Every dog has its day

Mitch Easter produced some of the best records of the 1980s and late 1990s.  Dave Daley asked him all about his acclaimed past, promising future, and just where the heck he hid during grunge’s heyday…

from Caught In Flux #7

Growing up in the quiet, desperate suburbs of Hartford, CT, it was very easy to romanticize the great Southern college towns that produced many of my favorite records, to create mythologies around the vistas of Winston-Salem seen on Let’s Active records, or the kudzu on the cover of R.E.M.’s Murmur. Mitch Easter’s name was practically a Good Housekeeping seal of approval then. Easter’s name kept popping up as the common denominator on the albums I played most, whether R.E.M., Game Theory, Pylon, the dB’s, or his own Let’s Active projects -- and a decade later, once again, on albums by Velvet Crush, the 6ths, Helium, and Pavement. Easter recorded many of the 80s’ best and most influential records in a studio built in his parents’ garage in Winston-Salem. More recently, he moved the studio down the road to a beautiful country home in quaint Kernersville, North Carolina. That’s where I visited him last winter to talk about his career and R.E.M., for an Alternative Press retrospective on Athens pegged to the 15th anniversary of Murmur.  Easter, who is currently working on the new Hang-Ups record, couldn’t have been kinder, more generous with his time, or more unassuming about his own influence.

Why has it been so long since you’ve made a record?
I got very upset with the way it was in Let’s Active at the end, with the way the band was, and the way the record company was. It really was deeply depressing in a way I don’t think I even grasped at the time. After that was over with, I was recording stuff, but I was never quite ready to present it. Several years ago I was aggressively recording a lot of stuff. When I hear those songs now, I think they’re fine, but I don’t really want to put them out. It’s hard not to think what you’re doing now is most correct. Increasingly, without a tour coming up, it got easier and easier to do more studio stuff and kind of forget about it. It was stupid, you know.

What happened with Every Dog Has Its Day?
The best thing that happened with that record was right before it came out, Robert Plant discovered the previous record (Big Plans for Everybody) and started talking about it all the time. That was the biggest promotional boost we ever had. Every Dog was just plagued in a lot of ways. It seemed like IRS had already pulled the plug by the time it was released.

That’s interesting, because I remember seeing the “Every Dog” video on 120 Minutes and thinking maybe you would finally have a chance.
I’m impressed you saw that video. It wasn’t very good. I’m even more stunned that it was played.

Sure, and before 120 Minutes, Let’s Active seemed like regulars on IRS’ Cutting Edge.
We had no luck with videos, that’s for damn sure. We did this tour with R.E.M. in ‘83 which helped get us on the Cutting Edge show. The video was this cutesy thing with a puppy dog. MTV played it because they were looking for videos. In that way, it was great, in another way it killed us forever. We looked like we were 12 and the biggest cutie-pie thing this side of I don’t know what. The funny thing about it is years later that band Weezer actually made the video we were thinking of. They have that one with the dogs running through the set. That was our notion. We asked for some dogs, because we wanted the chaos of dogs running around. What they were able to get us was a litter of newborn puppies. They were just darling, but they weren’t capable of running through the set, so it came out quite a bit different.”

Walk through the Let’s Active records. What was your vision for them, and how did it change as the band and the lineup evolved?
The first little EP was a demo tape we made. It was purposely really stripped down. That was sort of the aesthetic of the time, and I wanted to do something of the time. By the time that band got started, I already felt a little old. It was a little bit deliberate on my part to think that way. I had been playing a long time by then. It was an effort to make a real simple sounding record. Cypress doesn’t sound like that. I wanted a little flashier, a little denser, sound. Every year you’re a different person. Big Plans was different as well. The band had fallen apart altogether. I did a lot of that record myself.

Would you do anything different?
There are keyboards all over the place. Good lord, I had no idea. If I had it to do again, I might have less keyboards. I don’t hate keyboards – I find them to be real fun. The icing on the cake. There are definitely a lot of ‘80s-isms there that I would not do, but I guess they made sense at the time. Some of the reverb and some of those sounds are really ‘80s, but that’s fine. Those records are old enough now that I can listen to them like they’re somebody else’s.

