Steve Albini is an absolute music legend who, as one of the most storied engineers of all time, worked with such icons of rock music as the Pixies, Nirvana, The Jesus Lizard, and Jawbreaker. His sudden passing in May from a heart attack was a shock to the music world that many are still reeling from. But today, we get to share a piece of his work posthumously on what would have been the engineering master’s 62nd birthday. Meet Friendship Commanders.
Nashville-based heavy rock duo Friendship Commanders released their sophomore album BILL in 2018 and found a bridge between the punk and hardcore stylings of their early material and the sludge/grunge/metal sound that they were starting to develop. The original version of the album released in 2018 was mixed by Friendship Commanders drummer Jerry Roe, but the original mixes by the great Steve Albini haven’t seen the light of day until today.
Check out the full essay from Friendship Commanders guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Buick Audra below:
It Wasn’t Just the Mics: It Was the Man.
Why I Loved Making the BILL Album With Steve Albini.
When we returned to Nashville after spending a week in Chicago making our second album with Steve Albini, we drove straight to Baja Burrito, a favorite lunch spot for local session musicians. The experience of making BILL at Electrical Audio had exceeded all expectations musically, professionally, and personally. I felt newly emboldened, like I could do and be anything. I’d worked with my favorite engineer, a man with more stories surrounding his career than anyone of his time. And it had gone well. Very well. Life-changingly well. I was floating.
Once inside the eatery, we ran into some guys we knew, all music folks. They approached my bandmate Jerry and excitedly asked him about what it had been like to work with Albini. How was he? What mics did he use? They’d have to get coffee and catch up about it! No one looked at me. So, I chimed in, said I’d written the record. Nothing. Back to Jerry. They agreed to talk another time. The men, that is.
Nothing will bring you back down to Earth like being treated as less-than. As often as it happens to me, I never get used to it. It’s why Friendship Commanders don’t make our records in Nashville. We record out of town with people from the future who can see me. Steve was one of those people. In the story of FC, he was the first.
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The basic tracks for BILL were recorded live to two-inch tape in Studio B. Jerry and his drums were in the huge live room, and I was with my rigs in the dead room. We were separated by double sliding-glass doors. The album is 13 songs, the most we’ve ever included on one release, but Steve was a fastidious, methodical recordist who was not easily overwhelmed. He moved us through the process, accurately capturing what we sounded like in that season of our lives. We enjoyed his professionalism—It was all I wanted at that point. I loved that Steve was a principled person with boundaries, someone who didn’t make obnoxious personal observations, who appeared to have a profound absence of gender bias.
By then, I was asking men engineers one question before deciding if I would work with them: How do you feel about women? But I hadn’t asked Steve. I didn’t need to. The years-long endorsements of Kelley and Kim Deal were the only proof I required. And true to my assumption, he treated me like I mattered.
For me, the hesitation was around vocals. I hadn’t allowed anyone to track my singing in years, instead learning how to do it myself. Had we worked with any other engineer in any other studio, I might have continued on that way. But BILL was the Albini record, and thus, I committed myself to seeing it through. But not without a conversation.
Before vocals, I went up to the control room to talk with Steve. I told him I’d been abused around my voice, mostly by one engineer I’d collaborated with for years. That person had chipped away at my sense of self, but worse: He had tried to convince me that I couldn’t hear pitch. And while I knew that wasn’t true, it had changed me. I didn’t trust anyone with my voice. Making music had long hinged on me being able to safely track myself.
Steve was quiet while I spoke, watched me, listened. When I was done, he tipped his head down, nodded.
He said, “Sounds like a dick. I’ve heard about men like this; I don’t know why they work in music.” I thought that might be it, but he spoke again, and what he said was one of the most surprising things I’ve experienced to date. He said, “I invite you to leave it here when you go. Leave that abuse, that trauma, leave it in this room. You don’t need to carry it anymore.”
I went down to the huge live room and sang the entire record in six hours. We laughed; we told jokes; we poked fun. I nailed songs in single takes, I enjoyed myself. After my first vocal pass, Steve casually said, “Well, turns out you’re a great singer.”
I’m not sure anyone had said that to me before. I’m not from that kind of support. It was new. And it was coming from a man we’d been warned against working with by multiple people, folks who complained of his inattentiveness or acerbic tone—or my favorite: men who had never worked with him but trotted out the same stories we’d heard a hundred times. To us, he said things like, “I love that choice you’re making there.” We didn’t need it, but man, it was cool to hear.
Maybe it was because we showed up not needing anything from him beyond his sonic expertise. Maybe he liked us; maybe it just was an easy fit for all of us. I don’t know. But he stands out as special, different. As brilliant an engineer as he was, there was something else. A love for music and the people brave and unhinged enough to make it, a drive to make things better than they were before he got to them, an empathy borne of knowing what it’s like to be on the mic’d end of things, and a willingness to learn from others as he went. I think a lot about people who make others feel heard and known, and I find it to be one of the highest gifts a person can possess. Steve had it for miles.
He was a genius musician, but he was an even better person. One could procure every piece of gear in his eclectic arsenal, set it up exactly the way he might have, and they still wouldn’t get what he got. Because the missing ingredient would be Steve, the man who heard the people he mic’d. The best.
There’s still time for everyone else.
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Buick Audra is a Grammy Award-winning musician and writer living in Nashville, TN. She is the guitarist and primary songwriter and vocalist in the melodic heavy duo Friendship Commanders, a project she shares with drummer/bassist Jerry Roe. Their new album, MASS, was released on September 29, 2023, alongside an accompanying memoir. BILL – The Steve Albini Mixes, a rerelease of their second album was released on July 22, 2024, on what would have been Steve Albini’s 62nd birthday.
Check out the full album of the Albini mixes below.
You can also check out the video for the lead single, “Outlive You,” which features footage of Albini himself.
You can purchase the Albini mixes here. Follow Friendship Commanders on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok for future updates.
Photo courtesy of Anna Haas
