barely breaking up. When the
song kicks in, the driving, jangly electrics lean a little to the
left side of the stereo field, and
you punctuate things occasionally with drier, more straight-ahead rock chords and riffs on
the right side—and then when
that muscular solo comes in
the middle of the stereo field, it
hits you right in the face. What
drives your decisions on stuff
like that—and do you make
panning decisions like that in
the studio during mixdown, or
do you actually envision parts
that way when you’re writing?
We do little mixdowns as we go.
I’m a big believer in really checking out rough mixes and making
sure you don’t have to add too
much to it [at final mixdown]. I
do tend to want to double and
triple guitars all the time, and
Chris Shaw—Astronomy’s great,
great producer—did sort of hold
me back now and again.
MATTHEW CAWS’ GEAR
Guitars
1968 Gibson Les Paul custom black beauty, 2011 edwards LP- 130, 1975 Gibson
Les Paul Standard, 1960 Les Paul Standard reissue, 1969 telecaster, fender baritone
Jaguar, 1991 Gibson J-200, 1980 Guild f- 50 (strung for nashville tuning), 1971
Yamaha fG-180 (red-label nippon Gakki version)
Amps
two tweed 5e3-circuit fender deluxe clones made by John “J.J.” Jenkins of
twangmaster Guitars, fender 1965 deluxe reverb reissue with Jensen Special
design speaker, early-’80s marshall Jcm800 50-watt head driving a 2x12 cabinet with
celestions, early-’60s Silvertone twin twelve, thd 8 Ω (purple) hot Plates on all amps
Effects
fulltone ocd, hughes & Kettner rotosphere, electro-harmonix PoG, mXr dyna comp
Strings, Picks, and Accessories
John Pearse .013 sets (acoustic), d’addario .012 sets (electric), Jim dunlop nylon . 60 mm
J-200, and the Nashville tuning was on a big, blonde Guild
F- 50 jumbo.
because there are so many of
them—they’re blurring together.
So sometimes it does take a bit of
an effort to dial it back.
“When I Was Young” has a
gorgeous acoustic 12-string
sound, with the bass strings
panned left and the trebles
panned right. What did you
play for that part, and how did
you capture such lush tones?
Oh, thanks! That’s actually a
6-string doubled with a guitar
playing Nashville tuning [a
6-string with the E, A, D, and
G strings tuned an octave higher
than normal]. When we made
The Weight Is a Gift with [produc-er] Chris Walla, we were listening
to a lot of [Traveling Wilburys
and Beatles and Roy Orbison
producer] Jeff Lynne productions and noticing how he puts
Nashville tuning on everything.
Which guitars did you use
for that, and why did you use
two guitars instead of a single
12-string to get that sound?
Because fingerpicking on a
12-string is a sloppier affair, and
I’m really not much of a finger-picker. I used a 1991 Gibson
One of the big lessons demon-
strated by these tracks is how
the different layers need to con-
trast—rhythmically, texturally,
or tonally—and yet still lock in
and complement each other. For
instance, the middle section of
“When I Was Young” has these
anthemic, ringing chords on
electric guitar that give you an
image of a rock god in power
stance on a huge arena stage,
and it stands in such bold, stark
contrast to the lilting acoustic
beginning. How much time do
you spend thinking about and
working on contrasts like that?
I hope we’re not guilty of doing
the same thing over and over
again, but I always gravitate
toward certain things. I mean,
if a part is slow and big, I tend
to want to think in a Crazy
Horse way. Neil Young’s “Cortez
the Killer” [from 1975’s Zuma]
period—with those booming
chords—was a huge influence.
When I’m thinking that way,
I’ll go for this really saturated
sound and I won’t play much so
that the chords can really ring
out and bloom. It’s like when
you set a compressor the right
way on a crash cymbal. A lot of
people hit cymbals too hard so
they choke. That was a big thing
about [Led Zeppelin drummer
John] Bonham—he hit the
drums hard, but he didn’t hit the
cymbals hard. If you hit a crash
cymbal lightly, it’ll go whoooosh,
and I think guitars can be the
same way: If your amp’s really
singing, you can play less and let
the harmonics really do stuff.
Do you ever struggle with
having too many cool guitar
parts for a single song? How
do you know when to say,
“enough is enough”?
I don’t usually have too many
parts, but I can definitely have
too many tracks. At some point,
you have to go, “Okay, it’s getting
smaller.” The problem is that I’m
so addicted to doubling. But if
you’re, like, “Oh, let’s try this guitar and this amp. And how about
these …,” before you know it,
you’ve got four tracks of rhythm
guitar—which can be okay if you
can control it in the mix. But
when you have too much, it starts
to get smaller [sounding]. The
transients are all getting squished,
Your doubled guitar parts are
incredibly tight. Do you work
extra hard to track them that
way from the beginning, or do
you nudge them in Pro Tools
after the fact?
I’m not so into using Pro Tools
to move stuff around. I got my
big lesson on doubling with
Ric Ocasek on our first record:
Whenever we’d have a song with
a typical, here-comes-the-chorus,
kaboom-type of thing, we would
triple-track it with a Les Paul
and a Marshall. I’d do the first
track, and it was usually cool,
but for the second and third layers, he’d make me do it, like, 15
times—until that first fraction
of a second hit like a wall. I’d hit
the chord on the second or third
track, and Ric would be, like,
“Yeah, that’s good. Do it again …
Good. Do it again … Good …
Do it again ….” And then I’d hit
one where it was just completely
invisible—and I’m a believer now.
When the stuff is really tight, it
just does something really special
to the impact of the song.
