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Zac Ziegler: I'm Zac Ziegler, and you're listening to Oregon rainmakers from KLCC. In this edition, I talk with Chris Colbert of national freedom studio in Cottage Grove.
Take a moment to picture a typical rock music recording studio. I'm guessing you pictured a spot off the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, or something in a New York City high rise. You probably thought of a very minimalist modern esthetic with the latest in high tech audio gear. Very little of that description fits national freedom studio. It sits in what was once an outbuilding behind a house in a cozy Cottage Grove neighborhood.
Ziegler (field audio): Hey, Chris, it's Zac Ziegler. I just pulled up to the to the place here,
Ziegler: And in fact, it's so unassuming that when I went there to meet the studio's engineer, Christopher Colbert for an interview, I had to call him to make sure I had the right place and that I wasn't trespassing in a stranger's backyard.
Christopher Colbert: Oh, your professionalism is in your hands!
Ziegler: oh yeah,
Ziegler: It sits walls are covered in unusual decor, from old paintings and a taxidermy armadillo to a gold record plaque for Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats' self titled album, which was recorded there. National Freedom was started by Richard Swift, a musician and record producer who was acclaimed for his own work, but was also a member of the shins and toured with the black keys. He eventually recruited Christopher Colbert to work with him at national freedom. And when swift died in 2018 Colbert took it over. I start by asking him for a little more detail on how the studio came to be.
Colbert: My late studio partner, Richard Swift, went to high school in Cottage Grove. His family moved around a lot. They wound up here. He went down to Los Angeles to get his career going. I met him on sessions. At first I thought he was just a keyboard player. Then I met him as like, Oh, he's a backup singer. And then he gave me his demos because we got along. And that was the songs for his first album, walking without effort. I was like, Oh, this is fantastic. Let's do this. So recorded it. We did a bunch of other records in LA together, his stuff, other people's stuff, you know, trying to hustle. And then once he had a record deal for his solo project, a management company and a booking agent, he was done with LA and came back here because he has three kids and a wife and his brother in law owned this property and had it as a studio, like for local bands, and we took it over right as he got a deal with Polydor UK. So we spent a lot of time in Britain touring, and he did better there than here, and ended up meeting like a lot of bands, like he did the Jules Holland show the night Wilco did so they invited him to his studio to record a record. And then also that same week we met Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse, as we go out and travel on tour, he became more of a musicians’ musician than a hit maker. And then he would invite people to come here and record, and then his recording career kind of really blossomed. He wasn't the most technically savvy guy, but he had, like, great sensibilities, and he could play every instrument and write and sing. So he was a, you know, went into, you know, and had done a lot of work, so producing was easy, and then bands just started coming here because it's off the beaten path. Like there's no distractions of home. They can ride their bikes on the bike trails. They can do the Oregon stuff. The overhead is so low, it's like the price is right, you know. Like, we can work with pretty much any budget, you know, like, short of like, you know, bring us a chicken. You can probably record a song, you know, back in the earlier days. And it just kept escalating. And as his career, like, escalated, and he was getting great calls from like Nathaniel Ratliff, and then he joined The Shins, and that turned into him somehow becoming a member of The Black Keys, and then Dan Auerbach and him produced a bunch of records together. And then I would come in here, like late nights to fix stuff, and it'd be like, oh, there's Chrissy Hind, like, we're doing a pretender's record, apparently, okay, you know Lucius and Lonnie Holley and all these, like, artists who just were fans of Swift wanted to come here. And some of them, just like, love the vibe. Some of the bands would walk in and be like, Oh, this is it, like we, you know, we did a record at real world studios, and we're paying the same money to come here. We're just like, yeah, do you like the sound of Swift records? Just then, shut up.
Ziegler: Yeah, you're not paying for the visuals. You're paying for the audio, because this is music, yeah, yeah.
