Recording - July 2019 - 41

Hello again, Vance-it seems like we
just did this last month! [laughs]
Let's dive in. Tell me about the new
Stray Cats record.
Vance Powell: The album was tracked
at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, TN.
Peter Collins was the producer, and we
cut 13 songs for a 12-song album over
5 days, live, with no click track.

Tell me about the sound of this record.
I heard that one of your goals was to
use as few microphones as possible?
Guitarist Brian Setzer was inspired
by an old Gene Vincent and the Blue
Caps record that he really liked the
sound of, and he wanted this new album to sound like that. So we listened
to it, and it's really very interesting. It's
probably from 1957 or somewhere
around there. There's no low end on
the record at all, and everything is going through a slap echo. And when I
say everything, I'm talking everything,
the whole mix!
The drums are mixed way in the background and I'm guessing the whole
record was cut with three or four microphones total for the whole band playing live in the studio. I'm guessing one
mic on the bass, one on the drums-or
maybe capturing the drums and guitar
combined-and one for vocals, and the
whole mix was going through a 15 ips
(inches per second) tape slap.

Sounds really cool, actually.
So we tried to do something similar,
with as few microphones as we could
get away with, to pull off the same
kind of vibe.

Tell me about your setup. Did you
have the entire band all set up live
in the same room?
Yes, we set the whole band up in
the same room, exactly like they would
play on stage: Brian in the middle, Lee
on the left, and Slim Jim on his right,
all facing forward. Everybody was set
up with their equipment in a line, and
then I put some foam gobos in between
them to try and cut down on as much
bleed as possible. But let's just say that
despite the gobos, this record is very
bleed-friendly [laughs]. There is guitar
in the drums, and a little bit of drums
in the guitar, there is guitar in the bass
mic, and of course you also hear the
sound of the room as well.

Let's talk miking.
Starting with drums: On the kick drum
we used with a big old RCA 44 ribbon
mic, and a Neumann U 47.

The U 47 fet or a tube model?
A vintage tube U 47. Then, for snare
drum, I used a pair of Shure SM57s, one
on the top of the snare and the other on
the bottom. Jim only uses a single floor tom
on his kit, and for that we used a new microphone by Chandler, the TG Mic.

That's a great microphone. We
reviewed it back in our February
issue. Do you know what setting
you used on it?
I'm pretty sure that we left it set flat
in the center position. For overhead we
used a single, mono Coles 4038 ribbon
microphone. We also put a second 4038
over by the floor tom-sort of doing a
Glyn Johns sort of thing-but mostly in
the mix it's the single Coles overhead.

I should also note that everything that
we tracked went into the Neve 8078
console in Blackbird Studio A.

How did you mic up Brian's guitar?
We used a Neumann U 67 and a
Shure SM57, both on Brian's Fender
Bassman amplifier.
He also had a Supro amp set up, and
we used a U 67 and a 57 on that as
well. He only used the Supro amp on
a couple of tracks-the tracks that don't
sound like the Bassman. [laughs] "Cry
Danger" is one of them, I believe. The
tracks that have a more aggressive guitar sound are the Supro amp.

How did you mic up Lee's upright bass?
VP: The bass was the most complicated part. There is a DI out of the bass
from a piezo pickup, and Lee uses an
Ampeg SVT head with an 8 x 10 cabinet laying on its side.

I'm sorry, did you just say an 8 x 10
cabinet? That's huge!
Yes, but it wasn't turned up very loud;
it was just so he could feel a bit of the
bass for support. We miked the bass
cabinet with another Neumann U 47
microphone. Then we used an RCA
44 on the low side of the bass, and a
Neumann U 67 on the top.

Lastly, what about vocals? In the
EPK (Electronic Press Kit) it looks
like Brian is singing live with the band
through another RCA 44 ribbon mic.
I originally set that up for scratch vocals, but we didn't end up ever using
it for the final takes, because when he
would move away from it, it would pick
up too much of his guitar cabinet that

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Recording - July 2019

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