Sarah Tudzin is Indie Rock’s Next Big Producer

You likely know Sarah Tudzin for her tenure as the bandleader of LA indie rock heroes illuminati hotties. But, since the mid-2010s, she’s been quietly amassing one of the strongest production resumes in all of modern music. She’s worked as a mixer, engineer and producer on records like Weyes Blood’s Titanic Rising, Pom Pom Squad’s Death of a Cheerleader and Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres. In 2023 alone, she’s had a hand in the production of three incredible rock projects: The Armed’s Perfect Saviors, Speedy Ortiz’s Rabbit Rabbit and, of course, boygenius’ the record. Last month, Tudzin found herself nominated for three Grammy Awards as a part of the boygenius cohort, a really beautiful feat for the singer, songwriter and producer who made Let Me Do One More—one of the very best albums of 2021.

To see someone like Tudzin go from one of indie’s greatest best-kept creative secrets to nominated for Album of the Year is something I really have been cherishing these past few weeks. It’s like seeing one of our beloved torch-bearers take over the world. And, quickly, Tudzin is becoming one of the most trustworthy and potent forces on the technological and objective sides of music. Her self-production work on all of her illuminati hotties releases was merely the first taste of what splendor she can bring to any project. We caught up with Tudzin earlier this month to talk about moving back to LA after studying audio production and engineering at the Berklee College of Music, working with The Armed, decamping to Shangri-La with boygenius and the vulnerability of someone trusting your vision.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

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Paste: The first illuminati hotties album, Kiss Yr Frenemies, comes out in 2018. But, prior to that, you had been working as an audio engineer and as a mixing assistant on Slowdive’s comeback album and the Hamilton original cast recording. Looking back on six or seven years ago, how crucial is that first move back to LA after finishing your time up at Berklee?

Sarah Tudzin: Totally crucial. I mean, I’m from [Los Angeles], so I had a landing pad—which was really nice. I lived at home for about a year or so after college, just to start getting some cash flow and getting on my feet, so I could be closer to where everything was happening. But, yeah, coming back to LA was definitely a big piece of it, and so many creative people are here. Just being in the mix and being at studios where artists were coming through every single day was a huge part of launching my production and engineering career.

How did you prepare for that career leap when you were on the East Coast?

You know—like many college students—senior year was a panicky, what-happens-next kind of thing. There wasn’t much preparation, other than just what I was already doing at school, which was recording as much music as I possibly could and working on all my friends’ records and working on some of my own music and just trying to be in the studio as much as possible and have a really good handle on the gear and the programs and just be extra prepared for any job possibility that I could possibly get into.

Chris Coady, he’s mixed two of my favorite records of the last 15 years—Teen Dream by Beach House and Tobias Jesso Jr.’s Goon. What do you learn from being in the same room with him? Or, more specifically, what parts of his approach to production and mixing are you finding yourself still referring to, now that you’ve refined your own approach to production?

I learned innumerable skills from working with Chris. He’s the best. He’s one of the best to ever do it. He already made a lot of records that I love, too, and he was also relatively new to LA—had moved here in, maybe, the mid-2010s and I had just set up a little spot at Sunset Sound and needed extra hands. That’s how I got started working with him. His methods to making records are very much about staying out of the way of the artists. I think there’s an archetype of an egomaniacal producer screaming and calling the shots, the Phil Spector archetype. Chris is very much the opposite, as far as just knowing what sounds good, being really technically skilled and letting an artist drive the ship and then stepping in when it’s time to get real on a project. I learned so much from him just about gear, about being in the room, about how to let an artist have the keys to the sandbox to be playing around in. There’s so many things that, just from the three-and-a-half years I worked for him, just became second-nature—even just file organization, any sort of miniscule task you can think of all the way up to the actual record making.

Most folks will self-produce because that’s often either cheapest or the most realistic option when making an album. But once you got to a record like Let Me Do One More, was there any consideration about bringing a second set of eyes or ears into the studio? Or is this something that you’re pretty set on fulfilling for the rest of your tenure writing and recording?

I think that there’s always consideration for that, and I do have a lot of people around me that I’m happy to bounce ideas off of and that have helped so much—Collin Pastore being one of them. He mixed [Let Me Do One More] and [Kiss Yr Frenemies] and is such a great sounding-board and reality check when I’m too in the weeds. I love collaborating, and I think that there’s room for that in the process. And there’s always going to be room for me to get better at what I do—and one of the ways to do that is to bring onboard people whose talent I really respect. I feel lucky to be in a place now where that’s a reality because, you’re right—at the beginning, I had the production skills and I also had zero budget. So, it was kind of like a friend thing—a friend-gig—for a while.

Instead of paying someone else to come into the studio, you can just do it yourself and save a couple of bucks that you can put towards touring.

Exactly. And it was a way to flex my own skills and produce something that I truly had all of the creative control over. When you make a record for another artist, you want to make a record that they like, and that’s not always what I like, necessarily. I just want to do what’s best for the songs.

