John Kurzweg talks music, moving to Santa Fe and producing Puddle of Mudd and Creed.
SFR: How did a big fancy record producer such as yourself, with the credentials of having produced gold records, and the bands Creed and Puddle of Mudd, end up in Santa Fe?
JK:
Well, back around 2002 my wife and I were trying to move to LA. We were shopping and shopping and even bought a house but got out of it for complicated reasons-an elevator that was going to cost more than our house back in Florida. And then in the summer of 2002 I rented a guesthouse out in Rowe for vacation. It was gonna be three weeks and it turned into six weeks. We fell in love with the area and we just on a lark looked at a few houses: 'Maybe we'll come here later or maybe we'll retire here years later.' And one of the first houses we looked at was the one we now live in and it ruined everything after that, every house in LA, and actually every house in Santa Fe that we looked at. And when I found out Stepbridge Studios was here-I knew there were a lot of little studios here but I didn't know there was a place that had all the gear I'm accustomed to-when I found that out I was like, 'You know what, let's do Santa Fe.'
What was your experience in the late '80s as a singer and songwriter?
I got my record deal in '86 and put my record out in '87 on Atlantic Records and it was a really great experience for me. The record came out and sold about 10 copies. After I lost my record deal, I moved back to Florida and I had always produced myself, I never had produced anybody else, and I just kind of fell into doing that. In the beginning it was all college alternative bands. They would call me up and say, 'Hey we hear you've got an 8-track in your house,' so I tried it not knowing if it was something I was gonna be cut out for. I think the first band got on the local college radio station and really I've been working ever since. I was still playing fulltime on weekends up until about '98, '99, somewhere around the second Creed record, when I just got to a point where I couldn't be playing and producing at the same time.
How did the Creed gig come about?
An old friend of mine, Jeff Hanson, called me and said, 'I have this band and I want you to produce them.' They were just a local band in Tallahassee playing clubs, even playing bakeries-I remember there was a muffin and coffee shop that they played at one night. Honestly, I turned them down about two or three times because they were not very good live yet. And also to please their audience they tended to do noisier, faster, yelling kinds of songs and I just didn't get it until [Creed singer] Scott Stapp came to my house one day with a cassette of some songs I hadn't heard before. And I noticed there was a different thing going on, more mid-tempo, and they had songs, and they never had had songs before, so it was somewhere around there I agreed to do the project, still with no feeling or anticipation that this was going to be anything other than another band I was going to produce.
When the album hit it big, how did your life change?
It was funny at first, we did the first Creed record in our house just with what gear I had at the time and when that record went gold I called around producers' managers in LA and I still couldn't get arrested. Nobody wanted to manage me, so I just continued to work with local bands. I did the second record and I'm not sure the label even really wanted me to do that. When that record started to happen, that's when things changed. By this point people did call. I went to work on a few songs with Big Head Todd right after that second Creed record. So I started staying really busy and having to travel more and certainly being a guy that has lived off anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 a year all of a sudden my life was very, very different.
Do you have a favorite band in Santa Fe?
When I first came here I didn't know there was a whole lot of roots music, kinda folk rock, and I really love that genre. That whole Frogville roster-I really like all that stuff. That was really missing from the community that I came from. I didn't know that was here for a few months and when I discovered that I thought, 'This is a really healthy, really cool thing that's going on.' And I'm building a studio on my property and I was hoping to work with some local artists there. And I've tried to turn the outside world onto some of [Frogville's] stuff, but unfortunately the circles I'm in are the circles where if they don't think it could sell multi-platinum, they're kind of not interested, which is sad because there's a whole other world of artists and records that maybe don't sell a million records but sell a good amount, where they get a fan base, and it can be a business thing even.
It's a strange irony that you kind of skipped over the things-
The things that I wish I was doing, yeah. And it's funny that I live in a place like Santa Fe because there's probably a lot of people who can relate to this: It's a matter of focussing and intent. Because there was a moment back in '95 or '96 where I started to go, 'I do want to produce more,' and I did a lot of affirmations of 'Oh, I want to do something that's very successful,' but I didn't give it any more specifics than that. I didn't say, 'At something I really love.' When it took off there was almost no time to think about it. It was just, 'Oh, now you're doing Puddle of Mudd next. Now you're doing this next; now you're doing Eagle Eye Cherry next. Now you're going to do a song with Jewel,' and there was almost no time to think about it.
If you could take one or two bands from Santa Fe and make them succeed, who would it be?
First off, there are so many acts I haven't seen yet, including the whole Warehouse 21 scene. And I know there's a whole world of stuff going on. But I'd have to say Hundred Year Flood because I think they write really great songs and they've already got the whole thing right there. I mean, all of Frogville's stuff is cool. And of course Mary & Mars are gone now, they were the first act I saw in Santa Fe. There's a lot of great talent here, and hopefully something can happen and hopefully I can help.
