Recording - September 2019 - 42

Vagabon
All The Women In Me
On the title track, 'All The Women In Me', did you sing to
yourself and double track that?
That is all me. Some parts are doubled and some are triple
tracked, all in one session. That's the session where I discovered the U67 was my favorite mic.

On the reprise, is that a different singer or is that you
with your voice effected?
It's funny. A lot of people have been asking me that! The vocals on the reprise are sung by Sadek from the German band
Monako, and myself.
Monako is one of my favorite bands. They opened up for me
in Hamburg. I wanted to reprise 'Full Moon' that way just to
show how a song I wrote can be sung by multiple people and
become a whole different thing.

When you are tracking vocals, what is your process? Do
you do one take and call it good, or do you do 10 takes
and create the perfect master take?
It depends. 'Water Me Down' was a straight-through kind of
song. 'All The Women In Me' was sung straight through from beginning to end for a few takes, and I think the second take is what we
used. Then, for some songs like 'At The Table' it's a hodgepodge.
I only just started to get into vocal comping on this album. It's great,
but I do like to try to sing things all the way through a few times, and
then if there's anything to rectify I'll comp in specific parts.

Do you get into tuning your vocals, or not so much?
I don't mess with that. There may be some tuning that John did
somewhere on my vocals, but I don't do that myself. I'm not a
trained vocalist or anything, but I do try to be on pitch [laughs].

How many tracks are most of your songs?

Last question: how did you come up with the name Vagabon?
It's a blur. I think I just didn't want people to say my first name
wrong...

Which I of course did when you answered the phone.
[both laugh]
It's also a play on what my mom used to call me when I was
little, because I couldn't sit still.

Thanks for taking the time to talk, this was great!
Thank you so much!

Jason Agel
Jason Agel is a Grammy
Award-nominated audio engineer based on the East Coast.
He got his start at Sony Studios
in New York City before going
freelance. Jason has worked
extensively with John Legend,
as well as artists including serpentwithfeet, Björk, Beyoncé,
and many others.

So, you did much of the studio tracking for the
Vagabon album?
Yes-a bunch of strings, guitars, horns, and drums.

Where are you located?
I'm in Jersey City, right across the river from New York.

This record has more tracks than I've ever, ever, ever, had in my
life, but my sessions still don't go anywhere past 15 tracks typically.
I'm so used to just being in a rock band-guitar, bass, drums
and vocals-and I thought having fifteen tracks was a lot because of the electronics.
It meant a lot when John expressed gratitude for getting to be
the mix engineer on this record because he liked how everything
was delicate and strategically placed and how it fit together.

But most of the tracking happened in LA?

How did you get John as a mixer?

We definitely miked up an amp. The Wurlitzer was going
through a Supro amplifier. I had an Electro-Voice RE20 on it,
and then a Neumann U48 in figure-8 mode, and the two mics
were set up in a mid-side configuration.

I heard about John through my friend Lucy Dacus. John mixed
her record Historian, and after I heard it, I was like, "This person
has to mix my record!" When I met up with him, I didn't know any
of his extensive credits, I just knew that he had to mix my record.
He mixed it in like three days. It was so much the right decision.

Who mastered the record?
Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound. He did a beautiful job with Moses Sumney's record Aromanticism, and I love how that record
is so delicate, but sounds so big.
42 RECORDING September 2019

Yes, we did a bunch of sessions at Boulevard recording-
drums, keyboards, Wurlitzers, shakers. Most of the drums
didn't make it, just the shakers. Many of the songs you hear on
the album actually had a badass drummer playing on them that
isn't there now. [laughs].

Jumping right in, the Wurlitzer-did you record that
direct, or did you mic up an amp?

Wow.
I end up doing that with guitar amps a lot so that I can make
something stereo if I want to depending on the arrangement.
Things can be easily switched to mono if I need to, and I
even have the option of splitting it up as two mics. It's a very
versatile setup.

Recording - September 2019

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