Portland's Boy Eats Drum Machine is an interesting blend of turntables, guitar, synth, and according to the band, "often danceable" grooves. They compare to...well, nobody. BEDM's music has shades of spaghetti western soundtrack music, surf, 80s dancefloor blips and boops; it resides in its own musical zip code. Gearwire pinned down BEDM's Jonny Ragel to get some dirt on the group, how they set up for their live shows, and what kind of gear the group prefers.

Gearwire: "Tell me about all about Boy Eats Drum Machine."

Jonny Ragel: Boy Eats Drum Machine started out as my experimental beat-heavy solo work. A week after finishing my third recording, which features sampled breaks from many of Portland's finest drummers, I was offered both an interview with one of the city's leading weekly papers and an opening slot for a national act at one of the city's best venues. so I enlisted the help of my friends Benjy (synth, guitar, vox, percussion) and Peter (drumkit) to make us a live act. One year and 50 shows in 13 states later, we're working on the next batch of songs."

Gearwire: "You've got all the requisite keyboard noises, but you don't necessarily define yourself as electronica, is that correct?"

Ragel: Boy Eats Drum Machine isn't electronic in that it features 'real' drumkit, guitar, and turntable. Also, the songs tend to have a pop structure. That said, the heavy emphasis on breaks and analog monosynth basslines makes BEDM groove-heavy and often danceable.

GW: "What gear do you find useful on stage?"

Ragel: Synth: Waldorf Pulse. I really like the punchy analog quality and raucous low end of it's sound. Great mono, needs to be tweaked though. The presets are barely usable. Basic understanding of synthesis and some patience are musts. Very economic, $350-$400."

"Turntable setup: Technics MK1200 with Vestax mixer and Korg Kaoss Pad 2. Fueled by my fear of fumbling with RCA cables in dark rooms I made a road case for my setup with a built in DI box. all I have to do is plug it in, power it up, and point out the DI to the generally impressed soundtech. the Kaoss pad is a nice live device, very expressive and surprisingly effective as a quick phrase sampler. Fun too, very fun."

GW: "What about guitars and percussion?"

Ragel:"Benjy and I trade off electric guitar duties and share a Fender Deluxe blackface reissue. it's proven to be a nice sounding amp (although the vibro has quit working on it). We each have a setup with a tuner and fulltone fulldrive. Mine is actually a bassdrive and sounds very good with my 68 SG's hot bridge pickup, Benjy also has an EH Deluxe Memory Man, which is currently emitting an obnoxious hum every so often."

"To accomodate our needs Benjy switches between our signals with a Morley A/B box. This simplifies our live mix and saves space in the Astro van for important things like Cliff bars and bottled water. The primary guitar Benjy has used is an old 60's Hopf solid body I picked up at a flea market in Germany. It's an excellent well-made twangy guitar but features alot of switches and toggles making it a bit tedious for live use. It has since been removed from live duty in favor of a lesser-crafted but more practical Ibanez hollow-body reissue."

"Drumkit? DW four piece. Blue sparkle. Rock. We also have an mp3 player for any sound fortification we might need."

GW:"Does BEDM record its live shows for future exploitation? Live albums, that sort of thing? How do you get the results you want?"

Ragel: "Unfortunately we don't record our shows. Our friend archived our warm-up show at an art space with a pair of Shure condensers into a Sony CD burner. We also have an excellent recording of the first show of our summer tour, the Zebra cocktail lounge in Bozeman, Montana. The sound tech just handed us a CD and the quality was very good."

"If I were to consider a live recording for release I'd hire someone with experience and a track record of good live recordings. that said, the internet offers a great opportunity to stream live tracks and extra goodies. Lesser quality recordings can still find ears. Tis the age of nicknacks, after all. but I'd rather only promote material of decent sound origin."

GW: "What about studio recording?"

Ragel: "My first recording was with an iMac G3 233. Yes, the original Bondi blue one! I used the mic mini jack input and it's stock A/D converter. The results were surprisingly decent. Not such a terrible demo recording. I moved onto a G4 tower with a MOTU 828, which serves as my current setup. I run Digital Performer 5 and adore it's grid structure. Edits like butta. looks nifty too."

"I recently acquired a Sytek MPX-4A (4 mic pres), which should make tracking drums a joy and is a major improvement over the MOTU 828's stock pres, which ain't chopped liver in my opinion. I plan on doing some remote recording for the next disc with these pres, a pair of Neumann condensors (I have a very nice friend with an impressive mic locker) and a laptop. Another addition to the gear is a Symetrix 501 compressor/limiter, which is proving to be a very versatile processor."

GW: "Let's talk about the bane of all DAW users: HARD DRIVE FAILURE. How do you safeguard your music against data loss and other problems related to the failure of computer storage?"

Ragel: "My G4 has two hard drives---one for running OS and the other for storing data. Recently I aquired an external Glyph drive. How did I live without it? But I used to have to backup data on CDRs. Currently I record with the Glyph and backup data weekly on the extra internal drive. I've noticed the Glyph is MUCH faster in the recording process but seems to lag occasionally in editing/mixing sessions. So I plan on tracking to Glyph and mixing from SCSI drive."

GW: "What about using computers on stage, at the sound board, etc? Your feelings?"

Ragel: "I've heard a few horror stories about laptops. To be honest, I'm not fond of laptops and don't like seeing them on stage. We use an MP3 player to augment some tracks. The pros of the MP3 player are in it's simplicity of use and the fact that we all have one in our pocket in case something should go awry. Preparing tracks takes some getting used to though. The click/guide track goes left, sounds go right. Stereo compression plugins need to be avoided as they often cause left and right channels to innermingle; no we don't need that unholy union in this case!"

"Peter has a lil' mixer with in-ear monitors recieving the click/guide track. The right channel goes straight to a DI box, which has both 1/4" which can go back to the mixer, and XLR out. This setup is, of course, all stored in a road case and requires little time to fire up."

"The key to tracks: keep it simple. Don't make your track the intro to the song---that distracts the audience from the musicianship. Unless the objective is performance art or dance the sounds should augment---not lead. Just my opinion..."

GW: "Any parting advice?"

Ragel: "Not all sound techs ask for a live floor schematic but the ones that do really appeciate it if you have one handy. Sound techs are our friends, they make us sound pretty.