What do you like about the Let’s Active records now?
One thing I do like about them is they sound a little odd to me, like they’re kind of different, and I hope they are. That’s the thing that will give them some kind of shelf life. I think they were of those times, but I don’t think we had a comparable band. We weren’t doing the same thing as some band from Portland. I don’t think there was an equivalent to us. The other thing that makes those records so schizophrenic is I really felt like I was trying to make up for lost time. I felt like by the time I was as old as I was then, I should have had like 12 albums. I didn’t have any. This sounds really stupid, but I was kind of upset when I graduated high school that I didn’t have a record deal, that I was going to have to go to college. I wanted to play.

When did you start playing? You’ve been friends with Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple since childhood. There must have been some great elementary school talent shows.
I met Chris in second-grade, and started playing at 12. I really liked recording. We’d done all these tapes, and I thought, “OK, I’m ready.” I wanted to go into the studio with Glenn Johns immediately upon graduation and make a record. I didn’t have the slightest path leading to that other than I could play guitar. College was spent having little moments with bands and continuing to record with Peter Holsapple. It took the arrival of the indie scene, college radio, and new wave to get the machinery going to where it reached down to us in North Carolina, and we could connect everything. For me, there were also the pioneering efforts of Chris and the dB’s in New York. That was all part of it.

Chris was the first of the three of you to strike out to New York?
All I know is he came back and got a haircut. He took this weekend field trip to see Television, and it had a profound effect on him. He was a conduit to a lot of that stuff. The thing that was so great was it was just a handful of records then. If you had “Little Johnny Jewel,” “Piss Factory,” Devo and the Pere Ubu records, you sort of had it. You just had ten or 12 records and you were a member.

What had you been listening to?
When I was a kid, girl groups like the Shangri-Las. The Beatles, of course, and The Who and other English stuff. Some American rock like the MC5. By the time I went to college, though, it was stifling. It was Steve Miller on the radio and Gentle Giant in the record stores. I didn’t know what to do. I was really freaking. I didn’t know about Roxy Music or something that would have saved me. There was a gap there from like 1975-77 when I didn’t know what the hell to listen to. When that first Ramones record came out, it was just God. And new wave. That didn’t sound like the Ramones at all, but it was all connected in those years. I embraced it all with incredible vigor because I was so relieved.

Where did you go to college?
That’s the other funny thing. I was going to school in Chapel Hill, which is now, of course, the world’s hippest town. But at the time there was really sort of post-hippie, living-in-a-school-bus vibe down there. This vegetarian folk-music atmosphere, which is fine, but it wasn’t me. I was upset. I’m in college now – it’s  supposed to be really swinging! What do I do? I didn’t want to ride around in an old Volvo and listen to an acoustic mandolin record. I was 19 – I wanted to rock. But it quickly came back together, with the Ramones and New York Dolls and Bowie. Things got good again. I went out and got Low and was completely satisfied with life again.

Those days seem really exciting and romantic to those of us too young at the time, but who found all those records later and used them as our own musical foundation.
The thing I loved about those years was that you knew you were on to something, but you knew it was rare. So you would drive 300 miles without blinking to see somebody. I’d make a trip to New York to see Alex Chilton play with Talking Heads. It was a great trip to Mecca. That you had to drive to get there was fine. You’d drive to Atlanta to see the Dead Boys. Some second-tier band like that would still be worth a major expedition, and you could round up people to do it. It was kind of lame around here. The Athens bands, they were pioneers. The B-52’s and Pylon were the first bands from the South to get on that New York circuit and that was really important. It was a huge thing for the South, and I felt real proud of it all.

So after Chapel Hill, you spent a little time in New York, then came back to Winston- Salem, and started Drive-in Studio.
I moved back from New York in 1980 to start the studio.

Why did you set up shop in your parents’ garage?
I thought there would be no business at all. I thought it was going to be terrible. I was scared to rent a building. By 1980, there was plenty to do. But I don’t think a year earlier it would have worked.

This was really in the garage? What was your parents’ house like?
Actually in the garage. It was so crude. Crackers were our first band, and I remember after they arrived knocking a hole through the wall with a hammer to run wires to mike the drums. They had one of those long, low houses built in the early ‘50s. The garage had been a children’s bedroom before they got the house converted. The layout was usable for a studio. All I did was knock a few holes in the wall. I thought it was just a place to set up and try it out, and ended up using that space for years. I never expected to.

Mom and Dad didn’t mind all these bands coming by to make their records?
It was actually pretty cool having the Raybeats stop by my parents’ house. They were totally into it. They were great. Until I moved here, I was in that garage for 13 years.

How big was it?
It was little – 24 by 24 feet was the whole space. I guess that’s why we were so busy recording in the driveway. We made it work, but it was tiny. That’s the great thing about relative youth. I was thrilled to have some stuff to hook-up and start running. I was 25 and had this “oh-boy” attitude.

Why did you stay in the garage so long? Why not set up somewhere else once R.E.M. and the Game Theory records made it clear you could make it work?
I thought about it, but I never made enough money to do it right. I couldn’t decide. It was really important to me not to make myself miserable by getting into a trade where I would have to work all the time. I wanted to enjoy recording, and I made enough money to live on with that setup. I figured since I had the equipment, I could put it anywhere. It made the space not matter so much, because you couldn’t get access to equipment like this unless you were willing to spend a lot of money. And there’s a tradition to garage studios.

Is there an early recording experience that you remember as just laughably awful?
That’s where I’ve been lucky. I haven’t done very many things where I’ve wanted to kill myself. Most of them have been vaguely cool on some level. Some of the really terrible ones have been so fantastically terrible that I cherish the memory. In 1982, I recorded this French-Canadian guy from Greensboro. He was a vacuum cleaner salesman, an older guy in his 50s, and he looked like a paunchy Napoleon with long hair. His look was just astounding. He had this idea that what the world was waiting for was rock music sung in French, so he rounded up these surly Greensboro teenagers to back him up on this session. They came in and it was the most amazing thing ever. He had a completely non-rock voice, and these guys playing behind him were these evil little pot-smoking guys that would rather be playing Rush. Every time this guy went out of the room they’d say something mean about him. It was real tragic, but with an element of a 50s talent show that made me like it.

(At this point, Mitch’s girlfriend, Vinyl Devotion singer Shalini Chatterjee, joins us and we head to one of their favorite lunch spots, The Spoon, in downtown Kernersville.)

How did you come to do the first R.E.M. session?
Peter Holsapple knew Jefferson Holt, and he mentioned the studio to him.

Did you know anything about them?
I had seen a poster for them at The Pier in Raleigh. I had the idea they were this electro-band like old Depeche Mode. When they showed up, I guess I was still thinking that. They got to the house the night before the session, and we sat around and talked, and it was very apparent they were a rock and roll band in every sense of the word. They really seemed like a ‘60s band to me. They had the Fab Four feel. These guys looked good together as a band. There was something reassuring and classic about the four guys up there. I had a great time talking to them. We liked the same stuff.

They came in to record the “Radio Free Europe”/”Sitting Still” single for Hibtone. What did you think of the songs?
They came in with “Radio Free Europe,” “Sitting Still” and also “White Tornado.”  I really liked them. More than that, I thought these were songs that other people would like. Even by then I was bothered by the fact that you’d record people even while thinking that nobody really wants to hear this. With them, it seemed to leap out of the speakers. This is a record people would buy. I wasn’t one of these guys who thinks in terms of sales, but it just seemed that way. It was so clear. They had everything. Michael was the mysterious but very starlike singer. Mike and Bill were sort of bemused and doing that good job back there. Pete Buck was the rock-and-roll zealot. I used to think back then it was Venus appearing fully formed. The whole deal was there.

What kind of ideas did you have production-wise?
None of us were thinking in terms of fancy-pants production. That was a good thing, because I didn’t have the facilities to do it anyway, so it was perfect. I didn’t even have any reverb back then. We were recording totally straight. That was exactly what they wanted and it was right for the times. That’s why I think we all have bad memories of Johnny Hibbert coming back to remix. He spent six hours remixing, and we didn’t really have the equipment or the wherewithal to change anything, so it came out sounding a little worse. The Hib-tone single is a little more lifeless than the original version.

