Jackpot! Recording and the TASCAM 38
That jump from 4-track to 8-track recording. -by Larry Crane
It’s crazy that one piece of recording equipment could have such an effect on one’s life, but when I purchased a TASCAM 38 8-track reel-to-reel tape deck (and console) in the mid-’90s it was a big leap forward for me. At that point, outside of actual studio sessions or borrowing Quasi’s Fostex 8-track, I had been recording on 4-track cassette and recently a 4-track reel-to-reel deck. At the time, I was working at a pub in the NW part of Portland, and one day on my bike ride home I woke up in the OHSU hospital instead of pulling up to my home (where Laundry Rules Recording was in the basement). A young motorist had popped their door open on NE Everett Street as I was riding down the hill, and apparently I flew over the door and landed on my head, cracking my bike helmet and cutting open my right arm. Brain trauma is real shit, and I remember my wife at the time in tears as I could not recall that we’d moved into our house together. Memory slowly returned, but everything from the preceding weeks seemed like it had happened to me 6 months prior. I took a few weeks off work, and would just sit on the porch doing nothing, sometimes randomly breaking into tears for unknown reasons. But I was getting better. When the insurance company for the driver at fault called, they claimed I was at fault, but after a lot of push back I was able to get them to give me money if I signed a contract saying I would not make further claims. It wasn’t a ton of money (I don’t recall the exact amount) but I was able to pay off a small credit card debt and buy a small Soundcraft Spirit Folio Rac Pac mixer and the TASCAM 38 tape deck - the exact one pictured above. And I soon got to work on The Maroons’ I Am To Blame album.
More than anything, The Maroons and John Moen’s faith in me were the factors that made me a person who could be trusted to record others and sealed my reputation in the local Portland music scene. I’d only lived in Portland for less than three years, but things were happening quickly. Tape Op started in this house as well, and I was getting busy.
I don’t have very many photos of Laundry Rules Recording. Here’s one of Hillary Johnson when she dropped by to visit from NYC to be interviewed for Tape Op! We wrote “Madonna” on the reel and took a photo. Silly kids.
Elliott Smith and I were hanging out at a party in my back yard (I’m sure Joanna Bolme brought him along), and he asked to see my basement studio. I think he was as shocked as me to realize we had the exact same tape decks. His Mackie 1604 console had broken, and he needed to overdub vocals on a song called “Pictures of Me,” later on his album Either/Or. He came by a bit later, and we knocked it out quickly. I loved the music, right up my alley. I said it reminded me of The Left Banke, a ‘60s group I’d been obsessing over. He looked surprised and said, “You know that band?” Around that time Elliott and I also did a session at my house with Sean Croghan (Crackerbash, Jr. High), though nothing was finished from that. Sean’s band Jr. High came over to do a 7-inch single, with Joanna Bolme (bass), Janet Weiss (of Quasi, drums), and Dan Hawthorne (lead guitar). My TASCAM 38 had stopped working, so we borrowed Elliott’s 38 and it stayed ion my basement for a while.
Then, not long after I interviewed Elliott for Tape Op in the fall of 1996, it came time to open a “real” recording studio… and Elliott joined up.
Above is a photo of me in Jackpot! Recording Studio early on, wearing a Maroons t-shirt! For a little while in 1997, after opening, we didn’t have the MCI JH-16 2-inch tape deck, so Elliott and I kept doing stuff on the 8-track deck (whichever one was working). Many years later, with his parent’s permission, I sold Elliott’s TASCAM 38 to the Experience Music Project, along with his piano from Jackpot!
Prior to our move in 2007, my TASCAM 38 was traded to my assistant, Gail Buchanan, and a few years ago she graciously sold it back to me and it’s at Jackpot! again, though we haven’t even checked if it still works! Soon.
Having eight tracks to record on really did up my game as an engineer, though when I got a 16-track deck it did sound a lot better and offered up far more flexibility. But the TASCAM 38 was a cornerstone of my early studio work, and I am still thankful I found it. It would have been nice to skip the bike accident though…