March 2025
Those who think it’s impossible to have one’s fingers in many pies and eat them too apparently aren’t familiar with Fernando Perdomo’s body of work… Not that the American guitarist – or, rather, multi-instrumentalist – would welcome food-based phrases, because he’s been on a diet lately, which is just a new challenge in the line of many the man loves so much. It’s the challenge running in parallel to an impressive task of releasing “Waves” :a series of albums getting issued in monthly installments through the year, along with quite a few other records. Seemingly omnipresent in certain circles, Fern’s well aware of how people may see his productivity, yet he’s not afraid of becoming a laughing stock – and, for all Perdomo’s patented humor, our long-overdue conversation was surprisingly light on laughter, as there’s nothing funny about genuine concepts of art.
– Fern, people call you a prolific artist, and you indeed release a lot of music. What most of those people don’t realize is that you keep a quality bar very high. So what percentage of music that you write you actually put out?
One hundred percent. The thing about it is, I’ve released a song a week on Patreon since 2020, and they’re not as complicated – a lot of them have one or two instruments, sometimes they have drums, sometimes they’re full-band pieces – but I use that as a testing ground for new equipment, for new sounds, for new plugins, for new guitars. I don’t do demos. I might have an idea on my phone that I’ll then turn into something, but ninety-five per cent of the time, I’ll grab a guitar or play piano, come up with the idea for the song, and even the track that I lay down to express the idea, and seven out of ten times it stays on the track, because I play it as good as I possibly can, because the better the guide track the better the drum track is going to be, and the better the bass track is going to be – those are the first three things I do. And then I do the melody – and sometimes I’ll do the melody first, because I don’t want to forget – and then I’ll do the final touches by adding sprinkling synthesizers or strings, or Mellotron. I like to build songs like houses.
But as far as prolific goes, I know people who hoard their material: they’ll record a ton of ideas and then just have it all. Still, there’s a guy that I respect a lot, named Mac DeMarco, he’s a big indie rock guy who records every day and who, one day, released a two-hundred-song album [2023’s “One Wayne G”] – and that inspired me. All right, this is a lot, and most people aren’t going to get through half of it, but the way I’m viewing “Waves” is that it’s a hundred-and-twenty-song album that I’m putting out ten songs at a time, because, in the end, I think it’s going to be a fun to listen to all of them and see the progression I’ve had this year. You’re going to hear new sounds that I’m going to be discovering just to keep things fresh, because when you do twelve albums of instrumental music, it’s easy to repeat yourself, and I don’t want to put out carbon copies of “Out To Sea”: I definitely feel like this has its own sound, which is really cool. And I also see myself putting out a “Best Of” based on people’s votes, which might be really cool, too. It’s easy to be prolific when you have a good system and a good work ethic
I don’t want to not be prolific, because the minute that I start getting lazy is when I’m going to find myself in trouble, where people are going to want music, and I’m not going to have it. And I also like to keep myself busy, because I want to keep my brain going. I run a recording studio and I also live in that studio. So when I get up, I have coffee and I start making music. And a lot of the time, since I have clients pretty much every day, I find myself making music for myself in the mornings and the evenings. I enjoy getting music to the people, and I enjoy being creative. The minute it’s not fun anymore is the minute you quit, and I don’t ever see that ever happening, because the most fun I ever have is making music. I hope you hear the joy in what I do. I’m not forcing myself because I’ve got a record label that’s paying me, and I hate it when I hear people have to go through that, where bands are reuniting because they need the money, or people are working with people they don’t stand because they need the money. So I can be really prolific, because I’m never waiting on anybody. The pay is not the issue – I don’t mind paying other musicians: in fact, I’ve got a project now where I’m going to be hiring horn players – but as far as what I do, I never have to wait for a drummer, for a bass player, for a keyboard player. I’m there and I’m ready to go. I always show up prepared to my own sessions.
– Usually when people release as much music as you do, it’s half-baked ideas that they milk tirelessly, no matter how complex the arrangement is, but you’re an exclusion to the rule here. How do decide when to stop and put a piece out and when to work more on it?
