MUSIC

stay open, that conversation with a band was like, “OK, we’re gonna record, but don’t bring anyone in here. Just the band.” The less bodies, the better. I normally have four interns. I’ve made them all stay home.

During the publicly enforced suggested shut-in, I was mostly mixing by myself—I didn’t have anyone in there. About mid-March everything closed and all my sessions canceled. You don’t necessarily have to have the band in while you’re mixing, so there was a lot of phone calls and FaceTiming, Google chats, e-mailing. If they needed to finish something with overdubs, they would actually record that at home and send it to me.

you get these e-mails of people being like, “We wanna record!” And I obviously need that income—I want to record because it’s what I do. But it’s hard to balance the morality of that.

What you have to put forth is, “Hey, if anyone is just feeling slightly uncomfortable or sick, you have to tell me.” If you have four other people in the band, there’s that pressure: “Ahh, I don’t know if I can say this, because I don’t want to let the other people down.” And I have to step in and be like, “You’re not letting them down. It’s so important that you voice that.” And then we just rebook it.

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