Since last summer, Clap Your Hands
Say Yeah frontman Alec Ounsworth has
tracked two records — Mo Beauty and Flashy
Python’s Skin and Bones — in two very different
studio settings. He told us about his
return to the keys, his DIY studio struggles,
and the resplendence of New Orleans.
You did two albums in six months —
how do you combat studio fatigue?
I just kind of plowed through. Coming out
of the Flashy Python record into the New
Orleans one was a bit much, but that’s
what I do. I work on songs, constantly. I
don’t have any tricks, exactly.
No special pills?
[Laughs.] I just really like the studio. And
for live shows, I’ve almost switched exclusively
to keyboard, which is a new thing.
Guess I just don’t know when to stop.
Why is that such a transition?
Live, what I’m trying to gear my brain to get
right is, where to assert myself on
keyboard. I want to be able to turn off, the
way I’ve always been able to turn off with
the guitar. I put some songs together on
the keyboard in the past, but Clap Your
Hands Say Yeah was relatively basic stuff —
keys were more for atmosphere. I want to
be natural. If I have an idea, a feeling, I want
to be able to sit at the piano and just do it.
What made you want to do Mo Beauty
in New Orleans?
We knew how valuable New Orleans was
— the amount of talented people and their
level of talent. For one, it’s hard to pin down
all the players I have on this record. They’re
really active so to get them on their home
turf was important. For another thing, we
relied a lot on taking talented people . . .
“off the street” isn’t exactly the right way to
put it but, well, sometimes! Frenchman
street was near where we were staying,
and our engineer would just wander outside
and say, “You know, I just ran into soand-
so. We could call him up!”
From what I remember of New Orleans,
you could walk down Frenchman
street and just bump
into musicians, like
some guy playing tuba
on the sidewalk.
Yeah, and they’re really
stellar musicians.
You did Skin and
Bones in your own
freshly-built studio.
Were there any production
techniques,
like interesting mic
choices?
With Flashy Python, for
keyboards, we ran the
Wurlitzer through a Supro
amp miked with a Shure
SM7. We recorded the
Hammond directly from
its speakers with a Shure
KSM44, because the
Hammond has a darker
sound. We didn’t want
crazy dark. For the last
song, we ran a Farfisa
organ through an Ibanez
TS9 Tube Screamer, and
into a bass amp for an
enormous sound.
Beause this was the last
song, we wanted it as
dirty and perverted as
possible. We miked that
with another SM57. I
don’t mean to say that
the 57 is a bad mic —
Shure loaned me a
bunch of mics.
So is name-dropping
the 57 a condition of their loan?
No, no, no [laughs]. It just happens that I’m
wracking my brain to remember what
Shures we used. We were also working on
the fly, experimenting with everything. In
New Orleans we focused our experiments
on the songs. Everything else was relatively
dialed in at the studio.
Meanwhile, you don’t recommend
starting your own studio. . . .
I don’t recommend starting your own studio
while you’re making a record, because
you’ll have everybody there, starting a song
and you realize . . .
That you don’t have enough
headphone amps or something?
Right. It’s the little things. You should make
a list of the things you’ll need.