WWF production

Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie are Boston's best tag team

by Ted Drozdowski

Check the back of albums by Radiohead, Hole, Juliana Hatfield, Morphine, Buffalo Tom, the 360's, Belly, Throwing Muses. You'll see the names Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie. Friends since they played guitar and bass in the early-'80s Boston party band the Sex Execs, Kolderie and Slade are today the hottest production tag team in guitar-oriented rock. Founders of the Fort Apache studio, partners in the label that now bears its name, and good-natured guys who love their work, Kolderie and Slade recently discussed their mutual work over a few cold ones. In the process, they told a story that enfolds '80s Boston-rock history and reveals how the subtleties of chance -- and the willingness to take chances -- can make for great music.

---

Phoenix: When did you begin working as a team?

Kolderie: It was the early '80s and we lived in a house in Dorchester -- almost all of the Sex Execs. We built a studio in the house. It was really primitive, but that's how we taught ourselves.

Slade: The control room was in the attic. We communicated with the band by running a line back down to a Fender amp we would talk through.

Kolderie: We made enough money off the band that we didn't have to work. So we would spend the days we weren't playing on recording. We did all kinds of crazy shit.

Slade: We'd invent fake groups, then do a whole album of that group. We'd be the group. I did a solo album with Jim Fitting, from Treat Her Right. The Beer Album, where all the songs were about beer.

But we started working together on the day when he and I went to New York and bought an open-reel four-track at Uncle Steve's and brought it back to Dorchester. We had that and one good mike. We had a bi-amp board. It was beautiful because it had built-in spring reverb. Naturally, we'd get stoned and put spring reverb on everything. So the early mixes have this kind of Lee Scratch Perry thing.

Kolderie: The Sex Execs didn't really do our own records at home.

Slade: We went to Syncro Sound, which thrilled us immensely. We'd be walking down the stairs and Ric Ocasek would be walking up.

Kolderie: We really felt like we were in the inner sanctum of rock.

Slade: By no means, though, were Paul and I the producers of the group, even though we were doing all of this home stuff.

Kolderie: We didn't really trust ourselves yet.

Phoenix: What was your first production gig?

Kolderie: At the house, the first people who came over were Lifeboat, which was Gary Smith's band. They had some cool pop songs. I think maybe they paid us a hundred bucks. We recorded a tape. That was a time when radio in this town . . . 'FNX and 'BCN played tapes. You could take them a tape, and 'MBR, too, and they would put them on the air.

Phoenix: And soon after you started your own studio, the original Fort Apache?

Kolderie: We set up this space in Roxbury that was really raw. Joe Harvard, who was the guy who we did it with, went down there with Jonathan Richman and they were walking around the space and Jonathan said something like [in a perfect, nasal baritone imitation] "Joe, do you think this city . . . does it need another studio?" We had blind optimism. If you go down to that area now, I swear to God . . . No one ever got physically harmed there, but it was rough. Joe came out one night and his truck was flipped over and burning in the street.

Slade: I got my car stolen.

Kolderie: My car was never stolen, but every window was broken and I lost my stereo.

But there was a huge amount of space. We rented a small part of a giant commercial laundry building. This thing was a city block. For a couple of years, this space was just open. And we would, of course, drag mikes outside the studio into this hangar. The first Pixies album? If you can picture it, Black Francis is out there in the middle of this room that's as big as a football field. There was one fluorescent bulb flickering, and he's just kind of going [shrieks].There was a sound that comes from that. We knew that we had something. Musicians would walk in there and they would go, "Wow!" Because they just had never really seen anything like it.

It was really cold in the winter. We had the group that turned into the Cavedogs, the Blame, and they came in and unpacked their Rickenbacker guitars. It was freezing so they had to warm up around the heater. Then they went in and kicked off "Tater Country." We recorded it and it went right on the radio.

Slade: I think that was our major-label debut, because Ed Stasium, the producer they made their album with, couldn't get a better version of that song. So they just remixed our eight-track tape, and that's on the album.

Kolderie: But it was running a studio like we were a band.

