Nov/Dec 2007
Welcome to issue #62 of Tape Op.
By the time you read this I will be in the middle of my first album-tracking sessions in a long time. Over the last year I was dealing with selling my home, AES SF, working on Elliott Smith's New Moon release, moving to Arizona, NAMM show, renovating our new home, moving Jackpot! to its new location (over four months), AES Europe, the final TapeOpCon and attempting to catch up on work for this magazine. All this took over a year out of my recording time. To be honest, I have had Pro Tools open a lot for archive work I'm doing for Elliott's estate, and I did record two Death Cab For Cutie concerts in December 2006 (nerve wracking but fun). But I haven't had any album tracking sessions since September 16, 2006. Ironically these sessions in the old Jackpot! location were for an album by my friend Chris Tsefalas, who was also one of the first "clients" to work at my home studio, Laundry Rules in 1995 or so. These sessions led directly into mixing New Moon. Elliott Smith had helped me put Jackpot! together, and here I was working on his tracks, some of which he had actually recorded here by himself ten years before. It felt like a full circle of some sort had occurred.
Now I'm finally able to utilize my new studio space in Portland, and I'm excited to see how all the improvements and concepts I applied to the layout of this place work. It's a new era in my life: I'm living 1,548 miles from Jackpot!, Tape Op takes up more time than it ever has, the magazine has branched into the UK and EU and I'm starting to assemble a home studio in Arizona. Now that's really full circle...
Next issue I'll have some thoughts about what worked and what could be different in the new Jackpot! Hopefully there will be some good advice for others to heed!
-Larry Crane, editor