Having self-produced all of the illuminati hotties records, is it easier to produce someone else’s record than your own? Or is trying to illustrate someone else’s vision more daunting than the pressure of bringing your own to life?

I’ll say that I think it’s completely different. And, also, it’s nice to have another voice in the room. I think maling my own music for so long became quite schizophrenic, and it’s hard to be creative and be objective at the same time. And that’s what the whole point of being a producer is. An artist’s job is to be creative and to come up with ideas; the producer’s job is to be objective and figure out how to execute those ideas in a way that accomplishes the goal of the record—whether that’s the make the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard or sell hundreds of thousands of copies. The producer is the objective eye in the room. When somebody’s in the room, it’s a little easier to just be able to be inside myself and not have to step outside my creative brain to then make decisions on a completely objective or task-based front that I would do if I was working on my own record.

I’m interested in the other 2023 albums you had a hand in working on—The Armed’s Perfect Saviors and Speedy Ortiz’s Rabbit Rabbit. I know you and Sadie Dupuis went to Rancho De Luna to work on Rabbit Rabbit, and she told me a very cool story about how you guys programmed the buttons on a microwave at Elliott Smith’s studio, but I don’t nearly know as much about your work on Perfect Saviors. How did you get involved working with The Armed?

We opened for The Armed in LA one time, which honestly just started as a Twitter DM thing. They hit me up and they were like, “Yo, do you want to open this show?” And I freaked out, of course. And we just became friends and I ended up singing background vocals on a majority of the tracks. I engineered my own vocals for a lot of that and then went into the label’s studio with the guys and did another layer. That was truly another piece of the puzzle type of role, but I was so stoked to work on that. The parts were amazing, the tracking session was amazing that I did with them. I love how that record turned out.

I feel like the album floated under the radar this year, especially when it comes to rock records. And it’s not like it even came out early in the year; it came out in August. So I don’t know what happened there but, yeah, it’s a great record and I wish more people were talking about it like they were when Ultrapop.

I feel like “palatable” is an unfair word, because I do love [Ultrapop], but they tried to go really big with arena rock choruses and hooks that would catch your average listener—so I feel like maybe the build is still happening. I know that they’re touring right now, and the shows that they do are just unbelievable.

When you’re working with songwriters like Sadie Dupuis or Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker—these people who have been in this game for just as long as you have, or even longer—how does that expertise heighten the familiarity? Is it easier to tap in and make a record with people who are very much comfortable enough in their own lanes to take risks and go to new places? Or is it harder, because there are also expectations to make something that is of a consistent quality with what they do in their catalog altogether?

It’s a bit of both. I do think that those people specifically happen to be great producers in their own right, and that makes my job easy in a way—because they come in with such great ideas and they have a goal of what they want the record to be. In some ways, I think you can get painted into a corner a little bit, as far as getting into the details of a demo. And, maybe, as a producer, sometimes it’s my job to look outside the box and be like “Is this the best way to do the song? Should we waste time trying other ways? Or is it not a waste of time to go down the rabbit hole and mix it up a little bit? You’re right, those artists are all established; they all have their own sounds. They can sell a record, they can play a show. They’re pros at the highest level. So, a lot of that is—especially at the beginning—being deferent to what the vibe is. Usually an artist, if they’re really trying to mix it up, will come out with that right away and say “I have no idea what I’m doing, I need to start over.” And that’s rare, I would say.

Three Grammy nominations, we can’t avoid talking about it. Walk me through the emotions of that Friday, when you find out that not only does boygenius get seven nominations, but you’re involved in three of them.

I couldn’t have asked for a better project to be nominated for for the first time. It was really such a special experience for me to be a part of that. And they were so benevolent in their inclusion of other engineers and other producers and players for that album. Working with Catherine Marks was just really exciting. She’s a producer that I admire deeply as a person, and to hear that she was working on it as well as the boys was perfect. It was a dream phone call to get from Lucy, her being like “Hey, can you come to the studio?”

On the day the Grammy nominations were announced, I was driving to the Bay Area to start a tour, so I wasn’t looking at my phone at all—because I was looking at the road. I got a call from my manager, and he’s like “You’re about to be able to add another thing to your resume: Grammy nominee.” And I was like, “Oh, my God.” I was freaking out, my partner was in the car and we were both freaking out. And I looked at my phone and itwas blowing up—the texts and DMs were all rolling in. I didn’t really see it when it hit the internet, but it was really exciting to see the response. And I felt really proud to be in the ring of professionals that I admire.

the record is the most talked-about album of the year, and probably by a wide margin—so I don’t think that the nominations were all that surprising. I think people were expecting the boys to really hit a home run with that. But how did Phoebe, Lucy and Julien ask you to join the production?

