Tim Easton doesn't like to be categorized. While the Dylanesque folk vibe on his latest CD Ammunition, is hard to miss, there are also blues and rock sounds aplenty to round out the disc. And with three tracks produced by Jayhawks vet Gary Louris and Lucinda Williams showing up for backup vocal duties, there's no shortage of talent on the album, either. Gearwire caught up with Easton via email to talk musical aesthics and to learn why he decided to dump digital and record Ammunition on analog tape instead. As we learned, Easton has his own way of doing things, both with the music and the treatment it gets in the studio.

Tim Easton: I'm not against computers or anything, I just prefer the limitations of tape. Too many tracks and you get something that is artificial. Reverb and echo effects . . . these are sometimes artificial, but they are the electronic imitation of a sound that can be produced in the the right room or out in nature, even. It wouldn't matter to me if you recorded your record on a boombox. What I want to know is did you mean it, and can you feel it?

I must admit that I am almost afraid to dive way into the computer world because I don't want that to take away from the songwriting. I've seen it happen to other writers. That being said, it's important to understand basic engineering and whatnot. You definitely want to be able to communicate your creative thoughts to engineers and producers.

GW: That's a very good point. If you're talking to someone who is getting ready to work with a professional recording studio for the first time, or someone just getting to know what it's like to work with a live sound crew, what should they be trying to learn here?

Easton: Not everybody is going to be able to speak in the exact or scientific language . . . "Could you pull 10k out of the left channel?" or whatever the hell that means, but you should be able to at least speak in terms that gets the sound you want across. Even if you have to use specific examples of recorded history, such as, "Can you give me the acoustic guitar sound from (the Rolling Stones's) "Street Fighting Man" please?" which is actually Keith (Richards) playing through a boom box and then that was bumped up to the two-inch tape.

Once, I stopped a live show because the engineer misunderstood me when I asked him to make my acoustic guitar "dry" and my vocals "a little wet." I swear to god, he had a chorus on my guitar, and I had to stop the show and ask him to take it off. He just added it in the middle of my set because he thought that's what sounded good. I have a recording of the show. It's funny now, wasn't then.

GW: Recording your latest album on two-track surely must have posed some interesting challenges in this age of instant edits, overdubs to infinity, ProTools effects, and such. Then there's the equipment upkeep problem. Dirty tape heads, machines going bad on you, being unable to find replacement parts, etc.

Easton: The challenges are only as hard as you let them be. The real challenge is the material. Do you have a song that is worth recording? Does it matter to you if anybody ever hears it but you? Were the musicians having a good time when they recorded it?

GW: Since you were dedicated to analog on the recording of Ammunition, did you trot out any vintage gear to help you get a more organic sound?

Easton: I just went through this whole thing on Ebay with this guy from Canada, trying to get that right piece of vintage gear. I ended up not getting it, and in the end it'll probably save me a lot of headaches. It's true that the maintenance of tape machines is a concern if you are one to be writing songs all the time and wanting to record them.

GW: When someone is about to enter a professional recording studio for the first time, what do you think should guide them in those first sessions?

Easton: You don't want to play a song more than three or four times in a row. If that is the case, then maybe you shouldn't be in the studio recording that tune, for example. I mean, the Beatles may have taken several takes and all that, but they were the Beatles, after all, and they had the time and talent to experiment. They may have been writing things as they recorded, which is something you don't really want to be doing when you are paying for your time in a studio. At home, it's different.

GW: Speaking of working at home, any advice there? As you said, it's a very bad idea to be refining your songs when you are paying for studio time . . . 24 or 48 tracks can be pretty daunting to fill when you aren't really prepared.

Easton: Get a cheap four track. There are tons of them out there. Learn to make the most with the four track, then take it from there. Find the guy or girl with a song you really want to record. It's like learning guitar: you don't want to start with something you don't like, something you are not going to be proud of no matter how good it comes out in the end. What good is the flawless recording of a crappy song? I guess we hear that answer all the time on the radio!

GW: Any other recording advice you'd like to share?

Easton: Take out all the clocks in the room. Then, get the best song you have and perform it live into as few mics as you can get away with. Getting relaxed is really half the battle, and maybe you need to have a few friends in the room with you. Maybe you need to be totally alone.

Tim Easton's latest CD, Ammunition (New West Records), is available at Easton's website: www.timeaston.com.