Brooklyn’s Newest Studio: Anthony Gallo Opens Virtue and Vice for Production, Tracking, Mixing

GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN: There’s no substitute for experience, a fact that Anthony “Rocky” Gallo is taking firmly into account as he expands the buzzing Brooklyn studio scene by another degree. His addition to the Broken Land’s soundscape: Virtue and Vice, a just-right room that he’s growing in Greenpoint.

Gallo has set up shop as he exits his position of Chief Engineer at Manhattan’s Cutting Room Studios, his professional home since 2003 (he was also briefly partnered in Williamsburg’s 1.6 studios, before it changed ownership and became Three Egg). In the process of working with major names like John Legend, Carrie Underwood, Jon Bon Jovi, Yeasayer, The XX, and KRS1, along with scores of indie artists, Gallo became convinced that there was a need for a New York City tracking/mixing room that wasn’t too big, and wasn’t too small.

Instead of investing in a massive gear list, Gallo has stocked Virtue and Vice with a tight but superior inventory of the components he knows best, and wired them into a naturally light space that facilitates comfort and creative flow. Filling out 800 sq. ft. in a Greenpoint commercial loft building close to the L train, Rocky G believes V&V can excel and succeed in NYC.

What kind of space were you looking for to go into business?
The big thing to me was creating an accurate, great-sounding listening environment. I was looking for windows with good light, a very clean design and affordability. This building had all of those things — and I spent two or three years looking for a room before I settled on one.

My theory is that the old way of making records is completely dead: control rooms, live rooms, machine rooms…the way they did it for 40 years isn’t working any more. I wasn’t trying to create this super-isolated environment with a control room and a live room – instead there’s a large vocal booth with a large control/main space. I was talking to a colleague who said he thought that around $500 a day with engineer is the magic number, and that was my main goal.

In Brooklyn, that approach can work out well for my clients and for me – you can break even without having to be booked every day of the month. I also have two or three other guys that come in, and they can charge a little less if I’m working in Nashville. It’s a flexible thing.

What niche did you design Virtue and Vice to fill?
The reality is that artists spend a day or two doing drums — that’s what it’s been for most of the records I’ve done. So why spend money for a buildout and treatments for a room you’ll use one or two days a month? For the gear, it’s the same thing: I’m buying pres and compressors that will never go down in value. If you’re going to buy something, you should never have to say later on, “That was stupid.”

So really the idea is to get as clean of a signal as you can get for overdubs and guitar tracking. This is a place where you can set the amp up, run the speaker cable and actually hear what you’re doing — all the things you should be capable of that a lot of people ignore, as far as the indie market goes.

Good feng shui was obviously on the top of your mind when laying this studio out.
A mentor of mine told me once that a great couch can mean more than a $15,000 microphone. As sad as that is for me as a gear head, I’ll realize that that’s true, and I’ll stop myself from buying a new compressor all the time.

As soon as you can make a client feel that they’re not in a recording studio, and feel like they’re in a living room instead and completely relax, they can focus on doing work. The studio environment freaks people out. Back in the day, that was the office for studio musicians, but now it’s a rarity. Making records might happen more often, but a lot less time is spent in the process.

So I was going for a more comfortable environment, rather than saying I had three Telefunken microphones — it’s the reality that it doesn’t matter as much as the feel of the place. Not to say the equipment can’t be good, but I realized that where to put your energy was in a really clean, comfortable environment. Because 90% of the time the project will require one microphone – three tops – for overdubs.

You expect to be doing a lot of mixing here as well, right?
Mixing is most of the work that I do, as far as my clients go, but production, mixing, and overdubs are all my main personal workload. When it comes to mixing, for me the Dangerous 2-BUS has definitely added a huge dimension to the stereo image. I come out of Pro Tools HD3 into the Neve 1081 channels or compressors – which I use like a strip of the console — then back into the Dangerous again. The amount of clarity and overall fatness the combination creates was a huge, noticeable difference.

You’ve been steadily building up an impressive portfolio in NYC and beyond. What would you say is driving your evolution as an engineer/mixer?
The whole Manhattan music production scene has changed more in the last in the last year or two than in the previous twenty years. The way people are releasing and recording records is transforming: Now you can work in Pro Tools on your laptop without an interface. Five years ago that was never even thought of – you were carrying around an Mbox at least.

As far as my approach, I figured out how you can make a record for very little overhead, and still make it sound really great. You should be able to make a major release for $10-15K. Those live KEXP sessions at the Cutting Room really opened my eyes. Great bands like Yeasayer were coming in and saying, “This sounds better than the record,” and I was thinking, “I just spent 25 minutes on this, and you must have spent at least two months making your record. What’s wrong here?”