They were out in Malibu at Shangri-La, Rick Rubin’s studio. They had already started on it when I got called, and I think they had so much material and were just in the weeds with all of the things that they were trying to get done in a short period of time. Lucy sent me a text like “Are you free the next couple of weeks?” It was early January, so things were starting to pick back up again after the holidays. Luckily, I was home and I was free. I was like “Yeah, what’s up?” And she said “Will you come to the studio? We could really use another set of hands and ears on this?” When someone like that throws the bat signal out, it’s go-time. So I went out to Malibu.

There’s a “B-Room” that’s a little Airstream trailer that has a console, and I started running overdubs out of that room and doing file trade back and forth with Catherine—she would be tracking in the main room with the boys, she would give me a hard drive, I would chop it up and get it into shape, have some of the boys or Melina [Duterte] in the trailer with me doing overdubs, cutting up pieces of songs, re-approaching pieces of songs and demoing stuff out so they could it in the big room again with Catherine. I just became two or three weeks of rotation, back and forth between those two rooms. And it was awesome. You’re looking at the beach, and the vibe was amazing. There were no bad ideas, in the most pure way that I’ve ever seen. It was everybody in a place of being able to give their opinion and feel heard. It was a really special session.

I have truly no idea what goes on when it comes to production. I think that’s mainly because I interview players more than the inverse. Forgive my rudimentary question, but what is the difference—at least from your perspective and your involvement—between producing and engineering?

It’s definitely become a finer and finer line, because of how much happens in the computer. Generally, I would say an engineer is using the computer and using ProTools to accomplish the result of a record. The line is blurred, for sure. But, I would say an engineer is there purely for technical expertise—as far as how to best record a drum set or choir or a string quartet or whatever—and getting the sounds using the tools, running the session in that way. The best way to describe the difference is an engineer is the cinematographer, they’re capturing the music in a way that is pleasing or is not, I guess, depending on what the goal is. And the producer is really the director and calling the shots and saying “I want it to sound like this. Let’s do it this way, I need this kind of feeling out of the performance.” And a lot of producers are great engineers. I tend to do both, if I’m producing something as the executive producer. And a lot of engineers end up being great producers, just because they have such a great handle on the technical tools that they end up being a great creative force in the studio also. It’s like a captain and co-captain. An engineer is a technical position and a producer is a more creative overview.

Rick Rubin would agree, I think.

I think so.

I love to ask musicians about the producers that they work with, because I’m just so deeply interested in that relationship—because it just seems so focal to the vision of any project. But I only get to hear that from one side, which is always the musicians. Obviously it’s crucial to be a musician and have an engineer who you know is going to take great care of the work, but what are the rewards of knowing that the person or people that you’re working with have got such immense faith in you and your vision and what you can offer to their own art?

It’s hugely vulnerable. I think, at the beginning of every session, there is a discomfort and a little bit of dance trying to figure out what the roles are and how do you trust someone to get involved in your artistic process with a record that you may have been living with for months or years before you ever met a producer. The writing process can be so in-depth and so personal for a lot of artists that, when a producer enters the room, they’re hearing the songs for maybe the first time.

There’s a little bit of growing pains, for sure, so I feel honored when an artist trusts me with that. And I know that they were coming from a place of not only knowing the music much better than me, but also being open to me getting in there and mangling the songs that they’ve just spent hard-earned time on. It’s a really interesting thing, and our job as a producer is to be sensitive to the emotions in the room but also get stuff done within, often, a very small period of time. There’s a bit of sensitivity that producers that I love tend to bring to the room. Their goal is to just hit record and start going and start turning demos or voice memos into a record that everyone’s proud of. All I can say is it’s so humbling and exciting when an artist is willing to let me in early on in a process that is held close to the heart.

Are there any particular moments on the record that you are particularly proud that they get to exist someplace forever?

There were so many of those songs that I was able to dig into the sessions and get my hands on. And, also, so many of those songs existed in a state of, I would say, perfection before they ever got recorded. And that’s just the charm of boygenius, that all three of them—on their own—are some of the best songwriters. And then, the fact that they’re able to put their power together and make it work and there’s no ego and there’s no “This person is actually the star,” it’s all very democratic and they have such a beautiful way of critiquing each other in a way that’s non-threatening and does make the song better, I think, in the end. It’s very purely collaborative in a way that doesn’t happen with a lot of bands.

So, I guess I’m really just proud that I got to be in the room with three people who I admire deeply as artists and who I feel very, very close to as friends. They tried to make the environment very non-dude heavy. There were great men that worked on the record, as well, but they definitely made a concerted effort to hire musicians and engineers and creative people that were not men. And that was a huge energy shift in the room at all times. I think there was power in that—and not even to say that it was some kind of statement about gender balance, or whatever. Just energetically, it felt completely different than 90% of the sessions I’ve ever worked on. It’s Lucy and Julien and Phoebe’s world, and the main thing that I was proud of was that I got to bounce some ideas off of three people that I really respect and they were heard and they were folded into the final wave of the record.

Watch illuminati hotties perform at the Paste studio in Austin in 2019 below.

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Matt Mitchell reports as Paste‘s music editor from their home in Columbus, Ohio.