Press Record

We're not talking Rick Rubin levels of production "assistance" wherein the guy at the sound board is practically rewriting songs, but Cragin has cobbled together a pretty massive collection of audio odds and ends to create a widely varied and interesting playground for record production.

This is a guy who teaches Audio Technology at the United World College in Montezuma and Northern New Mexico College in Española, has previously worked as an engineer and keyboard tech for Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo (they did Dead Man's Party for all y'all who might not know) and came up through the ranks at a time before anyone with a laptop could slap together an album in their bedroom with ease.

Cragin even did some uncredited work on Beck's hit-making 1994 album, Mellow Gold. And no matter how super-cool that all sounds, it pales in comparison to the philosophy he's cultivated through working with these people. By the time he opened his doors at Santa Fe Soundworks 20-some-odd years ago, he had a way of doing things that shirked the cold, clinical approach of many modern recording studios in favor of more spontaneous practice.

"I like stuff that's funky, and I sort of like this idea of being 'unprofessional,'" he says. "As soon as you start being too professional, or if I can't mess around with something, it's like there's no soul."

This mentality has proven to be an asset to certain clients and also in his Frankenstein-like approach to combining instruments and equipment as well as the building of his own guitars. Cragin has compiled tons of gear from yard sales, Craigslist, eBay and places like The Black Hole in Los Alamos, a bizarre bazaar of salvaged machine materials too varied in use to recount here.

"I want to make available to clients all the weird equipment I've found over time," Cragin says with a laugh. "I love finding and having something that nobody or no other studio has, and this also lets me come up with some weird recipe of guitar, pedal, amp or whatever for recording."

Of course, Cragin doesn't exist to tell people how to create or where to direct their music; more like he's got a great ear for what musicians want and acts as the curator/custodian of forgotten equipment and an army of custom guitars all ready to be utilized in creating one's masterpiece.

"I'm never gonna try to put my big stamp on something, but I encourage people to get creative in the process," he says. "Sometimes that happens live, sometimes it's better when you build it up like a layer cake. … I mean, if you're going to want me to make your record sound like Fall Out Boy, that may not happen, but I've done everything to make this work, and I really look at recording like an art."

This sort of studio atmosphere may not be for everyone, but can the opportunity for play really be underestimated here? Cragin points out that when musicians decide to self-record, they generally find themselves up against a sea of technology.

"Reading through manuals and trying to learn this stuff can mean you're switching from the right brain to the left brain and out of creative mode," he points out. "I've seen it before when a song can be overthought and overworked, and I've found that ideas are usually best when they're fresh, and that's why I think writing in a studio is a great thing; there's almost nothing like four or five guys in a room drinking beer and yelling at each other and getting songs down."

It's about more than making tracks, anyway. There's a ritualistic aspect to the recording of music, especially with a great engineer/producer like Cragin. That recording experience seems to be drying up everywhere, and that's just plain sad.

"If anybody is feeling creative and wants to make a record, I'm their man," he adds. "It's shamanistic."

Santa Fe Reporter