Icons: Eddy Offord Re-Emerges in NYC With THE MIDNIGHT MOAN

August 5th, 2012 by Trenton

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In music, the hope of finding the diamond in the rough holds a power all its own. As satisfying as it is to cultivate great talent, discovering it takes that charge to a whole new level.

(l-r) The highly influential producer/engineer Eddy Offord, with APB of THE MIDNIGHT MOAN. (all photos by David Weiss)

For the legendary producer/engineer Eddy Offord, the recent revelation that he had stumbled on a hidden rock & roll gem of a band called THE MIDNIGHT MOAN has been all the more electrifying – because he was most decidedly not on the hunt when it happened.

Yet somehow, after Offord was laying low for decades, something about this group’s music lured him back into the game at Pyramid Recording Studios here in NYC, where he’s been back in action, tracking and mixing for the last few weeks.

Offord was on hand for the recording of some of the 20th Century’s most influential albums, with an artistic inventory that includes producing and/or engineering for John Lennon, Yes, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Levon Helm, Procul Harum, and Yoko Ono. And yes, he was there in the studio when such culturally gigantic songs such as “Imagine,” “Long Distance Runaround,” “Lucky Man”, and many more were recorded.

But even after being instrumental to so many important albums, Offord more or less retired early — his last original studio album project was 311’s Grassroots, recorded in 1994. From there, he’s led an enviable existence of cruising the world with his wife in their sailboat, with occasional breaks to see family and friends.

In May, Offord parked his watercraft in Panama, then hopped a flight up to New York City to visit his kids. When his stepson Sam took Offord to check out his friend’s band, THE MIDNIGHT MOAN, the iconic audio man was stopped in his tracks: In a flash their classic rock energy, Alice Cooper-attitude, Strokes-style instincts, Jack White swamp confidence, and Rolling Stones-level blues commitment converged to draw Eddy Offord straight out of retirement.

THE MIDNIGHT MOAN is led on vocals, guitar, and harmonica by its principal songwriter Andrew Paine Bradbury (a.k.a. APB), who with just of a few years experience on his instrument is emerging as a precocious talent. And his band believes: it’s staffed by accomplished players like drummer Ricky Gordon (Wynton Marsalis, Public Enemy), bassist Joe Sweeney, and guitarists Brian Baker, Steve Cuiffo, and Doug Anson.

After observing a night’s worth of mixing for the no-apologies rocker “Room 1009”, SonicScoop got the chance to interview Eddy Offord and APB – a re-energized producer and the man who unintentionally drew him back into the studio.

Andrew, you told me that Eddy shows “a deep sensitivity to the artist and their art” – what do you mean by that?

APB: I feel like he’s got an incredible ear, not just for the sounds that are happening, but also for the ideas that are being expressed. He listens to the words and sees how the words relate to the music.

A lot of people that I’ve encountered — in my short time with music people — they don’t seem to really listen to the words and ideas so much. But Eddy gives all that the proper weight, to understand what the song is going to sound like.

Eddy, what are you hearing in Andrew’s songs that held such strong appeal to you?

Eddy:He’s in touch with a higher spirit — his lyrics come down to him. He’s in the groove. He’s beautiful.

API faders — marked and ready to mix at Pyramid Studios. (click to enlarge)

What Andrew’s talking about is that when an artist is making an album, they’re all nervous. They’re all tense. They all feel like they’re under the microscope. So part of my job is to look at everything from their point of view, make them feel good about what their doing, and hopefully good music will be made.

And when it comes to Andrew’s music, if we’re recording a piano or a horn or anything else, the most important thing is the song and the lyrics – everything’s got to be augmenting that, and not detract from it. So if you’re doing a piano overdub, for instance, you work it so it fits with the vocal, it fits with the guitar, and nothing steps on anything.

You’re coming off a week of tracking and heading right into the mix phase. How would you characterize your workflow for mixing?

Eddy: We’ve done this album fairly quickly, so I have to remind myself what guitars we put down and when! (laughs) From there, it’s just a matter of sorting out the bass, drums, guitars, and making sure that they don’t conflict.

