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Rock blasts from Jeff Moleski’s massive Urei 813 monitors
as he describes the projects he’s been a part of and the people he’s
worked with in more than 30 years in the recording business.
He’s got a brilliant energy about him—never static, always pacing,
talking or actively listening, clearly with something on his mind.
It’s easy, when watching him, to wonder how hard it must be for Moleski to let his mind rest when it’s constantly dissecting sounds, listening to the careful details of every bit of music swirling in the air. It must be a blessing and a curse to hear things so precisely, down to the details. Drums are too bright, or not enough. There’s buzzing in the bass. That fill wasn’t quite up to par and those vocals need to be replaced. It’s a science that is fascinating to watch as it all happens.
On this Monday night, it’s Pale Green Stars in Moletrax Studio, 621 Marcellus St. The band strolls in one by one—first singer, songwriter and guitarist Jeff Jones, then drummer Jeff Tripoli and finally bassist Brian Coyne. There are others in the band (Shawn Sullivan on guitar and Dave Solazzo on keys), but tonight, the focus is on the rhythm section, with Jones there to provide direction vocally and on guitar, although his parts will probably be replaced later on.
The studio is in an unassuming building on the corner of Marcellus and Ontario streets on the Near West Side, bare from the outside. Stepping in from the back door, it’s obvious the structure is a work in progress, with unfinished walls and untidy corners. But it’s also obvious that this is no rookie studio like the ones young musicians patch together in their parents’ basement.
Moleski’s equipment astonishes. The Sony APR-24 track 2-inch analog tape machines are noticeable from the start. The piled amps, drums, guitars, basses, microphones and equipment boxes that have “Chick Corea” spray-painted on the side might catch an eye. And when Moleski starts explaining the purpose and background of the equipment, like the console he’s got that was once used by Janet Jackson (he scored it back when he worked in Chicago), the clout of the place goes up a notch.
The band sets up in the largest of three major rooms Moletrax occupies. There’s the control room, where Moleski sits; the middle room, where Jones is setting up; and the big room with both low and high ceilings (to increase room options for sound) and a stage. Moleski stirs back and forth shuffling between the rooms as the musicians set their gear, placing microphones at various heights to obtain different sounds and testing the drums and bass as the band prepares to record.
Jones is swigging back a beer, explaining there are working beers and warm-up beers and then there’s the “house blend,” Labatt Blue Light, that Tripoli will be drinking. From behind the drum set, Tripoli chimes in that the can matches his shirt and Moleski notices the need to differentiate “the Jeffs” (Moleski, Jones and Tripoli).
“Hey, Jeff!” he shouts.
“What, Jeff?” Jones replies.
“Hi, Jeff,” Tripoli yells.
They start going by nicknames: Jones is Jones, Moleski is The Mole, Tripoli is “Little Chris” (because he looks like a little Soundgarden front man Chris Cornell with his hair down, Jones explains), Coyne is Bruce and Sullivan is Frampton—even though he’s not there at the moment. This recording studio is fun. But once the mikes are set and Moleski has adjusted the levels of all the instruments just right, things become more serious.
The band starts recording on tape. Moleski notices a difference in Tripoli’s playing from when he was testing the drums to now, when he’s playing with the band. The Mole starts shifting and adjusting, explaining the tweaks he’s making as he does. The mixing board is laid out in front of him, with endless knobs and buttons before him to twist, turn and push. It’s madness, but he makes it looks easy.
Listening carefully, it sounds fantastic, funneling clearly through the gigantic monitors, and Jones’ powerful voice is addictive. It pushes over the tight, solid groove of the bass and drums. The sound, even without the missing pieces, is thick. “Come on in, boys,” the Mole shouts into the mike that feeds into the headphones of the players in the other two recording rooms once the song wraps.
He rattles off a list of needed changes. They try again. A long and tedious process of slight changes and tiny improvements adds up to make recordings that can compete with the high production of the major players. Moleski has his head in the game right now and, it seems, always. Apparently a soundman’s brain never sleeps.
Little Drummer Boy
Moleski, 48, started playing music as a drummer when he was 4 years old. He began playing at Franklin Elementary School a year ahead of his peers because his older brother, John, played clarinet and his older sister, Anna, played flute. He started bass later on in junior high. His father, Jesse Moleski Jr., was an engineer at Carrier, which also helped spark Moleski’s interest in electronics.
“When I was 6 or 7 they {his parents} gave me a broken AM radio, which I fixed,” he says. “That was my parents’ biggest mistake. All of a sudden I had this world open up. ‘Smoke on the Water’ was a hit. ‘Killer Queen’ was a hit. My sister had a ticket for me to see Queen and Thin Lizzy. I was too young and my mom wouldn’t let me go, but she made it up to me in 1975 when she took me to see Alice Cooper. I was lucky enough to see Queen later when I was in eighth grade.”
The addiction to music was recognized
early on and it was severe. But things were different back before
ProTools and easy access to other recording equipment. The Mole started
experimenting with four-tracks, playing in bands, and in 1985 he started
working for the Baldwinsville-based National Audio, the largest
regional live production company, known for providing sound, lighting,
stages and roofs for many local events and festivals. He went on a club
tour with Duran Duran, and out again with Motorhead and Slayer, while
working for National Audio. In 1988, he met a girl while he was on the
road in Chicago; he moved there in 1989.
