Augie March: Build Stuff

Besides some heavy travelling around the country in support of their third long player Strange Bird, as well as an overseas jaunt which saw the band head to the US to tour with the likes of Gomez and Wilco, Augie March have been quietly laying down the foundations for their very own fully-equipped recording studio. What began as a rehearsal and demo room inside a dilapidated shopfront in the Melbourne suburb of Preston, has transformed into the near completion of a four room recording studio perched lakeside in the small regional Victorian town of Nagambie. Dubbed Second World Studios, the newly built labour of love lies nestled behind the weatherboard house where engineer Nick Treweek lives, and literally just above the picturesque waters of the Nagambie river system.

Adam Donovan – Augie March guitarist, engineer and producer.
Nick Treweek – Engineer, part-owner and long time friend.

M+N: So whose house is this?

N: It’s Glenn’s (Augie March frontman) parents.

M+N: How long have they had this place for?

N: About 5 years.

M+N: And what’d they think of you building a studio here?

N: They were quite happy for us to do it here. Beforehand it was just a shed, a carport basically.

A: [Points] One car in here, one car in there.

N: Yeah if you can imagine...all the walls weren’t here. You were looking at weatherboard wood, the same as what’s on the outside.

M+N: How did you come up with the designs and figure out how to start pulling it all together?

N: Chris and I did a lot of research.

A: Internet.

N: The internet was pretty valuable. Some of us had done engineering courses years ago...just having to relearn it all, and also the other side of it with being so hands on was actually having to DO it. Actually build it and so on. I pretty much learnt everything about building from scratch.

A: I was dreaming of finding some money and just paying someone to finish it.

N: It’s been going on for ... 2 years?

A: Chris started it a year before that as well. When Preston folded, Chris (Richards, Glenn’s brother) was living here just starting this and we said “Do you want to have us bring our stuff out here?” and he was “Well yeah.” Glenn and I came out and put the floorboards down ... this wall wasn’t here and we put a layer of plaster around everything, painted it. The ceiling was basically insulation with calico underneath it, all that stuff. And we thought we’d finished. And then before we recorded anything Nick came back and ... made us work for another year. Drew up plans and made us put up another layer of plaster which meant we had to repaint.

N: We made the walls thicker, for a start. That’s another thing I don’t know if you realise but that whole wall there [points to north wall] got put in as well cause originally that was just ...

A: Doors

N: And open. Big steel doors.

A: And I’m pretty sure we ripped asbestos out from the wall here as well.

N: [Laughs] Yeah

A: Probably find out in ten years.

N: So Chris and I then decided to keep going and to split it up into smaller rooms. Originally the idea was sort of one large room, and you record in the control room. I think we just figured in the long term we’d benefit more from having the separate spaces. We figured that if you wanted to record in a big room you can always find a church or hall to do it in.

A: It works a lot better with 2 rooms, and as it turns out that (main recording) room sounds like a big room.

N: Yeah it does.

A: Well it is a pretty large room. You could get a whole band in there.

N: And that smaller tracking room is the least finished of the lot, that one in the corner. But essentially it’s nearly finished. As soon as the window goes in. This room which was originally the chill out room, can now be used as well. Overall we figured that it’s a lot better to be able to separate the recording so we built some more rooms.

M+N: If you’re going to go to the trouble of building a place from scratch you may as well.

N: Yeah.

A: I’m also thinking of trying to find an old bank safe.

M+N: What for?

A: At Big Jesus (Burger studios, in Sydney) they had it. Just to put the bass cabinet in, close it up.

M+N: What like a big box?

A : Mmm.

M+N: Is most of the stuff inside the studio from the Preston set-up?

N: Well I bought the desk probably 7 or 8 years ago ... with the view that someday there’d be somewhere to put it.

M+N: How long did Preston go for?

A: A year and a half.

M+N: And does it sound very different here?

A: Yeah heaps. Way better. All the Preston stuff was done in the computer and also I used mixed it with effects going out ... here we’ve got the tape machines.

M+N: Where did all the bits come from, the wood etc?

A: Well we all contributed here and there. Plus Augie got a little bit of money from the record company.

N: Were BMG keen?

A Yeah they were great.

M+N: Does that mean you’re supposed to pay that back?

A: Through record sales yeah.

M+N: It’s a pretty good way to do it seems, put your money towards recording yourselves.

A: Yeah. If they don’t drop us. [Laughs] ... So from now on we can use it whenever we like.

M+N: Did you try and figure out acoustics or did you just think you’d build the room and deal with what turns out?

N: We were mindful but I think because of the learning curve of the building side of things, we decided not to be too ambitious.

M+N: And you don’t know it til it’s done.

A: It’s fine.

N: You concentrate on the control room, because it’s the control room that matters more. The recording room never really matters so much, I mean as long as the instruments sound musical in there ... but the control room has to sound good.

A: It’s got to sound RIGHT.

N: You want to hear what’s coming from the other rooms accurately

M+N: We’re you surprised when you took your mixes from here to another studio? Did it make sense sonically?

A: Yeah I’m happy with it.

N: I’ve been really happy with it, the stuff we recorded in here sounds really good.

M+N: No one really gives a shit what it sounds like in here if it doesn’t sound good in their CD player.

N: That’s right.

M+N: One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about this stuff was I’ve been reading a lot of...do you know the recording magazine Tape-Op?

N: No

M+N: It’s great, it’s this independent magazine a guy in America runs and it’s just about all kinds of personal recording including y’know, people who record with four-track or build their own studios and it’s really interesting. And about how say ... a lot of people deal with recording in their bathrooms or homes etc and universally what everyone ends up saying is that you just get so used to your environment and your equipment that it really doesn’t matter where you are after a while.

A: Yeah.

M+N: You don’t put the cd on and hear a room in Nagambie or someone’s bathroom or whatever ... you hear a guitar and drums and it sounds good.

N: Yep

A: If you have a good recording experience ... I mean the album we just did, the stuff from here is the favourite.

M+N: Right

A: Easily

M+N: I think it sounds more like you hear it as well. Cause you don’t play music very often in a million dollar recording studio.

A: Yeah and sometimes ... yeah [trails off] ...

N: [Laughs]

A: Haha. Yeah I was gonna go on one of those.

N: If it’s a good song you can play it on a tape recorder and it will work.

M+N: So if someone wants to come up and record could they stay here?

N: Yes

M+N: Just in the house?

A: Accommodation’s part of the price.

N: There’s quite a few beds and rooms available.

M+N: Is it a hope that it will become a studio for lots of bands to use, listed in the books so to speak?

A: Yeah

M+N: For some people it’d be a selling point to be able to record in Augie Marchs’ studio.

N: It shouldn’t be.

M+N: No I know but that’s how a lot of band’s start choosing their recording. You look at the covers of albums you like and see where it was recorded.

N: Yeah of course. We’d like to end up there and do lot of good recordings that people are happy with and that we’re happy with.

M+N: And so how much of the new Augie record was done here?

A We did ... I can’t remember but we did ...

N: Two songs completely.

A: One song completely as in mixed here as well and another song we tracked everything here and mixed somewhere else. About 3 or 4 others we did drums somewhere else and then brought them here.

M+N: And laid stuff over the top?

A: Yeah.

N: Glenn did a lot of vocals here. 6 or 7 tracks.

M+N: What did the guy (Mark Howard) mixing your record think?

A: Oh I asked him and he just said “Look it’s the same drumkit isn’t it. It sounds like the same drum kit” - He was into it.

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