John Alagia

By Mr. Bonzai

At The Village in Los Angeles, John Alagia and engineer Brian Scheuble sit at the console tracking the new Liz Phair album. Not one to just camp out between two speakers, Alagia also sits at the B3 overdubbing some tasty organ licks and occasionally hoisting a bass or guitar. Checking out Alagia's credits, you'll find him listed as a producer, engineer, mixer, musician, and the artists he has influenced include Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Jason Mraz, Simon & Garfunkel, Lifehouse, Ben Folds Five, O.A.R. and Rachael Yamagata, among many others.

A resident of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay region, Alagia is tall, affable, modest, polite and — judging from the steady string of successful work he has produced during the past decade-and-a-half — one of the more musically gifted people working today. Some may call him a Renaissance man, but Alagia would most likely blush profusely if introduced as such, so we decided to have a fireside chat and see what makes the man tick.

First, where were you born, raised and educated?

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and lived there until I was 18, when I left to study at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. I graduated in 1986 with a degree in English Literature, but I was playing music throughout my school years. I was supposed to become a lawyer, but that didn't work out. I played rock 'n' roll at night, and made demos playing keyboards, guitars and drums. I had a TEAC 4-track recorder, and then moved up to a Tascam 8-track with dbx Noise Reduction. I didn't really have any training as an engineer, except for a seminar at Omega Studios in Rockville, Maryland. I learned mostly from being in studios and watching folks that had experience. Bob Dawson at Bias Studios, outside of Washington, D.C., taught me quite a bit.

(...)

How did you get from college to the minor leagues?

When I was a senior in college, I met an incoming freshman named Doug Derryberry. He was the first musical genius I ever met — plays almost every instrument, he sings, he writes — and we still work together today. We got together in college and formed a partnership called Derryberry and Alagia. (...) During our journeys on the road, we found ourselves working alongside other bands in the same towns on that circuit. That's how we met Ben Folds and Dave Matthews.

Just around that time, I had been at a bar in Washington, D.C., and had heard the Dave Matthews Band playing, with an audience of about 75 people. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and was wondering how the hell you could capture that sound on tape. They were the best thing I had ever seen live. (...) Slowly, we decided to do an official live record with a couple of studio tracks and that became Remember Two Things, their first record. It was in June 1993 that Dave asked if I would like to help produce that record. (...) I spent months on end with Dave at his house in Virginia, helping with the pre-production for Crash and Before These Crowded Streets. We'd sit around with a couple of guitars and he'd be pouring out all these little musical ideas that would eventually become some of his biggest hits like “Crash,” “Too Much,” “Crush,” “Stay” and so on. (...)

How would you compare producing live recordings with studio productions?

Live is more a job of organizing the recording event and overseeing it. From a production point of view, it's more of a surgical effort and the correcting of things. In a studio environment, you try to bring together the best team for the job. I try to make it as comfortable as possible for those who are recording.

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Speaking of inspiration, who did you look up to in your formative years?

George Martin and Phil Ramone are the two that first come to mind.

How did you get to work with Herbie Hancock and Paul Simon last week?

I worked with Art Garfunkel on a Paul Simon track about a year-and-a-half ago. It was going to be on [Simon's] Hearts and Bones, but Paul didn't feel like it quite made it. Paul thought I did a good job on it and invited me up to his house to listen to his new material he was working on with Brian Eno. I really don't know how I ended up on the Herbie session, but was secretly hoping that Paul had something to do with it. Ends up that I've worked with a few other artists who share Herbie's manager, so I went over to meet him at his house and ended up spending hours and hours with him, just listening to music and talking. We talked about technology and music, and he is such a fine man.

The track we did is for Herbie's record, and because he's touring and such a busy man, he asked me if I would produce it. We had a concept, and we were working on the charts in the hotel the night before we went into the studio. Paul came in a day early and he had some ideas. I could hardly believe it: Here I was playing Paul's guitar part with him singing, and Herbie on piano, Pino Palladino on bass, Steve Jordan on a champagne kit, and Jamey Haddad and Cyro Battista on percussion. It was a great little group of folks to have in the studio at the same time. Paul was talking about how a musician making music is similar to a preacher who is giving a sermon. Those few days in the studio were a remarkable time for me.

What is your responsibility as a producer?

To create a team of people that will achieve the best results for the artist. You've got to have mutual respect with the people you work with. Music is a wonderful mystery, and the making of it, the process, should never be taken too seriously. Focus and have a good time at it.

Ideally, a great artist and producer challenge each other and together yield great results. I respect the artists I work with, and if there is any disagreement on the creative side, I'll most likely bow to them, as their talent is what brought me to them. They are the reason we producers and engineers do what we do. No producer has the right to ever say he made an artist, at least not a great artist. Helpful, yes, but not a maker.