In the Studio with: Chuck D & JP Hesser

I mean, we live in such a unique spot, literally, where... Biggest secret, and for years, how big of a secret this area was. It's a bit out of the bag, you know, but, you know, it's cool. My name is Chuck D and I do a bunch of different things and JP is my engineer, my studio guru and as of the last couple years, co-songwriter and producer of a lot of good ----. My name is JP Hesser. I'm owner operator of Castaway 7 Studios here in beautiful Ventura, California. My thing is I come in as a songwriter see if you could do the job. JP went from being just that side affiliate studio into being the only place I trust my vocals. Part of that The goal that I had in mind was to create a space where people could feel safe, heard, and they would trust that that person was there With their heart and soul to do a good job, to capture, to take a picture. I'm a photographer of sound, basically. That's my job. So, you know, I think that's where I've tried to, as I've gotten better after I do this. It's great. I'm a photographer of sound, man. I got to salute you on that one. That's dope. I mean, that's the bit. It's taking a picture of, like, what's in front of me, you know? The microphone's the lens, pretty much, right? Mm-hmm. I run back here. To record with J.P. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I run back here because it's like, it's like in baseball when you have, like, Steve Carlton and Tim McCarver, you know. When Carlton was on the mound, no pun intended, he had to have McCarver. It's just like, I don't care who else you got, he's gotta be my catcher. I think the same thing works for vocalists because there's a lot of emphasis on the producer of the music. There's such an area, and this is how we even start working further together. I would tell JP, I said, listen, a lot of times our vocals might come here and then offshoot into different studios around the world. And I said, you know, some people are like, OK, I cut my vocal and then you send it out. JP will produce the vocal. He will repair the vocal, he will also shift the, like, I don't know, I think this inflection is cool, or that inflection could be better. I think you can try that again. So he's producing the vocal. We feel that the same way that music has back in the day they would have an arranger Danger. and get all the charts together and stuff before the vocalist comes in. JP is an excellent producer of vocals and also an excellent arranger of music too so and then they're a pretty good musician and a pretty good singer so he checks the boxes but if anything is going to leave here in full it's going to come out. And if it's going to leave here in parts, the parts will be complete. Right, right, right. I'm a firm believer that you can develop a philosophy. And you could develop a core conversation about whatever project they're going to take on before the studio. Right. This is game time, right? Yeah. We spend more time at lunch and dinner talking than we do actually executing the job. And a lot of times... I'll come and Jay said, are you ready to cut it? And I said, no, I got to work on it. And I don't work on it in the studio. That's a waste of both he and my time. We rather spend time when we're together. We nail it. If we're not going to be in the studio, we're eating and talking. The conversation about a project to me is 50% of the project. You know, like, why are you doing it? What are you doing it? How are you going to go about it? Is it really? As best it can be before you're actually ready to get behind that mic and execute. And I think a lot of musicians miss that. I come from a genre where studio dependency and the waste of studio time went hand in hand and neck to neck. Oh, I'm just trying to figure it out, trying to feel it. So what are you feeling? Is the studio feeling louder? Is it louder than your car? I mean, you can work this ---- out in your car, dude. It's like, you know what I'm saying? Right, right, right. But yeah, I got it. And then... They're writing in the studio and I don't believe in any of that. I don't believe also that you can be in a brand new shiny new studio with all the bells and whistles and tools that's going to make your song better. Matter of fact, I think it made our songs worse. And you know, we record with the big boys, you know. Universal has an incredible studio down there in Santa Monica that we've been invited to more than a few times and I think we can send people there but You know, we would also send a philosophy of how they should look at it. I've been in California since September of 2003. I moved here from Pennsylvania. I was in my early 20s and I was playing music with my partner, Jared Feridin. It was like, we just felt welcomed. Immediately, two outsiders just came right in and felt welcomed, you know? Does the Pacific talk to you? Oh, at night. I'm on Pierpont in the last few days with the weather. It's so loud down there. Three things talk to JP. The Pacific. The sunset. Right? And sometimes Pine Mountain and those mountains up above Ojai. I've been here when Joe's Crab Shack was up on the hill. I was like scratched by it. What is that up there? My crew is Pete's. Pete's breakfast house. I know everybody by name. It's like I walk in there like Norm from Cheers. Cheers. Ha ha ha ha! D, really? Everybody knows your name. I'm starting to speak. I did text you a couple days ago. You were like, yeah, I'm a post-Pilates beats or something. We never did pizza. No, no, no. Well, I'll, I'll, what, what's his name in the spot? Brofies. Well, Brofies and the Ali joint, Rolando. I got to shout Rolando on Pierpont Tacos. The best Parmesan hard shell in town. Rice by Mama. Rice, yep. Tasty China out on the East End. Tasty China. That's the jam, lure, yep. We be basically, I said we spend more time at lunch. We do. Yo, what you talking? Hey, Jay, what you see, man, today? Two trees. Yep. Yep, and there's nothing quite like Danny's or Allison's as the classic staples of town, you know. For me, Juan's on the west side, the only burrito I kind of trust, Chuck. Like my breakfast, breakfast burritos at Juan's. Lalo's right across the street. Lalos Yep, yep. That's like, they're a little open until three o'clock joint. I love sushi. I love sushi. I love sushi, and also, um... We like A.M. Noodle. We've been to A.M. Noodle up here, and we try to support the Winco Plaza. Yeah, yeah. We love that spot. The new spot that they opened up, it's like Boba Tea. Oh, sh... What? Yo, man, I had this ---- yesterday. Downtown? No, in the Winco Plaza. A Boba Tea in Winco Plaza. It's like a Boba Tea right next to, uh... The old Baja Fresh Spot, or whatever. Yeah, the old Baja Fresh Spot. We do a lot of eating. I mean if you could see how excited we got. We were mellow about the music part of things compared to how excited we get when we talk about our favorite