What follows is one of the many articles in the Mercury’s 2026 Fall Arts Issue. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.
When people think about what goes into recording an album, some imagine cavernous recording studios with large recording consoles, the hunched silhouette of an engineer fiddling with dozens of knobs and faders, and a pacing producer overseeing the operation. For others, modern home recording through a Macbook with a few microphones and a pair of decent headphones is more realistic and approachable. There’s an entire spectrum of scenarios in between those poles, and that’s just what Tape Op magazine has been working to unravel over the last 30 years by interviewing producers about their approaches to recording.
Helmed by founder and editor Larry Crane of Jackpot! Recording Studio in Portland and publisher/sound engineer John Baccigaluppi, the recording arts magazine’s impressive influence is celebrated in a new book, Making Music: Conversations with Record Producers, available from Akashic Books September 1.
The book whittles down an enormous list of interviews from the magazine’s decades of publications to 24 examples. Over the course of these, a semi-chronological arc emerges, running the gamut from the ultra legendary—like Tony Visconti, Brian Eno, Glyn Johns, or Daniel Lanois—whose budgets permitted them to spend time in enormous studios with seminal artists of the 20th century, to those recording on their laptops in a bedroom and still generating hits, like Finneas O’Connell.
“It’s sort of amazing that we’re still doing almost exactly what we set out to do,” says Baccigaluppi.
For Crane and Baccigaluppi, revisiting interviews that either they or a Tape Op writer had scribed over the preceding 30 years yielded opportunities to discern them through a new lens, revealing more nuance and wisdom than perhaps when they were initially published.
“I was getting different things from them even though I had, I’m sure, read all of these before,” says Baccigaluppi, who came on as Tape Op publisher a couple of years into the operation. Crane and Baccigaluppi met after the latter recorded and signed Crane’s legendary 1980s punk band Vomit Launch.
Choosing the final list of interviews was a difficult task for the duo, who as of this writing were working on issue 175 of Tape Op. Important to both was inclusivity among the interviews featured, with the recording industry historically being a white male dominated affair. Interviews with producers like Susan Rogers, RZA, Linda Perry, Jennifer Decilveo, and SASAMI round out a who’s-who of revealing, and often very funny, interviews.
“Brian Eno’s gotta be in it. Glyn Johns has to be in it,” explains Crane. “I really fought for Susan Rogers to be in it ’cause I thought her conversations about Prince were really cool.”
Both the book and the magazine shy away from prying into the rigid technical specifications of gear, an approach that Crane and Baccigaluppi understood would separate their magazine from others in the market. Tape Op has published very few list-style articles covering the minutiae of mic choices for recording sessions.
“I can’t stand a list of ‘What do you use on the kick drum? What do you use on the snare drum?’” says Crane. “Especially when it’s people who work in fancier studios than Jackpot. And you’re like, I don’t have $80,000 for mics
for the drums.”
The magazine has become something of a revered mentor to a whole slew of artists, engineers, and producers, either of the budding variety or the seasoned.
“[Tape Op] answered so many questions I didn’t even know I didn’t know,” says Portland audio engineer Nalin Silva. “It was a time where the info and secrets of the trade did not seem to be shared openly with everyone—that this trade, like others, was for a few select people and gaining access to this world was hard. Tape Op helped bridge that gap. It helped me become who I am.”
Portland musician and engineer Cameron Spies (Night Heron, Radiation City) was featured in issue 172 of Tape Op and concurs on its continued influence in the industry.
“Tape Op is one of the few magazines that I’ve genuinely read cover to cover,” says Spies. “Something about the style of interviewing made this career feel accessible, even if the fancy big studio environment felt unattainable. It definitely made me feel empowered to make high quality records without having access to floor-to-ceiling racks of outboard gear and $100,000 mic lockers.”
Crane and Baccigaluppi hope that musicians get hold of the book and understand that they could have a voice in the process of recording their music.
“That’s what I really want people to take from it, to empower them in a way,” says Crane. “I hope that it reaches a wider audience that would be more than just music fans, too. Not everybody gets to come into a studio. Even some musicians don’t; they’ll just record themselves at home. It’s not something that happens to people all that often, and they wonder what’s going on in there, what’s it like. We can tell those stories, and make it look a little more inviting and less scary.”
Making Music: Conversations with Record Producers is available through Akashic Books September 1. Powell’s City of Books hosts a conversation about the book between Larry Crane and John McEntire of Tortoise on Friday, October 9 at 7 pm, 1005 W Burnside.