The Michael Carpenter Interview

One of the first record reviews I ever wrote was of a Michael Carpenter record. I've been a fan since his Not Lame debut Baby. I've since then gotten to know Michael personally, and let me tell you, the warmth and spirit on his records reflects the man in person. Michael is an open and engaging conversationalist, who can opine on a variety of topics. Recently, Michael teamed up with Mark Moldre of Hitchcock's Regret, and they formed The Supahip. Their debut disc, Seize The World, is a fun and friendly pop-rock record that is both energetic and relaxed – it might be as fun to listen to as it was (see below) to make. (Check out my review in the August 2005 Fufkin, if you get the chance.)

On the occasion of this new album, I thought it would be a good time to throw some questions at Mr. Carpenter. This is an e-mail interview – I would have liked to do a live interview, but as I've learned, once Michael and I get to talking, it might have been hours. Between the phone bill and transcribing it – well, it would have been a bit too much. In Part I of my interview, we focus on The Supahip record. In Part Two, I'll fire Michael questions about his solo career and other thoughts on music and life in general. – Mike Bennett

Fufkin: Let's start with the basics -- how long have you known Mark (Moldre) and tell us a little bit about his band, Hitchcock's Regret.

Michael (MC): I met Mark a few years back when the label we were both signed to, Laughing Outlaw, thought I might be a good producer for Hitchcock's Regret and their second album. Occasionally in life you meet people who you just know you have a very natural bond with, and that was how it happened for Mark and I, musically and personally... we became good friends very quickly. Come to think of it, we never really spent a lot of time talking about records we liked etc.. we just seemed to 'understand' each other and I guess assumed that we had similar musical likes... a very easy, natural link.

So I produced Hitchcock's Regrets' second album Her Life In Reverse back in I think 2002, and I still think it is one of my best production jobs. It gets very close to the sort of perfect record I've always dreamed of being a part of, and I'm extremely proud of it, from my point of view as a producer and as an important record at the time for the band. It fused our love of great sounding records, the occasional Beatles/60's reference, mixed with Crowded House and Simon and Garfunkel, with just enough edgy weirdness to make it a very well rounded album. The band have gone through some significant personel changes since, and have just released their great new album Endless Intermission on which I produced 3 tracks.

Fufkin: So how did this project come about?

MC: Like many things that seem to happen in my life, they start off as some sort of off hand joke. Mark and I started talking about the idea of making a record, but it initially seemed really unlikely, with him being committed to Hitchcock's Regret and me in the midst of juggling a solo career, my
own studio and production duties. But we kept on bringing it up, and started purely by accident talking about some of the parameters we'd like to make a record under. Both Hitchcock Regrets and my stuff tends to be quite 'produced' but we both loved that whole late 60's/early 70's stripped back thing.. think The Band, or the White Album, or Ram, or Emmit Rhodes, or to update it, the first Finn Brothers record and the vibe of Ron Sexsmith records. We started talking about the idea of doing a record where we consciously limited ourselves. Just a few mics on the drums, no doubling of guitars, make decisions early, not huge multi-track extravaganzas. We kept on talking about it, and then thought of the idea of writing, recording and mixing a song a day, and that seemed to really give the project a life. For both of us it was an intriguing idea, and something we'd both never done before. So we set aside a day to see what happens, without any real expectations. The album's opening track 'Like Love' was born that day, and 13 days over 14 months later, the album was finished.

Fufkin: How did the name come about (and I'll be honest, I'm not as keen on the name as I am about the record...).