So you don’t need everything in the world — just experience and doing it time and time again. The theory is just you knowing what you want to hear in the end. I would love to work on a big console today, but I just started to realize you don’t need it. It’s really not important. And time after time I found myself using the desk less and less, based on the short amount of time I had with the client.

On that note, what type of clients are you appealing to with Virtue and Vice?
Pretty much any stage of their project. If someone’s looking to do a record and they hit us up, we’ll find a place to do the drums for the day. We take a strategic approach to production, rather than saying, “Show up for your first day, we’ll set mics up, and see what happens.”

As a staff engineer, for example, I was constantly seeing that people were coming in with problematic drums – they didn’t have their time signature noted, their tempos weren’t set, etc…. I’d rather go over that with my clients in advance, because it will make things challenging for me if I’m the one mixing it down the road. I think the best thing to do is spend some time before you come in, so you make the right decisions before you go in to work.

Overall, the target audience is someone working on a budget, but who still needs to make something really great. I know I’m not the cheapest, but I definitely have the experience and probably work faster than most people, being the product of a Manhattan studio. When your client is getting charged up to $175 an hour you have to be fast and not think twice about what you’re doing. And that’s how I was trained.

You had your choice of boroughs and neighborhoods to set out a shingle. What’s going on in Greenpoint that made you select  it as the home for Virtue and Vice?
A lot of my colleagues are in Manhattan and they’re saying to me, “You’re going to have trouble getting people out here (in Greenpoint).” Some of them say it’s like going to New Jersey, but I tell them that all my clients live out there.

The only people still living in Manhattan are label heads, and how much longer will they be working at that label? The clientele has really moved out here, and the people that have been making music here for the last ten years are growing up, and getting much more developed in what they’re creating. The people doing this for a living are not afraid to spend money to get the right person to do the job. Young guys see how it’s going, and how records as are being made.

Brooklyn’s Greenpoint and Bushwick areas are becoming a mecca for making music: The artists are there, and the studios are there because it’s less expensive to operate. The whole Manhattan recording scenario to me seems bizarre: high rent and a small room to work in. The people who are doing volume recoding are out in Brooklyn. There’s a lot of great places coming up, with guys coming from Manhattan studios who are super-experienced and putting together really tight rooms, like Kevin Blackler who came from Sony (and established Blackler Mastering in Brooklyn). I think the mastering guys like him have it the best, because they can be anywhere.

There are a lot of options already for artists and producers working at that level you just mentioned, as we’re sure you aware. What made you decide to look past that and open another NYC audio facility?
My next door neighbor across the hall is doing the same thing in his off-time, and when I moved into this building, he basically said the same thing, “Another studio?” I said, “I know…”  But this is not a hobby for me. This is the way I live. It’s the way I purchased my equipment: I didn’t give up my old job and make a bunch of miscellaneous purchases with my severance package. I learned how to make records from guys doing it for 20 years, and then I made records in order to buy this gear.

Yes, it seems like the market is flooded with studio choices. and I know a lot of great guys are getting out of doing it, because its flooded with more kids coming out of recording school than there are bands to record, and the young kids are the ones doing it for a six-pack and a pizza. It’s a funny thing, how many people are opening up studios: They think it’s affordable –  that they can charge $300 a day in exchange for making an investment of $15,000 and make it right back.

But it’s not an easy job, and it’s not for somebody who’s in it for the short term. I think I’m finally getting a real grasp of what to do and how to do it, and I’m talking to people who have been doing it for 25 years who are getting their minds blown with the recent developments, and changing what they’re doing.

There’s always been people who are good talkers and will get the gig, but this is a long, slow, steady course. The more you put in, the more you’ll get out of it, and the better records you’ll make. That’s the best way to approach it.

– David Weiss

New York Summer Music Junkie Contest: Are You SuperGlued?

Concert season is here! In mid-July SuperGlued, a community that brings people together around live music, will be kicking off the New York Summer Music Junkie Contest.

The contest will bring an additional dynamic to the concert experience as music fans will be able to earn points throughout their concert experience, from buying tickets and Twitter updates, to blog reviews and media uploads. The SuperGlued leaderboard keeps track of the points and those concertgoers with the top scores will win weekly prizes throughout summer.

Prizes include CMJ Music Marathon badges and tickets to some of the biggest shows of the summer such as The XX, Morning Benders and Belle & Sebastian.

