In Her Own Words: Dawn Landes
Issue #35
The self-described audiophile gets into the thick of recording studio details with her new album, Fireproof
By Dawn Landes
Published: March 1st, 2008 | 2:59pm
Dawn Landes caught my attention after I got a promo of her self-released and self-recorded debut album, Dawn’s Music, in 2004. At the time, I couldn’t stop listening to it, heaping words like “pretty,” “charming,” “delicate,” and “wistful” into my review. Here, she shares the intimacy and spontaneity of her sophomore LP, Fireproof, and tells a little bit about the fun instruments she used to create a record that’s just as likeable as her first. — Kristina Francisco
My name is Dawn Landes and I'd like you to meet Fireproof. I recorded it in an old fire station in Red Hook, Brooklyn, to 2-inch tape on a 24-track recording machine (not many people record to tape anymore; it’s mostly done these days with computers). The name of the studio is Fireproof, and mine was the last record to be done there before they moved it to Los Angeles.
I'm kind of an audiophile [Editor’s Note: Landes is also a recording engineer] so I want to tell you some fun studio stuff that went on during the recording of this album. The first track, “Bodyguard,” used to be slower. A friend came by on his skateboard while I was adding other instruments and told me he wanted to dance. We tried dancing to the song but it was too slow, so I turned the tempo knobs on the tape machine up & up & up, until it sounded like a singing chipmunk and we were dancing! I loved it so much that I re-recorded the vocals and guitars at the faster speed and added some banjo to tie it all together.
Another funny thing happened while my friend Ray Rizzo was over. We were in the middle of experimenting with crazy sounds on his audio effects pedals when suddenly a taxicab radio signal got caught up in the recording. We found out only because just as the song ended we heard taxi driver voices talking to us through the speakers! It was late at night and pretty spooky. I like to think it was magic, but the engineer part of me knows it’s just radio frequency. Apparently, if you put chicken wire in your walls, you're less likely to pick up that kind of radio frequency interference. Some fancy studios I've worked in while in New York even have special metallic wallpaper to keep the radio frequency out. But I prefer chicken wire. Some of the extra instruments on the record I recorded at home while living in the East Village (sans chicken wire) and there are a few passing-car-sounds that got tucked into the album.
What else is on the album? Oh! There's the Fun Machine organ on the song “Goodnight Lover,” in all its crackling glory. Most people would try to take out the imperfect crackling sounds of an old organ, but I find it charming. The cough and hum of a good organ is great. And of course there's the Optigan! This is probably my favorite instrument in the world! It's an old, inexpensive electronic keyboard, and instead of the keys playing normal organ sounds, it plays back pre-recorded sounds from discs placed inside. Most of the sounds from an Optigan were made by musicians in Los Angeles in the ’70s. One of the discs that I used for the organ sound on “I Don't Need No Man” was called Blues Sounds. There was a gorgeous picture of a black lady in profile on the disc, backlit with soft light. She had the most magnificent hair and seemed a little blue, like she was looking at a photo of an old lover. I was looking at her and playing the organ parts thinking, “You don’t need no man, honey!”
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