But the nice thing is that since we’ve got the first song (“Mulberry”) mixed now, we’ve got the drums and bass sounds together. Now that’s running through the second track (“Room 1009”) which we just mixed, and next we’re going to our third. There’s songs on the album that are straight-up rock & roll with driving drums, and then others that are totally different. So we’re knocking out the rock songs at the moment.

Andrew, what did you expect from the mix phase?

APB: It just feels like I’m working with people who are working on such a higher level than I’ve ever witnessed before. The first song, “Mulberry”, was the hardest one that we had to tackle – it was the most complex with so many different things going on — and within two hours of them finding bass sounds they’ve got this track in a nice realm.

Getting the horns right was a huge thing for me because I love hearing horns on a rock & roll song, but it’s difficult to pull off. But Eddy knew where to put them in a way that they had the force that they needed, and they’re not overshadowing everything else. You want them to come in not so much like a punch in the face – more like a forceful kiss.

Eddy: When I make a record, my philosophy is: “It’s Andrew’s name on the record, and these guys are the ones performing.” The producer and the engineer are kind of secondary, you know? So I’m encouraging Andrew to be involved in the mixing, and feel like he’s making his own record — with a little help from me.

APB: Even if I can’t express it in literal terms, it’s easy for me to give the idea that I’m looking for.

So how do you translate the artist’s desire for a particular vibe into the actual sound that’s achieved?

Eddy: Let me say this: I’ve worked with artists that write good songs, but when Andrew’s writing a song, he hears the whole thing in his head. Obviously, the rest of the band contributed a lot to it, but the man has vision. He knows. That’s the sign of a good artist — someone who knows what they want to hear.

The LA-2A’s got a workout for THE MIDNIGHT MOAN. (click to enlarge)

When I was watching you work on “Room 1009”, I didn’t hear much mention of effects – almost all of the attention was being paid to the levels…

Eddy: Before you arrived, we had put quite a lot of compression on quite a few things: the vocal, the background vocal, the guitar, the kick drum. It just makes it easier to mix that way.

What’s your approach to compression?

Eddy: On the vocal I do like it fairly compressed, and we’re using LA-2A’s on that — whether its screams or whispers, it keeps it all together, you know?

The bass we compressed quite a lot on this album. We recorded the bass direct without compression, and later fed it back out to an amp and recorded that on a separate track. We combined the direct and amp into an LA-2A — it was the amp that gave it that gritty sound. I think it sounds almost like Jack Bruce! The bass sound is awesome. It may be all dirty, but it’s rock & roll.

Looking at the little details for a moment, I liked the subtle effect that the shaker had on the chorus of “Mulberry”.

Eddy: Any time you add a double-time percussion instrument to a song, even if the beat is straightforward, it immediately lifts it. It could be a shaker, a tambourine, whatever – it’s that sixteenth note feel that gives it a lift.

Eddy, you’ve worked with some truly iconic artists, to say the least. How is that informing you as a producer today?

Eddy: I don’t think I’m that much different now then I was then, although hopefully I’m doing things a little better!

But the secret of my success, if you want to call it that, was I was more of a psychologist than a producer. If people had a disagreement I could sort it out. Although I technically did a lot of editing, my biggest attribute was that I managed to make people relax and do their thing, and keep the bad vibes out of the studio.

APB: I can definitely attest to that. We were trying to get a lot done in a very little time, and in order for that to happen, everyone has to be operating at a pretty high level, and everyone has to be focused.

At the same time, focus isn’t the most rock & roll thing in the world – it’s important to be tight but sound loose. I feel like Eddy made everyone in the band feel relaxed enough, that he was confident in them doing what they were doing. So they didn’t need to worry about it, and they could just be themselves.

At the same time, when you’re working with someone of his stature, you want to get your job done and really bring your best. And it was just a wonderful, wonderful vibe here. The first three days where we laid down the basics tracks, there were no moments of —

Eddy: Sheer panic? (Laughs)

APB: Or bad vibes. There was nothing negative between any of the people — the producer, the engineer, the delivery guy, the random people stopping by because they heard something was going on. Everything felt really nice, and I think that’s the only way for things like this to come out their strongest.

Eddy:Even though I’ve known Andrew for just a little time, when you work in the studio with someone, it’s a marriage and a learning experience. But when he was doing vocals, we developed a good communication.

Music and zen prevail throughout Pyramid.

