: Has the band done that with any previous albums?
JR: Not to the extent we did with this one. We really went in and tried to do the whole Bionic Man routine. We went in and worked with a couple of more producers and a different mixer. I just wanted to make a record that I thought would age well. We went back to a lot more classic guitar tones, and we really dug through old albums, listening for great sounds and trying to recapture some of those.
MR: This album reminds me of your older projects. Was that intentional?
JR: I don't think it was intentional, but I think it did kind of come out that way. I think that had a lot to do with the guy that ended up mixing the album because he mixes us live. He's our live sound guy, and we put him in the studio and let him go. I think it helps when somebody who mixes you live every night mixes your album because they know how you sound, and they put your stamp on it.
MR: That's a good point because, although it's not live, it has the energy of a live performance.
JR: Yeah. We used to go in the studio and stand in front of a big microphone, and have to stand three feet away from it. You can't move, and it's really emotionally restrictive, you know? So, I just grabbed a regular, hand-held microphone, and just sang all of my lyrics into that. I could actually kind of perform while I was doing it, and it felt really comfortable.
MR: So, essentially, you captured a true "performance."
JR: Yeah, you can throw a lot more emotion into it, you know?