But despite that single and then Chronic Town, IRS still wanted a different producer to do Murmur, and they had Stephen Hague in mind, who would go on to do the Pet Shop Boys.
I don’t know how they knew him. He wasn’t a household name. But they hadn’t heard of us, and we were from the South. They probably thought that we were their buddies doing sound, and now it was time to give it to somebody else.

I can’t imagine how that record would have sounded had he produced it.
He went on to be a very successful commercial producer, but you couldn’t have picked anybody more wrong for them. I think it still stands tall as one of the worst nightmares of their professional life. When they played us (Easter and Don Dixon) the tape, they were turning white, like it really made them sick. He made Bill play the drum takes a billion times and destroyed their confidence. He was a guy to make sequencer records.

But the band insisted that they do a session with you and Dixon as well.
Somehow or another they got their way. Our session was presented as a tryout. My favorite thing about it was the label didn’t like either. They didn’t like Stephen Hague’s stuff, but also did not like our stuff at all. I’m really proud of that, because that session produced “Pilgrimage,” which I really love. The mix they heard was the one that went on the record. We didn’t touch it.

So the compromise was ultimately that IRS agreed to let you do the record, and you and Dixon agreed to record it at a bigger studio, Reflection in Charlotte. How did their experience with Hague change REM when they went into this bigger studio?
They were definitely super-conservative and distrustful of what you could do in the studio. We’d propose some overdub, and they’d reject it as too fake. Eventually, Dixon yelled at them and told them they’d be making a demo tape if they didn’t cool it.

And somehow you made them feel comfortable -- there’s all those overdubs on “Perfect Circle,” and that’s one of the prettiest songs they’ve ever done. Then there’s those little short snippets introducing some songs, or the sound of cue balls on “We Walk.” What did you think they had to do, and how’d you talk them into it?
It was a bit of a struggle. With “Perfect Circle,” we did the overdubs when they weren’t there. They hated it, but came around. We wanted to hear a little more sound, some piano, some acoustic guitar. When big complete production works on a Kinks level, there’s something exciting about it. To me, that freedom was what was great about working in the studio. The pool balls just happened. The studio has a corridor under a staircase, and Michael liked to sing in there. The corridor led out into a rec room where Mike and Bill played pool all the time. The vocal mikes weren’t too far away. The sound was just cool so we filed it away. “We Walk” was a weird one, and we didn’t know what to do with it, and that bizarre idea sounded fine.

What did you use to get his vocals to sound so muffled and mysterious?
That’s what came out of his mouth. Nobody believes that. We used a microphone. I’m telling you, there was nothing funny going on there. That’s what he sounded like.

Really? That’s amazing. No delay, or echo, or anything? It sounds so unlike any other vocals from that time.
In mixing, there might have been the slightest bit of short delay on there, which was a typical mixing thing at the time. But everybody else would have had that, too. There’s nothing unusual. He was an art school guy, and he wanted to sound like that. I didn’t think it was a big deal. There’s a grand tradition of rock and roll singers you can’t understand. But he really got a lot of attention for that. I think it helped the mystique factor. They were all about mystique back then. I thought it was great. Scott Litt must have made a mighty persuasive case for him to stop doing that, because when Document came out, I was like, “What’s going on?” It was disturbing to me to hear how that sounded because it was so radically different all of a sudden.

He started taking his message and politics much more seriously then, whereas those early records seemed to be more about phrasing and words that sounded good blurred together. Did he actually have lyrics written out?
They were kind of screwy lyrics, with a lot of wordplay, but they weren’t completely absurd. There was an electric typewriter in the studio which he loved. He was down there typing his lyrics all day long, so I can tell you that every word was specified. I saw them. I have some track sheets from those sessions too. All the words were real words.

