Do you feel like there was ever a time where some of your work got tainted by production or recording styles?JT: I think Wilco's Summerteeth is probably the closest to having some sensation like that. I definitely have things I wish I had done differently on some records. The overall drum sound on Wilco (The Album) I feel is muscular and uncharacteristic. It was weird that that was the decision being made at the time, but I think we were playing so much. I think we had gotten used to the sound of (being) pummeled (by) live drums. It was hard to hear them any other way in the studio. I don't really understand it. But Summerteeth definitely has some of the earmarks of us transitioning from analog to digital recording.
It feels different to me. It came after (Wilco's second album) Being There, right?
JT: Yeah.
That's much more spacious and open sounding.
JT: It's all rough mixes, too. We had mixed the whole record at Ocean Way (Recording). When I was at the mastering studio with Bob Ludwig (Tape Op #105), we'd mastered the whole record from the original, finished mixes. I'd booked two days, because it's a double record. I came back the next day and said, "I don't like this record as much as when I used to listen to it on my cassettes." Bob said, "Well, let me hear the mixes you like." He helped me pick all of the mixes from cassettes and DATs.
That's awesome.
ST: He's so nice.
JT: He agreed with me. He said, "These feel better. They're not better sonically. They feel better." That was a big moment for me, affirmation-wise, to have him supportive of that decision. We'd spent a fair amount of money on those other mixes!
There's no way you were getting out of Ocean Way for cheap.
JT: There're a couple of David Kahne mixes on Summerteeth. He was mixing Sugar Ray and people like that at the time. That makes it more contemporary-sounding than anything else we ever did, probably.
Right. Don't take this the wrong way, in any sense, but that record always pushed me away sonically. I'd always think, "Why do I keep going to Being There or the records that followed?" That record always sounds more pushy and abrasive.
ST: It's cold.
JT: I don't really know. I feel like the material on that record has continued to be something that people want to hear when we play live. So not very many of the songs have disappeared from our consciousness, which is more important to me.
Yeah, as long as the songs stick around.
JT: Yeah. People get excited when we start playing one. I love making that connection. I don't know how much of it is from the record anymore or if it's from Wilco being a live act for so long that people are perhaps more familiar with the live version of any one of those songs.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 30 July 2019 14:10 (four years ago) link