VK Icons: Michael Brauer

In the world of music, there are mix engineers, and then there is Michael Brauer – a living legend who's effortlessly traversed genres and eras, leaving an indelible mark on the sonic landscapes of our favorite tunes.

Recently, we had the privilege of sitting down with Michael as part of Vintage King's 30th-anniversary celebration. But once we got to chatting, we quickly found ourselves with way too many great quotes for just one blog.

Continue reading to learn more about Michael's illustrious 40-year career, which sessions were his favorites, and his advice on building and sustaining a career in this ever-changing industry.

Your discography is very eclectic – how did you achieve that in an industry that loves to put people in a box when it comes to genre?

I always wanted to become what I consider a real mixer – someone who can mix anything that's out there. I never wanted to be pigeonholed, so I kept changing my discography every five years. That was planned because after five years I'd achieved everything I wanted from really understanding that style of music. Then it was time to get all nervous, stray out of my comfort zone, and start learning the next approach. Quite often things were a blend: I started in R&B, went from R&B to rock, then I went to pop/rock and then I was doing pop/R&B and they all worked together. It's about how you treat the bottom end and how you treat the top end. Where do the vocals sit? How do you treat the vocal? All those things changed and I really liked that.

I never wanted to stay in one style of music and that was always an issue for labels because they want to pigeonhole you into one style. So, to be honest, I've always been struggling to prove myself. It has never been easy but I've worked well and consistently, although every time I would start going to a new style, my work would take a big dip and I'd have to prove myself again. But I always had an objective in mind of a band that I really wanted to mix for and in order for me to mix that band, I had to change myself – I had to be a chameleon. 

My styles were generally transparent, they weren't like a huge trademark where everything sounds the same. What you would hear would be how dynamic or how emotional the song was; how the vocal would project out of the speaker; and the way you would listen to the story of the song – that you could attribute to me, but in a very transparent way so that I could move from one landscape to another. I always said to myself, “Okay, I'm going to enjoy the success of what I've just done, but I'm not going to enjoy it for too long; I'm not going to get too comfortable. I'm going to love it and then I'm going to start thinking about what's next. What am I going to go after next?” 

I distinctly remember hearing the band Grizzly Bear and wanting to mix them, but thinking, “They'll never call me with the kind of records I'm making right now. So what do I have to do?” Slowly, when the song was appropriate, I would no longer use my go-to methods, which is a very difficult thing to put aside. I would always stop myself and go, “No, don't do that. That's not the drum sound that would work, they would never want to hear that.” The morning of doing the mix, I would be thinking about it and start doing things differently; I'd even change little things like how I brushed my teeth or how I would get to the studio. I would start prepping myself for a different mindset and I would just keep working towards that. 

Obviously, I wouldn't mix a song that should have been pop and make it sound indie, because that's not appropriate, but I slowly started moving over. I remember my manager saying, “You really want to go indie? Because you understand that if you do that, your finances are going to drop by about 50% since indie budgets are way less.” And I said ‘yes’ because there were some great indie bands that I wanted to work with. It was never about the money. Obviously, money is important; I have a family, I had kids to put through school at the time, and it's not like I didn't care, but I knew that I would just have to work twice as hard and that was okay.

Eventually, one day, I mixed this band called Twin Shadow, and the producer and engineer for the last Twin Shadow record was Chris Taylor, who was in the band Grizzly Bear. He listened to the mixes and went, “Wow! I always mix my own records but I don't want to mix it this time. Would you mix it?” I had envisioned working with him one day and there you have it! That's kind of how my career goes – I think about a band that I really want to work with, even though it's a different style, I do records that they'll listen to and like, and slowly make my way there. That's why my discography is so eclectic because that's what makes me happy.

Tell us about some of the artists you’ve worked with that were pivotal to your evolution as a mixer.

From which decade? [Laughs] I've been doing this for 40 years, I can give you a band from each decade if you like. 

Let’s go decade by decade then!

During the first decade, the ‘80s, it would definitely be Luther Vandross and Aretha Franklin; I love the record I did with the band When In Rome; I also worked with Terence Trent D'Arby, and Hall & Oates. In the ‘90s, I moved away from R&B towards rock, so we have The Rolling Stones, but there's also James Brown in there. After that, I was getting into pop/rock and there were so many artists during that period of time, it's almost a blur. There was Amanda Marshall and New Radicals; and there was All I Want by Toad The Wet Sprocket that I think was really the pinnacle of my pop/rock period. Then it was time to completely move away from that and it got scary for a while.