The music junkie to accumulate the most points will earn the grand prize package that includes a Brooklyn Bowl 365 pass, and a guest DJ spot on the Seaport Music Show on East Village Radio.  The Brooklyn Bowl 365 pass will provide the winner and a friend with free admission to shows at the Brooklyn Bowl for one whole year.

Founded by Rush Doshi and Tom Plunkett (CTO of Gawker) in June 2009, SuperGlued’s mission is to create a place where concertgoers can come together and share their experiences, photos and videos, as well as connect before and after a show.

Rob Shore: Maximizing Music Business Management

MIDTOWN, MANHATTAN: How do YOU manage? If you’re a band or solo artist working above a certain level, then you do it with a business manager like Rob Shore.

Straight from Madison Avenue, Rob Shore and his team oversees monetary matters for a diverse roster of 35 artists, including As I Lay Dying, Flyleaf, K’naan/, LCD Soundsystem,  New Found Glory, Portishead, Slipknot, The XX, and Wolfmother.

Shore opened his own practice after spending 16 years – 1988-2004 – handing the business management for all the acts on Sanctuary Management.  During that time, Shore saw the Power of Metal firsthand with juggernauts like Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, Poison, and Dream Theater to look over.

SonicScoop got a reminder of why they call it the music biz – as in business – when we sat down with Shore.

Q: You’re quick to stress that you’re a business manager, as opposed to a creative manager. What do you mean by that?

A: Although Business Managers and Creative Managers work closely together, they’re two totally different jobs.  Creative Management is 24/7, there’s a lot of guiding the artist and Creative Managers weigh in on every decision in the artist’s career.  Most of these are grey areas, with no absolute right or wrong choice, like deciding which producer to use for a record, or which singles, what video director, or what record label to sign with.  These are primarily a Creative Manager’s job, and none are particularly easy choices.

That’s the thing I like about business management: There’s not a lot of grey area, it’s mostly black and white.  We work within the deals that have already been made, so, for example, when money is due from a merch company or publisher, the Business Manager makes sure that the funds collected and spent are contractually correct and in the best interest of the artist.  The Business Manager oversees the finances of touring, merchandising, publishing royalties and keeps artists’ financial interests in their mind at all times.

Q: What are some additional differences between business and creative managers?

A: My analogy is that a creative manager is like a heart surgeon, and a business manager is like a dentist. It’s not as exciting to be a dentist — but no one calls a dentist at 4 AM to have their teeth cleaned. A heart surgeon gets called 24/7.

Unlike the Creative Manager, the role of business manager in most industries isn’t necessary, because the owners are usually the ones who look after their money.  In our case, it’s often not in the interests of an artist to oversee what we do because it’s not an efficient use of their time – and can be almost impossible while on tour.

For example: Is it more important that an artist find the proper insurance, or focus on songwriting, which will probably lead to more success than making sure his insurance is in place?  Both are important, but many artists find the best use of their time is to hire someone else to deal with things like insurance, so they’re free to create.   This defines what we do, why we’re necessary.

Nothing we do is brain surgery, but there are tricks of the trade: every country has different touring laws for different bands, and unless you know how to minimize taxes, you’ll pay full rate everywhere you go, and it makes it almost impossible to tour on a tight budget.

Q: So, in contrast, what are some of the things that a business manager handles?

A: That includes artist royalties, merchandising, reviewing deals, and making sure the tour runs smoothly so the artist is not missing out on any revenue that’s coming to them.

We make sure that taxes are paid properly, from the IRS to foreign states. We basically protect the artist from any kind of financial situation. It’s incredibly humbling that we’re trusted with tens of millions of dollars belonging to these artists. But we’re certainly not a bank. My practice is a word-of-mouth boutique, more user-friendly and service-oriented.

Q: If I’m an artist reading this, my question would be, “At what point do I require a business manager?”

A: What usually happens is that we are brought in when a record deal is signed. The creative manager may have brought them to the record company level, but a business manager isn’t needed until there’s money to manage. So in the band’s early days, where they’re playing for $200 a night, my services probably aren’t necessary.

I’m usually brought in after manager and lawyer are in place when either a record deal or tour is about to happen. The lawyer has worked on the deals, the deals go through and entities, like a LLC or partnership are set up, depending on the individual’s need. After that, we usually get involved. The point of doing this in this way is to get bands in the right position.

It’s not a bad place to get involved. It could be two to three years into the process, when the artist is ready to go to the next level. But there’s definitely times when it would have been better for us to get called in sooner. For example, if a band has been signed, and if they’ve done a tour already, things may have gotten messy. Tours happen, funds are distributed, years go by and tax records get confusing. It’s difficult to recreate what happened in a business after the fact. That’s why I’d rather be involved from the first tour on.

