Exclusive: Glambergirlblog Speaks With Music Producer Eric Lilavois

Photo: Eric Lilavois

Eric Lilavois is a Record Producer, Engineer, Mixer, Musician and Songwriter who has been in the industry for quite some time working with hundreds of artists like My Chemical Romance, Atlas Genius, Surfer Blood and Saint Motel.

Fresh off a winter tour, the “music tastemaker” of indie rock owns two music studios, Crown City Studios in Pasadena, CA and London Bridge Studios in Seattle, WA, and has a documentary coming soon following “musicians to Seattle’s historic London Bridge Studio (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains), where creative ambition meets professional commitment.”

In between a studio session in California, I spoke with Eric Lilavois about how he got started in this business, producing, working in the studio and more. Check out the excerpts from our interview below.

On getting started in the industry: “I started in a band. It was a band called The Days In Between and we were just an independent band touring around, you know booking our own tours this is kind of like the heyday of Myspace. Very early on in the band we were sort of able to book whole tours and places to stay and things like that. So we did a few independent tours and things like that and constantly in and out the studio with that band and that was sort of the very beginning of really understanding and loving the studio life as oppose to the touring musician life.”

On transitioning into producing music: “I was playing that role pretty much for my band. I always kind of was the guy hanging around late hours with the engineer on the project or every studio we would go into I was the one, the one always asking about all the gear and try to soak up and learn everything possible. And so there was kind of a natural progression that happened. A lot of other bands you know that we were either playing out with or friend’s bands or people that were going into the studios that we were going into started to inquire and I started working with them.”

On what goes into producing a record: “Well there’s a lot of different, every producer you know has a different method of course but for me its an enormous amount of kind of pre-production that happens. I like to spend a lot of time with the band you know, or an artist, you know if they’re a solo artist, just really realizing and understanding what the vision is and what exactly we’re trying to accomplish throughout the course of the record. And often times we’ll spend weeks before we even get into the studio together just fussing out the songs and making sure all of the arrangements are correct, and you know sometimes co-writing more songs. So that’s kind of the first step, but then there’s other projects that kind of are a little more solidified you know maybe a band’s on their second, third, fourth record and they’ve been playing together for a real long time and they don’t necessarily need that much pre-production and it’s a little bit more about capturing the vibe that they set up you know and just capturing that in the studio.”

On his sound as a producer: “I do my utmost to work hard with the band on what their vision is and whether we are aligning ourselves in the right pathway to that vision and there’s times when an artist is a little confused, you know they may have a certain idea about where their vision will land them and they don’t necessarily have the sonic tools to get there. So sometimes its sort of fudging between those two details, trying to get the sort of idea to match up to the sonic part, sometimes it’s if the vision’s really thought out but for me the sound is really dependent on the artist that I’m working with and how I can remain true to what they’re trying to accomplish.”

On producing different work in Crown City Studios versus London Bridge Studios: “Yeah and that’s across the board you know I’ve worked in a lot of different studios across Los Angeles. There’s still some very great studios out there and the studio does add this sort of unique vibe to the project and I’m very careful about sort of where we work in order to enhance that the most. As far as London Bridge is concerned in Seattle its just meticulously built, it’s a beautiful studio designed by this gentleman Geoff Turner and the original owners Rick and Raj Parashar just took so much care and consideration building this studio. And now was we move forward, as we revamped it, I have two other partners there, Jonathan Plum and Geoff Ott, as we revamped it and we started kind of moving more in the future and we’re also restoring a lot of elements of the past, it’s just becoming stronger and stronger by the minute in terms of the numbers of different possibilities and genres that would really thrive there.”

Stay updated on all the things Eric Lilavois is up to by going to his website HERE and check out an excerpt from Lilavois’ upcoming documentary called “The Journey: The Making of Salt, S(e)a, & Smoke” below.

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