Colbert: This . . . These rooms just happened to they were built well, like they were acoustically designed, designed and executed, kind of sloppy by hippies, which is fine because there's no right angles, which is great, and they just sound good and it's affordable. And while Swift was, like, super busy with producing, I was out on tour with, like the Walkman, Mazzy Star, Leon Bridges, Sufjan Stevens, like busy, you know, I would bounce around between working in here. I was renting studio space in Eugene at a studio called number station where I was doing mastering, because Swift was so busy. And then after he passed, I just brought it all home, where I do all my stuff. Here I retired from touring in 2018 because I just aged out of the program.
Ziegler: I can imagine that is not a not a young man's game different city every night having, I'm guessing you were, were you on the technical side? Then running the board?
Colbert: I was mixing front of house, like I was the sound guy, and it was hard leaving Leon Bridges. I was at his first five shows with a band ever. And then how that blew up in, you know, watching that happen in real time was, like, awesome and really super fun, but my kneecaps kept falling off, so that became a bit of a hindrance. And I was, then I was, I was saying no to a lot of studio work to stay out on tour. And I realized in my 50s that that was a mistake. And so I've just been here since 2018 and the studio is still like chugging along, you know, without Swift, who passed in 2018 as well. So a different dynamic. I'm more of a technical person, like, more of just a straight up engineer. He was more on the creative, like songwriter, performer side.
Ziegler: He was the producer. You hear tale of guys like Rick Rubin. He plays a little guitar. He doesn't know how, you know, if you put him in front of this board that's right behind you, he'd be borderline clueless. But boy, he knows what makes a song. He's that kind of guy.
Colbert: Yeah, he just a sensibility. And yeah, Swift. I mean, I'd set up signal chains, I plug a microphone into a compressor, into an echo, and he would never change that. And he did amazing things with it. And it was kind of fun to watch his career kind of take off as a producer, because it was just based on whatever that fine line between confidence and arrogance is that makes this happen, and just, you know, musicianship and then having willing partners as his clients.
Ziegler: So with some of the artists, you kind of mentioned that being off the beaten path can be a thing. I think of actually the I remember hearing an interview with Nathaniel Ratliff talking about the solo album that he recorded here, and how much that was an album of him coming through chemical dependence issues, is not being in LA or New York is being in this town of 10,000 people, maybe an allure for some people at some stage of their career when they're ready to not be in a big city, not have those distractions.
Colbert: Yeah, even bands from Portland will come here just to have not the their family distractions. They're not family distractions. You know, we're not next to their favorite bar. We're not part of their the drop ins in their situation. Even people I know who own or operate studios will come here to do their own records just to be distraction free and get away from the noise. It's quiet here. I mean, I'm an LA boy, and sometimes I'm still just stunned by like, how quiet it is. And you know, plus no one, it's an old hippie town, if you're not part of jam band, Grateful Dead fish scene, no one cares. Like Dan Arbaugh can walk around and no one knows who he is, like the the women in Lucius were here for a month, and a few people be like, Oh, we just assumed Those girls were with you guys, because they don't look like they're Grovers, you know. But then, like no one cared to bother them, so it's, you know, fine, like they can't do that in Los Angeles, where they live,
Ziegler: Yeah, yeah. Trey Anastasio from fish comes walking around. It'll be a different story, like you said. But you know, most of the modern musicians, it sounds like they can, they can. Of the quiet life here while they really home
Colbert: An album, yeah, yeah. Having, you know, Danger Mouse in town is just like, to me, that's hilarious. You know, that's the few times him and Swift and [James] Mercer were working on those Broken Bells projects. It's just like those guys were in town, and it's just like no one cared. And I just thought that was just a lovely thing.
