Jason Lackie in studio. // Photo by Kelly Mason

At Dan’s Tunes, we work to bring you a comprehensive picture of the Seattle music scene, and musical artists are a big part of that. But, an album doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It takes a whole host of people to bring a musician’s vision to life. In our new series, “Behind the Scene,” we’re taking a look at all of the people who are integral to the process of making music that you probably haven’t heard of before — from producers and radio DJs to vinyl cutters and photographers. Our goal is to make the series both educational and a resource for artists looking to expand their teams. Today, we’re chatting with Jason Lackie.

To producer and mix engineer Jason Lackie of Lackie Productions (formerly of Fastback Studios), the most important part of his job is protecting the artist’s intent. That’s why he approaches each project he takes on differently — from recording to mixing to co-writing. Throughout his 17 years in production, Lackie has worked with local artists like TeZATalks, RX, Ben Smith (of Heart), Father John Misty, and Ayron Jones. On the national scene, he’s worked with the likes of The Band Knives (Lady Gaga’s backing tour band) and Reggie Watts.

I sat down with Lackie to talk about what it means to be a producer, how his job has changed over the years, and the difference between mixing and mastering. Below is our interview, edited for length and clarity.

How would you define your job?

It depends on who you ask. What I tell people is that I produce music. I help singer-songwriters make records. That’s probably the focus of what I do. Someone comes to me with songs, whether complete or partial. Sometimes they’re like RX, where they barely need me: He plays guitar, he plays piano, and he can record himself. Then there’s people that are just songwriters or that just have lyrics and some melodic ideas. I would help them by either playing myself or by finding someone to play on their record for them. 

In the old days, I would put together a band and book the studio date. I would arrange everything: make sure everybody was on board, coordinate everybody’s schedules, coordinate the budget. There was a lot more work to do because there were a lot more people involved. As time has gone on and budgets have gotten smaller and smaller, people don’t have money to pay musicians. Typically now it’s just a matter of me figuring out how the hell we’re going to get this done for this humble amount of money. 

With COVID, everything is different. But normally what we do is book studio time, bring the [artist] in, and record the bones of the song. Then I take it on my own and mix it. Ninety-five percent of the time I mix my own productions because a lot of my production work is in the mixing. 

You mentioned “the old days.” Where’s the line between the old days and the new days?

Well, that depends on when you were born. It really does. It depends on when you came into this industry. When I started, being a producer did not mean that you made music necessarily. That had nothing to do with it. You were coordinating people. You were helping to guide the project. You were helping to draw these musical and artistic ideas and creativity out of the artist in a way that was collaborative but not invasive.

Like a project manager?

Like a project manager plus. You’re managing the project, but you’re also definitely getting involved in the artistic realm and helping to make those decisions. But you figure out where your place is. When you say “producer” these days, it’s automatically assumed I have a laptop and some kind of digital audio workstation [DAW], and that I’m going to be making some kind of instrumental or beat for an artist to sing on. Part of me wishes there was a distinct term for that particular occupation, because it is different.

Then there are people that make beats and also work with singers to put their vocals down and record them and effectively produce them. So that’s where the term producer comes in — when those people start working with other artists. For me, the term “producer” is someone that works with artists in some capacity, however you want to define that. I don’t want to sound too grandiose. I don’t know what the hell a producer is anymore, but I know what I do.

The most important part of my job description is to protect the intent of the artist, whether that be from A&R people, label people, mastering engineers, other band members, girlfriends, boyfriends, parents or, a lot of times, themselves. Making an album or a song is very emotional. There’s a lot of pitfalls. There’s stages where you’re really excited and everything is going great, and then a month later a couple of people have quit and the budget is way overspent and things are not going as planned. So a lot of times it’s just keeping things on track. That’s a lot of trust to put into another person, and I don’t take that lightly. When someone trusts me with their art, I take that really seriously.

That’s the most important part of my job — to make sure I really care for that artistic intent, and to know when it’s okay that that evolves. Because a lot of the time it does evolve. Not getting stuck on one thing and saying it has to be this way because that’s what we decided two months ago. Let it evolve into whatever it’s becoming. And sometimes that’s totally different than where it started. My job’s insane. It’s impossible to define. I just tell people I make records.

