Sound and spirit

[May 2nd, 2007] I met with producer/engineer/TapeOp magazine founder Larry Crane among the boxes, scattered papers and tangled wires that were once Jackpot! Studios on Southeast Morrison Street. Though he relocated to Arizona last year, the 43-year-old has been back in town for the past three months moving Jackpot! to its new location on Southeast 50th Avenue. It was here on Morrison, though, that Crane worked on Either/Or and XO with Elliott Smith—who helped Crane build the studio over a decade ago. At one point during the interview a strong wind blew the door open, and Crane said, laughing, "The ghost of Elliott Smith!"

After Smith's death in 2003, the family reached out to Crane, asking him to be Smith's official archivist. The role found Crane digging through Smith's tapes, backing up and carefully restoring the audio. The fruit of his labor is New Moon, a two-disc compilation of unreleased outtakes (and a few rarities) from Smith's early (pre-XO) career. After all his work compiling and remastering the tracks, Crane says, "I have a hard time imagining Elliott's albums without this as well."

WW : There must be unique challenges to compiling an album like this, making decisions the artist would usually make.

Crane: Well, I think the challenges were harder on something like [From a Basement on the Hill, Smith's final album], because it's supposed to be a proper record, and this is just a collection of songs from a certain era. Technically, the hardest thing was just finding all the tapes and getting it all together. A lot of stuff spelled itself out for me. I knew how he tracked, I had watched him. Part of my job became more analytical and pragmatic than emotional.

You must have had to remove yourself, emotionally, from the process.

Yeah, I mean, I had a job to do. The last few years, Jesus Christ. Grant from the Go-Betweens died; the Exploding Hearts died, most of them; Josh who used to play in Braille Stars died; Elliott died...you know, your friends and clients are dropping like flies and you just have to let go of a little bit of that. I'm not a person who gets depression...but still, the two weeks of mixing this stuff was a little dark.

It has to be a big concern of yours to have this not look like cashing in on the tragedy of Elliott's death.

And I wouldn't want the estate to be seen that way. Even putting together "New Disaster" from two takes made them really nervous. They thought people [might] think we were creating songs out of leftovers.

It has to be refreshing to have people on that side being thoughtful about it.

Oh yeah...there are certain limits. It's not sensational.

Is it a humbling thing, or just awkward, to be a proxy for Elliott?

Well, I'm not as good a songwriter, so I had to find someone's boat to climb on [laughs]. No, it just feels like...it's an honor, you know, that people trust me enough to give me this job...that I can have a rapport with all these really awesome people he worked with. I'll be glad when [the interviews are] done and I can just focus on the work. There are still hundreds of tapes to go through.