I am aware that there are people that have put out more music than me, and yes, a lot of it is just demos – I know it’s a demo when something is just haphazardly put together, or a jam, or there’s a drum machine – but I’m really thinking about the parts and planning ahead. I’ve already kind of planned next year’s project, which is also going to be a twelve-album cycle, and then maybe more in the future. I’ve got this momentum now, when I feel very accomplished, and my soul feels good. I don’t understand how people can have lots of unreleased material, like Prince’s “vault” – I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing that that stuff is going to die with me! We’re all in charge of what people are going to remember us for. If I get sick in five years and die, I’m glad that people are going to have lots of stuff to check out. It’s a pity that we only got two UK albums, that we only got three Nick Drake albums, that we only got one and a half Jeff Buckley albums, that we only got one album by THE GRAYS. And that’s why I am incapable of doing something half-assed.
There’s one thing that I haven’t done well right now: I released “Volume One” of my “Createreon” Patreon series and I never did Volume Two and Three. I was supposed to do it every year, like “The Best” of every year, and I might have to do that eventually. If you check out that record, those are all songs that I did for my Patreon, and the songs for my Patreon are just as intricate. There’s real stuff there! Honestly, I would rather not do anything if I was putting out substandard material. That’s why I stopped singing for a while. I realized that that stuff just wasn’t doing me as good as the instrumental stuff. When I sing my own words… whatever. But when I’m singing someone else’s words, I want to make sure that those words are sung intricately and sung well, I have to respect people whose words I’m singing. So I really believe that demos are a waste of time. A lot of people I know go, “Hey, let’s make a demo and then we’ll record it in a real studio!” No, man, do it as good as possible! Use that good mic, use that good guitar amp, don’t do anything fast just for the sake of it.
– Of course, most people also don’t realize how exhausting it is to: a) be a prolific artist, b) be not only a musician but also a producer, c) be playing live. How much discipline does it take to juggle all this within the same period of time?
Oh, well, it’s not so much discipline as following through. Taking a job and doing the best I can, so I get hired again as a producer. Doing my best to perform as well as I can, so I get hired again. And then, when it comes to making my own music, taking stuff to the finish line and then making sure that every step of the way is taken with respect – from making sure that everything is sounding great and that everything works together to sequencing of the recordings, creating the artwork and making sure everything is done on time, because my fans order everything. And it’s really cool to be able to have the discipline to get everything done without killing myself, without making it so that I just have to stop. So I’ve developed a good system, where every day I have an itemized list of things to do, and I never forget anything. I also want to be respectful of my paid clients because I don’t have a regular job. Even when I’m on the road, I’ve got a full setup, with a way to record guitars, with microphones and everything, because I’m constantly at the mercy of my clients. But that’s just the way I am. I like to go above and beyond with everything I do. I’m forty-four years old and I’m lucky to have health and be able to deliver every time and be there for my clients, for myself and for my friends – for Marshall Crenshaw and Dave Kerzner. I’m about to go on “Cruise To The Edge” with Dave, and I’ve been practicing, relearning the songs and getting ready to go, but right now I’m finishing “Waves 4” that’s being mastered today – I’m actually starting the pre-order tomorrow – and I’m already writing the “Waves 5” album.
I’m also currently writing a record with a lyricist that I’d love to talk about because it’s my first real progressive-rock project where I’m singing. The lyricist, Sarah Melick, is a band member, but all she does is write lyrics, because I always loved it when KING CRIMSON included Peter Sinfield as a member, PROCOL HARUM included Keith Reid and RENAISSANCE included Betty Thatche, because I feel lyrics are important. I met Sarah at a songwriting showcase, we started writing together and wrote four songs that were in the traditional style, and then, about three weeks ago, she said, “You want to try writing a progressive rock song?” And we wrote a song that was so cinematic that I said, “Maybe we should do a whole album about this stuff?” It’s going to be a concept record, and we’re in talks about putting out a single soon, just to establish the project. It’s got that dramatic style of singing, which works really well. See, there’s not a lot of guys in prog rock that have low voices, so one of my biggest vocal influences are Peter Hammill of VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR and Gordon Haskell, who was the singer with KING CRIMSON, and I’ve recently been listening to Bill Fay, because I realized that we have similar voices, and Roy Harper, especially to his harmonies. And because of the subject matter, there’s also a lot of BEACH BOYS-style harmonies. That’s all part of my rock and roll fantasy. I love it.