Slade: We built it ourselves. We wired it ourselves. We didn't care about that learning how to engineer shit. It was all about rock, and how to make it exciting.

Kolderie: The Pixies album was '87. Treat Her Right went in there and did their first record. That was a big success for us, because we made this record on eight-track. We sold it to Demon for an advance to the band. And then it got sold to RCA for a substantial advance. That's when I realized, hey, we did this for maybe $2500, and they got a six-figure advance from RCA. And it went on to do well in radio.

In late '87 we opened the second studio, in Cambridge. When Gary Smith came in. The first year we ran it as kind of a producers collective. But Joe realized that we were actually a business that had to pay taxes and be on the books, so that was Gary's job. And immediately Gary brought in the Pixies. Gary already had one success under his belt with the Throwing Muses, whom he had found in Newport, and also managed.

Kolderie: We did the Pixies and Heavens by Big Dipper, which was at the time a great band.

Slade: That's how Dinosaur Jr. came to us. J Mascis heard Heavens.

Kolderie: Then it was Christmas, Volcano Suns, Buffalo Tom . . . At that point, it became Gary and Joe's business, and we got out of the business.

Slade: I didn't want to be a studio owner. But for those first couple of years, we did everything. It was really fun. A band would call us up, book a session, and I'd drive there and do it. That simple.

Kolderie: There's no substitute for experience. I've seen bands break up, I've seen them have fights.

Slade: We had one that broke up in the studio.

Kolderie: It was over a guitar solo.

Slade: It was a fistfight. One band came in too drunk to play. They were so wasted, they didn't even care when I called the session.

Phoenix: As a team, what do you feel you both bring to album making?

Kolderie: It's difficult for one guy to handle all the aspects of the job. With us . . . somebody has to run the machines, and then somebody can be interacting with the band -- motivating, encouraging, consulting. You can play bad cop/good cop.

I have more technical expertise. If something breaks, I'll probably fix it. If there's something wrong with the arrangement or the musical aspect of a song, Sean will fix that. If your cord is broken, I'll solder it. But if your chord has a wrong note in it, then he'll fix it.

Phoenix: How did you get the Hole gig?

Kolderie: Courtney went to Butch Vig first. Butch pleaded that he had just finished the Pumpkins record and was about to start the Garbage thing. And he begged off. Butch's management -- they're friends of ours -- were big fans of "Creep" by Radiohead. They suggested us to Courtney. And Courtney liked that song.

It turned out that Mark Kates, who was the A&R man at Geffen, was an old friend of ours, because we had mutual friends in a band called Salem 66. And we produced them. He felt we had done a great job and thought we were good guys for trying really hard to make them stars. So he had a good word for us too. It's one of those things . . . long connections that reach back into those early days, which kind of came together in a weird way.

Phoenix: What about Radiohead? "Creep" is a great song.

Slade: When I first got the album, I must have listened to that song five times in a row, because I was so excited. But I never thought it would be a hit, because it's so weird and negative.

Kolderie: But looking back on it now, it doesn't seem that weird. It's just a little Al Green meets the Pixies kind of thing [laughs]. When we did "Creep," that was a moment of pure fate. All I can say is that I had the good sense to get out of the way. The session wasn't going well and I said to them, "Play that other song that you played the other day. That was good." We weren't even supposed to do it. They just played it once. There was a bunch of their friends in the studio, and they played this staggering version. It was amazing, and everyone looked at each other and began applauding. I got on the phone with the A&R guy in London and said, "I think you better get up here."

Phoenix: Given the lack of stability in the music business, do you worry about your longevity?

Slade: That's one of my big neuroses. Producers are like rock stars; you have your run and then you cool off, and then you might have a comeback.

Kolderie: No matter what, I swear I'll never get over that thrill of getting into my car and turning on the radio and hearing something I did on the radio.

Slade: I think having a hit record is like winning the lottery. You can sit there and say, "Oh, we worked hard. It's a good record." But that doesn't mean it's going to sell. So you can't be in it for that. I just happen to think that being in the studio for 12 or 16 hours a day is the coolest thing in the world.