You
know how in every state there’s always one city where the derelicts and musicians and dregs-of-society
artist types gather — like Austin is for Texas? That’s what Bloomington is for
Indiana. And that’s where I fled to from Perdue as quickly as I could, to go to
school.”
Stuart Sullivan is recounting the events that led to his moving to Austin.
We’re talking on the phone late on a Sunday night, but I can just picture him
at the other end, his handsome, angular features grinning broadly, his blue
eyes bright with creativity (and maybe mischief), and his fingers habitually
running through his red hair. Producing, engineering, mixing… since moving
here in 1983 to pursue studio work, Sullivan has gone from earning studio time
as clean-up person to claiming at least three gold records for acts whose
diversity only reinforces Sullivan’s talents: Little Joe y la Familia, Meat
Puppets, and most recently, the Butthole Surfers.
Sullivan is also remarkably unphased by the stellar work he’s done, not to
mention the critical acclaim he’s garnered for recordings with local and
regional acts such as Lou Ann Barton, Kim Wilson, Junior Brown, Toni Price,
Starfish, Sincola, Euripides Pants, Ruben Ramos, the Texas Tornados, and Poi
Dog Pondering as well as national acts like Toadies, Supersuckers, Lucinda
Williams, and Sublime. But between an Indiana native’s desire to make music,
not just play it, and the gold records of late, lies a lot of territory.
“[Growing up in Indiana] I had seen a couple of bands — the Fabulous
Thunderbirds with Jimmie Vaughan — that were, whew! This was `81-82.
And then a friend of mine told me about Austin, said he was gonna move there.
He was the best guitar player I’d ever met, so I figured if he thought it was
cool, there must be something to it.
“My friend did move down here, but I stayed home to work for the summer
because I had a bunch of debts and stuff to pay off. At the end of the summer
in late 1983, I decided to get the hell out. My friend seemed to be doing okay
in Austin — we didn’t stay in close contact but I knew he was enjoying it —
then the drummer from the band I’d been playing with announced he was
gonna move to Austin.
“Well, I knew I was gonna be poor for a while, and I figured I’d rather be
warm and poor than cold and poor, so I moved down here. My guitarist friend
promptly left Austin to go out on the road with Mitch Ryder. So I got a picture
of what was going on around here, and got a stupid little resum�
together and took it to all the studios in the yellow pages and said, `Hey,
I’ll work for free.’ Everyone laughed at me but I knew I wanted to do
this. Whatever it was that was driving me.
“Paul Leary and I have talked about this, that that drive is purely
tenaciousness, that unwillingness to give up… and maybe fear in there, too,
playing a large role. Not so much fear anymore… maybe it’s anxiety, now.”
Sullivan laughs. It seems odd to hear this well-respected producer talk about
his fears and anxieties so freely. After all, this is a man with a Number 1
single on modern rock charts, “What I Got,” by Sublime, and one that could
legitimately collect additional gold records for engineering work with Eric
Johnson, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“I’d gone to every studio and said, `Hi, I’ll work for free,’ and they all
went, `Sure.’ But Lone Star [Studios] hired me to clean up, vacuum, sweep —
all that shit for $5 an hour. Then I would get credited $5 an hour against
their studio time at card rate — $45 an hour. So every nine hours I worked, I
got an hour of studio time. In retrospect, I’ve laughed about the fact that I
was so compulsive about it — that place must have been antiseptic. Pretty soon
I had enough for a couple of days.
“The first record I produced was the Wild Seeds’ Life Is Grand (In Soul
City). I was also working at Texas French Bread, and knew this woman named
Laura who had a boyfriend in a band and they wanted to record, so I said,
`Yeah, okay!’ That’s how I met Mike Hall and the Wild Seeds. About that same
time, I met this guy Al and his brother who had a band called the True
Believers, and did a demo with them… The Hickoids, I did
Corntaminated. Of course, I did think these people have to be out of
their minds! They’re psycho, but I like it!
“Then I met this guy from L.A., who came around talking like a big shot, and
one of the other guys at the studio, Stan Coppinger, decided he was gonna
produce him, and put up the money for it, so I engineered the record — that
guy was Dino Lee. Dino has always entertained me. He has frequently been
shunned by the community; sometimes he’s been hailed as the king and sometimes
he’s been spit on… He’s gone through so many cycles in this town. What I
learned from him is that they’ll love you then they’ll spit you out. Whether
he’s being sick or being Frank Sinatra, he’s always entertaining. And because
Dino had this revolving door of so many people playing in his band, I knew all
these musicians.
“Besides Lone Star and TFB, I also had a flexible job at the Performing Arts
Center, but I still wasn’t making any money. I wanted to make records, but I
wanted to enjoy my music. This was the form of expression I had and if I didn’t
enjoy it, I was making a mistake with my life and I should’ve taken that
advertising job.”
What’s is a producer’s job? “Whatever you can get away with.”
Sullivan’s only half-kidding when he responds wryly to the question, but it’s
dicey enough a position that he’s quite justified in his offhand answer.