It’s also cool for somebody that works alone so much to collaborate with other writer. I’m so not used to it! For example, I’ll go ahead and do the final vocal, and then she’ll be like, “Oh, here’s another revision of the lyrics!” I say, “No, I gotta cut it again!” It’s not being lazy; it’s just I prefer not recording stuff over and over again. I won’t go in and try to get a better take. There’s one client who will come in and do a brilliant guitar part on the first take, and I’ll say, “You’re done!” but he’ll want to try it again and beat that first take only to realize, half an hour later, that he can’t perfect it. A lot of the stuff you hear on “Waves” is first or second takes.
– Well, immediacy is important, because you’re fresh and haven’t exhausted the idea.
That’s actually a good point, being fresh. Releasing the albums so quickly after they’re done means that I’m still fresh about them, still excited about them, because nothing’s worse than the usual thing with record labels, where they say, “Okay, thanks for the album. It’ll be out in six months so we can do press!” which is fine. I mean, that’s the right way of doing things, but it’s difficult: when records come out late like that, sometimes artists are already working on their next album only to have to go on the road playing their previous one. When I look at it, it’s like, “Okay, I’m still super excited about ‘Waves 3’ and I’m still super excited about ‘Waves 1’, but ‘Waves 4’… oh my God, this is going to be fun!” I actually took a few things to heart that you wrote, and I’m working on making sure that the stuff that people are really digging is the focus now.
I enjoy doing funk and disco, stuff that’s more lighthearted, but this record is going to be a little more emotional: it’s got some really dark moments and it’s also got some really pretty moments. It’s a little more acoustic. That’s another thing: I’m very influenced by equipment. I recently picked up a guitar from Italy called the Eko Ranger 12, which is a guitar used for “The Musical Box” and “Supper’s Ready” and which has a very interesting sound; a lot of the equipment that GENESIS used, especially in the early days, was affordable. especially acoustic guitars, cheap ones like Hagstrom and Vox, that were made out of plywood and that don’t have a lot of bottom end. And when you have a guitar that chimes like this, it just screams out to double it and harmonize. I’m reading a book right now by Bill Schnee, who was an engineer for STEELY DAN and for a lot of yacht rock stuff, and it’s really interesting to hear the stories about using limitations. Now, with computers, a twenty-year-old bedroom producer has access to recreations of equipment that sometimes would take an entire lifetime to acquire, and they use it just because they have it, but then, it’s really nice to see that there’s a lot of people like Jacob Collier, who are embracing space.
I’ve just produced a record for Danny Ayala, aka Dr. Danny, who’s the bass and keyboard player for THE LEMON TWIGS, and he suggested using tape, which is the basis for the recordings was my eight-track recorder, and when you’re recording on this machine you have to play the song all the way through, so you have to kind of pre-plan what you’re going to do. I have to know what the song’s going to sound like before I record it: what type of drums am I going to play on this and what type of keys. But a lot of the times I listen to something, and I’ll be like, “Oh, I’d like to try that drum beat on this song!” I’m still expanding as a musician, but I do have a style, and I’m very respectful of that style. I’m learning some songs for “Cruise To The Edge” that are a little above my speed, but I don’t think I ever want to be like a shredding guitar player. Steve Hackett‘s a good example of what I might want to be in the end, because he is capable of being very fast, and still, in general, what we always remember him for are things like the solo in “Firth Of Fifth” that’s just a melody played passionately. Anybody could learn it, but to play it with passion takes years, and the way he plays it now is so much better than he did back then, he plays in such a way that every note counts, and that’s what I love. Andy Latimer plays like that, too. This is why two of my earliest influences were Carlos Santana and Neil Young: they don’t necessarily play a lot of notes, but you feel every note they play.
