Audio Richard Swift
"Knee High Boogie Blues"

Richard Swift emanates a genuine vintage quality that is generally faked. Swift does not package himself in outdated fashions, either aesthetically or musically. Instead, his music seems to honor antiquated styles through pure fascination and adoration. Much like his contemporary Kelley Stoltz, Swift relies on discarded recording technologies, primarily the combination of Fostex and Tascam four-track recorders.

Cassette technology has treated Swift and his fans well. By using two recorders and a bit of studio wizardry, Swift has managed to create everything from baroque pop to his latest album, Richard Swift as Onassis. Onassis finds Swift further exploring concepts laid out by Paul McCartney--one of Swift's heroes--back in 1970. The idea is simple: Lay down four-track recordings of predominately instrumental songs that bubble over with garage-blues. The album will probably leave critics scratching their heads, but it's sure to please fans.

Swift talked to MP3.com from his home in Oregon about his recording technique, his latest album, his love affair with vintage McCartney, and how convenience is killing everything.

Hey, how are you? Good, how are you doing man? Well, I was just leaving a message on your machine. Oh yeah, yeah, it just beeped at me actually. Okay, well you'll be--you should be slightly entertained by the end of it because I saw you that you were calling and I think I said "s***" or something like that. I understand. Good afternoon. Yeah, how's it going? It's going well, it's going very well, and how are you today? Yeah, doing pretty well. I, like, deejayed last, or whatever, selected. I hate calling it deejaying, but played a bunch of records last night at a friend's birthday party and drank, like, a lot of tequila, so I'm just kind of taking it easy today. Well, fortunately then we have something in common. Oh, good, yeah. I kind of got a little brain melt today myself. Yeah. Normally I don't get hangovers. It's like this weird blessing-slash-curse, like I don't get sick and I don't get headaches and stuff, but I definitely feel foggy the next day, you know. Right. So I'm kind in a fog. Well, welcome to the fog. Yeah, exactly. Planet Fog. How come you hate the term DJ, you prefer selector? Yeah, basically because I mean, like, I know like my buddy Mark is like a f****** awesome DJ, you know, and I've got a couple of good friends that are really good DJs, like they know how to scratch and they know all the tricks and stuff. I don't know any of that s***. I mean I know how to, I know some tricks, but not too many, so yeah. So I just tend to select records for people to dance to or mellow out to, and last night was great because I normally play records like every Monday night, every other Monday night at this, like, local bar. Sounds like a good time. Yeah, yeah it really was actually. Where do you generally play records at? I mean, I'm sorry, where are you located? Oh, I live in Oregon. I live in a small town just south of Eugene, Oregon. Oh okay, lovely. For some reason I thought you were in California. No, yeah a lot of people have that idea. I lived in Cal--I think when I kind of started my music career I was in California, and I was there for about five years. I think that people just read bios and stuff, and figure that's where I am still, but I moved away from California maybe like I don't know, two, two and half years ago or something like that. Do you feel that living in Oregon has in any way improved your mental space for recording and writing songs? Oh yeah. Absolutely. It's kind of crazy, I mean at this point now, I've got my own kind of studio and a bunch of gear and everything, and so I'm able to like paint and record and to play a bunch of records and everything like every day, so for a while now I've been trying to write and record every single day, and so that's been great for me. It definitely helps with anxiety and stuff like that for me to kind of just get lost in like a creative process as much as I can. Right. Yeah, it's imperative to have those outlets, right? Yeah, yeah. Otherwise, who knows what sort of mischief you might get yourself into. Yeah, well that was part of my problem in California, was that kind of a couple of years into living down there, I started having some serious panic attacks and some kind of serious anxiety that I still kind of deal with, but I think it was just I had--it's like if I wanted to record I had to go to somebody's studio or book time, until I started buying gear and recording at home and whatnot, which has been great. So yeah, now that I'm up in Oregon it's a lot mellower. You know, a slower pace of life, and I kind of like that. I kind of grew up in rural Minnesota for the most part, and so it's like I'm just not a city boy. Although I was in New York in late March, maybe early April, and I kind of loved it actually. I've been humming and hawing about city life, but I really loved New York this last time I went down. I was actually doing a bunch of reading the last couple of days, and you're an interesting person to read about because you are someone that I'm familiar with your music, but I tend to shy away from the sort of mythology that artists can create around themselves, whether it's self-perpetuated or invented by your press secretary or what have you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I just totally forgot where I was going with that. A--yeah that fog hasn't quite lifted yet. Yeah, exactly. Well, actually I just recalled, but the press and the various people who write your one-sheets seem very obsessed with your recording technologies, the fact that you limit yourself to four-track cassette--I hate to use the word "limit." Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean, though. Yeah, and it's not like--well, I mean I do record on a four-track cassette pretty much every day of my life, and I have been for the last--especially the last year, year and a half when I'm not on the road, I've been recording on this thing. But yeah, I don't know why that is. I don't know why they're so into that, I mean-- I mean, do you feel that the press's obsession with your recording medium like in any way could potentially detract or steer some people away that--I mean obviously it's a representation of what you're doing musically, and it's obviously a huge part of the end result, which is the sound. Right, right. But do you think it's really necessary for people to be so focused on the process? I don't think so, although especially like the Onasis stuff, and the newer Onasis stuff I've been recording, it's so, I mean it's kind of so obvious that it's on four track. Well, to me it is, but I've played it for some people and they just think it's all vintage equipment and there is vintage equipment involved, but for the most part it's just a spring reverb and a four-track cassette recorder. So I think more people were shocked when I did The Novelist and will probably be shocked when I put out this next Onassis record that I'm working on because, like with The Novelist, which I did on four track, it's such a big sound... It's pretty complicated where normally you think of a guy in front of a four track and it is kind of limited I think. But I don't really know why people care how I record my records. It's nice to have people that care. I get e-mails all the time asking what kind of gear I use or what I used for this sound or that sound. So, yeah, I mean I think maybe anyone that's writing stuff for me for press or people at Secretly Canadian or Polydor, like I just don't know why they-- Well, I just think it's interesting because if you had another band, let's say some sort of popular indie rock band or something, let's just say as an example. Yeah. You know it's not going to say in the press release "72 tracks on Pro Tools." Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I guess for other people it's just astonishing that someone can record what you do with something that is such an antiquated recording format. Yeah, yeah. Well the reason why I recorded The Novelist on four track, if there was a specific reason, it was just because I was doing so much studio work on a f****** computer and it's like people would obsess about fixing vocal lines and running them through, like--what's that thing? Like the Auto-Tune or whatever, and you can quickly kind of kill any sort of life that the song had even to begin with. And so for me like with, especially with the Onassis stuff, well pretty much for all my stuff, but especially the Onassis stuff, it's just so immediate, which is why I like the four track, because it's so immediate. And I guess for some people a computer is really immediate too, but I don't know, for me I just like being able to plug in a microphone and see "oh, input one, turn input one up," there you go, there's the sound. [It's easy] to beat the s*** out of that machine too. You start beating up a computer and it just doesn't sound right, like it--the distortion isn't right, and I think that like the charm of '40s, '50s, '60s music-- and then it started to get a little too professional in the '70s--but the idea that these people are like taking these like new forms of technology... I guess you can make the same argument for the computer, but I will say like analog technology and stuff, I just think it's really cool because they were just beating the s*** out of these machines and you can hear it in the recordings, and it sounds really tough because it is really tough. Yeah, so, I mean that's pretty much why I do a lot of four-track stuff. I mean I guess I could try to pick apart why exactly I do it, but at the end of the day it's like, I don't know man, I just like it. I just like how it sounds. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. And I think that people really miss out on the, maybe you would agree, on the sort of tactile experience that you really have with loading a cassette. Yeah, yeah absolutely. Having a box of cassettes, not a file on my desktop, you know. Right. Just like physically having a suitcase full of cassette tapes, that if I were to pass away, I could hand somebody--somebody could hand this suitcase of cassettes to my children, you know not--I don't know, there's something a little bit more endearing or romantic about that than, "Here's your dad's laptop with all his records on it." Right, exactly. "Here's a zip disk of all your dad's music." So, can you explain Onasis and how it--because on the CD itself, it says a new side project of Richard Swift and Richard Swift as Onasis, so can you explain this, is it a character, or an extension of yourself? I don't know if I really think about it that deeply. Originally I just really wanted to release the record as Onasis, as if it was just a band, and a lot of my friends were like "No, man, this is like it would really be funny and kind of confusing to people if you just release it as Richard Swift." And I thought that wouldn't be really fair in a way. I don't know if that makes sense, but I just didn't think that would be fair because for me the Onasis stuff is like so immediate and off the cuff, where the Richard Swift records like Dressed Up and the double disk and then this new record I'm working on, I kind of like really spent a lot of time on those records and sometimes I feel like kind of earlier, like you can kind of obsess about certain things and quickly extinguish any sort of life that it had in the beginning. So it's kind of like Onasis is the rock band that I could never have. And now I've got time and the energy and the tools for me to be in a rock and roll band, or my version of rock and roll. Well, it's interesting you say that because the album has a very distinct feel, but it has a similarity, for me at least, to Paul McCartney's--I feel, often overlooked--first solo album. That's actually my favorite record of all time, to be honest. Really? I like Ram. Yeah, I love Ram, but Ram, man, like side B just isn't as strong, like I feel like that McCartney record every--anyways I didn't mean to cut you off. Oh, no, no, no, please continue. But I love that record... Like, the Plastic Ono Band record, Lennon's first solo record, I don't know, man, those records just kill me. I mean there's literally, you know I still listen to it quite a bit, but there was like about a five- or six-year span where I would listen to McCartney every single day, and I love it because I think it's right around 30 minutes. I think the record's like 31 minutes, which is the perfect amount of music I think for an LP and it just makes you want to like flip it over and listen to it over and over again, for me. I love Ram, though like "Three-Legged Dog" and "Ram On," that song, it's just the first time I heard it, it just slayed me, that was kind of the inspiration for the rhythms on Dressed Up actually. I definitely feel that. But see, that's--that was my idea with Onasis is the same thing that McCartney was doing, it's like he was in the Beatles, he helped promote the vaudevillian part of or side of the Beatles, and he was in charge of a lot of their studio masterpieces or whatever, and he just went out to his garage in Scotland and plugged all these instruments into a four track, it wasn't a four-track cassette, it was a Studer four-track machine, but it's just off the cuff--he could have overdubbed s***loads of harmonies and tricky horn parts and stuff, but it's just McCartney playing everything, singing everything, other than Linda on a couple of things here and there. Right. And there's something really special, those kind of records turn me on. Same thing with Sly and Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On, that's probably one of my favorite records as well. It's just like Sly did pretty much that entire record by himself, and I don't know, there's something really--I've always been turned on by that kind stuff. From McCartney to Sly to Prince, you know. You know, even Elliott Smith records and stuff, people forget that guy was a f****** awesome musician, multi-instrumentalist, and I've just always kind of been turned on by that. Anyways, sorry to interrupt--anytime anyone mentions that McCartney record, I just freak out because I love it. I've got like seven copies of that record that I just kind of have floating around the studio just so I can, if nobody's ever heard it or owned it, I'll give away a copy, and I gave away a copy last night to my friend Lee, who's birthday it was, so. That's funny because I used to love handing out copies of Ram to people. Oh, that's funny. But I held on to the first McCartney record just as a--I don't know, it was like a secret. I didn't want to distribute it to everybody. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I know what you mean. So, do you never see yourself sitting--well, you've sat in with bands, but you've never--have you had a proper rock band? No, I've never been in a proper rock band. I toured and recorded with a band called Starflyer 59 in 2002 or 2003, but that was one of those things where Jason [Martin] paid me money to come and play on an EP, and we really hit it off and he's like "Hey, why don't you get in the van with us and do a few tours." And so I did and then ended up in a couple of photos, and I think everyone just kind of assumed that I was in the band or whatever, but that's like as close as I've ever come to being in a band, but I feel a bit like when I play live, the guys that play with me, there's really strong camaraderie there and we play just like--it's not like the Richard Swift Show or something, we play as a band. But do you have a slight aversion possibly to collaboration, at least for your own material in the studio? For my own material, yeah, I'm not really, well, it's tough to say because the new Swift record I started at the Wilco loft in Chicago, and I had an engineer there with me and my friend Casey who plays in my live band, so there was some collaboration there I suppose... And then for the first time ever on the Swift stuff, I worked with a producer on this newer record, at least on one song, I worked with this guy Mark Ronson on one track. And then that was weird because I spent a week in New York while Ronson and I were recording this thing and then Ryan Adams ended up singing on it, which I didn't know Ryan at all, and Sean Lennon played guitar on it, and Pat from Wilco played bass on two tracks on the new record and some Mellotron, so that's kind of like as collaborative as I've ever been. But did you say, well, this is one of the questions I wanted to ask you, actually, because your blog makes mention of your visiting Mark Ronson. Yeah, yeah. But was it a full recording session you did for an upcoming album? Yeah, see Onasis is something that I did--I've got a bunch of back catalog of instrumental stuff. These are all things that I do while I'm working on my Swift records, like my proper kind of pop records or whatever you want to call them. So yeah, so I've been working on this new record kind of off and on since like October or November of last year, and then I went on a tour and then had a break from the tour and f***** up my left wrist tripping over a keyboard stand one night, which was totally ridiculous. So yeah, the thing that I did with Ronson was, we just worked on one track. I wrote a song like three days before I flew out to New York, and then we just worked on that one track together that will end up on the next--on this next Swift record. I've recorded about 13 tracks, probably wrote about 17 or 18 songs for the record, but just have decided to, like, focus on 12 to 13 tracks. Interesting. But all that stuff was like, I recorded the Onassis stuff pretty much at the same time and I've recorded like 16 new Onassis tracks in the last three weeks or so, while I'm still working on the Swift record, so for me just because of my personality or just because of the way that I'm made up, it's important for me to kind of have a lot of, what's the word like, pans in the oven or--I don't know the right term. Yeah, pots in the oven--pots something on the stove? Pots in my pans, maybe? It's always important to have pots in your pans. Yeah, exactly. So basically you're just a prolific kind of guy who, as you said, you feel the need to record in order to beat off these anxieties and probably kill time and, ah-- Yeah, I think it's just any artist unless they're totally full of s***--or maybe they think about it a different way, but yeah, I think that the reason why you make music it's like one part magic, one part boredom, one part reactionary--you know there's visual stuff that I try to do and whatnot like movies and blah blah blah, and so yeah that's like really, I don't know if I have a choice in the matter necessarily. Probably not. I tried to fight it and that's kind of when the panic visited. Fear is the mind killer. Yeah. Well, I have one last question for you. Yeah. Before this--I've a 30-minute time limit on the recorder here. Oh, we're-- I don't want to come full circle in the conversation per se. But just curious if you feel that modern technologies move us--and when I say "us" I mean humanity--further away from ancient and more mysterious methods of creativity? Yes, I do think so in a lot of ways. It's a tough thing, man, because obviously there are like strong arguments on both sides. Right. But ultimately I think that what is considered music these days and what is considered a creative process is not what I feel it is, or it was back in the day. I mean you could say the same about philosophy or any of those things. Like, I think a lot of philosophy, if you look at religion, religion is completely watered down and really holds hardly any value for the most part, and I think that music can kind of be the same way. And there are some, like, true believers in music, and there are true believers in religion and philosophy and true believers in all sorts of things, but if, I don't know, I think the convenience is a really kind of a scary thing because, like, using plastic is a really convenient thing, but we're completely f****** up our environment, the ocean like is just polluted with s***loads of plastic, and yet you can stand back and say "well, plastic helps people" and "plastic, you know plastic can do this and that," but it can get to the point where every time you buy a s***** sandwich from Subway they put it in a plastic bag and then you walk 30 seconds or, you know, you walk 10 seconds to your table, you sit down, you pull the plastic bag off and you throw it away. And I think that's kind of what's happening to music because convenience is killing everything. Indeed. Alright, well thank you for the interview, and take care of yourself. Yeah, thank you.