Producer Profile: Phil Ek [Fleet Foxes, Modest Mouse, Jack Endino, Built to Spill, The Shins]
Phil Ek’s latest release as producer is Fleet Foxes’ Crack Up, just out as of mid-June of 2017.
Casual music fans, some musicians—even some producers themselves—struggle with defining the word “producer”. It’s never the same job twice. The goals, the methods, the circumstances, the talent required or brought to bear is different every time.
To deal with this, we often rely on anecdotes and stereotypes: A producer is a Rick Rubin-like sage whose positive influence is felt, mainly through a series of long pauses and pensive beard strokes before offering minimalist advice.
Or it’s a Phil Spector/Martin Hannett Svengali-type. He stands in the control room, arms crossed and eyes closed, listening intently to an exhausted band doing yet another take of their best song. When they finish and look towards him expectantly, almost pleadingly, he opens his eyes, shakes his head slowly, and says just one word into the talkback mic: “Again”.
Phil Ek is no such stereotype. He has little trouble defining his job, or how it might change from record to record. His influence is clear, direct, and often quantifiable, as bands he’s worked with multiple times–like Fleet Foxes, Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, or The Shins– might be inclined to tell you.
“The main job of the producer,” Ek tells me, “is to make sure that whatever is being worked on—whether it’s your idea or the artists’…that the work is being done the best way possible, and that those ideas are the best thing for the songs, and for the record as a whole.”
Evolution of Suburban Rock Kid
Ek comes from the small town of Bremerton, Washington, a ferry-ride away from Seattle. He ran live sound at Seattle’s Off Ramp club (now El Corazon) while still in school. He spent several years assisting the preeminent no-nonsense curmudgeon of Seattle rock and roll, Jack Endino, at Word of Mouth studios.
In the days when there still was a vibrant music economy to speak of in the Pacific Northwest, and back when bands had to pay for a producer and studio just to record a demo, Ek “worked with anyone who came through the door”
“Anyone,” he told an interviewer for Seen | Heard | Known. “I recorded weird Grateful Dead cover bands, blues, really bad white hip hop.’
Phil Ek calls his younger self a “typical suburban rock kid”, inheriting passions for The Beatles, Creedence and Johnny Cash from his mother, and for KISS and AC/DC from an older brother. Later on, as he began to play in more bands himself, he branched out to Metallica, The Misfits and Slayer, The Smiths, The Cure and Joy Division.
“I had too many favorite records growing up!” Ek says. “I’m not exactly sure when I [started to] appreciate production of records, but I guess one is just drawn to what sounds and feels good to you. As I got more and more into music, that’s when I became more and more interested in the way [records] sounded, their production, and then ultimately, how they were made.”
Phil Ek, pictured in a 2011 video interview with Napster/Rhapsody. Click through for video.
After high school, Ek attended the Art Institute of Seattle, simultaneously working his live sound gig at The Off Ramp.
A teacher introduced him to Jack Endino, and Ek spent a few years assisting Endino at the epicenter of an exponentially-growing music scene, watching and learning while helping out on records for Nirvana, Hole, and The Supersuckers.
“Working with Jack all those years ago was huge for me!” Ek tells me. “He was so kind and helpful, and a huge mentor to me. He’s a very intelligent and talented guy and he certainly didn’t need me there assisting him, but he let me, and [he] taught me so many things. As a 19 or 20 year-old kid, that was priceless. I knew so little before working with him, and just watching him and how he worked and what he did, and why was amazing to me.”
As Ek’s skills grew, so did his opportunities. Friend Chris Takino asked Ek to record the band Butterfly Train for his label Up Records. The band’s leader, Brett Nelson, played bass in another band called Built to Spill, which led to a fateful meeting one day when Built to Spill frontman Doug Martsch stopped by the studio.
In a 2002 Tape Op interview Ek said, “I didn’t really know Doug and he came in the studio… I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ He told me that Brett was the bass player in Built to Spill and they were in Seattle doing shows. He had just got done doing the first Halo Benders record. We just kind of hit it off. We were talking about music and he asked me to do the Built to Spill record. We recorded what became There’s Nothing Wrong With Love a month later.”
Released in September of 1994, There’s Nothing Wrong With Love marks the beginning of the ascent of both band and producer. They’ve worked together a total of six different times, and today the album ranks number 24 on Pitchfork’s “Top 100 Albums of the 90s” list.
Since then, Ek has become a mainstay of the Northwest music scene, producing multiple albums for several bands, with Built to Spill being just one of those high-profile return clients.
“I love working with bands multiple times,” he says. “When we go back into the studio again we are always trying to outdo ourselves, both for our personal enjoyment and to just simply make it better than the last time. I can’t say that it’s a communicated thing, or that there’s pressure to do so, other than just [wanting] to continue to grow.”
Helpfulness Blues
There may not be a signature “Phil Ek sound”, but artists he’s worked with can often pinpoint where and how Ek has produced them, and nod to the positive results.
In a 2004 Pitchfork interview with The Shins’ James Mercer for instance, the interviewer asks Mercer about the ”more present vocals” on their then-new Chutes Too Narrow album. Mercer responds:
“That’s largely Phil Ek. I tend to get a little bit shy, and hide my vocals, but Phil wouldn’t let me! We would have conversations where I would say, ‘are you sure the vocals should be that loud?’”
A 2012 Rolling Stone photo diary for The Walkmen, who recorded their 2012 album Heaven with Ek at legendary Seattle studios Avast and Bear Creek, features a photo of Ek with a caption from the band:
“There’s Phil Ek. He’s incredibly good at what he does. He played a big role in helping us make what we think is the best record we’ve ever made. Thanks, Phil!” Later, they mention how ”boring” the mixing process is because Ek is “so good” that they don’t even really need to be there for it. When asked about Ek in a 2002 Tape Op interview, Doug Martsch said: “We really do have a rapport that I don’t have with anyone else musically.”