Around the time I went to high school, from 1994 to 1998, all the guitar players were into Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, MEGADETH and METALLICA, who had these metal guitars, and there I was with my vintage Guild SG guitar, which I still have, and a Fender Strat, and people would taunt me and say, “Man, you’re not playing fast enough! You gotta listen to this!” I even went to see the G3 tour, because Robert Fripp was opening, and I watched Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, the blues guy, but I fould that even though it’s exciting when someone plays so fast and so clean, after a while you don’t remember a single thing. When you think about, what is the most successful song that Joe Satriani released? “Summer Song” with its very simple melody that you can actually sing – (sings) “da-da-da-da-da-da da-da-da-da-da-da” – and “Always With Me, Always With You” which is beautiful too. One of the greatest guitar players I’ve ever seen in my entire life was Jeff Beck: I got to see him three times, and all three times, especially the last time I saw him, weeks before he died, he was on top of his game. Yes, he was fast, but on things like “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” he was singing with the guitar.
– People don’t realize that he wasn’t using a plectrum, that he played with his bare fingers.
That’s a beautiful sound, especially on a Stratocaster that’s very bright to begin with, so if you play with your fingers you get a little bit of a fatter sound, and it sounded like he was playing a Telecaster, which is known as a country guitar: it didn’t sound pingy or thin. One of my friends used to tour with Brian Wilson, and during a tour where Jeff opened up for Brian my friend went up to him and said, “I know what you’re doing! You’re trying to sing with your guitar, and the voice that you’re trying to emulate is Jeff Buckley!” Beck gave him a huge hug and said, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do!” So I did a record called “Guitar As a Voice” where I covered a song and just basically played the melody, because when it comes down to it everybody could appreciate a well-played melody. Not everybody could take that crazy, fast, nut stuff. I’m friends with Adrian Belew and Tony Levin, so I was really excited about BEAT, and I was very impressed with how Steve Vai played with them: he understands where to show off and where not to.
– I went to see THE ARISTOCRATS once, and they were third on the bill, with two opening acts were playing in the same shredding manner. It was too much for me.
You know what it is? It’s a three-ring circus! When you go to the circus, you don’t want somebody walking around slow – you want to see people jumping on the trampoline and doing things like that… Look, I totally understand. I’m a fan of fusion jazz, I love MAHAVISHNU [ORCHESTRA], I love Jean-Luc Ponty, I love RETURN TO FOREVER, and it’s always thrilling to see Al Di Meola, but for me as a musician, that’s not really in my wheelhouse. I love Marco [Minnemann, THE ARISTOCRATS drummer], we’ve played together, and Marco told me something that completely changed the way I view him: he didn’t grow up on THE BEATLES! Then I went to go see KANSAS for the second, and Marco was there, and he said it was his first time that he saw them. So he has a very interesting set of influences, because he comes from that technical world, and it’s cool, I applaud him. What Marco does is magic, and also he played great with UK.
But my earliest influences were THE BEATLES, THE WHO, Michel Legrand, a very famous French composer that my mom was obsessed with, Charles Aznavour, and the Cuban music I grew up with at home, and then I got really into BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD and CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG – and then I discovered prog, when I heard [YES’] “Roundabout” on the radio. There was a radio station that used to play “Long Distance Runaround” a lot, and I was like, “This is really cool!” Then, I bought “The Yes Album” and after that got into KING CRIMSON. And you know what’s funny about it? The first KING CRIMSON album I found was “Islands” which starts off with “Formentera Lady” – and I didn’t know what I was hearing. For Robert Fripp, to be able to have that much space but hold back and almost not play guitar on a song! And for me, who was ten years old when I got that record, to be able to understand it! The next record I heard was “USA” which was easy to understand: okay, these guys are loud and capable of rocking! I didn’t get to hear "In The Court Of The Crimson King" until after.
– Note that it was Ian Wallace who played on “Islands”: he went to play with Bob Dylan, which was quite unusual for a prog drummer.
