M. Ward: A Wasteland Companion

As a recording engineer I can't even count the number of albums I've worked on where my participation didn't end up on the final album - hell, some records never even came out. I'm by no means saying that I'm a bad engineer - I'm just pointing out how the record-making experience can shift along the way. Sessions gone awry, demo-tracking, and guest spots that don't gel are all part of the process, as many of us know. My non-contribution to Matt Ward's new album is some edits and a missing snare overdub for "Watch The Show." Thanks to the wonders of confused computer backups or Pro Tools session overwrites, somehow Matt ended up at the mix sessions without the extremely minimal work I'd done and, since I was on the road somewhere, the files remained on my drive at home. Matt simply added a new snare and redid the edits; and I was once again left off of a fantastic album. But my name accidentally made the credits. Now people will think I'm partly responsible for this excellent album when, in fact, I did nothing. Shit. Thanks to Matt for being so thoughtful - and so damn talented. By the way, this new record, his eighth, was recorded at seven other studios, including Magic Shop (NYC), Blue Rooms Studios (Portland, OR), Toybox Studios (Bristol, UK), Wavelab (Tucson, AZ), Arc (Omaha, NE), Bright Star (Los Angeles, CA), Cacophony Recorders (Austin, TX) and with a ridiculous list of engineers who did the real work: Tom Schick (who also mixed a lot of this album), Erik Wofford, Mike Coykendall, John Parish [Tape Op #45], Chris Schultz, Mike Mogis [Tape Op #51], Pierre de Reeder and Alistair Chant. Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering.