Brett on recording Stranger Than Fiction

“Stranger Than Fiction was the first record where we ever hired an outside producer, the legendary and talented Andy Wallace. Andy is probably best known for doing Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’, which at the time of Stranger Than Fiction had just come out a little while before. He’d also just completed a huge Rage Against The Machine record; he was on fire. But the thing about Andy Wallace was that, you know, he wasn’t just some young upstart producer. I mean, going way back, he had worked Donna Sommers and Madonna and he’d done every kind of music that you can imagine. He was actually sort of an older gentleman, he wasn’t a kid our age, so we really looked up to him and we felt that he was somebody we could let produce us. The way it came about was, Andy’s manager reached out to us and said, ‘Hey, Andy likes you guys, would you like us to try out a mix. And if you like what Andy does, maybe you’d want him to hire to produce you’. And we were on tour at the time, so we arranged to have the multi-tracks of American Jesus send to him. And he quickly did a mix and sent that back to us. In those days it wasn’t possible to just send links, I think he actually had to send a burn, which we listened to on the bus, and it sounded phenomenal. And in fact, I would kill to get a copy of that nowadays, ‘cause I don’t have any idea whatever happened to that. But it wasn’t on the record, it was just a test mix to show what he could do with our stuff. It sounded phenomenal, and God, I wish I still had a copy of that. Anyway, Andy produced this record, it has his signature sound, it was done at a place called Rumbo Recorders, a place where Guns ‘N Roses did their ‘Appetite for Destruction’, and also Jeff Lynne of ELO fame does a lot of work there. It’s deep in the Valley, the San Fernando Valley, but that’s where we recorded with Andy. And then it was mixed out in Burbank at a place called The Enterprise. But it was a real pleasure working with him, he’s a true gentleman, I learned a lot from him and I’m grateful to him to this day, a really wonderful experience."