You know what I’ve just found out? My friend Denny Seiwell used to play with WINGS – oh my God, it’s so cool to work with him, because I’m a massive Paul McCartney fan, and when we did "Ram On" it was a dream come true! – told me that he was supposed to do that Bob Dylan tour but, because of McCartney’s arrest, couldn’t go to Japan, so they got Ian Wallace. [An unlikely story, given Dylan toured there in 1978 and McCartney got arrested in 1980. – DME] Ian was a rock guy, a perfect stepping stone between Mike Giles and Bill Burford, and I love what Ian did with CRIMSON JAZZ TRIO.
– Since we’re talking about progressive rock, why do you think people tend to see you as a prog artist if your spectrum is much, much wider and not limited to a single genre?
It’s very simple. The prog stuff sells better because it’s niche. I put out the "Self" album on purpose, because one side of it was singer-songwriter Fernando Perdomo, former Americana artist, former pop artist, and the other side was the prog thing, and it turned out that the prog people didn’t understand Side One and the people that liked Side One didn’t understand Side Two. It’s a very divisive world where Steven Wilson releases a pop record, and people are like, “Huh? What?” But even though Steven’s known for prog, he does other styles. And a perfect example of my template as an artist is Todd Rundgren: the same guy who wrote “Hello It’s Me” also wrote “The Ikon”; the same guy who wrote “The Ikon” also wrote “Bang The Drum All Day”; the same guy who wrote “Bang The Drum All Day” also puts out dance music; and the same guy who puts out dance music is going on tour singing Burt Bacharach. He’s so unpredictable, but everything he does is definitely Todd. So if people ask me what style I am, I’m just me. I’m just Fernando. I’m the guy who grew up listening to French film music, THE BEATLES, Cuban music, and watching TV. One of my biggest influences was the game show “The Price is Right” with all the Seventies music that was on there. I am just a product of eclectic listening since I was eight years old.
My family used to go to the flea market and street markets all the time, and my mom would give me five dollars for toys, but I realized that that five bucks could get me five to ten records, so by the age of ten I had a thousand records. With fifty cents a record, it’s not hard to amass five hundred records, right? I was constantly listening to music, and I had everything: I had all the cool BEATLES stuff, I had WINGS, I had YES, I had FLASH, I had CURVED AIR. so I was already immersed in stuff and I was already saying, “I like this! I don’t like this!” Going to school, I had friends that liked NIRVANA and stuff like that, and I liked it too, but I was more into THE CARDIGANS, Tori Amos and BEN FOLDS FIVE. And now I listen to a band based in New York and Belgium, FIEVEL IS GLAUQUE, that’s like a jazz fusion with female vocals, MEN I TRUST, an easy-listening band from Quebec that has a beautiful, dream-pop sound, and also listening to a band called IMPROVEMENT MOVEMENT, which sounds like a cross between CROSBY, SILLS & NASH and Zappa. But that’s the thing: there’s lots of great music that’s happening right now where people are being themselves.
I have to apply a lot of psychology when I produce other artists, and what I’ve come up with is: make music for yourself, and if anybody else likes it it’s a side effect of it. If people didn’t like “Waves,” let’s still do it because I love it, and when I look back at it in thirty years as an old man sitting on a chair, I want to be able to say, “I really did something!” Look, my goal isn’t fame. I don’t want to be famous. I wouldn’t mind having more money, but it’s not really what drives me. What drives me is that every day my brain is happy, that my heart is happy, and I also enjoy the fact that people like my music and are still interested in what I do after releasing all this music. So I am successful.
– Still, with all this music that you release, and all the variety of styles, genres and even techniques that you use, it’s hard to see the real you behind this music chameleon. So what would be your style-defining album?
