When was the first time you ever went into a studio?
That would be with the Vines, we went to a studio called A Sharp near Riverwood in Sydney’s southwest. We did some demos, a couple of songs from that first record: “Winning Days”, “In The Jungle” and “She’s Got Something To Say To Me”. It would’ve been in 2000. And then after that we were just recording at home, until someone else wanted to pay for it – we didn’t have much money. Well, I’d always have more money than the other guys, and I’d always have to lend them my share of the money when we went into record. It was becoming ridiculous! Craig ended up owing me too much money [laughs].

Did you have any knowledge about how music could be recorded back then?
I understood the process of multi-track recording, but I still don’t understand the process of compression… I know what it sounds like, and what reverb and delay sounds like, but I don’t understand the circuits and the actual way they’re created. The way someone like Wayne Connolly – who [produced] the Youth Group record – the way he understands circuitry, you know, it’s much more than an appreciative aspect of technology, it’s how the sound is actually being generated. I didn’t understand that when we did the Vines’ demos, and I still don’t understand it.

What was that first session like? Did you have a good idea of what you wanted before you went in?
We were pretty much a live band that never played live. I guess the Vines were never much of an experimental band; we had the exact structure of the songs worked out, we had the guitar parts and drum parts worked out. And then Craig had all the lead vocals part worked out in his head, and plus all the harmonies. We used to practice a lot – well, once or twice a week for years and years before we hit the studio. Craig developed this very idiosyncratic recording style from having his own four track, where he’d want to do a line at a time. He broke my four track doing that! They’re all made of plastic, and we’d stop and rewind, stop and rewind every time. We did a lot of four-tracking. Basically I think you learn as a band that it’s better to do things right the first time. You can make things sound really good on a four-track if they’re played well.

What was it about working with Wayne that appeals to Youth Group?
When I first joined Youth Group and we were talking about doing a record, we were talking about doing it live. I think Toby at first was talking about doing it completely live, like Highway 61 Revisited. That obviously didn’t work out, but Wayne did record the band playing live a lot. Plus he did the last [album] and he’s obviously a good friend of the band. He’s got quite the comic repartee, especially with Danny [Allen, drummer] and Toby.

What’s a typical day in the studio like for you?
We play live – Toby sings to what you would call a guide vocal. Sometimes he doesn’t get all the lines out ‘cause he wants to get the guitar right. And generally we try and do whole takes of a song… very infrequently we get a whole guitar take that we use on the record. Usually Wayne will chop the chorus out of one [song] and use it in another take that was very good except for the chorus. And pretty much from there you can go back and redo your guitar or bass parts. Cameron and Toby didn’t because they were always happy with what they did. I did for a little bit of the record. My bass was actually amped in a separate room, whereas the two guitar amps were in the same room as the drums, ‘cause of the space constraints of Velvet Studios. There’s a bit of spill, so it might sound weird if you re-did the guitars… although maybe not too weird because the parts would be the same but the actual performance might be different. Wayne’s actually in Australian Audio Technology magazine, he’s given a big rundown of the audio aspects of the record.

What about things like miking techniques?
Wayne uses the same mic chain for every song – he puts them all in a row, so that sort of miking leads it all up to the performance, and you can leave delay and reverb to afterwards. You see someone hang a mic above a drum kit, and you think it’s just been put there. But it’s actually been slightly offset from a snare [at a certain distance], he’s using psychics there, and it’s all a lifetime’s work. There’s nothing I could say that would influence what he does, so I just watch!

Official website for Youth Group »