Nirvana had come out and I hadn't been thinking about going to indie rock yet, but they kind of forced that. I remember that first year or so was really tough and it became difficult for me because bands didn't want to hear pop/rock at all, anything with reverb on it. [Laughs] But I survived that and then in the 2000s, Coldplay came along with Parachutes, which was just the perfect situation for me. They were an English band, the mix they were doing was a bit generic sounding, and my involvement made it a bit more American, in the sense that it was still organic, but it had this fresh approach. So with Coldplay, it was about having the opportunity to help establish a template for their sound. I mean, the band already had everything on the record, so it was about bringing out what was best about the band.

If it's already an established band, the template is already set, but my career has done well by being part of setting up the template on a fresh album by a new artist – creating that template, consciously seeing what it is that makes them unique, building on that style, and working around that. With Coldplay, Chris was a star and he didn't even know it yet, but I recognized that he was a great, great singer and I needed to make him more prominent than he or the band really liked. [Laughs] I also felt it was important to make him sound as vulnerable as he was when he was singing, and to not blur that sound in his voice when he kind of breaks up a little bit, to accentuate the emotion in his voice by making it sound very vulnerable, which, at the time, was a bit of an issue. But there was nobody who could tell a story like him, so I wanted to accentuate that.

Then I started getting back into some R&B with James Morrison who is also a great singer; John Mayer came along with Continuum and Battle Studies; I also loved working in indie rock with My Morning Jacket.

Then I started getting into doing some urban stuff and that’s when the Calle 13 record came along, which was fun for me; it was very different from what I'd been doing. With an artist like Elle King, I really got back into Southern rock with high compression and making her sound so mean, and then backing off again with James Bay. Again, those were great singers! I’m not taking away at all from the fact that there was great production and recording; it was 95% there already, but just bringing out a great singer like James Bay, for example, and projecting him so that you're really listening to his story was important. Also, the songs were good – without a good song, you just have a good singer, and nobody will ever know. 

We’re in the 2020s now and I'm working with Ben Folds ­– he's a great artist and one of my favorites. I mixed his most recent record, What Matters Most, here at my studio and he was there for it. It's rare that I have anybody present at my house, but Ben is a good friend, so it was a pleasure to have him and his engineer Joe Costa here. I was doing the cooking, I was doing the mixing, and it was a really fun couple of weeks!

You work with new artists and unsigned bands as well now. Tell us more about that.

For the last six or seven years, I have also been doing a lot of what I call PayPal gigs – a new or unsigned band has access to someone like myself and I match the prices of a good indie mixer so that it's affordable. I've been getting a lot of pleasure out of doing that because I want to support new artists, I want to give them their shot. 

The way things go today, there are very few labels that really nurture and bring an artist to fruition; they won't even sign an act unless it has a huge Instagram or YouTube presence. It’s all about who you already are, they want all the marketing already in place, they want the record already done. It's fine, nothing stays the same; I just keep mixing and it's a lot of fun. I’ve been working with bands like Como Brothers, Echosmith, Balu Brigada (Atlantic Records), and Bird Streets, and it’s been incredible.

So I'm still having a lot of fun, but also, my challenges are back. For example, I was a bike racer for ten years and then I stopped for many years, so once I moved up here, I decided to get back into racing. I had to train for a couple of years to get to the point where I'm not only ‘bike fit’, but also ‘race fit’; so that's what I've been doing. I have a new challenge, and it's to build something and get to the top of it all, to the pinnacle. I raced my first Masters National Road Race this year and did okay racing against the best in the country.

I like that challenge, it's fun because with mixing it's basically 95% mindset, and with biking it's mindset and the physical aspect of it. When you are working to the point where you’re right on the edge, physically, and you're suffering, that's where the mindset comes in. I have the experience of mindset from mixing because it's not like every mix you ever do is like a picnic – some are an absolute struggle and the only way to get through it is the proper mindset of how you're going to nail it, as opposed to just giving up or making it less than what its potential is. So I have that going for me, [laughs] because there's a point where you just have to tell yourself you can do this and then you go ahead; if you tell yourself, “I can't do it”, you can't do it, and in bike racing, if you start having those doubts, you’re out the back.

Looking back, what are you most proud of in terms of your history?

I'm just proud of the fact that I've made a lot of people happy; I listened to the songs that the artists recorded and I helped bring that out to a lot of people – that's what it's about, bringing the artist's vision to reality; I’m proud of that.

If you’re interested in purchasing any of the gear mentioned in this blog for your studio, contact a Vintage King Audio Consultant via email or by phone at 866.644.0160.