What is Pyramid Studios bringing to the project?

Eddy: I would say that [Pyramid owner/engineer] Todd Hemleb is an old rocker himself. He likes the music, he’s gotten behind it, and the studio’s just been so comfortable. It’s not huge, but it’s got a great vibe to it. And Todd is awesome, he knows his way around Pro Tools.

I love the API board [a custom-built 1976 board with 550A eq, 525 comp/lim and Moving Fader automation] here a lot – it’s got this nice EQ. I know you can mix without a board if you have to with Pro Tools, but it’s so nice to walk up to a desk and play with a vocal level.

APB: We met the amazing engineer Todd Hemleb through our drummer Ricky Gordon. From the first visit I just got a really great feeling from the room, the big board, and from Todd himself. His taste in music is very similar to mine in that love for gritty, soulful rock.

In our first conversation we talked about making a controlled trainwreck…there’s a lot of guitar happening on some of the songs and I wanted them to sound tight, but feel loose and Todd really understood the vibe we were trying to capture. Similarly to Eddy, he took the time to really listen to songs themselves, what I was trying to communicate with the words, so that everything going on sonically gave an underlying support to the ideas of the song.

There are a lot of people with a wealth of technical knowledge and Todd has that in spades, but I guess in the end it was a question of soul that sold me on working at Pyramid with Todd. He has a great spirit. And the studio itself felt very much like I was hanging out a friend’s house — that level of comfort really helped us in making the work as honest and true as possible.

Shifting gears – Eddy, you’ve been pretty much done with producing for a long time. Why was THE MIDNIGHT MOAN the band to bring you out of retirement, so to speak?

Eddy: The reason that I left rock in the first place was because I was bored with it. The last band I worked with was 311 [as producer/engineer for 1994’s Grassroots].

I had no intentions to get back into rock, but then I ran into Andrew. I had left my boat in Panama, I was here on a little vacation four months ago to see my kids…and it just developed into something else! And now having been in the studio with Andrew, I feel like I’ve still got it! (laughs)

Before I retired, I was very much an engineer – working with Todd is the first engineer I’ve worked with, you know? But I’ve also discovered that I’m more musical now than I was. I played piano during these sessions, I jammed with Andrew on guitar. I have a better understanding of music, rather than just being an engineer. I feel freer now.

After “Room 1009” was done playing in the control room, Eddy said, “THAT’S rock & roll!” What does that mean to you?

Eddy: Rock and roll is definitely not using a click track! (laughs) And rock and roll is trying to be as live and as real as possible, not worrying too much about separation, and not even worrying about little flubs here and there. It’s the feeling that’s more important.

Andrew, what’s next for this record after you and Eddy are done working on it?

APB: The record is going to be mixed, and we’re hoping that there’s a place for some late night rock that’s dirty and sweet. We’ll be talking to some people when the songs are mixed, but I’m very much illiterate in terms of the business of music.

What I’m focused on now is making a great album — an album that I can listen to a thousand times, like albums by some of my favorite artists that I’ve listened to a thousand times.

In the end, I think that a lot of people will respond to it. I think that this record has a certain energy to it that is maybe missing in a lot of the contemporary music that I hear. But I’m just making an album that I want to listen to, because I don’t hear a lot of them, and you can only listen to some of the old ones so many times.

I believe in American rock & roll, and in that kind of late-night vibe – that fine line between joy and sadness and frustration and triumph – and songs that are about love, loss, and redemption, that try to blow a few doors out at the same time. Something you can put in your car and drive to.

Eddy, Andrew’s talking about music that stands the test of time, which is something you know quite a bit about. What do you believe is the common element to timeless music?

Eddy: It’s just got to be magic. It makes me think of when I went on the road engineering with Yes for five years to help them recreate their albums live. 80% of the gigs were good, and 10% were terrible — but 10% were magic. I only want to experience that magic when I’m in the studio.

— David Weiss

(l-r) Pyramid’s Todd Hemleb, APB, and Eddy Offord applied serious strategy to THE MIDNIGHT MOAN mixes.

Be prepared!

A full view of Pyramid’s custom 1970’s API.

Another gear rack in action.

Tape…just in case.

Summon the spirits…

…for a masterful mix in motion.