Ziegler: So we got into why Cottage Grove is, contrary to what many would think is a good place to record and to be a musician, and you just keep speaking my language with with more and more of these acts that you mentioned, but what? What is it about the building we're in? What? What is it and the equipment? What gives this space some unique sound for for lay people, for those who maybe aren't super well versed on the recording industry,
Colbert: Well, some rooms just happen to sound better than others. It's just the shape of the room and the the echo it has in the performance room just sounds really good. It's just something about the shape, the size, just it sings in there. And when Nathaniel Ratliff was going to when he built his home studio, we measured the exact dimensions of that room so he can recreate it in his basement. And I had an artist come through, playing at the Ax and Fiddle. They stopped by the studio, and he had recorded at Nathaniel's house. He walked in here and he was like, oh, Patrick wasn't lying, like, this is the same exact room that, you know, Nathaniel built. It's the same. It's the same, just, and then, you know, this is an old barn. It predates the house. You know, it's like, probably 1900 or earlier, just like, big, heavy beams. And then, like, there's just the layers and layers of soundproofing. We did to be in a neighborhood. You know, you can play drums at three in the morning and you can't hear it outside, and then the gear is just a lot of vintage equipment, you know, doing it the old way. I mean, yeah, we're recording into a computer, but through analog console, and we mix like with analog equipment. A lot of the technology stopped around 1972 except for the Pro Tools rig, because that thing works, yeah, just kind of combining, like the vintage equipment in a good sounding room with good musicians. It's hard to not get good results if you have the right player
Ziegler: And you know, to bring it back around, putting them in that right headspace too, you know, you you just create an environment that that just kind of welcomes it all.
Colbert: Yeah, I mean, we don't charge by the hour. We either charge per project, if you're an out of town band, are for local bands, usually per project, usually per day. There's the clocks don't work a day is whatever the day needs to be. Taking that pressure off, I think, is extremely helpful. What makes a good record? The biggest factor is having enough time to do it right, to go slow. I mean, our policy is like, we'll record one song a day, you know, start in the morning and work on it for the entire day at a leisurely pace. I believe in taking breaks, like, sometimes I'll DJ for the clients for a little bit, just to kind of steer them in a path of like influence, but it's just low overhead means I can be flexible with the budgets. And then, most importantly, it's like, we sell time and we don't have the pressure. I mean, this space in Los Angeles would be eight or $10,000 a month to rent, and I would have to work a lot to make an overhead and it would be like 1200 $1,500 a day. Nope, 500 bucks. You can come in here until it makes sense to stop and so that that's the it's the commodity of time, where people can take an hour off to go walk in the woods and come back and there's no pressure. And I think that's kind of the biggest advantage to being here.
Ziegler: I'm guessing, like you said, that that low overhead is probably a huge, huge part of it, just being able to slow down. That's something that these folks probably don't get because their life, especially like, if you think of touring life, it's, there's a reason. There's a sign right off most stages that says you are in name of city, because they, they don't get to slow down much. They are just like, quite literally, go, go, go often.
Colbert: Oh yeah. I spent, you know, 40 years of my life touring where I did not know what city. I was in, there's days I did not know what country I was in. You know, I've, I've worked in 112 different countries on tour. And, you know, I have, you know, all my passports are full, and that pressure that like musicians have to keep going all the time because the management company, like they want their 15% the booking agent wants their 15% like the crew needs to get paid. It's like, that pressure piles on, and it's just like, that's a lot of noise to like, be able to write a song that will have meaning and context, like other people to connect emotionally with all that pressure from the machinery in place, which is, I mean, I'm a participant, but it's an ugly machine. It's hard on the artist. It's not artist friendly at all. And having seen that swift and I, we wanted to build a place that was like, managers don't really want to come here. There's no they're not going to network with anybody else they can't. Like, piggyback it with, you know, another chore to like, double down, you know, double dip on expenses. You know, all their games like they can't, so they stay away.
Ziegler: We're going to take a break. I'm Zac Ziegler, and you're listening to Oregon brain makers from KLCC.
