On The Record: The Madison Square Gardeners' "Teeth of Champions"

March 24th, 2011 by Trenton

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LOWER MANHATTAN: While so many Brooklyn bands are trying to figure out new ways to distort, drown and fuzz out their sound in the studio, the Madison Square Gardeners are crafting hi-fi records in the spirit of their favorite 70s rock and roll albums by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, CSNY, David Bowie and T. Rex.

Ladies and Gentlemen…The Madison Square Gardeners!

On their latest EP, Teeth of Champions, the Madison Square Gardeners achieve better-than-ever results on this mission. With Tomek Miernowski tracking the band at Grand Street Recording in Williamsburg, and mixing by Mario J. McNulty at his own Incognito Studio in Lower Manhattan, this band of well-oiled rock-n-rollers have made a record that stands up to their live show.

Accomplishing this has been a process, says bandleader and singer/songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan.

“What we do translates really well in our live gigs but recording has been a bit of an uphill battle for the band,” says Tasjan. “Because there was so much reverence built early on for the live shows – people were comparing it to The Replacements, the kind of music you have to see live because it’s so energetic and engaging. And we’ve struggled trying to capture that on record.”

Considering their instant chemistry on stage – doing classic rock-and-roll covers and eventually playing house band for a few select artists and venues around the city – the Gardeners naturally expected to breeze through their first studio sessions. They figured…pick a good room, a good engineer, and track four or five songs live. Don’t overthink it.

“We made our first EP at Headgear with Scott Norton, who’s a really great engineer that we knew through his work with Son Volt,” says Tasian. “We also really liked some of the records that have been made there – a couple in particular by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Hold Steady. We totally went in with the mindset of tracking live, but it was weird — even though we were all playing in the same room together, somehow it just didn’t have the spark of energy that we so easily have in our live show.”

It took an unusual recording assignment to set the band on the right track. “Engine Room Recordings asked us to do Poison’s ‘Nothin’ But A Good Time’ for their [upcoming] Guilt By Association compilation,” Tasian shares. “We spent the whole day just working on this one tune, and it became obvious to us that we were being too jock about the way we were going about making our own records – trying to go in the studio and track 5 songs all live and make it all about the vibe… We hadn’t been thinking enough about what we were trying to create sonically.

“What world did we want the band to sit in? Did we want to make super hi-fi big radio sounding records? Or did we want to be more ‘indie’ about it and make cool, garage rock sort of records? Each one is an art form. In working on that one song, and really pulling it apart, we realized we hadn’t been carefully considering the way in which we’re making our recordings. Once we got through that and turned it in (and Engine Room really liked it) then it was time to go back and reinvestigate.”

Refining The Process, Quarterly EPs, Big Sounds

That first Madison Square Gardeners EP, recorded at Headgear, came out in March of ’10. At that point they’d already been playing together for a few years, but had only just begun writing original material.

Rock and roll.

The band had always been a side project for Tasjan, who was lead guitarist in Semi-Precious Weapons, and his band-mates – all active sidemen for artists such as Ben Kweller, Justin Townes Earle, Roseanne Cash and Dar Williams. They all still play in multiple bands, but with no shortage of new material and enthusiasm for the project, they have been working through a series of Gardeners EPs and mini-tours over the last year.

“Instead of doing one record that would cost us a lot of money and time, our plan was to do a bunch of EPs over the course of a year or two,” Tasjan explains. “We figured we could put out another EP every 4 months or so – that way we always have fresh material, and we’ll always be able to tour and get press because we always have something new.”

Their experience producing the Guilt By Association cover led to a new approach on the Gardeners’ second EP, Taste the Thunder (January 2011). “This was our first attempt at working on each song until it was totally done, and I think it was definitely a marked improvement over the first EP,” Tasjan notes.

“And then in producing this new, third EP, we were refining that idea even more – [I think you always have] to make a record that’s even better, and that means across the board: that is, in the songwriting, the performances and sonically. So when we got to the point of mixing this one, I knew I wanted to get someone really serious. Mario had produced one of the Semi-Precious Weapons records, and I just knew he was going to have the right feel for this new record. It was like intuition.”

And, in recording, a process Tasjan refers to as “somewhat mysterious,” where one’s success is not always determined by practical know-how and flawless execution, intuition is often your guide. Especially when the project is not afforded tons of studio time in the great big room of its choice.

“If I could make one record like [Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’] Damn The Torpedoes, I think I wouldn’t care about anything anymore,” he shares, in a half-kidding tone. “In a way, it seems like that should be simple to do, but even when you know what you’re doing, and you’re in Avatar Studio A, the record you start out making is not necessarily the record you end up with.

Aaron Lee Tasjan and Mario J. McNulty in Incognito, Lower Manhattan.

“Hopefully, if you’re doing it right and open to people who can help you, you’ll end up with a record that’s even cooler than what you set out to make.”

The Gardeners were not going to get weeks in Avatar Studio A, but this did not change their objective just the process by which they would get there.

“We really wanted this record to sound as big and wide as the topics that we’re talking about in the music. Sonically, there’s obviously some 70s influence there…all our favorite records – Bowie and T. Rex, Tom Petty and the Rolling Stones. We really wanted to make songs that you’ll sing along to when you come to the show.

“So in the studio, we were focused on figuring out how to create that mood and that vibe, those big sounds and textures [without being in a huge room],’” Tasjan shares.

“There’s a lot of energy and passion that comes through on this record and part of it is that we really stepped up the material. But a lot of it was also that when we were tracking it, we really considered how we were recording each part. And then the mixing aspect – I knew that was going to be a big part of getting it to sound huge.

For this, McNulty’s part, the mission was clear: “The drums had to be big and powerful and the guitars had to sound thick. The vocal has to be thick and meaty sounding and the band is not the supporting cast – this is a real rock and roll sound, and I approached mixing it with that rock sensibility.”

In the sweet spot at Incognito Studio, where we previewed some final mixes, Teeth of Champions was sounding pretty epic indeed and refreshingly discernible to these ears.

McNulty mixes in Pro Tools on an HD3 rig through a Dangerous 2-Bus — a 16 channel analog summing mixer — with fader control via a Euphonix MC Mix control surface. Looking around his studio, he points out a few other important components: “the Pendulum ES-8 tube compressor is my main bus compressor, and I use a Dangerous Monitor, switching between the Focal‘s, NS-10’s and headphones.”

The care and consideration the band brought to the tracking sessions translated all the way through to the mixes, according to McNulty. “The playing was fantastic and everything was recorded really well by Tomek at Grand Street. He’d sent me some notes on what he did which was really helpful, so once I got started, I was able to approach it really organically. The songs really lend themselves to what they’re going for sonically.”

Check out our favorite track “Miracle Mile” off the new EP for a dose of the Madison Square Gardeners’ sweet Americana folk and rousing arena-sized rock-out jams all in one song!

And given the band’s ambitions, as summarized by Tasjan – “to make great records and go play gigs that people walk away from 100% satisfied” – you really ought to catch them live sometime.

Stream or buy the Teeth of Champions EP at the Madison Square Gardeners’ Bandcamp page. http://themadisonsquaregardeners.bandcamp.com. And follow them on Facebook and Twitter.