CDR's Adam Smith on the Cheater Slicks
The following is an excerpt from a recent interview I did with Columbus Discount Records co-owner and mastering engineer Adam Smith. Smith discusses recording The Cheater Slicks' Reality is a Grape LP in 2012. The full interview will run in the next issue of Bored Out. -Ryan Leach
Ryan: What are your memories of recording the Cheater Slicks at Musicol?
Adam: I had done a couple of singles with the Slicks on CDR. I’d known Tom (Shannon) for a while. We recorded and released Reality is a Grape (2012). That’s the session I’m talking about. We did one more Cheater Slicks record after Reality is a Grape. It’s a live album called Live Vol. 3 (2014) and it was the last CDR title. It had “Sister Ray” on one side and an old ‘90s version of “Thinkin’ Some More” on the other side. The thing with that live record was it was supposed to be a double LP. But we’d lost so much money on the Gibson Bros’ Build a Raft due to the gatefold. We decided to break the Cheater Slicks’ live record into two volumes. It was thousands of dollars cheaper to do two separate records as opposed to two LPs together as a gatefold.
Ryan: Nevertheless, those 50 people greatly appreciated the Build a Raft reissue.
Adam: Totally! We actually did sell out of it, but it was rough. We moved 500 copies and were going to press some more. However, the stamper plates broke and the sleeve place wouldn’t cut us a break on 300 sleeves. They’d only accept 500 as their minimum order. There was just no way we could financially do it.
Ryan: It was incredible that you got the original Gibson Bros together for that reissue.
Adam: They played in a parking lot.
Ryan: With Ellen Hoover back on drums.
Adam: That’s right. Dan Dow too. I remember walking to that show and I ran into some friends of mine. Like gutter punk-types. They had some acid and asked me if I wanted some. I said, “Yeah, sure.” I took it and it wasn’t kicking in so I took some more.
Ryan: You made the proverbial mistake.
Adam: Total mistake. I remember that show. By the time the acid kicked in, I’d had a double dose. I tried to introduce myself to Jeff Evans. I have no idea what happened. If it went well, poorly or what I’d said. That was the only time I’d ever met him. The next day, Don recorded that Burning Bus LP that In the Red eventually put out in 2020. He’d brought his band up with him to Columbus. I was still coming down off that acid during that session. I was barely hanging on. Nevertheless, I’m happy with the way that record turned out.
Ryan: Let’s get back to cutting the Slicks at Musicol.
Adam: We’d previously cut a Cheater Slicks single at Musicol. At the time, the Musicol studio was in such a state of disrepair that it took us four hours to set everything up. Nothing worked right. We hit play on the tape machine and it started playing backwards. It was a disaster. Nevertheless, we did get the songs for the 7”. We actually cut Reality is a Grape at the CDR studio. We’d decided that it would’ve been too arduous to record an LP at Musicol. Our studio was in a large, 3,000-square-foot basement. The way Reality is a Grape went down was Tom had a batch of new songs that he was excited about and CDR was on board. They came into the basement and we recorded essentially the whole album in a weekend. A couple of weeks later, they told me, “Yeah, we’ve listened to the rough mixes. There are a couple of songs we want to recut. And then we can start working on the vocals.” No problem. So, they show up and we set up again. Do a soundcheck. I set up the vocal mics. The thinking was when Tom or Dana’s voice would get tired, we’d work on those two other basic tracks. We’d just keep bouncing back and forth. Tom prepares to do his first vocal for the record and he’d forgotten his notebook with all of his lyrics at home. So, he’s trying to remember the words to this song and he can’t. He’s getting really frustrated. Then Dave (Shannon) walks out. They start getting into this argument which turns into a screaming match. I’m sitting in the control room with Dana and he says to me, “This is really stupid.” I told him we could try again later on. Dana replies, “No. They’re not even fighting about the record. They’re fighting about a garden plot behind their house.” They lived right next to each other in a shared duplex. The frustration of the session apparently boiled over onto this ongoing feud they had over a garden plot in their backyard. They weren’t even yelling about the session; it was all about who owned this small garden. Tom comes into the control room and says, “The session is over. We’ll come back in a couple of weeks and finish it.” I told him, “No pressure. But we’ve got everything set up. Let’s just try to get those two backing tracks done today. And then we’ll call it.” The Shannon brothers are furious at one another. Dana is furious at both of them. Nobody is looking at each other. They’re all looking at the ground. Literally, they then played that record front to back without stopping. No communication between them or me. By some miracle, I’d loaded up a fresh reel of tape for these new basic tracks. So, I had 33 minutes of music. They ended up redoing the whole record. With the exception of one or two songs, those were the takes we kept for Reality is a Grape. They were just blistering. They were so angry at each other. That session where they weren’t talking with one another was so much better than the previous one. It was an amazing, cathartic moment. They weren’t even mad at each other after blasting through the songs. You can hear it on the record. The Cheater Slicks are the real deal. It was one of the great honors of my career to do some records with them.