But perhaps the best view of Ek’s production prowess can be seen through the lens of his ongoing relationship with the band Fleet Foxes. Ek first met bandleader Robin Pecknold when the latter was still a teenager.
Ek took the band into the studio to record demos for their debut album, but a lack of funding limited him to a sort of producer/engineer-by-proxy role after that. For their first album, he lent the band equipment and gave them instructions for how to set it up properly in their own recording environments, then mixed the results a year later.
When it came time to make their sophomore album, Helplessness Blues, the band had become stars and wanted to go bigger, working with Ek there from start to finish. It was a production that tested the meddle of everyone involved including, and perhaps especially, the band’s leader, Robin Pecknold.
Pecknold isolated himself in a cabin in Port Townsend, right by the furthest tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, to write and demo 9 new songs—eventually scrapping all but two pieces of music from these secluded writing sessions. Pecknold wanted to record exclusively with vintage gear. He wanted his vocal takes to be done quickly and live, even including mistakes–if they happened in the natural flow of things. He was insistent on recording everything to tape.
In a 2011 Sound on Sound interview about the album, Ek’s focus on efficiency and execution shines through. He didn’t fully embrace Pecknold’s ideas, but he didn’t shoot them all down either, instead finding the middle ground in most cases—a place where the bandleader could feel good about the sounds and the choices made, while the producer could feel good about the quality of the record being produced.
Pecknold got his analog tape, but Ek also recorded everything digitally. Ek restricted his use of EQ, in-line with the band’s vision for “more natural” sounds. Guitar tracks recorded early on (tracks which Pecknold hoped might be considered final) were re-recorded later—and better—Ek might add. And the “natural-and-mistake-filled-vocals” idea was nixed altogether.
“We’re not keeping mistakes,” Ek told Sound on Sound.” Robin is a young, excited kid about music and recording, so he will romanticize the idea of going into the studio and think, ‘I’m just gonna sing!’ and, ‘Ah, I don’t care about mistakes, they don’t really matter.’ The reality is they do matter, and he knows that.”
Instead of doing multiple vocal takes for each song, Ek did one master take, with Pecknold punching in and out for different sections. “The way I like to work with a singer, production-wise, is to get them on a path. Singing at a certain volume with a certain clarity. Getting the general presentation and then guiding them through the process.”
Ek also had to be flexible in considering how his own choices served the record. He tried multiple mics and singer configurations, whether one by one or in a group for the band’s thick vocal harmonies. At Bear Creek Studio he chose to use the Neve BCM10 instead of their more oft-used Trident TSM desk. And late in the process, he made a tough decision to scrap a mixing session at New York’s Sear Sound that ended up going nowhere.
“Four or five days in, it was only sort of seeming like it was sounding cool, which is not a good sign,” he says. “I remember saying to Robin, ‘I don’t think this is really happening for us… That triggered his thoughts and he was like, ‘Oh well, I think there’s a few of these other things that still need to be changed musically with the overdubs.’ So eventually that gave us a chance to go back to Seattle, finish ‘Bedouin Dress’ and actually add ‘Battery Kinzie’, which hadn’t been recorded at all.”
That record was eventually finished in Seattle at Avast studio. The final ledger showed that the band had worked on the album for about a year straight and used five different studios, figures that often signal a troubled production with mixed results in the end. Not so with Ek at the helm. Helplessness Blues was nominated for a GRAMMY for best Folk Album and peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200.
“I think it’s awesome,” Ek told Sound on Sound. “The basic cheerleading thing that I did the entire time was I said, ‘No matter how long it takes to make this record, it’s an awesome record that needs to be made. So if we need to spend ‘X’ amount of time on it, it doesn’t matter, we’ve just gotta do it.’ I feel like we made a really cool record that’s important for many different reasons. We worked hard on it, and I think it shows.”
The Right Kind of Ego
I ask Ek what other producers he likes, if any. He doesn’t really follow other producers. I ask what his favorite productions of his own are, or if he thinks the general public should revisit any specific one. He doesn’t single any one record out—he “likes them all”. I ask him if there’s anyone he still wants to make a record with but hasn’t been able to yet. He answers “Maybe Neil Young?”
Phil Ek seems happy to be Phil Ek, to have the career he’s had, and to occupy the space he does in making the records he does. He’s a craftsman through and through, and like many a craftsman he’s not above some sense of pride. “I like all the records I’ve done for a million different reasons, and of course pride is a part of it. Pride is a part of everything everyone does… ya know?”
His might not be the type of pride we’re used to seeing from artists—a pride in one’s self and one’s own ideas—but rather in the ability to make a meaningful contribution to something larger than oneself.
In his Seen/ Heard/ Known interview Ek says, “You have to be doing it for the right reasons—because you believe in it. Believe the artists are talented, can make a great record, and that you can push them to be the best. And you have to really love the music. My name is on the record same as theirs. That is my name saying, ‘Yes I did this and I believe in it and we worked hard on it.’”
Some of Ek’s newest work can be heard on the brand new Fleet Foxes record, Crack Up. The band produced the album themselves, but Ek mixed it and helped with some editing and mastering decisions. “It’s an incredible record with sounds and songs that are connected, as well as departures to older records, but I feel it’s a complete linage to Helplessness,” he says.
Through all the changes the industry has seen since its last zenith in the early 1990s, what still excites Ek about making records?
“All of it excites me,” he says, “still does. Almost 27 years after I started making records it’s all exciting. The music, the bands and how they work or don’t work well together, getting cool sounds, working on ideas, shaping a record… all of it.”
Blake Madden is an author and musician who lives in Seattle.
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