MC: Yeah... band names are funny things. We had to call it something, and we wanted it to encapsulate a bit of fun and the irony of the fact that this project was most definitely NOT hip... I mean, it's totally self indulgently retro. I'd always been a fan of bands with 'Super' in their name.. I loved the name Supergrass, and that'd been floating around my head for a while. And I remember being at a certain point in the record where I really felt it was getting very good, and that some of these songs may have a chance on indie radio if the planets aligned correctly.. just because they were so obtuse and in our minds quite funny in approach. So I started thinking about how people perceive things on indie radio as being 'hip' and how strange it would be for us to be 'hip' with this odd little self indulgent project. So one day I just threw the idea of 'The Supahippe' out there, and I got to like it very much, and I think I kinda forced it on Mark, who is a very relaxed guy about these things, especially when I get so insistent on things. But people started miss-pronouncing it as 'Superhippy' so we changed it to how it is now -- The Supahip. I actually really like the name a
lot... I think it's very tongue in cheek and a little bit ironic and sarcastic and cheeky, and a funny little name. Most people seem to get the joke, but of course others think we're serious and miss the point of the whole thing, which spoils the effect completely.

Fufkin: You mentioned the Finn Brothers, and your album definitely has a similar vibe. How deeply did you and Mark discuss your approach to the record? How did this compare to the dozens of other records you've worked on?

MC: I've never done anything like this... it was totally immediate and in a lot of ways was unique in the fact that the line between writing, recording and mixing was totally blurred.. it became all part of the same process. In terms of how much we discussed it.. we just knew that records like Abbey Road and most of the White Album were done on 8 track, so we started off very aware that we'd need to take a very different approach. On the first track we tried, 'Like Love' there were two mics on the drums, an acoustic track, a bass track, a Leslie guitar solo, some Wurlitzer, our two vocals and a few BVs. I think we ended up using about nine recording tracks, and we both felt incredibly impressed with the way we sounded within these limitations. So over the first few songs we just developed a way of thinking that carried through the record. Things like coming together in the morning to write the song, then once it's written we set a tempo, then we do an acoustic guitar track that is always the final acoustic, then we do the lead and backing vocals... again always the final ones, and THEN we build the track around it. It revealed a very different way of approaching the production, with the layering only ever serving the finished acoustic guitar and vocals we had as our foundation. And it was wonderful to commit to a sound early on. For example, once the drums were recorded, they were submixed to one channel, and THAT was the drum mix for the rest of the song recording. Very immediate, very instinctive and totally different to the way every other record I've made is made.

Fufkin: Did you both come in with pre-existing songs? How much was written in the studio?

MC: I had nothing written before the project started, although I do have a funny little story. I was so freaked out the night before our first day about the fact that we had NO SONGS ready before our first day recording, that I had a dream during the night of a song Mark and I wrote together in my dream. I woke up only enough to remember the basics of it, and sang a bit of it into my mobile phone and jotted down a few words, then went back to sleep. That song became the second song we did "Ultra Black Light".

But apart from that, we both just bought in little snippets initially. Mark had a few bits for "Like Love" and we fleshed it out on that first morning. That was pretty similar with "Tulsa" although I think that was more complete in Mark's songbook. Then after a few songs, we started to write things specifically for the project. Personally, I was pretty emptied out before we started the album. I'd just finished my Rolling Ball record and wasn't thinking of writing a song for a while. But once we got into the groove of the record I started to come up with a few things that I'd bring in and we'd usually finish them together. I'd say about half the album is songs we fleshed out together, and the other half is things we wrote individually with the project in mind, making them a kind of 'spiritual' co-write!

Fufkin: Were there any surprises as you worked on this – things that came out of you two as a team that you didn't expect?

MC: I have to say that the thing neither of us expected, and the thing that I believe is most important about the album, and this project, is that we had so many laughs.. so much time just laughing our heads off at what we were making. The whole process, from day one to the very end, was about as close as I can imagine coming to musical bliss. That was very suprising to both of us.. there's usually some element of anxiety when you make a record, whether as an artist or producer. But not with The Supahip. We just basked in how much fun we were having, and it spurred us on to become more adventurous... we basically were trying to make each other laugh most of the time.

Tracks like "Tulsa" are a direct result of us purely entertaining ourselves. And there were a lot of wonderful moments where the feeling of making something special, not only for our careers but for our lives and our life experiences was tangible. It was a very important album for us, as we enjoyed being creative in such a definite way. The thing that amuses me most though about the fact that we laughed so much, is that thematically, this is some of my most desperate stuff. "Hanging By A Thread", "Everything's Alright", "Something's Gotta Give" and "The Radio", for example, all reflect a period of great difficulty for me personally. It seems strange to be having such a good time making the record whilst having such a difficult time with so many other things.

