Mitch Easter’s New American Pop Sound
Mitch Easter is a Southern-born-and-bred producer whose studio has been turning out some of the best nonconformist pop records in recent memory. Easter, 28, built his studio three years ago, and since then, the world has slowly but surely been beating a path to his rustic back door. Situated in an oddly sylvan setting for a rock & roll studio, Mitch’s Drive-In occupies the garage and an adjoining room of his parents’ sprawling ranch-style home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The atmosphere is casual –— the rooms are cluttered with instruments and equipment, and when it gets too crowded, musicians have been known to play their parts out in the driveway or backyard. Easter, who is wont to pad around in tennis shoes laced with recording tape, has recorded such artists as R. E. M., Pylon, the Individuals, Chris Stamey and his own band, Let’s Active. Presently, he’s working on the second album by Beat Rodeo.
Considering the bands you’ve worked with, do you think you’re carving out a niche for a particular style of music?
Maybe. It’s the same circle of friends and people who like one another’s records, I guess. All of us wanna make new sounds, but I also think we have a pretty heavy pop background that we couldn’t shake if we wanted to. It’s a real American rock-group sound.
What sort of production tradition do you come out of?
A messy production tradition [laughs]. I think that if I had my way all the time, my production would tend to be busy and full of noise – a dense sound, not in a Phil Spector kind of way but more in a 1968 kind of way. To my mind, the ideal record exudes a kind of cool —– that moment-of-glory feeling —– from the minute you put it on, and that can mean anything from a Tommy James record with big production and lots of sessionmen to a garage-band demo.
Are the major labels becoming more receptive to the sort of work you are doing?
Yeah, I really do think the big guys are starting to get interested, because the variety of sounds you can have on a hit record is wider these days. It’s now possible to have a respectable hit with a real cheesy drum machine on it, whereas a few years ago it was considered something you’d do only on a demo.
What does your studio offer someone that can’t be found anywhere else?
I guess it’s cheap, for one thing. If a group brought in five songs and worked on them fast, maybe two days, they could probably get away for $750. Also, I’ve seen a lot of garage studios that were depressing to be in; it seems like you can really get something done here.
I can’t imagine that there are a lot of diversions in Winston-Salem, either.
No, you have to get real excited about barbecue or a particular Ms. Pac-Man machine or something like that. It’s pretty low-key, and that seems to help people get down to work.