Did you ever imagine Murmur would have the impact it did?
I thought it was good, but I didn’t really consider that. It’s kind of obnoxious to think, “Yes, we made a record for the ages.” People do pronounce those sort of things, but I’m not really given to those sort of announcements. I thought people would like it, because I saw the reaction they got in Athens, and didn’t think it was just Athens. I thought it was them. But as far as the lifespan of those records, I don’t think anybody expected that. At the same time, when Murmur got record of the year in Rolling Stone, I was pleased, but it didn’t change my life. I thought, “Great. Now we have to do something else.”

So how did Drive-in become the place for Athens bands to record? Just about every essential Athens band made their records in Winston-Salem.
I suppose so, except for the B-52s, who moved away. I just know the phone rang. It’s hard to remember, really.

Did you drive down there a lot? What was the town like?
The thing that was so cool about Athens back then was that it lived up to its reputation. There would always be 25 parties going on every time I was there. If you went to one, you were likely to see 10 or 15 people you knew, or who were figures in all this. A band would play, and people were on their feet and bouncing off the ceiling. That support for a local band was something you always wanted but never had. I thought it was Utopia.

A mythology has developed around Winston-Salem in those years as well, but that’s probably just because of you, Peter and Chris. How was Athens so different?
Well, we had those parties here, too, but they didn’t feel like that. UGA had that rip-roaring art department and the hip professors. It was a training ground for beatniks. Michael Stipe’s a real cat, an art-cat guy, even though he was 20 when I met him. At another time he would have had a beret. Here, you would have never seen that. Chapel Hill had hippies, not this new class of swingers. In Athens, people lived in these big old houses, were very beatnik with their French cigarettes. North Carolina just wasn’t that cool.

What do you remember about making Pylon’s Chomp?
I think that was Chris Stamey and Gene Holder’s session. It was my studio, but I was just sort of there.

Your mom is credited on that record for “hospitality.” I like to imagine her dropping off doughnuts and cookies for the bands.
I don’t know. She did keep the coffee pot going, and sometimes she’d put out stuff, some sort of treats. Some people tell stories about her coming in with the apron and fresh baked goods. She did put stuff out, but usually in a very secret way.

Tell me about making Oh-OK’s Furthermore What. That was probably the first time Matthew Sweet made a record.
We made that really fast. I liked them, and thought that first record was really great. When they got Matthew in the band it just opened up what they could do. They were better for having him along.

How did you meet him? He was a pen-pal of yours and Michael Stipe when he was in high school, and then moved to Athens to join Michael’s sister’s band after graduation.
He corresponded with me when he was still in Nebraska. I sort of steered him into going to Athens. I had heard his tapes, and they were really good.

What have your favorite projects been?
Chronic Town was great, and not too much later I started doing those Game Theory records. They were a lot of fun, because of the variety in the way they approached recording. The tremendous portion has been music somebody has liked, somewhere. I was so lucky the timing was right. I got to work with a couple cool bands, and it totally got the ball rolling, and it just kept going for a long time. I think I was least hip with the music business around that transitional time from the late ‘80s to the early ‘90s, but those were sort of bad years anyway, so what the hell.

What were you doing all those years when we didn’t hear much from you, either your own songs, or your production projects? I remember you did a Hummingbirds and a Moose record, and then didn’t see your name much until Velvet Crush in ‘94.
It is sort of vague in there. I was still working, recording a lot of my own stuff. Nothing felt right in those years. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I didn’t try to do anything with it. It must have been my own psychological state being bad. I definitely could feel I wasn’t going to fit in with that he-man thing. I felt very uncool in those years. I’ve got that squeaky, weird voice. Everything I do is going to be called pop no matter what it is. Pop was a really dirty word in those years. It made me feel bad,. I wasn’t up to the struggle of going, “Yeah, whatever.”

You really felt like you wouldn’t be well-received?
I really felt like in those years I would have been detested, and it was better to just lay low. I really couldn’t become anything else. Now I don’t feel the same way. I truly don’t care how it’s received as long as somebody somewhere likes it.