Doors immediately started opening for Moleski in a city he still has a fondness for. “If I struck it rich tomorrow, I might be apt to spend most of my time in Chicago. It’s nonstop,” Moleski says fondly. “Chicago is like New York City: It’s a 24-hour city.” He started working at a studio called Dress Rehearsals where he met co-owners Don and Monica Grayless.
While there, he also met Kerry Brown, who was working as a producer with Smashing Pumpkins. Moleski started producing the band’s B-sides and eventually worked on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995, Virgin). He lived and worked there for nine years, with similarly big-name bands and musicians walking in and out of his life, leading him to other gigs, he nonchalantly mentions now. “At the end of the Pumpkins thing, in the meantime, I flew down to New Orleans to record a bunch of demos with Hole.” Just another day in the life.
After things had simmered in Chicago, Moleski moved to Los Angeles. He thought about Nashville, but reasoned, “I am The Mole. You either love me or hate me, so LA might be better.” He hit the road with a friend and rented the old Wally Hyder Studio 4 on Selma Avenue, one that had seen Janis Joplin, Cream and Mick Jagger walk through the door. He was supposed to work on a record with Eric Avery, bassist of Jane’s Addiction, but when one project falls through in Los Angeles, another tends to pop up. He soon found himself working on a song for the 2000 film Erin Brockovich by day and playing pool on the same table Jim Morrison once played on by night.
Life was surreal. Moleski brightens when he gets to tell a story about walking into Cheetah’s. “We all know what Cheetah’s is,” he jokes. “My favorite strip club!” As he walked in, the deejay recognized him as they had worked together on a record. Strippers strolled up to Moleski and escorted him into the bar. Lemmy (of Motorhead), a friend of Moleski, was sitting at the bar and scoffed, ‘Ha! That’ll fade fast.’” Moleski laughs as he tells the story. “I get real rock’n’roll moments that some people will just never get to realize.”
But things took a stark turn around 1999 when Napster altered the industry. Suddenly the $3,000 monthly rent Moleski was facing and the new reality of free music for the masses changed everything.
“We were all just thinking about how to keep doors open,” he remembers. “How do you beat this? All the labels couldn’t develop any bands. That’s why you’re not hearing lots of new stuff anymore. It costs money to develop a new band. It takes time and money and effort and a team of people. And that’s what the music industry’s missing right now.”
Mole and Jeff
So in 2005, Moleski moved back to Syracuse. Around the same time, his friends Matt Pedzick and Sue Karlik returned from New York City. The group had played together in the past and as they found themselves in the same town again, they reformed as a new music-making entity, Amerikan Primitive. After a six-year hiatus, Moleski started playing drums again and he began formulating plans to open a new studio.
He met Jones in 2006 and the two kicked it off immediately. They did a few sound gigs together and then started building a studio on North Midler Avenue, sharing a warehouse with Mark Fitzgerald of Rosewood Sound. They built it from scratch, with Jones’ construction expertise making it possible. But it wouldn’t last.
“It was in a crappy location,” Jones says frankly. “It was all we had at the time. I didn’t really like the vibe. It was hard to get people to want to go there. You can’t operate like that in a bigger, professional sense. This place {the new location} is freakin’ perfect.” Jones notes that the new spot is convenient from any major highway, nearby hotels, theaters, venues and restaurants, and the building progresses every day.
Moleski put the down payment on the building back in February 2009, but it took until December 2010 to close on it. Once he did, Moleski and Jones quickly went to work turning a building that had once been a bar, barbershop and auto garage into a state-of-the-art studio. “So Jeff {Moleski} has a thing,” Jones says. “He’ll say, ‘I bought a building and we threw half of it away.’ That’s basically what we did. We tore a lot out. People had just kept adding things on top.”
Layers of ceilings, walls and floors had to come out. A whole bar, coolers and mirrors had to be removed. As he walks through the rooms Jones explains the tedious process of removing and repairing. He points out the lower section of ceiling and reveals that the garage door from when the room was an auto garage is still tucked away, boxed in by sheetrock.
But the incredible amount of labor the duo put into the work-in-progress paid off when the studio quickly became functional. Within a month of obtaining the property, tearing it apart and putting it back together, Moleski hosted the country band J.D. and Rollin’ South for recording and soon after, Miss E. The projects keep coming.
“Jeff’s made a lot of great records, worked with a lot of great people,” Jones says of producer Moleski. “When you start hearing what’s coming out of here, it’s a little different quality-wise than what you’ll hear coming out of other places. He’s got some equipment and techniques—things he’s developed over the course of 30 years—you’re not gonna get it through ProTools or working in your mom’s basement. Plus, you’ve got this giant room, all kinds of instruments. You could put a choir in here. It’s not just for rock’n’roll.”
But tonight it is. Pale Green Stars continues the session and will meet back up with the other band members later on, layering tracks into the mix. Moleski plugs away at the board and listens intently as the band plays on. When asked what his role is in the process, he has little to say.
“My job is to take your vision of your music and get it to sound how you want it to sound,” he explains. “It doesn’t matter what I necessarily think it should sound like if you don’t like it. I’m not the one that has to listen to your record for the rest of your life. I want to produce a record that the artist loves. No two records are the same. There’s no cookie-cutter process you can go through that’s gonna make the same record for Jim as the same record for Joe. It’s all different. My job as a producer is to be the conduit to get your vision onto tape, mix it, make it, mold it, into what you want as the artist and to have sonic integrity.”
With a pile of CDs already under his belt, more on the
way and a studio space that fits the mission to rock, there’s plenty to
prove that Moletrax is a studio to watch.
