Sixpence None The Richer :: Russ Long
A song instantly recognizable almost anywhere in the world. You must be talking about "Kiss Me", the #1 song by Sixpence None The Richer. Russ recorded the lead vocal in his garage. Surprised? We were.
Then I had mixed an EP for a band, a Texas band, called Sixpence None The Richer, who had done a few records already and it went great. They got in a really bad record company situation, I don't remember all the details, all I know is it was unethical and unfair and they had attorneys fighting to get them out... but it was going to be a lengthy process and Steve (Taylor) became friends with Matt, and they start talking, and Matt's written all these songs and they want to put out another record. But they're not able to do one because of the record label, so Steve comes to me and says man I think we're going to do a record that we got to keep under the radar, you know we can't really let the word out that we're doing, it but we're going to without letting anybody know. Make a whole record on this band because we got attorneys fighting and Steve is helping pay to get the attorneys to get him out of the deal but until we get out of the deal we can't do anything because they'll end up, you know, confiscating all the tapes and potentially putting somebody in jail or something.
So we're looking at a place to do this record. There was a studio on Music Row that had been called Sanctuary Recording, and that's where we had tracked. Well we've done another Newsboys record after that called Take Me To Your Leader, and we had done it at Sanctuary, and Steve and I had loved working there. The way we were kind of working with The Carport is we were tracking... our plan was always go a couple of weeks to another studio big studio track there and then go back to The Carport for all of our overdubs and mix... and because it's just pretty small. It's basically a control room and one other room... plenty of space to do guitar overdubs or vocals or anything like that. So that was our routine way of working.
The Take Me To Your Leader record was the biggest at that point the biggest record Newsboys had ever had and went platinum. I didn't mix it but Tom Lord-Alge mixed it, which I was a big fan of his, so I was excited to have him mix a record and I got to hang out with him a fair amount while he was working which was great.
Then we jump in on this Sixpence None The Richer record. Well we're trying to figure out where to do it, and it turns out we were, we looked at Sanctuary, and Sanctuary has gone out of business. They've closed down it's an abandoned building, and Steve's like wait maybe we could rent the building for a month and we've already got all this gear at The Carport. We could bring in maybe buy a few more things but have enough gear to set up a tracking studio. So we go into the studio and look and it has been because somebody was looking at buying it or remodeling it but they went through and cut with knives all the fabric on the walls to see what was behind it because they were assuming that it was not going to be used, but it's pretty trash up because of all this people digging in behind walls and tearing into them to see what stuff's made out of so we set up in there we decided we run it. I can't remember if it was one or two months but we rent it for, I mean, for nothing 1500 bucks or something a month.
It’s in a terrible state to record this record, ironically though, one building, I don't know what direction it is... West of the studio is their label. So when we are sitting in the control room we are literally about 75 feet from the president of their label that if he had any idea we were recording he would have went crazy but of course we're not going to tell him. So we're like even watching when we're driving into the studio every day and just trying to keep it completely quiet. But anyway we get through the whole thing and record we rented an API sidecar RS Field, who's an amazing producer in town, used to have this, I guess it was a i don't remember if it was 12 or 16 channels but this little i think was 16 channel API sidecar that just was sounded amazing, so we rented that to track through and then supplemented it with all the other gear that we had, and then recorded the the record there and then we went back to The Carport and did the overdubs and I mixed it at The Carport.
And then Steve's pitching and Steve's got a manager he's working with and they're pitching the album, trying to get a label to pick it up. And they can't. Well they're pitching it, they have got to be careful about how they pitch it because they can't let the other label know and they're trying to keep it secret and all this stuff. I don't remember the exact timeline but I know the lawsuit or the the legal battles ended and the band was free to go so now we can do anything we want with the record, but for whatever reason we can't get another label or Steve can't get another label to pick it up.
So Steve just decides, man and he believes in this record 100%, he goes this is going to be a huge record. I'm going put it up myself, so all sudden he starts checking into funding and he starts this label. He starts a label called Squint Entertainment, and he's gonna put out, with two employees, and they're gonna put this, this record out. The record comes out, and for them it's doing great, because I don't think they'd ever sold more than 40 or 50 thousand. But it's not an instant success, but it's building slowly and slowly and I guess it got up to about 75,000 units and he got some kind of a placement in some tv show and then got some interest from some program directors. I guess they hired an independent promoter or something, but the deal was the guy told him he goes, “listen I need something, a name that I can tie to this.” He goes “it's an unknown band, unknown producer, unknown mix engineer... I need to be able to have one known factor in there somewhere so before I pitch it. I would suggest you get somebody to remix the single and that'll make it much easier to get radio to play.”
So they decide Bob Clearmountain is going to remix three of the songs, that the single, which is a song called “Kiss Me” and the next two songs which are gonna be the next singles. And Steve has always been really great about all this, and this kind of stuff and he goes, “man we're gonna get Bob to do it, man, can you come out and be there for the mix session and everything else?” I was like of course, and then my wife was not so keen on it since it was they were going out the day after we got back from our honeymoon, but Steve actually begged my wife and said. “Listen, this is a really big deal for him. You've got to let him do this…” So i ended up not going the day i got back but waiting a day and then going and got to hang out at Bob Clearmountain’s studio while he mixed, and heard amazing stories about him working with David Bowie and the Rolling Stones and Brian Adams and all these crazy great records he mixed, and he was all about it because he didn't have very many technical people come by.
He was all about telling the stories and stuff. He was just the nicest guy in the world and was real respectful of my mixes.. that he was remixing them. He listened to him ahead of time and really recreated the mix. It felt to me a lot like it was basically my mix with a way better sounding vocal and a way better sounding snare and a little bit better sounding everything else, but still he retained most of the panning and everything i had done which i thought was a real big compliment.
And so then the album goes back out and it's mixed by Bob Clearmountain, and all of a sudden, the consultant or whoever was right because everybody starts playing this “Kiss Me” like crazy. And it became a number one song relatively quick, and then went on to become a number one song in nine countries.
When I would drive to a studio in the morning every day, I would get in the car start scrolling through stations and my whole goal is to see how many different stations I could hear “Kiss Me” on before I got to the studio where I was going, and a lot of times it'd be four or five stations I would hear this song played on before I got to the studio where I was gonna be working at... which was just crazy.
And then my wife and I went on vacation to Europe, and we heard it in England, we heard it in Germany, we heard it in Austria.
And so does she feel a little bit better about the whole thing?
She felt way better about it.
I mean of all the songs it could have been to have that story.
Yeah, so it was a good one it was crazy and the thing that kept going through my head was because this had been done and that we did the vocals for that in The Carport, and so I'm in Austria and hearing this song on the radio, and all that I can think is “that vocal was recorded in my garage,” and just can't believe that we're in the other side of the world hearing a vocal that was recorded in my garage.