Q: Can you give us some specific examples of mistakes like that made by young bands?

A: Here’s what not to do: Sometimes you go into a club and get paid $200, and they ask for the lead singer’s Social Security number, so they can say they paid someone. After two years there’s a ton of 1099’s with this guy’s Social Security number, and the perception in the eyes of the IRS is that he’s earned tens of thousands of dollars.

The reality is that 99% of those tours are losing money such that no taxes would be due. It’s important to keep track of expenses so they’re not stuck with a large tax bill. In that way, it’s never too early to set up a partnership or an LLC because it’s much easier from a tax standpoint for those things to flow through an entity. Keeping track of receipts and being organized is a good thing to do from Day One.

Another mistake made by young bands is trying to negotiate deals without the input of a lawyer or business management.  These people are just licking their chops when they’re dealing with a band that’s not represented well.  As exciting as it is to have a record deal it could be an albatross for many years if executed improperly.

Q: That’s very valuable. How about another piece of advice?

A: My personal pet peeve is that people don’t protect themselves with insurance. Once a crew person had an insurance policy finish on a Friday and a new one start on a Monday. He was doing carpentry work on a Saturday, got a small sliver of wood in his eye, and that ended up costing him tens of thousands of dollars for that lapse of coverage. We just make sure that all of our bands are covered for health insurance, because I’ve seen too many people – both in my personal and professional life – who were in the hospital not thinking about their health but thinking about their health bills.

In a similar vein, the majority of young band’s biggest asset is there equipment.  For a minimum of cost they can purchase equipment insurance, ensuring their gear is safe from water damage, theft, you name it.

Q: Since you’re minding the money coming in, what are you seeing as the increasingly dependable streams of revenue for artists?

A: The obvious one, and the reason I lucked out having so many metal acts to manage is that in the metal genre touring and merchandise can still be very lucrative.  My son’s in high school; his friends wear Slipknot t-shirts, however, that‘s not necessarily the case for a pop artist like Ke$ha.

Unfortunately, artist royalties from record sales is a 180-degree turn. In my earlier days, people would tour to sell records, and now it’s become more and more prominent that people make records to tour. The reason to tour is because that’s where profit is made, and that lends itself to merchandising. Endorsements and synch licensing are big, as well. It’s hard for an artist to make money on record sales when anyone can download their music for free.

Q: That sounds like an incredible amount of detail that you have to keep track of.

A: I have an incredible staff I work with, and we associate ourselves with great people: great insurance people, great lawyers, great tour managers; it’s a lot to keep track of, but when you work with great people it’s not as difficult.

Part of my job at Sanctuary was the survival of bands, and allowing them to live long enough to break. If RSA has a forte, it’s taking bands, and extending their life longer than other people might be able to.

I think part of this is managing tour support, for example. As record companies make less and less money, it’s tougher to get tour support out of them. So we work hard to maintain budgets, get what’s really agreed upon, and receive what’s needed to extend the band’s life.

That’s true not just for emerging bands, but ones that are perceived as successful as well. A platinum artist may want to have a baby next year, so they’d ask us what they need to live next year without touring. We might say, “The money runs out next November, so that’s when you’d have to go out and tour again.”

Q: You mentioned the intricacies of working financially outside the US, as well.

A: Most countries used to not have a clue as to how to tax bands coming in and out, but now everyone seems to be on top of it. In the US, it used to be a relatively easy process to get taxes waived, and now it’s nearly impossible. We’ve become experts on the intricacies of what the IRS really expects now, and that knowledge can make a huge difference for an artist at tax time.  We have a good working relationship with people at the IRS and close ties to professionals who handle taxes with bands overseas.  In many cases, the ability to minimize taxes in the US allows foreign bands to go on tour here.

Every country has their own game that needs to be played, and we know how to play the game while working within the legal limits and paying what’s owed – without paying more than necessary.

Q: We ask this a lot, but I’m particularly interested in your perspective: How do you see the music business in 2010?

A: I’m not sure if this is an answer to your question, but it is that bands can still be successful and earn a living in the music business.   If my experience can inspire anybody, it’s that I’ve seen bands go from a $500 gig to a $100,000 gig in a year. I’ve seen really poor bands seriously considering taking a $50,000 publishing advance, holding out a little longer, and then landing an $800,000 publishing deal less than 8 months later.

I admire people who have the guts to stick it out. People who took a big chance on music careers, and then got to the point where a record company is willing to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into them to make them successful , then playing in front of thousands of people. I’ve seen it happen that way: People didn’t give up, and they found success. That’s an amazing process.
– David Weiss