So, one time I met Rush.

This one’s not as ridiculous as my Albini story, but I still like it.  About, oh, two weeks after I started interning at the wonderful East Iris Studios, I found out that everyone employed there was a major Rush head. 

Myself, I’ve never been much into them, but I could understand the general buzz of excitement around the studio when we learned Rush would be in-house to listen to (and mix part of) their new album (circa 2003 or so).  You know, the weird covers record; or maybe you don’t. I don’t, to this day.

Anyway.  I kid you not: Rush rolls up outside the studio, on MOTORCYCLES. Black Honda crotch-rocket style motorcycles. And they’re all in black leather / dark denim with black helmets on.  Repeat: I am not making this up.  They all get off their bikes and mosey inside, followed by their manager, who is of course on the phone.

Our studio manager, Mike, asks the manager if they needed anything, or if they wanted a drink.  Remember that Mike’s job is to make the client as happy as possible, so he continues to ask questions to meet their needs.  “Water? Soda? Coffee?”  Mr. Manager says water would be fine. Mike: “Sure, cold or room temperature?”

Now, this is a valid question since we have fridges all over the building plus a kitchen stock of room temperature beverages, and some people don’t like cold water. I digress. The manager says that Rush would like BOTH cold and room temperature, but that the water be Evian.  He turns back to the band who are shuffling down the long hallway to the studio, leaving Mike and me in the foyer.

Mike looks at me and just says, “I don’t know where you’re going to get that. We don’t have Evian, and I don’t know where we can get it two different temperatures… Good luck.”

Oh great.

I grab my keys and head out to my grandma car (the ‘89 Mazda 323) and tear off in the direction of some grocery stores.  As I’m heading my mind is racing; I’m speeding, looking all over to find an idea of where to get both cold and warm Evian.  Suddenly, I remember that drug stores have a warm section plus a freezer section, and I pull into a Walgreens and rush inside.

Success! I find four bottles of cold, four bottles of lukewarm, and run to the front counter.  I tell the clerk to please not mix the bottles together since I need them at two different temperatures.  I pay (using the East Iris credit card, mind you) and run the bags of water back to my car.

I plow out of the parking lot, cutting off somebody trying to turn in.  As I’m speeding away, I wonder to myself if this is what my life will be like working in studios….

Mike is shocked to see me back so quickly, but helps me setup the Evian to make it obvious and appealing to the Rush guys that yes, we have this Evian, and please, help yourself.  They are, of course, oblivious to it and never touch it the entire time they’re there.

After this ordeal went down, I met the guys in the band. They tell me their names, but don’t ask for mine; it’s obvious what the pecking order is here.  My only proof of this is the above photo… No, I’m not IN the photo; I took it.  What a thrilling moment, right?

Minutes after Steve Albini tells me I’m for sale, Doug calls me and tells me that due to Steve’s flight delay, the local restaurant we’re planning to take him to is closed for the night.  We call around several other great local places… all closed.  We finally find a TGIFriday’s or some chain crap and take him there.  Great.  He orders a steak, medium rare.  Of course he does.  I’m still shell-shocked and am just glad to have more cavalry around me.

Doug casually converses the evening away and Steve actually seems to enjoy himself a little bit.  We take him to his hotel, which he loved because it had four or five huge American flags in it’s courtyard.  We drop him off and everyone relaxes a little bit. I don’t know what it is, but that dude can make other people tense.  Oh, and he still hasn’t given his talk yet. Another day with him, tomorrow.

That day was a bit of a blur, as we spent the time setting up the auditorium, putting fresh batteries in his microphone, and feeding Steve lunch.  He took a quiet tour of the studios at MTSU with us and was probably underwhelmed considering most of the studios are centered around Pro Tools rigs or, blasphemy upon blasphemies, a digital console in the flagship studio.

His talk was delivered to an over-full room of several hundred eager recording students. He was funny, smart and said probably more information than many of us could take in during one session. He also took the time to rib at a few of his employees (including projecting some funny images of them on the giant screen behind him).  I’m trying to find the video online, as the apparent source has since been taken down.

After the talk, we took Steve to a final lunch. I handed him a huge check and picked his brain about a great band I love, the Danielson Famile.  It was about as animated I’d seen him the whole time - he was excited about them and loved discussing the characters of that band and their crazy antics and costumes.  Maybe it was the band, or maybe it was the huge check… I’m betting it was his legitimate love of the music (honestly).

We wrapped up our time with Steve and it was time to get him back to the airport. I was due in the studio to help mix a project I was working on, so I bid farewell and thanks to Steve.  I left him in the capable hands of Nathan, another professor at the school and our resident, uh, Pro Tools expert. Awesome.  Nathan drove him all the way to the airport, talking to him the whole way about digital music production.  Nathan later referred to Albini as a caveman, considering how antiquated his methods seem to someone using a DAW system to record and how little he knew about Pro Tools.

You can debate digital and analog all you want, but Steve knows what Steve likes and that’s good enough for Steve.  I think that’s a good summary of the whole experience.  Like him or not, Steve is Steve and doesn’t put on anything for anybody.  In hindsight, I think he had a little more humor and sarcasm in him than I gave him credit for; I was just young and scared of him! 

I’m working on finding a copy of the video of his talk and I’ll post it here when I find it.

Previous posts:

The Rock n Roll Intern: Steve Albini (Part One)
The Rock n Roll Intern: Steve Albini (Part Two)
The Rock n Roll Intern: Steve Albini (Part Three)

Catching up on the story, we’ve just picked up Steve Albini in my crappy car and are driving him to my school from the airport.  Keep in mind that Murfreesboro is about a half hour or so away from where we’re currently at… since that means we have a little quality time to spend with Albini, it was time to get comfortable.  I try to make some conversation but he’s really quiet about everything.  He suggests we put on a little music.  Oh great!, I think, as I’ve coached my friend Jon to pick out something tasteful but hip, something Albini might like.  Instead, Jon hands my huge CD case into the front seat, offering it up to Albini. 

Oh crap… I tell Steve to ignore all the burned CDs (after all, I’m a broke college music nerd, forgive me).

He shrugs it off and flips through my discs, in silence, for a good five minutes. This is torture.  I can tell he’s narrowing it down but is really not liking much of anything he sees.  He’s eyeing a Modest Mouse record, then settles for a Nick Drake compilation.  “Nothing like a little Nick Drake for good road music, right?” he says, then slips the disc in my player.  I turn the volume up, but not nearly enough, and so this already somber and mellow music serves as minor background noise against our already flat conversation.

We finally crest a hill and reveal the city of Murfreesboro.  Steve remarks on the city’s population and guesses a pretty decent figure; turns out he grew up in a town similar in size.  I tell him a little about the school and how we’ve got a lot of eager people ready to see him.  Steve is largely unfazed and instead asks about the local attractions — what makes Murfreesboro other than the school?

I decide to go off on this largely uneducated bender about the World’s Largest Cedar Bucket (no lie, look it up), a rural attraction that made Murfreesboro laughably famous (until vandals burned it down a few years ago).  Steve finds this fascinating, and seems quite shocked and taken aback when I mention I’ve never been to see that cedar bucket in question. 

Looking back now, I don’t think he knew I didn’t grow up in this town and had only really been there a couple years.  Looking back now, I wish I would’ve asked similar questions of Steve himself. Looking back now, I wonder if what he said next was a joke or if he was taking himself very, very seriously.

He looked at me, coldly, and went off on a tirade that I hope I can accurately quote here:

“What if, ten years down the road, when you’re a successful and prominent engineer, the great city of Murfreesboro calls you up, filled with pride for their school’s new celebrity, and asks you to host a celebration of the World’s Largest Cedar Bucket?  And they offered to pay you extravagant amounts of money to give a speech in front of said bucket?  Would you do it?”

I start off, “No, I don’t think…” but he cuts me off: “Of course you’d do it!  You’d do it not because you care about your local culture but because they’d paid you. Because you’re for sale.“  He said more, but those words knocked me to my very core and I’ve forgotten all the rest of it.

His words echo in my tiny car.  We sit in silence.  Awkward.  Aw-kward.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

This is a four part series describing the time Steve Albini made me feel really awkward while I was a college student.  Photos in the series are from my days at MTSU in the recording studio.