A really good example of a style-defining record, believe it or not, would be my first album, “Dreaming In Stereo” from 2008, when I was basically going under the name DREAMING IN STEREO. Actually, I’ve been thinking about going back to that name for this new prog project, but I have another name that I don’t want to give away yet. However, that old record has some of my most well-known stuff: on one end there are pop pieces like “Lazy” and “Let Me Love You” and then there are “Steal This Song” and “Misery Loves Companies” – as well as “Half Dead” that had been influenced by “Silently Falling” that, in turn, was inspired by Chris Squire. I established with that record that I’m not just one thing, that I’m a multi-genre artist. This was a good example of my first introduction into being a chameleon, and another one would be “Voyeurs” that was a pop record which had an additional, all-instrumental EP involved and which was the beginning of my discovery that I was really good at instrumental music.
– As instrumentalist, you used this association with the “Echo In The Canyon” film for some times, until fairly recently, and then you stopped mentioning that. Why?
I’m still proud of that movie. Any chance I get to watch it, I watch it, and I always tear up because I realize that I come from Miami, which is a tough place to play rock ‘n’ roll, and I never thought that I’d ever achieve what I’ve achieved already. Honestly, I could have died because I got to play with Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Eric Clapton and Beck, with Fiona Apple, Regina Spector and Cat Power, I got to be in the movie with Brian Wilson. That project was a dream for me, especially because it celebrated some of my earliest influences. But that’s why I’m taking it to the next level. I want to do more. I’m a very lucky guy. But, as my mom used to say, the harder you work the luckier you get. So I’m working hard, and it’s leading to opening doors. Hopefully, I get recognition from it. And I never stopped using my association with “Echo In The Canyon”; it’s just the movie is not my calling card anymore. I’ve done some bigger things – bigger for me. It was not a creative project, and I feel like my biggest achievements have been making music and creating the sound that people consider mine. The “Out To Sea” records changed my life forever. When I realized I had a voice on the guitar, it was: “Oh, my God!” For somebody who’s never loved his own voice, to be able to play guitar and sing was liberating for me. And I love it. I love it! People call me all the time for that sound, and I think it’s a good thing: the minute a guitar player finds their sound they truly become alive.
– So you’re still thinking about yourself as a guitar player first, not as a composer?
Oh, no, no, no, no. I’ve always been a composer. The composition side is great. But I am a multi-instrumentalist, too. I am a composer. I’m a producer.
– In this order?
In this order. I also sing but, really, I’m a rare breed in prog that can play all the instruments on a record. There really isn’t that many prog rock records where people are just one person.
– You’re talking about prog again?
I’m kind of hot on prog right now. (Laughs.) I consider “Waves” prog, and that’s what’s on my mind right now, and this new project that IK worked on this morning. I’ve done singing records, but I found a way for me to sing prog. There’s a lot of high singing in prog – Jon Anderson, Geddy Lee, even Phil Collins: they all sing all high – but as I said, there’s not a lot of singers in prog that sing low, and I figured out how to do it. That’s why prog is important for me at the moment. But you never know. Maybe in three months I’m going to discover something that’s going to make me go back to what I did on “As Is” just now, which is telling stories about my pop songs. And I’m playing a show next Sunday for a fire benefit in L.A., doing my own pop songs.
– You started “Waves” as a musical accompaniment to a series of photos, but then it became a looser concept. How important is having a concept – or is it simply a framework for you to gather composition from a certain period of time or a certain mindset?
I like having a concept. I like having a style. “Out To Sea” didn’t have a looser concept – it featured the album covers by Paul Whitehead, and it was just a general prog rock thing – but I want the music on “Waves” to be as epic as the covers, even when it’s acoustic: it’s a broad-spectrum sonic adventure. And now with this new prog album, the lyricist sent me an email with how she wants to tell the story, so we’re going to fill in the blanks and create songs for all the different points in the story – that makes it easy because now we have focus. And focus is important for me because when I’m just making music for my Patreon, I can do anything I want, but I want to be respectful of these new records and make sure they work. That’s why there are songs I’ve pulled off. There’s a song that was going to be on “Waves 4” that I decided to throw away because it didn’t meet the quality of what I was doing, and I don’t want anything on my records to sound like a throwaway.