But to properly answer your question, I'd add that we both did push each other into territory we were unfamilar with. We didn't expect to make a record that was as obtuse as it is in spots... things like "The Radio" or "Falling Backwards" are such strange little songs. I knew our voices would blend well...I'd gotten Mark to sing on my version of "If I Needed Someone" for a Beatles tribute album I was part of, and we sounded great together, but I didn't expect us to fall into such a natural compliment to each other, as both singers and writers. I was suprised that we both fell into the very distinct idea of what The Supahip became so easily... I expected there to be more ego, or more desire to put a specific stamp on the record, but the opposite happened... we both seemed to just surrender to it, which I found very surprising, in a very pleasing way

Fufkin: Who's idea was covering Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't It Be Good?"

MC: From very early on we thought it would be a good idea to do a cover for the record. We wanted to avoid doing an obvious 60's track, as we knew people were going to attack us for being retro anyway... not that that bothered us at all. So we needed to find a song that we could both sing on, that we could reinterpret in our style. One day, for some reason "Wouldn't It Be Good" came to Mark.. I think he heard it somewhere. The minute he told me the idea, I knew that was the song we'd do... I loved that song when I was younger, and knew it very well, and it had the perfect arrangement for our voices. So we waited until we'd done six or seven songs and then had a go at it. I think it turned out great, though it was funny because it took both of us a little time to like it. The day of recording that track felt strange because we didn't spend the morning writing... we already had the song, and left that day feeling a bit underwhelmed. I listen to it now and don't know what our problem was... it turned out really well.

Fufkin: On a number of songs (including the Kershaw song), you and Mark trade off vocals -- did that just come about naturally, or did you try different approaches on those songs?

MC: I think as we went along we started to write things with the other in mind a bit. I know I did on "Everything's Alright" and "Hanging By A Thread". But also after the first few songs I remember we talked about how every song shouldn't have the 'you do the verse and I do the chorus' thing. That was way too obvious and not the intention of what we were trying to do. So you have tracks like "Something's Gotta Give" or "The Radio" where I'm singing the lead. The irony on those two tracks though is that Mark backing vocals are so great that they're the highlight on both songs! We rarely tried different approaches... actually, we never did. We had a good sense of what bits each of us would sing best, and very much played to our strengths. Again, it just seemed like a very simple obvious process. Choosing who sung what was no different to choosing who played what or what guitar we'd pick off the wall to use.

Fufkin: Any disagreements between you two? Any songs that didn't make it out of the studio alive?

MC: Never. Not one disagreement. We'd often hear things a different way, but rather than just mindlessly shooting down an idea, we'd just try it out, and most of the time it worked. It seemed silly to throw out a perfectly good idea without at least hearing it, and because we were working so quickly, it never took long to hear if something would work. And everything always seemed to work... never any real dead ends. There was one song we demoed very quickly that was one of Mark's called "Photograph Of Your Mouth", but that didn't get rejected... we just didn't feel the need to record another song for the album. So it'll pop up at some point.

Fufkin: Do you think there will be future Supahip projects?

MC: I've enjoyed the project so much that I may never make another solo record again! We're both commited to the idea, and although we're calling it a 'side project', it's not really. It's going to be an ongoing thing. We do our first live shows in September, and I expect we'll be in the studio again before year's end.

Fufkin: Has this project caused you to change your perspective in any way in records you'll make in the future?

MC: You know... I could make records like this all day every day and be happy. Unfortunately, fashion and an expectation to hear things a certain way these days means I have to be aware of the way people 'expect' to hear modern production. But elements of this process will stay with me.. the idea of getting things moving quickly, and capturing things as soon as they're happening. I've always been a quick engineer, but nowadays i like to be ready to do something within a minute or two of an idea being suggested. This was definitely the way we worked, and I loved how it kept the process moving and feeding itself.

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