My name is Brad Wagner. I grew up in San Francisco back when Joe Montana and Jerry Rice were the kings of the universe. In my teens and early twenties I bounced around the country from Northern Michigan to Wyoming, ski-bumming between Jackson Hole and Lake Tahoe before returning to SF to produce sports entertainment TV shows including Fog City Wrestling and SF Bay Bombers Roller Derby. I moved to NYC in 2012 to work as a transfer engineer at Wolfgang's Vault where I digitized thousands of hours of live concerts by the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and loads more. I reshaped that job into a 5-year stint at Paste Magazine where I built and operated the Paste Studio NYC, producing nearly 2,000 sessions with artists like Steve Martin and Ani DiFranco.
The pandemic permanently shuttered Paste Studio NYC, so we pivoted to Paste Studio "On The Road," a nomadic concept as opposed to a physical location. We now build a pop-up version of the studio in cities around the country. Audio engineer Juan Soria and I recently traveled to Guatemala to run sessions in a tiny mezcal bar in Antigua called Café No Sé on behalf of Paste and Ilegal Mezcal. We aim to expand the international nature of the "studio" in the coming years. We're now steadily creeping up on our 3,000th overall session.
What was the last creative project that you worked on?
The last creative project I completed was a session series for Paste Magazine in collaboration with Boise-based software company ConvertKit at the TreeFort Music Festival. Before this week, I had never co-hosted with anybody. This collaboration with ConvertKit involved figuring out how to share hosting duties with Haley Janicek in an entertaining way. Haley runs her own session series, so we put our heads together to figure out how to create something that would suit the needs of both series. I am proud of the outcome! Ghost Funk Orchestra and 19 other world-class artists absolutely slayed during our Treefort sessions, I think Haley and I figured out a happy middle ground to serve both projects.
Oh oh oh!! Lemme tell you about my NEXT project too. It's hardly commercial, but it is going to be fucking devastating. My long-time pal John Sutter has an awesome kid in Lake Tahoe, CA. I think he's 3 or so. This awesome kid has a special tree that he calls the drum tree. He finds sticks in the woods and bangs them on the drum tree and it's a party. Juan Soria and I will be in Tahoe next week livestreaming sessions from the WinterWonderGrass Festival, so we'll have all the fancy equipment with us. Following the festival, we're going to do a performance session with John's awesome kid at the drum tree, treating it like any other session we record. Full production value, we're gonna mic the shit out of this tree and see what happens! John is an über-creative man himself. By way of energy-exchange and appreciation, he's carving a representation of Lake Tahoe for me and Monte Fitz Roy for Juan (Juan is from Argentina, he requested a custom carving of Fitz Roy in Patagonia and John got to work!). Please check out more of John's work at https://tahoegraphical.com/
What are 3 traits of creativity to you?
I think all three traits of creativity are Persistence, Polite persistence. That inspiration/perspiration quote applies here. But for me, it's honestly closer to 100% perspiration. I don't get that lightning-bolt moment where I have to run and grab a pen to jot my brilliant thoughts down before they fade. I just sorta do shit, even when I don't want to. Especially when I don't want to. It takes a LOT of politely persistent communication to get people moving in the same direction. If I see a tremendous opportunity to create art, it does not necessarily follow that my vision and enthusiasm will spread to others by osmosis. It takes a shitload of calls and emails. That's a boring way for creativity to express itself, but that's what it looks like while we're sowing the seeds.
We have been very lucky to create relationships with studios like 3Sirens in Nashville and dozens of others who have graciously jumped onboard with the Paste Studio "On The Road" concept. In the specific case of 3Sirens, Maria Ivey DID sense the opportunity through osmosis. There was no 100-message back-and-forth email thread. I'm paraphrasing here, but it essentially went: Maria, "Do you wanna?" Brad, "Hell yes, please." All parties gelled relatively quickly, just a basic framework and a handshake. Doug and Alyssa are the absolute best and I'm proud of what we did together in Nashville that week!
Nah, not ALL three traits of creativity are persistence. I think that empathy is indispensable to being creative. If I'm hosting a Paste Session and am unable to put myself in the shoes of the artist with whom I'm speaking, the conversation is going to be a fucking dud. We are lucky enough to get to meet artists from all corners of the earth in these sessions. I have no frame of reference for what it is like to be an emerging shoegaze band from Hong Kong or a Malawian soul singer, but I am curious to hear them tell it and to find out what we have in common. Invariably it's something.
Presence of mind is crucial on set. There are lights and cameras and mics and cables everywhere, it takes concentration to be effective and safe in that environment. We take one hour maximum for artist arrival, load-in and soundcheck before we go live. One hour goes fast considering the amount of moving parts and moving bodies. All need to be aware of their own needs and the needs of others. All needs are valid and need to be prioritized and addressed if we're gonna steer the ship in the direction we all want. If it's clear that audio engineer Juan Soria needs a cable for an amp that he's dialing in for an artist, I need to be aware and toss it to him if I'm physically closer to that cable. And I do not hesitate to ask him to dial in exposures/focus stuff on my cameras if he happens to be closer. Whoever is closest to the thing that needs doing is immediately delegated, we would not be able to work with 4 artists a day otherwise.
