Bob Weston (BW): I'm a part-time/freelance BRT (broadcast recording technician) at NPR's Chicago News Bureau. There are 3 NPR reporters working there. We record, edit, mix and feed their news spots, stories and longer pieces to DC (we have a full-time fiber-optic audio link with the mothership in DC). Also, if anyone in DC (or anywhere else, like Philadelphia for Fresh Air) wants to interview somebody in Chicago, they sit in our studio for the interview.

Anybody can rent the studio to for interviews or recording or feeding audio over our ISDN lines (digital phone lines that audio can be sent over). The BBC will use us occasionally.

If I'm in on a Friday, I'll usually have something to do with the "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" show. It gets produced in Chicago. Either I'll drive the show (run the board for the live recording) or assist whoever is driving. Or I'll work on putting the show together in the afternoon and evening (editing, adding the music, making the breaks happen at the right times, feeding it to DC when it's finished, etc). We edit it on Sonic Solutions. The post production can take from 6 to 10 hours.

Favorite personalities. That's pretty tough. I've been an NPR listener for something like 13 years and love many of the on-air people. I'm definitely a big Cheryl Corley fan. I work with her at the Chicago Bureau. She does great work and I really enjoy listening to her stories. Last year she hosted Morning Edition (or maybe it was All Things Considered ??) while the host was on vacation and I was blown away by what a great job she did.

BW: The 2 jobs really don't have anything in common. I was a maintenance tech for a 50,000 Watt AM talk radio station in Boston. Fixing shit, aligning and cleaning tape recorders (okay, I do that when I record bands), maintenance, climbing the tower to fix shit, vacuuming out the transmitter, installing new equipment, sneaking in on Sunday night to mix Sebadoh songs in the 8-track production studio, etc.

3. What's the story behind Steve Albini's appearance on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"? Does host Peter Sagal ever listen to Shellac?

BW: I doubt Peter's ever heard Shellac. Obviously, the other folks who work on the show know that I play in a band with Steve and know that Steve recorded Nirvana.

So they asked me if I thought he'd do it and I gave them his number.

BW: I haven't seen the comic book.

Like I said above, there's a lot of post-production to clean up the show. It is taped live in one shot (not always in order, depending on the schedule of any famous guests). It lasts about 1.5 hours. We need to get that down to a "funny" 50 minutes (or something like that - I don't have the format clock in front of me). Sometimes, if a question doesn't seem to work, it'll be cut, or the order of questions will be changed after the fact to make the show flow better - be more funny.

Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion (I think), and Wait Wait... are all recorded and then edited. The callers are people who call the number given out over the air. They get called back and interviewed a bit during the week. A producer will talk to them and see who seems like they'll make a good caller on the show.

So, in essence, they're screened like on a live call-in show, but a few days in advance. Then, we call them during the taping on Friday. ‘Same thing for Car Talk.

Michael Feldman's What D'ya Know is actually live. We're live to tape, like Larry Sanders.

Ira's show (This American Life) is a little different. The segments / stories are all finished / edited by Friday night. Then Ira "performs" the show live over the air on WBEZ. He plays the music and reads all the introductions, bridges, credits, etc, and then plays back the prerecorded segments. maybe he'll add music to a segment live. And he'll decide, as the show is going on, what the funny joke about Tori will be and extract the line from whatever segment it's in. This live 'performance' of the show gets taped and then fed to the PRI network for distribution to stations.

Fresh Air gets "performed" the same way. The host does all the introductions live and then plays back tape of the individual segments.

BW: With a lot of guidance from the band I've been doing my version of the loops.

I'm told that Martin didn't do it the same every time, anyway. So there's no "right way". The album versions aren't necessarily the definitive versions as far as the loops go. I'd rather have Martin doing it. But if he can't be there, I feel like I'm one of the best guys for the job. I've played with Peter in the Volcano Suns, and have known Roger and Clint since joining the Suns. Roger toured with us a few times back in the old days.

The Suns (David, Bob era) played a show 2 years ago in Boston. It was great fun. I wouldn't rule another one out, but there aren't any in the works right now.

BW: I was always interested in recording, but never ever expected to be able to make a living at it (in fact, I barely live off it now - hence my part-time NPR job).

I went to school for Electrical Engineering so that I'd have a job to support my playing in bands and recording bands as my hobbies. I graduated with a BS in EE in 1988. I played in the Suns from 1987 until 1990 (or ’91? I forget when we stopped). I took a semester off from college to do my first Volcano Suns tour in fall of 1987.

I guess I learned about recording by just figuring it out on my own and asking lots of questions of lots of other engineers. I would mess around with recording my friends and I at my college radio station. I started a live band show on that station. So for a couple of years I'd mix a band live to stereo every week (first on a Tascam 8-channel mixer with a bunch of EV mics - then I convinced the station to buy a few good mics and a Soundcraft 200B). I convinced friends' bands in Boston that I could do their live sound (and would pump the other sound guys for info). When my bands recorded, I would learn a TON from the engineer.

I met lots of other bands by going to shows and making friends with bands that I liked from around the country. I would meet bands when the Suns toured. So I knew a lot of people in bands when I decided to try and record bands for real.

I learned a lot from Steve when he recorded the Suns. Then a few years later, he hired me to wire his new studio and work for him as his maintenance tech (with the agreement that I could bring bands in when he didn't have the studio booked). After a few years I couldn't keep up with the maintenance work and left Steve's employment to become a freelance recording engineer. Very scary. Sometimes I don't have a session for 3 months.

Pro-tools? I don't have anything against Pro-tools. I just don't see any reason to use it. 2-inch 24-track sounds amazing and does everything I need. I can edit on it. I can spot-erase. I record live rock bands, not hip-hop. 24 tracks is plenty most of the time. You know the old saying: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

BW: In a way, they're all "just for the money". This is how I make my living. It isn't my hobby or artistic outlet. I need to record bands to pay my bills and eat. That said, however, I do feel pretty lucky that I love my job so much.

And most of the time, I end up really liking the band (either the people or the music, or if I'm lucky: both). I'm very fortunate. I like the music made by most of the bands that have hired me.

BW: Lula cafe or Flying Saucer.

What was the reaction from the people at First Avenue when you told them that you wanted to do a breakfast show at 9 AM?

BW: We have a long relationship with First Avenue (Todd's probably played there more than anyone else ever). They were into the idea right away.

We try to go the extra mile with everything we do: recording, LP packaging*, shows, etc. We like giving people more than their money's worth. It's important for us to be proud of everything the band does.

10. I'm curious about the economics of the band: that show you did in Chicago last summer with Fugazi and The Ex was something like six or seven bucks for all three bands, and then you've got people like Bob Mould regularly charging upwards of $15 for a solo acoustic tour… Is it just 'cause you all have day jobs that you can afford to keep the ticket prices so low? Or are ticket prices really that overly inflated?

BW: We do it all ourselves and cut out a lot of unnecessary expenses. All shows could be way cheaper and still make money (but not for all the extra people/ middle-men involved in "big" shows).

BW: Todd's address has never had anything to do with Shellac's operations. Shellac will always be, by design, our hobby and artistic outlet. Never, ever, our job.

We practice when the 3 of us have time in our schedules. Todd's living in Chicago doesn't change my or Steve's work schedule - so it hasn't changed our practice schedule.

BW: Yugoslavian.

BW: Pet peeve: drivers ignoring traffic laws (ie: yellow means stop if possible, not speed up, etc).