Produttori

Yeah, you can feel in the music that you guys are really letting loose with what you finally wanted to do. I noticed that you have a tandem production credit with Rick Rubin and I'm wondering how you guys worked together. Were you a bit in awe of the process? What did you contribute versus what he contributed?

First off, I think we worked really well together. I wasn't in awe and there was nothing separating us, you know? It was two people who really enjoyed each other's presence working on a project together. Rick really helped with the arrangements and with helping us come back from our tangents, you know? I always think of Rick as this guy: You know when you move into a new place and you wanna put up a painting? When you're standing so close to it the painting looks straight but you have your friend in the back of the room who tells you, "No, it needs to be a little higher to the right."

Right!

And then you don't believe him and you go, "No I think it's straight." And they're saying, "No, trust me, just put it up a little more to the right and come back to the back of the room and look at it and if you don't like it you can put it back to where it was." And then you say okay and you hang it and you stand in the back of the room and you go, "Oh okay, I see what you're saying now!" He's kind of like that.

I'm so close to the music, being the songwriter and whatever else, that it's really easy to just get lost in tangents or in self-indulgence. He really helped to guide us through that. I was there to provide what the record sounds like. He definitely did his work on the drums but I was there to get the tones for the bass and the guitars and the keyboards and decide the proper arrangements, decide what takes to use and the layering of everything. Even down to the mixing. I pretty much took over the mixing and just did it myself there with Rich Costey.