places to eat. Chuck brought this box and he said this is a new thing. I go to my phone and get my favorite band Stream. Stream. Stream. Where everybody's sitting. So they wanted to take something physically home to have a format of their own. And so Kid Better Last year, with a record that we also wrote, produced, and did here, we went to the Kid Better Company and ran our last album. As one of the primary formats for release, because when you take that and you connect it to your device and it goes into the device to the app that's in there, not only do you get the songs, but you get extra room of things. Video. Yeah, there's video and everything else. Pictures. What a CD and a DVD used to be able to do. Right. This does it in one thing. It has something that offers in the digital space and something physically to hold. Yeah, so I'm starstruck by a lot of people that do the thing that I like to do, you know. Try me, I would be invited to Quincy Jones' house and just listen. Yeah. The thing about it, at my stage and age right now, all the people I looked up to to get that listening ear, Fading into their 90s and I remember when I had Jack Holtzman drive up and hang out with me one day. Jack Holtzman, the founder of Elektra Records. Doors label. Guru. Among many others. We were talking about picking lemons and avocados and the whole county is exciting to me. You know what, most people get Ventura mixed up with Ventura County and they get it mixed up with Ventura Highway. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was, you know. Ventura Boulevard in L.A., right, yeah. They're like, how far are you from here? I'm like. You should look at the map, because, I mean, maybe I'm not the right person. Pack a bag. I'm not down the road, you know, from your L.A. location. Yeah, because everybody's, yo, man, yo, I'm in L.A., where you at? I'm like, not there. Yeah. Oh, my God, I've made my entire adult life out of the talent that's here. I mean, this entire place, like I said, has been built by the talent of this town. It has expanded into other regions as I've gotten more years under my belt doing this, but... Right out of the gate, that was the first thing that Jared and I recognized was just art, not only just music, but art and culture and the community of creatives from Art City and places on the Ave and like that house artists and, you know, so music and being one part of it for me, but I'm still fascinated with the amount of deep ocean culture that is here. It's not just a pass-through, but if you If you want to go and look at the world and you've got an issue with it, you just can't think that it's going to fix itself. I mean, we just wrote a song called How If together, and it's like, how are you going to change the world if you can't change your mind, you know? It's the same type of thing when you talk about, well, you've got gripes and you've got complaints. I'm not saying that you should have solutions. But you're an artist, you should do a lot of listening, past, present, and future. Totally. And then that'll help your dialogue and what you want to talk about. I think a lot of artists sometimes write the same song, and I try to encourage them to take the plunge into areas that they might be fearful of. Especially if you're a songwriter, it's not A cop is gonna come by and throw a ticket at you. Right. Terrifying getting out of your comfort zone. Yeah, well, you got the Beatles, you got Earth, Wind & Fire, you got, you know, Parliament Funkadelic, you know, you got the Rolling Stones, the Public Enemy's usually the Rolling Stones of the rap game. I don't know if I'm Mick, or Flav's Mick some days, I might be Keith, and Flav is Keith, I don't... Wow, nice. We're the Rolling Stones of the rap game, not bragging, lips bigger than Jagger, not sagging, you know. Back in the day, you got Thousands of selections. Mommy, What's a Funkadelic? And that starts off with What is Soul? Wow. Mommy, I play that album a hell of a lot. Also, I'm stuck in three years. I'm stuck in 1969, 70, and 71. Those three years do it for me. Because I think the greatest... My period of recorded music is 1964 to 1974 and I kind of stay stuck in that time musically. You know, I'm a person, I'm 60s on 6, 70s on 7. I'm listening to more 70s on 7 now. You know, when I was coming up, I'm embedded into the 60s. So I'm more Led Zeppelin and Cream than I happen to be when I was in high school and you start seeing like These meshes and the beginnings of prog rock and Yes and all that. But weirdly, I'm starting to get more into what later on, what they call Yacht Rock. Because we like songs, but there's combinations. And he plays this way too. He plays to that. Jay gets on the keyboards and plays something that would work in 1982. Which is the year that I rebelled against because I was like, well, we need to bring back the sonic sounds of the 60s and rap over them. You know, so I totally was looking at music at the time when I was in college, you know, from 78, really the 80 to 84 period. And I was like, you know, so there's a whole area in there that I remember it passed me by, now I'm going to read because it's in me. Because it would be on pop radio, and I'd be like, okay. But then now I'm starting to get into the dynamic of the album cuts of those eras. Totally. The musical part of it. The musical part of it. Right, right. And I'm okay with it. That's kind of what's been talked about, too, is the future of some of these tracks that we've, the last month or two of the songs that we've been working on, is about expanding musically and opening up. Not like the jam band 40-minute version of something, but let's just spread it out a little bit. It doesn't have to be so bang, bang, three minutes. And that's what happened in the 70s. They started to say, all right, you know what? We're going to open up the vocals here, and then we don't hear the vocals for another two minutes because you're just zoned and spaced in that direction. So that's the fun part about experimenting now. But you could come in my car and almost hear it. There's some stations that I'll be like, I'm not. playing that because that would have me crash off the side of the road, but there's there's an interesting tape, you know. To see a pool of people come out to hang and support one another not like hey we're just going to bro out but like these are the people that are moving the energy through this community right now in the music world you know and i was honored to be able to play and to you know to have a chat um and be in that environment and just to see like there's so much history that goes musically comes from this community but i think the energy here yeah has always been here and Ventura, to me, is like a connector between what happens in Camarillo, Oxnard, and then on the other side you got Ojai, and then Carpinteria, and Ventura's a connector.