So you produce, record, and mix. Do you master?

Sometimes. When budgets are tight — it’s like another $100 for a single — a lot of times I’ll master it. Begrudgingly. I don’t like to master my own productions. Objectivity is a thing you lose in the first few hours, and then after weeks of working on something and playing guitar on it and coming up with bass parts and talking about melodies and getting to mixing and figuring all that out and hearing the song a million times, the last thing I should be doing is mastering. I have a couple of people I rely on that are really great, like Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering and Levi Seitz at Black Belt Mastering.

What’s the difference between mixing and mastering?

When you record, you multitrack. If it’s a band, you have the kick drum, the snare drum, the hi hat, and so on and so forth up through the vocals. When you mix, you take all of those separate tracks — let’s say 24 for the sake of argument, although it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a band record only 24 tracks — and you EQ, compress, do whatever you need to do in mixing. Add effects, reverb for the vocal, whatever, and you level those things to where everything is balanced and sounds good. That’s mixing. You mix it down to a stereo two track, so you have a left and a right channel, which is what you hear when you open up iTunes. That stereo recording is then given to a mastering engineer. 

Let’s say you make a whole album. The mastering engineer would make sure, from song one to song two, there wasn’t a big discrepancy in level so all of the sudden song two is way louder than song one or vice versa. Also in tone — song one has this sort of dark, brooding low end, and then song two is really bright. So how much of that dark, brooding bass do you take away without taking away the intent of the artist? Or do you add that into the second song? Or do you do a little of both?

Mastering is a subtle art, whereas in mixing I can make big moves and do things that make me feel good in the moment. I’m like, “That was cool! That was fun! Yay!” And then the mastering engineer has to get it and go, “Let’s calm down, Jason.” Or, “Let’s make that more exciting.”

How are you doing things in quarantine?

All I can do is work remotely. I’ve had people ask me to do studio dates. A few bands I work with all the time are really bummed out because they lost all their shows and some of their bandmates don’t want to practice because of COVID, so they really don’t have anything else to do. They’re writing all the time, like, “Jason, come on. Let’s go record.” And I’m like, “I don’t know. Where? And how do we do this safely?” I have no idea. And how do I mask up and stay six feet away from you and share air conditioning for 10 hours a day? Studio days are gross. You’re sharing everything. I’m a germaphobe already, forget COVID.

When COVID happened, I was like, “Okay, I’ll do what I normally do and just add the mask.” I’m already not touching door handles. I’m that guy. So I don’t know how to do it. I know people are doing it. But I’ve been trying to transition everything into remote work.

What’s your average pricing?

That’s really difficult to answer, because it completely depends on the project. I do quote-based pricing because of that. Sometimes people think a certain person or budget is out of their range when it’s really not. It’s just a matter of organization. A budget is always a conversation.

Let’s say you have a four-piece band. The very first question I’m going to ask is, “How long have you been together? What kind of music do you play? How often do you practice? Have you played these songs out at shows?” It’s like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. If you answer that you’ve only been together three months and you’re calling to get in the studio, all of my alarm bells go off. It could work, but chances are no. I’m not necessarily going to say no, but that’s a different kind of approach.

A lot of times what I like to do is get started with an artist doing one or two songs. A lot of times people don’t know their budget. They don’t know what it costs. So there’s all different kinds of ways to charge. When I produce someone, I’ll take a flat rate for songs. That means you give me a flat rate, and depending on what the scope of the work is, we’ll work that out. Because it might be something where you come to me and you’re totally prepared, super talented, you’ve done this before, and you’re ready to go. [But it might be something where] you come to me and you just started playing piano and writing songs and you’ve never made a record before.

Budgeting is a mess, but it can also be very simple. It’s just a matter of approach: Let’s not book time until you’re ready. You have an investor? Great. Let’s hold onto that money. We’re gonna spend the next month or two getting you ready for recording, whether that’s getting together in a practice space, getting together in our living room, getting together on Zoom, or whatever it is. 

That pre-production is going to be really key. You work with an artist to prepare them for whatever is next. Everybody starts at a different level, so everybody needs a different thing and everybody has a different budget.

To get in touch with Jason, email him at jason@fastbackstudios.net.