Ziegler: We're back. I'm Zac Ziegler, and this is Oregon rainmakers. My conversation with National Freedom Studio's Christopher Colbert continues,
Colbert: Most of my clients are the bands. Are other producers and engineers, some managers that I've known for a long time that send me like all their clients, but I we're I'm very, very fortunate that I can just ignore the music industry. I don't care. I don't care, like, what the managers say or the major labels say. It's like when, like dealing with Nathaniel Ratliff in Universal Music Group harasses me for files and all this stuff. I just I give them what they need, but I'm not. I don't take their abuse because it's like, I'm not in a cubicle somewhere, like, power trip and trying to, like, fight my way up the corporate ladder. I'm just, like, I just want to hang out in this studio and make music with people, whether you're on a major label or you're a band from Eugene. That's a Eugene band, which means you're probably going to be valid for like, four to 17 months before you break up, because that seems to be the style. I don't care. It's all good to me. You know, let's just make music here and, like, take the pressure off and not play the corporate game and not be, you know, we can afford to make art here, not so much product, because I heard the word product when I worked with Leon bridges, and we were offended by that term that they kept throwing at him.
Ziegler: You're taking me back 15 years to the Tom Petty, last DJ album,
Ziegler: just a quick fact check on myself on that last one. The last DJ came out in late 2002 making it about 23 years old, and making me feel pretty old, since I loved that album in my early 20s.
Ziegler: The things that you know, as he was airing his grievances about the recording industry, it sounds so much like you have many of the same, and you're trying to allow a place where that's not happening.
Colbert: I mean, they the belief in the industry is the same, but Tom Petty was a prophet, because all those labels, they are failures. They have not kept up. That technology has passed them by they're dinosaurs, like they their their stranglehold on the industry is like, only as strong as their egos permit. It's like, it's over for them. I mean, other than their publicity branches, like, what services does a major label offer? I mean, if you're like, Nathaniel and you like, he doesn't have time to, like, run a label. He and He moves enough units where he would be a strain on a on a small indie so dealing with, you know, major label makes sense. You know, like that works for him because he has enough traffic and sales to justify that. But. It, he also is smart enough to know that he can dictate his terms to the label and not the way they believe that that should be, where they dictate terms for the bands. It's kind of flipped, because, like, the labels are losing their their power, their Stranglehold, and that democratization of the music industry, I'm hoping will eventually be like a net positive. It's kind of still transitional right now, because no one knows what to do, especially the power brokers I see the kids. I have a lot of clients in their 20s who are doing, like a song a month, and then when they get to 10 or 12 songs, they asked me to compile it and call it an album, and I remastered, I touch up the Masters, and they call it an album. They'll press up some vinyl or some other physical media, then they start dropping singles again. So we've just we lost, like, 60 years of music industry formula, and we're back to, like, the 50s, where we're just dropping singles again. I think that's cool, because, one, it's fun to play with, like, as an engineer, like context free singles love it. It's like, I think being singles driven is kind of going to help long term. I mean, plus we're in a short attention span. But I think that will change, and people will start discovering the album again. Some kids gonna have to make that album that that sparks the interest in the long the LP. And some kid is in a bedroom somewhere doing that right now, and it's gonna be great, you know. And that will, like, force the hand of like, big music to like, have to realign, because it's in the end, it's just, you know, the the major labels, they didn't want a nirvana. They just had to, like, take it. They didn't want a Beatles like they were, they were frowned upon all the the points were like everything shifted. It was always art driven, not industry driven.
Ziegler: I could spend all day in here, but the dictates of life are pulling on me. The last thing, what is the biggest misconception in running a studio that you think people need help figuring out, because you seem to have managed to do a nice little job of getting one up and running.
Colbert: Here, it's a service job, like you provide the service your client needs. You anticipate their needs. They are the boss, and you provide them the time where I see other studios struggle and fail is they watch the clock, they nickel and dime. I'd rather err on the side of being too generous with time, because that brings repeat customers. It's just providing the time and not like, you know, once I negotiate the fee, that's the fee. If we go over in time, I allow it. I mean, just let it flow, just like let let the music dictate the flow of the day, and not the clock and not the Venmo.
Ziegler: Well, Chris, thanks for sitting down with me to chat about this and for providing what is easily the best sounding space I have ever done an interview in.
Colbert: Oh, good. Well, you know these cat paintings are here for strategic reasons.
Ziegler: That was Christopher Colbert, the recording engineer at national freedom studio in Cottage Grove. This has been Oregon Rainmakers from KLCC. I'm Zac Ziegler, thanks for listening.