So, final answer: Persistence, empathy and presence of mind are three traits of creativity.
Brad Wagner and Paste team @ BottleRock Festival in Napa Valley
In terms of work fulfilling my creative goals, a lot more creative energy has been spent in the pre-production process since the pandemic. My creative goals are evenly split between many disciplines of video production (heavy on pre-production and production itself, relatively light on post). I won't pretend as though I think my work is going to win me cinematography awards for my gorgeous compositions or jaw-dropping lighting design. I am good at lighting, good at comp, good at tech. But I'm not a specialist in any of those fields, and my creative energy is divided due to the fact that we generally work as a skeleton crew of two people (Juan does all things audio, I do all things visual and hosting; booking and location decisions are shared to a certain extent). There is insufficient time to perfect any single aspect of the production. Sometimes it DOES end up perfect (again, see Keb' Mo'), but it takes a confluence of factors not always under our control. We are in constant triage-mode prioritizing the task that needs the next most attention. We sweat our asses off until it's time to go live, and then press the button and it's go-time. I do each job as well as I know how to do it in the available time frame. Consequently, pre-production takes on an outsized importance. Our location is different every week, the lighting and acoustic challenges are constantly variable. The creative choices that go into location and booking decisions determine whether we'll end up with a stunning outcome that looks like a full crew dedicated a full day to the project, or whether we end up with a good outcome that looks like a group of college kids did their best (it's never ever a bad outcome, but some outcomes are decidedly better than others).
What do you look for when you are selecting a location for Paste’s “on the road” Sessions?
We want each location to represent the natural beauty and geography of the area we're in. When we're in Colorado, the location should reflect mountains. When we're in the Sonoran Desert, the location should represent Saguaro Cactus. I'm psyched for our upcoming WinterWonderGrass Tahoe location, we're shooting at a beautiful old horse stable inside Olympic Valley with gorgeous views of the Sierras. There isn't such a thing as a perfect location. Our locations are chosen from spaces that our partners have access to (or sometimes chosen based on the fact that my high school prom afterparty was hosted there 20 years ago, like in the case of Olympic Valley Stables in Lake Tahoe), we choose the best available option and dress up the space the best we can. The most valuable tool we have to represent the location is the ~10 second pre-roll video that displays during the introduction. Those ten seconds usually represent the vibe of the location better than the space itself.
The audio and video aesthetic of the location is of higher priority relative to the specific needs of the artist. We provide bands with at least 150 sq ft to perform, they all make it work. We have worked in tiny closet spaces (Antibalas played the Paste Studio NYC which was MAYBE 150 sq ft, it was tightly packed but turned out great), and we have worked in wide open outdoor spaces (see Keb' Mo' in Nashville).
Same same response regarding genre. We're paying more attention to the way the space represents the geographic area than how it works for a particular type of music.
What are some of your favorite Paste sessions that you have worked on?
One of my favorite videos we ever did was Durand Jones & The Indications at the original Paste Studio NYC on 7th Ave. The song "Is It Any Wonder?" has deservedly lit up the internet, recently passing 34 million views. Original Paste Studio audio engineer Bob Mallory's mix is fucking devastating, as are the performance and the lighting. My video capture of the performance has no particularly interesting or dynamic camera moves, just three Canon DSLRs on three tripods with decent lenses. But the lighting is the exact way I meant it to be. I had control over that room lighting-wise because Bob and I captured around a thousand sessions there and we had the room dialed. Aaron Frazer's vocal and visual aesthetic have everything to do with the video's success. The vibe of the song and the musical era it evokes (late-1950s harmony/soul) landed squarely in the wheelhouse of the Chicano lowrider communities of East LA and across the world, they've embraced it and blown it up.
Another favorite of mine has been Puddles Pity Party's cover of "I (Who Have Nothing)". That was captured long enough ago that livestreaming wasn't yet a part of our workflow. We used to capture these performances in-camera and then edit them in Premiere. Back when I wasn't operating a switcher for the live edit, I was available to operate a camera instead. I still have this old Edelkrone slider (can't remember the model off the top of my head, but it was one of the first products they brought to market) which adds a ton of visual interest and dynamism to the shot. Also check out the 1/4" tape machine at 0:17 in the video including the rewind audio! When we were shooting 5 sessions each week as opposed to 4 every DAY, we were able to add creative flourishes like that.
A third favorite that comes to mind is the Banditos song "Fun All Night." We had more than one adult beverage together and hung out on the roof of the old studio, played with a hoverboard, then recorded music. They are clearly a group of people who enjoy each other's company and know how to have fun, that session was extra vibey.
Any advice for upcoming producers…
My only advice for any budding producers is to do it as much as you can. Get behind the lens if you're a videographer, get into your audio rig if you're an audio engineer. We all either own or can borrow access to iPhone cameras and computers powerful enough to run free audio software. The type of gear you have (or borrow) does not matter. Just do it as often as you can. If your outcome sucks, you learn and make it better next time and the time after that.