And you know what? One person’s throwaway is… On the first “Waves” I was kind of scared about the song called – I almost forgot the title, and that’s a problem when you release so much music – “Nova” which sounds like GRATEFUL DEAD and has me coming in saying, “Well, the person who has the Chevy Nova parked in the back, please move the car!” I thought, “Okay, people are going to laugh at this one, but there’s really not much to it!” and one of the first reviews said that that was the best song on the record! Now I’m being a little more serious, but I hope people don’t miss that. I enjoy having the freedom of being able to look at these covers and say, “What does it sound like?”
– What did it sound like, and felt like, to be working at Abbey Road?
Oh man, both times I’ve done it it’s been absolutely incredible! The first time I did it for "Zebra Crossing" I couldn’t sleep. I cried when I saw all the equipment set up, because, you know, it’s Mecca, it’s Jerusalem – the gods walked, worked, peed there! One of the cool things about Abbey Road is using the bathrooms and saying, “Paul, John, George, Ringo, George Martin: they all peed here!” (Laughs.) Just to be able to walk in the same hallways and to walk in through the door and say, “Wow, absolutely amazing music was made there!” Kate Bush’s “Never For Ever” and ALAN PARSONS PROJECT’s “The Turn Of A Friendly Card” and many more classics were recorded there, because that’s the place where people shine. And I felt like I shined there, that first time especially, because the second time I was just engineering a podcast. What a joy that was – being there, breathing the air of the room, and going, “There’s ghosts here!” Also, it’s the oldest recording studio in the world that’s still running, and so much technical innovation happened there. A friend of mine actually came up with a great idea of why THE BEATLES were so successful: their music developed with the equipment.
– Well, I always wanted to know how much of their success could be attributed to the fact that they were given unlimited studio time at Abbey Road?
That’s why people build their own studios. That’s why Peter Gabriel built Real World. The fact that we all have home studios now changed the way music is. I work by the hour when I do my production, and I see people look at the clock and freak out, and I miss the days where people could pay me my daily rate and not have to worry about time. A lot of records are rushed – they could have been better if people would have spent more time on it. As for me, I wake up at seven and have someone coming in at noon, so I want to record a couple songs, but I’m never really rushing, even though I like to get things done faster.
– Your omnipresence in certain circles must lead to a lot of offers to collaborate. Just recently you released records with Earl Kayoss, Matt Tecu, Sandy McKnight, Ian Gothe… How do you choose who to work with?
It’s not necessarily omnipresence; it’s just that people like working with me. I rarely decline offers because I always enjoy working with different people on different levels. Like I’m working with someone who’s decided to become an artist after years of working a regular job, and she’ll be the first to admit that she’s not the greatest singer and not the greatest guitar player, but she’s writing good songs, and I’m helping her get her dream together because she had some illness. But with Matt Tecu, it’s a full collaboration, we are coming up with everything on the spot and working together, and LIFE ON MARS is really Earl’s thing, but he as the creative director thought what I was doing, getting all the sounds and playing all the instruments, deserved more than just the producer credit, so it’s really cool thing to be able to call that a project. When it comes to putting my name on something, if somebody wants that, I never say no, because most of the time it’s not coming from a disingenuous place where it’s like, “Oh, I want your name on it to sell more records!”
– But you have only so much time. You cannot serve everybody.
Well, I’m not going on the road with them, it’s not a band situation. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m no longer playing in this one band: they wanted a lot of time out of me and I wasn’t feeling creative with it, I felt like I was being undermined. But with these projects, I feel like I’m creative, and it’s great. It’s wonderful. And it’s an additional income too! (Laughs.).
– You see cover images as integral part of your albums. But do you consciously create your own image as a bearded wise man?
Yes. I’ve always been visual, I love videos, I love photography, I’ve always liked sharing images, and I love album covers, so I really care about this stuff – I think it all comes together into a nice package. But with regard to my image, I’m just being lazy. (Laughs.) I’m growing my hair out, I don’t shave, and I like looking older than I am. I enjoy the fact that my pictures could have been taken anytime: there’s a timelessness to it. I’m not going to have a mohawk or any type of modern thing. Because I’m not modern, you know. In twenty years I’m not going to say, “I look like an idiot!” This is me. This is really who I am.
