My Account
In Malcolm Welsford’s career as a music producer he has gone from working on a four-track tape recorder at high school in Tauranga, to recording studios in Hollywood. After establishing York Street Studio in Auckland in 1992, he worked with a string of bands that reads like a greatest hits record of Kiwi rock – Shihad, Supergroove, Headless Chickens, The Feelers, The D4 – earning him accolades including NZ Producer of the Year three times. After eight years working in Hollywood, Malcolm left the limelight and moved to Leigh three years ago, where he has been resident sound engineer at Leigh Sawmill. Now, for the first time, he has stepped out of the studio and started creating music. His first performance as a musician with his new project, Mad Shamans, will be at the Sawmill on Saturday March 12. He spoke to Mahurangi Matters editor George Driver about how the journey began …
All my life has been music. It started when my parents bought me a drum kit when I was 10 and I started playing in bands a few years later. But I found I wasn’t all that talented and I decided to try recording music. There were no courses for that sort of thing in the 1970s, so I saved up my lawn-mowing money and bought a four-track, reel-to-reel recorder and started recording bands at school and experimenting. It was my dream to forge a career out of recording and I begged Glyn Tucker, the head of Mandrill Studios in Parnell, until he agreed to let me sit in on recording sessions during weekends. I was there when he was recording The Crocodiles and even David Hasselhoff, but I kept in the background. When I finished high school I got a job selling advertising for an Auckland FM radio station. I was useless at it and I hated it, but they had a really nice recording studio and I’d go in and use it at night.
When I was about 21, I moved to Wellington and started freelancing for a small studio – Frontier Studios. I was thrown in the deep end and really started learning. I moved on to Crescendo Studios and a band called Shihad came in to record their first EP, Devolve. I thought they had something straight away. They were a very driven, tight and organised band. We built a good relationship and I ended up recording their next three albums.
I moved to Auckland in 1990 and started freelancing at Mandrill Studios. The music industry started drying up in the early 90s as more people were pirating CDs. Mandrill started moving away from recording bands and was getting into post-production for film and television, but I was booked up for an entire year with bands who wanted me to record them. That’s when I decided to start York Street Studios – I didn’t have anywhere else to work. I found some business partners and managed to convince some builders to give me a break and built the studio in Parnell. Working 18 hours a day, every day, I recorded over 20 albums that year and managed to pay off all my debt. It was scary, but very rewarding.
As a producer I work quite differently to other people. Back in the day, a producer’s role was to co-ordinate the whole recording process – dealing with record labels, studios, composers, conductors, musicians and technical staff like engineers who wore white coats. I didn’t deal with record companies at all. I solely dealt with the bands, helping them realise their vision on record. It’s not just a matter of recording what’s in front of you. There’s a lot you can do in the studio which has a huge effect on the final sound. You can make changes to the instrumentation, tempo and the key of a song to make a record glue together. We would try different things to give songs texture, using acoustic and electric instruments and working with dynamics to make a song more interesting. All the time you are thinking, ‘how will a listener interpret this’ and strive to make things as interesting as possible. York Street was also a special place. Apart from Stebbing Recording Centre and Radio NZ, it was the only large recording studio with high ceilings, which gives a lot more ambience to the sound. But, we weren’t a full-on commercial studio with corporate clients so the stress of recording was reduced and it was a fun place to work.
Still, the vibe at the time was intense. The amount of recording we were doing was really taxing, but I think that’s why it was successful and bands were starting to get radio play. During the 1980s and early 90s, that didn’t happen – a lot of NZ music was ignored. The quality was there, but there was no support for the bands. That changed with Supergroove. I recorded their first album, Traction, which was a big moment for NZ music.
In 1999 I parted ways with my business partners at York Street and set up my own studio at Karekare Beach on the West Coast. It was a beautiful house with amazing views and bands would come and stay. I recorded Tadpole’s The Buddhafinger album and Breathe’s album Don’t Stop the Revolution while I was there. I later moved back to Auckland and set up a studio in a house on Dominion Road.
I headed to the US in 2005. I was bored and wanted a new challenge. My girlfriend’s father was the ex-manager of Black Sabbath, so I had a foot in the door and we lived in Beverley Hills around the corner from Ozzy Osbourne. I started working as a freelancer at Paramount Studios, working with a broad range of artists. The owner is married to a New Zealander and he gave me really good rates. The industry is much more professional in the US – the musicianship of session musicians was amazing. Everyone was also much more enthusiastic. That work ethic isn’t common here. But the industry in Hollywood is also based on who you know, not talent. There’s a lot of wining and dining and putting an act on. I was used to being a hermit and I had very little to do with the industry in NZ, so that was a big change for me. During that time I recorded three albums with Madonna’s backing band and also produced an album with Adam Lambert, who went on to come second in American Idol and now sings with Queen. I also mixed Christina Perri’s song Jar of Hearts, which has over 200 million views on YouTube. The highlight of that period was getting to meet my idol, Bruce Swedien, who recorded all of Michael Jackson’s albums. He was running an engineering course in LA and I helped set up the studio. He taught me a few of his secrets.
After eight years in Hollywood I felt it was time to move home. I wanted to live somewhere on the coast close to Auckland and moved to Mahurangi three years ago without knowing much about the area. It’s a great community here. You don’t get that in LA.
That’s when I started my first music project, Mad Shamans. The music incorporates classical with electronic and world music, with multi-media video, controlled live using a keyboard. I’d been thinking about it for the past 10 years, but I finally have the time to bring it to fruition.
There’s not a lot of work for producers now and all of the major studios have closed in NZ. Now, for bands, it all comes down to performance – they can’t afford to rely on their recordings. They have to tour and build an audience. The trend has also been for bands to give away their music for free, but to me that’s completely undervaluing all the hard work that’s gone into it. Because of that I don’t think I’ll work as a producer again. My only focus right now is on Mad Shamans and hopefully touring at international festivals.