“It varies so wildly not just from producer to producer but from project to
project. Some bands are so together that all you do is let them get it on tape.
Other bands, you have to write their songs, play their instruments, tune their instruments, bail them out of jail, keep rent paid. Unfortunately, to
say, `What is a producer’s job?’ is almost un-answerable. It’s a different
question for every situation.”
“For me, personally, the producer’s job is to see that the music gets onto the
tape as honestly as possible, or at least as close to what everyone agrees on
as possible. Sometimes, you’re trying for an honest perception of an artist,
sometimes a stylized perception, and sometimes you’re trying to create
something that isn’t there — an image, a concept, a persona, a feel.”
And maybe that’s the biggest challenge for a producer, to at once enhance and
leave be. More like a jeweler, polishing rough material to a high gloss or
sometimes, knowing when to leave a gem relatively uncut. Sullivan seems to
agree though he came to that understanding of sound somewhat reluctantly.
“When you’ve made a record — and I am getting better at this –” he jokes
with self-deprecating humor, “and it’s done, the process of giving birth is
so… not traumatic but so consuming, that is takes me a good period of time to
pass before I have any perception of it. A beautiful example of something I
came to really like was Lou Ann Barton’s Read My Lips. I was working
with Antone’s, sort of the first big cool record for me, and between Paul Ray
and Derek O’Brien, we got this very ambient, traditional-sounding record.
“Now, I’d grown up listening to rock & roll, heard some blues and liked
it, but it scared me to make records like that. I loved to listen to them, but
it scared me to make them because I was afraid people might think I sucked —
that I just stuck up a mike. I had all this anxiety about what a
“good-sounding” record was versus what this Lou Ann record was.
“The manager I had when I had the gig in England — I was working for WEA with
a band called Underneath What — loved Lou Ann Barton. He’d been over here and
worked with Nick Lowe and the Thunderbirds, and was dying to hear that record.
I hadn’t even brought a copy because I was scared he wouldn’t like it and take
me off the project. I had totally bit into what Paul Ray and Derek were doing
during the recording.
“So I’m there in England and pick up Rolling Stone and saw a review of
it. The guy raved about it, specifically the sound of it! So I finally played
it for the manager and he loved it, and all of a sudden I realized that maybe
more than about 10 people liked the sound of that record.
“The remainder of [my recording work in] the Antone’s catalog has been an
exploration of that style, culminating in the Kim Wilson stuff, especially
Tigerman. I just realized this approach to recording captured something
nothing else did. An intangible feel… making things sound that way made
people feel a certain way and they played that way and that supports a sound.
That ambient sound, that traditional style of recording, I just love it now.
“Clifford [Antone] was a fanatic for that sound, and Derek has propelled it
all the way, in the sense that when you get someone like Kim, someone like
Snooky Pryor, somebody like Luther Tucker or James Cotton — these people are
not putting on acts, they are just themselves. And the more honestly I can
portray that, the more honestly you can feel what they’re trying to convey.
That approach has not only made me feel good about music, it has given me an
identity.
“I’ve always been wracked with self-doubt, and to have someone like Clifford
and Derek believe in you gives you a certain confidence to go further. Then you
stop questioning what comes naturally, and the less you interfere or impede the
process. You don’t have to consider every decision, things just happen. You
just get that groove, that flow. And when you’re talking about traditional
blues music, the concept of “assembling” something like that is absurd — it’s
the performance you’re after.
“Paul and I have developed a thing where, I make what he does better, and he
makes my thing better — I see that as a value to each other. We’ve got things
now where there’s common ground for us — he’s got his thing going and I’ve got
mine. He’s the producer but he gives me a lot of leeway. He wants me to
chase things, go to the corners and look at weird things. He can always say no.
He encourages me to throw ideas at him, and he’ll shoot down a lot of them, but
some of them will help. And I really appreciate that. It’s the shit,
y’know?”
So it would seem that
following a couple of musician friends down here has paid off big time for
Stuart Sullivan. He takes his success in stride, more willing to look for other
projects than rest on his laurels. “I’m missing some stuff that I’d like to
have more of,” he says. “I’d like to do more bluegrass, some big band stuff…
But for the most part, I am fortunate and lucky enough to have worked in so
many genres.”
And that’s almost an understatement, even by Sullivan’s standard. No sooner is
he back from Mexico City where he produced a band called Ansia, than he stepped
into the studio with Marcia Ball, after which he plans to work with John
Croslin for Meg Hentges, then the Derailers, and then, oh yeah…
“Paul just called and he’s gonna book me up after that — he’s been a Butthole
Surfer for a year but wants to be back to the studio.”
By the way, that guitarist friend of yours who went off with Mitch Ryder when
you moved down here, what happened to him?
“He came back and started playing with Joe Ely, then John Mellencamp and now
Storyville.”
Why that’s…
“David Grissom.” n
This article appears in November 8 • 1996 and November 8 • 1996 (Cover).