Previous posts:

The Rock n Roll Intern: Steve Albini (Part One)
The Rock n Roll Intern: Steve Albini (Part Two)

After a few weeks, the day finally came: we had to go to the airport and pick up Steve Albini.  Now, let me frame this up for you: here I am, poor, dirty, in college, driving a 1989 Mazda 323 with a knocking CV joint and a grandma smell.  We decided all of us should go; by all of us, that means me, my buddy Jon (the Secretary of our chapter), Chris (the Treasurer), and Doug, the faculty advisor.

Let’s talk about Doug for a minute.  Doug… where to begin. He’s probably got the most “real world” experience of any faculty member, having worked on film sets and in studios throughout the 80s and 90s.  Later in life he apparently went through a few setbacks and picked up a slight drinking habit.  He was a great professor and honestly one of my more fond memories at the school, albeit a bit poignant (many students begged him to get help, and as far as I know he still hasn’t).  Also, Doug looked a little bit like what Robert Plant looks like these days… but I digress.

We made it up to the airport and realized that Steve’s flight had been delayed by a couple of hours (he’s in Chicago, after all).  The first place Doug headed to was, of course, the airport bar.  I wasn’t yet 21, so I drank soda, while the other guys drank a beer. Doug had vodka, straight.  Two of them.

We kept watching the terminal signs and when we saw that Albini’s flight had arrived, we took our little cardboard sign (yes, really) and headed to the terminal exit.  Only we never saw him.  Turns out he was at the OTHER terminal exit and we didn’t find him until he was crowded around the baggage claim with all the other passengers.  He was wearing all black and his signature hat, and was a little taken aback by the sign my cohorts had in their hands as we shook hands.

Steve met Doug, Chris and Jon, and we chatted idly for a minute about his flight and his bags, then started our walk to our cars.  Doug and Chris took one vehicle while Jon and I (known as “the Jons” for some time now…!) took another; Albini rode with the latter.  As soon as we were in the car with the door shut, Albini turned to me and asked, “So, is that guy drunk or does he have a peg leg?”

Doug had been wobbling a bit as we walked to the car.  “Uh, I think he’s drunk,” I replied.  Albini laughed and mentioned that he’d heard about Doug before; after all, some of his staff and a lot of his interns went to our school.

So, at that, we had loaded my little grandma car up and started the trek back to Murfreesboro. Here’s where it got interesting.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

This is a four part series describing the time Steve Albini made me feel really awkward while I was a college student.  Photos in the series are from my days at MTSU in the recording studio.

Previous posts:

The Rock n Roll Intern: Steve Albini (Part One)

So, one time I met Steve Albini.

The term “met” is kind of an understatement though; in reality, I basically spent one awkward, strange day with the man.  Here’s what happened.

Back in my college days, I was the chair of the Audio Engineering Society’s college chapter at my school.  It was my job, amongst other random and nerdy things, to organize events for the chapter to participate in.  I felt it was important to show the university some important figures in the world of studio engineering; during my year we had some huge figures, but we figured none would draw a crowd like Albini could.

I called up Electrical Audio, his dream studio in Chicago, and asked if Steve was available.  The studio manager quickly transferred me directly to Albini, where we chatted for 2-3 minutes about the school and what I was looking for.  He was gracious, quiet, and after I nervously talked his ear off, he just said, “Um, I’m in the middle of a session; can I call you back later?”

Oops.

He called me back a day or so later and we started working out his schedule.  Eventually I got passed off to his studio manager who, I found out, was a stand-up comic on the side.  Over the phone, he told me a number of corny jokes, including this shiner:

You know, my family are Eskimos. I like to tell people that, and then when they say, “Eskimo, huh? That’s pretty cool,” I say, “Actually, we prefer Innuit.”  See? I give them the term, then I take it away.

Explains why he’s a studio manager during the day, huh?

Anyway, we figure out a time and I book his travel — the studio manager says I have him for EXACTLY 24 hours, so “don’t break him!” — and get him a hotel near the school.  We started getting ready, by reserving the largest meeting hall on campus and putting fliers up around the studios.

More to come…