Then suddenly you seemed to be everywhere, again. You started touring with Velvet Crush, sang on Stephin Merritt’s 6ths album, and produced two of 1997s best albums, Pavement’s Brighten the Corners and Helium’s The Magic City.
I don’t think I’m too hip, but now it seems to have moved to this point where people say, “Wow. That guy’s not dead yet? And I liked some of those records he did!” I’m hip again as an old guy.

How did you start working with Pavement?
Their drummer lives in Virginia, and they met at his place and rehearsed, which I think was a pretty radical move for them, and I think they wanted to stay in this area and keep that vibe somewhat intact from their rehearsals.

Have you ever heard their song “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence,” which sends up all that early R.E.M. mysticism? At the end Stephen Malkmus starts howling, “‘Time After Time’ was my least favorite song.”
Oh, that rules. I didn’t know much about them when they came in. I’d seen them on TV a couple times, but I didn’t have all the old records. I really liked what I had heard, but I wasn’t an expert on the band at all. I didn’t know if they knew who I was or anything, and then it came out that they were kind of fans of Let’s Active. They were experts on all that ‘80s shit I was involved in, so I guess they kind of liked it.

That record feels like their most relaxed and assured. What were they like in the studio?
It felt very much like the old days. They were into doing their thing, and weren’t worried about what anybody else thought. They’d rehearsed some, but the songs were just coming together as the tape rolled, and when they got one they liked, that was it.

How did you end up on the 6ths album?
Claudia Gonson contacted me. Where my name came up, I don’t know. I have a squeaky voice and that’s what he likes. I thought the tape he sent me was really cool, but my vocals came out a little too energetic for him.

He likes to counsel singers to sound bored.
I got this request to come to his apartment to sing it again. He wanted me to sing it softer, really bored, and really wimpy. The wimpier I sounded, the more he liked it. I was surprised. I feel like me singing at my most Jim-Dandy-to-the-rescue best is still going to sound twerpy, but apparently the delivery I’d given him first was too manly.

What was his apartment like?
Weird! His equipment was all this really early computer digital stuff, all very low-end stuff held together with string, practically, and of course he was a master of it. He had a sock as a microphone windscreen, and a face embroidered on it. He called the sock “Grandma.” I didn’t want to get near this thing. It was strange, but I also really enjoyed it.

But all that interest and excitement didn’t inspire you to finish something of your own?
I had lots of songs in 1990 and no idea to put them out. Then I had no songs, and the idea to put something out. If I get enough songs, I will, I want to do it for my soul. There’s this conflict in my head that I always hope nobody calls and asks me to produce something, so I have six months to record. It’s also always bummed me out to think of having a solo career, and it’s especially hard to have a band when you’re older. I’m really torn about that. I’m such a victim of ‘50s and ‘60s attitudes about pop culture. I can’t stand to look at a bunch of old guys playing. Some people have pulled it off real well. The crustier Neil Young gets, the better. He’s the man. So I know it can be done.

Would you ever reform Let’s Active?
With whom? It would be gross, I think, to use that name again and have all different people. We did that enough as it was, and I didn’t even like it then. I always wanted it to be a stable lineup. It would be extra-fakey now. If you’re going to reform a band, you have to reform Mach One version of it. That’s not going to happen. It’s also a real ‘80s name I wouldn’t pick now.

How about CD reissues?
I think those records are reissuable, based on e-mails I get out of the blue. One of the labels that does that would have to get interested. It’s hard to imagine it would sell a lot, but I think it would sell some.

Last question -- is there anybody who you’d like to work with now?
I would love to have worked on a Scott Walker record. I always think of things in different decades I would have liked to have done. When all else fails with the rock scene I put that on or Krautrock, or something that has nothing to do with now, and it’s very pleasing. I’d love to have worked on some of those things. I’ve always been super unaggressive about the production career. I’ve never gone after things. Bands now that make records that I think I’d really enjoy working on, I just never think about calling the labels to say let me do the next one. It would be great fun to make a Julian Cope record. That’s the kind of thing I like to record. I think it’s astonishing, though, that I can have this be my job and be so completely unaware of what’s happening in the music business. I think it’s awesome. Everybody always laments about the scene, but it must be fairly vital and big if it can support me here in Kernersville. I keep doing things I like.