Larry Crane w/ Geoff Stanfield, MAKING MUSIC

Tape Op magazine founder and producer Larry Crane discusses the new book Making Music: Conversations with Record Producers, edited by Crane and John Baccigaluppi. All of these interviews come from the pages of Tape Op magazine, founded in 1996 by editor Larry Crane. Crane will be joined by Seattle music producer and engineer Geoff Stanfield.

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THIS BOOK IS A COLLECTION OF INTERVIEWS with people who have made records with some of the biggest names in music. Along the way, they might be engineering the recordings, picking the songs, guiding the singers, picking the best takes of songs, balancing egos, fixing the lyrics, booking the studio time, buying lunch, playing instruments, pushing artists further, writing or cowriting the songs, selecting the musicians to use, overseeing the mixes, and many other tasks. Making records is always a combination of many skills and goals, and the producer needs to have what it takes to make the session productive and the music compelling.

In this book, interviewees include people who have worked with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Public Enemy, Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, P!nk, U2, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Wu-Tang Clan, David Bowie, T.Rex, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse, Paul McCartney, Dolly Parton, Duran Duran, the Replacements, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Kendrick Lamar, Tom Petty, and Sabrina Carpenter, plus more. And that’s just the beginning of the credits these producers—Brian Eno, Finneas, Glyn Johns, Hank Shocklee, Jack Antonoff, Joe Boyd, Jon Brion, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Linda Perry, Mark Ronson, RZA, Sasami, Steve Lillywhite, Susan Rogers, T Bone Burnett, and many others—collectively hold.

All of these interviews come from the pages of Tape Op magazine, founded in 1996 by editor Larry Crane. Over the last thirty years, along with publisher John Baccigaluppi, Tape Op has become the world’s deepest archive of conversations about the art and science of recording music, and is still an active, print-based magazine with the highest circulation of any recording magazine in the world.

Larry Crane was a home recordist and member of the band Vomit Launch in the 1980s before he moved to Portland, Oregon, where he opened a studio and founded Tape Op magazine in 1997—initially photocopied and hand-stapled. Crane’s Jackpot! recording studio has hosted R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Pink Martini, Spoon, Death Cab for Cutie, and Built to Spill, and he has worked with Elliott Smith, the Go-Betweens, the Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney, Jenny Lewis, Quasi, She & Him, M. Ward, Moon Duo, Team Dresch, Stephen Malkmus, Jolie Holland, Jason Lytle, and the Walkabouts.

Geoff Stanfield is a Grammy-nominated producer, mixer, engineer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Seattle, WA. Stanfield was a founding member and bassist for the alternative rock band Black Lab. His production, recording and performance credits include work with Sun Kil Moon, Danny Barnes, Dave Matthews, Jason Isbell, Dick Dale, Portugal.The Man, Ryan Bingham, Tinariwen, Rachel Eckroth, Whose Hat Is This?, Abigail Washburn, Glen Hansard, Firehorse, and many more. Stanfield co-founded the band Farmer with singer Jeff Taylor. In addition to his studio work, Stanfield has a long list of things he does at Tape Op including producing the Tape Op Podcast, and The Creative Recording With Tape Op video series, and he oversees Tape Op’s online content and social media. He has interviewed hundreds of artists, producers and engineers, notably Lee “Scratch” Perry, Daniel Lanois, Sarah Jarosz, Tony Visconti, Juana Molina, Suzanne Ciani, and My Morning Jacket. Stanfield is an avid baseball fan, an aspiring chef, enjoys gardening and building things with wood, and most importantly, he has played ping pong with Prince.