Joe Chiccarelli

Joe Chiccarelli

January 15, 2006
Photo by Jackie Butler
Words by Jim Brunberg

When MOSS invited me to interview Joe for their debut issue, I jumped at the opportunity. Joe Chiccarelli is one of the hardest working, most talented producers making records today. A truly seasoned pro, he's known for working on records by a sonically diverse array of acts: Tori Amos, U2, Beck, Rufus Wainwright, Frank Zappa and Elton John. Read that list again, and let it sink in: this guy really makes a lot of great records. Joe zips around the world, fully immersing himself in genre after genre, from Japanese alt-pop to sad-core (when it was really cool) to Latin dance music.

What many music-scholars love most about Joe, however, is his willingness to do independent, low-budget projects, not just major label stuff. His flexibility and keen ears for finding "underground" talent will keep him hip long after the "superstar" producers have stopped producing hits. Most recently, he flew to Portland to mix a debut independent record that I was producing by Miraflores, a Portland band.

The first time I ever knowingly heard a Joe Chicarrelli record was American Music Club's "San Francisco" (which he produced). I was already a fan of the band's brooding, profound emotional rock, but I had never heard them explode sonically or melodically the way they did under his guidance. Ten years ago, Joe produced an album by my band. Like many people, including musicians, I was a little unclear about exactly what a "producer" did. Many articles have been written in technical magazines about Joe's engineering chops, but very little about the producer role. I thought this would be a good place to start our interview.

JB: People get a little confused between engineer, mixing engineer, mastering, and "producer." What's your typical job as a producer?

Joe: As a producer, you're responsible for the overall outcome of the record, which includes all aspects - choice of songs, arrangements of songs, the sound of the record, the overall concept of the record. It's akin to the overall director of a movie.

JB: If part of that producer role is band coach, part is artistic director, and part is diving into the more nitty-gritty tones and sounds that come from the engineering and mixing aspect, which part do you feel tends to be the most important part of the producer's role?

JOE: The odd thing is that it really changes with the projects. With some albums, the band really needs some help with arrangement and structure of the songs. Then pre- production really gets to the core of each song picked, the arrangement and instrumentation from there. With a band that's well-rehearsed, that has been on the road for a while, then the focus becomes fine-tuning, maybe a little editing of the songs, then you maybe try to capture what they do live. It changes from project to project.

JB: What's the strangest role you've ever found yourself playing in your role as producer with an artist?

JOE: [Pause] You know, unfortunately, the oddest ones have unfortunately been some of the ugliest ones, so I'd rather not go there..

JB: [laughing heartily, with my own memories of making Joe's life a living hell during the recording of my old band's album]. Fair enough, how about this question: Now that the technology is there for people to produce, record, mix, and even master an album entirely themselves, in one facility (or even possibly their basement), how important do you feel it is to put a "fresh set of ears" on a project as it passes from the tracking phase into the mixing phase, and then again as it goes to mastering?

JOE: Certainly having a fresh viewpoint is a good thing, this is why people hire producers. Yes, Certain artists have been able to make great records all on their own, like Stevie Wonder. But it's always good to have an objective ear, someone who knows where to push you when you're getting lazy, or can hear a weakness in a song. I don't know if it's a fresh "new" perspective, as much as it is someone who can remain objective, and see the big picture. We all get tied up in details. Part of the producer's job is to instantly go back and forth between details of the moment and putting the whole album or project, sometimes over the course of six months or more, into perspective. Also, things get more difficult at the very end. After many hours, you might get fatigued, so sometimes you do want to bring someone else in.

JB: So, you can work with pretty much any act you want. Who are some with whom you haven't yet worked?

JOE: David Bowie, Brian Eno, John Lennon, Astor Piazolla, Leonard Bernstein, people to me who are players that have a whole unique perspective about how they write and present their songs. Something that turns me on is when I hear it for the first time, I get a specific picture of where it's going. One of those artists is Tom McRae , an artist I just recorded - his perspective in songwriting is totally unique. Every word and note comes from a very deep place with Tom. His album, "All Maps Welcome" is very exciting to me. You always have to think about what is going to come out in production: The Miraflores album we just finished is another example of this. The lyrics are very personal and intimate, so the treatment I gave some of the songs, even though I was tempted to make them bigger, deserved a very close and dry treatment.

JB: If you don't know much about a band going into a full production, what do you hope for? Do you have a favorite or least favorite aspect of the production process?

JOE: My favorite part is always at the end. If an artist comes to me at the end of a project and says, "Wow, you really got me, you really helped me get what was in my head out onto a disc." The thing I personally look for is having that initial vision and really keeping it in sight all the way through and being able to say at the end, "Yeah, this is pretty close to the picture that I had in my head - that we all had - when we started." The process, to me, is all secondary - it's all bullshit. It doesn't ever matter how you get there, it matters what the end product is. No one who listens to a disc knows if it took a year to record, with a lot of emotional trauma in the process, or if it happened in a day. What matters is at the end. If everyone is satisfied when they put it on, then people are transformed, their lives changed. In the 1970s, music was a very important part of everybody's lives. It had the power to change things. I guess I still go by this, though it may seem a bit archaic these days [laughs].

Keep watching MOSS for more insight into the artists that make the music happen, behind the scenes.

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