Lo-Fi approach/Hi-Fi results

Northeast Performer, December 1999
In The Mix: Jonathan Babu

The plan was to get some material together and record a few songs -- not to start a band, get label interest, and ascend to full-fledged rock band on the rise notoriety. But Baby Ray pioneers Erich Groat and Ken Lafler found themselves toting a 4-track to a secluded cabin with drummer Nathan Logus and bassist Paul Simonoff, building their definitive pop masterpiece.

"The way we've done our recordings is to record the drums in stereo to 2 tracks, then one track of bass, one track of guitar," explains Groat. "Then we dump it onto an 8 track adat and use the extra 4 tracks for vocals and more guitars. When you record like this, you need to have a good idea of how the songs should sound when it's done. It's good to have to make those decisions early, and not leave them until after things are recorded."

Paul brought some recording knowledge into the band, having done some recording of his previous band Lumen. "The only way to learn is to tinker around with stuff. We rented a Neumann microphone to record vocals for my last band, and I think I got the worst possible sound out of it. The best equipment in the world won't do you any good of you don't know how to use it."

Groat agrees. "We've all been in bands before, and we all have spent time in recording studios. We were the guys who would sit behind the engineer and watch him and bug him, and ask him questions."

"We have a magic microphone," Lafler says smiling. "I don't even know if I should discuss it...it's a little Panasonic hand held tape recorder. Erich found that you could use the internal microphone by running a cable from the outputs directly into a mic input [on the mixing board]. So you pick up the recorder and start yelling. It's one of those situations where you do your best with what's within your means and you come up with something that works really well. There are people trying to get their Sennheisers to sound cheap and dirty. We've got our $30 tape recorder."

For their recent album Do I Love America, Baby Ray enlisted Nathan's brother Paul Logus to produce and engineer the project. Nathan comments, "He's a great producer, and he's got great ears. One of the advantages of having an outside producer come in is that it allows us to focus on the music. We don't have to worry about who's going to press record."

"The thing about recording yourself is that you don't have the pressure of a studio, "Groat says. "There's no pressure of being under the gun, paying for your time, and having to perform. With Monkeypuzzle, we took a week off, went to the cabin, drank a lot of beer, and just played around."