RSR070 – Roger Moutenot – Producing Yo La Tengo & Paula Cole

Ian has many interesting tales to tell. Whether performing a weekly show in a San Francisco laundromat for five straight years, or producing records in the recording studio, or promoting concerts for crowds of thousands, or traveling the world recording some of the most fascinating music you might hear, Ian Brennan is always creating, recording, and writing about it. And as a result, has an intimate understanding of music.

He has written a fascinating book called “How Music Dies (Or Lives): Field Recording And the Battle for Democracy in the Arts” that shares his deep understanding of music, culture, and recording. He helps us look beyond what the world recognizes as music through popular recordings, and into the core of what music really means to us as human beings.

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It is an ear opening journey around the world with the intent of preventing us from deafley stumbling toward the end of music through innocent global homogenization of culture, by guiding us to a better understanding of what music really sounds like when it matters the most.

Ian has had a long career of recording his own music and producing other’s music, both in the studio and outside of the studio. His client list is loaded with names that you might recognize like Kyp Malone & Tunde Adebimpe (TV on the Radio), Flea, Lucinda Williams, David Hidalgo (Los Lobos), Nels Cline (Wilco), DJ Bonebrake & John Doe (X, the Knitters), Bill Frisell, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Jonathan Richman, Richard Thompson, and many more.

But it’s the names that you wouldn’t necessarily recognize that tell a truly remarkable story of Ian’s recording career. Projects from around the world like the Malawi Mouse Boys, The Zomba Prison Project, Hanoi Masters, and Italy’s Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino are recordings that Ian passionately writes about in his new book.

Here are the three main labels where most of the releases can be found...

Malawi Mouse Boys

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. The Malawi boys have been singing together since they were small children in their village with no electricity, radio, tv, or running water, and they have built all their own instruments. Music is a part of their daily lives and they literally learned to sing together so they’ve never sung apart. I think when you stumble upon that, any mic that's within six feet of them is going to capture something potentially cool. The depth of the musicality is so profound because they’re not viewing it in a consumeristic way, they’re viewing it in a very natural way. They don’t feel that it's in limited supply. And one of the most incredible things about their group is the ability to adapt instantly. So if they feel like it, one of them might switch and sing lead on another song without ever having done it before and without planning and rehearsing it

Q- What was some of the best advice you got early on?

A- Some of the best advice I ever received was make sure musicians are standing up and moving when they’re recording. More specifically, I would refine that to make sure that people are doing whatever they normally do. So if they normally play guitar and sing, they should play guitar and sing and not track a guitar and try and sing to it. Everybody’s different.

Q- Share with us a recording tip, hack, or secret sauce.

A - Again I think it comes back to the point we were just talking about, record in the manner people are comfortable recording. Meet them where they are at. So if they’re a night person, record at night. If they’re a morning person, record in the morning. I really believe in recording somewhere that has meaning to the individual so that it does have a sense of time and place even if it's not outdoors.