In this interview we catch up with NYC-based rapper T.O.N.E-z to discuss how he recorded his vocals on famed rocker Tommy James’s re-imagining of his 1970s classic Draggin’ the Line with Bruce Springsteen's legendary E Street Band member Stevie Van Zandt, using n-Track Studio - and on the Emmy-nominated, bluegrass hip-hop fused theme song for the TV Series Justified.
[T.O.N.E-z]: Well, I'm definitely hip-hop first. I'm an MC, born and raised in the Bronx, New York. My older brother was part of an original hip-hop group back in the 80s, called the Treacherous Three - that crowd was Kool Moe Dee, L.A. Sunshine, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, all of those guys.
I picked up the microphone when I was like 10 years old and was recording in studios for a long time, paying money out of my pocket - I moved on to my own little analog set up so to speak & then I heard about a way of recording things digitally. It was 2004 and I remember typing “Recording Studio Digital Program” into Google - for some reason I thought a program that has the name “Track” in it just sounded cool, so was like let me see what n-Track is about...
I downloaded the trial version and just started messing around with it. I didn't know you guys had been around since the 90s, and when I read later I was like “man”! I started to record my demos on n-Track, putting mixtapes out on the street. Now, I learned from being around the same engineers that worked with KRS-One and Public Enemy. I've been around those engineers, I know Rick Rubin & was around him as a little kid so I used to watch how they did stuff.
n-Track gives me the same feeling as putting on a boombox back in the day, hitting record & just knowing that when you're rapping if your voice is too loud the green light will clip and go to red. I like the simplicity of n-Track & ease of workflow to set up a track and record quickly.
By the way I would never tell anybody that I had my own setup because people started hitting me with questions like what studio are you using? I started naming all these big studios downtown, said I was going there & little did they know I was in my room using n-Track [laughs]!
The move of having n-Track on your phone or tablet is big for an artist like me. Sometimes you get an idea and are like “man, I need to wait till I get to the studio”. Now if I'm travelling or in the air and I got an idea of course you know lyrically I can keep it in my head but if I've got someone sending me a track saying “I need you to do something with this”, I just open the app and lay the idea down right away. I can literally run vocals over a track on the n-Track app and just upload it to Songtree. I love that.
I use n-Track’s compression plugin a lot. I use iZotope [third party plugins, which can be used within n-Track] too, but generally don’t like having to open up other programs when all of what I need is already built into the box. Having to use this plugin here, this plugin there and have the storage to hold everything isn’t smooth enough for me. I use the noise compression and after I’ve recorded vocals use iZotope via n-Track to help with the mix and master.
There’s just something about the n-Track sound. I know that with n-Track, when I'm recording my vocals they come out really clean and I know people say it’s the microphone, but it’s the program too because the sound is going through n-Track so the engine has something to do with it!
n-Track is perfect for a mind that’s always creating, and you can quote me on this: I’m hip hop first but you could be playing the damn flute... I don’t care if it’s rock, metal, folk or whatever the speed with which you can record into n-Track and get a track out is essential for creative artists. Not getting bogged down with time-consuming learning curves is essential for me. You can just open it up and everything is there.
As far as rappers I still like the legends. I listen to Nas and Method Man, people like that. As far as the newer guys in the past like five to six, seven years J. Cole definitely.
But, on a wider level, I'm into Judas Priest, Metallica, Janis Joplin and I'm a big Oasis fan – I’ve even got their separate albums. I'm more of a Noel Gallagher for writing but I like Liam, because it's Liam - come on man! And you know I'm big on rock and metal – I mean how do you think I get on a track with Stevie Van Zandt & Tommy James man – it isn’t just because I’m listening to Wu-Tang with a picture of Scarface on my wall [laughs]!
Stevie and Tommy are tight, they’re friends. Getting Stevie on the Draggin’ the Line record happened in a more organic way - it wasn’t like a business move in such as people thinking they had to get someone famous on it. It just happened because he likes the record.
It was Tommy James’s record, and you know Stevie Van Zandt added his guitar on it, but when Tommy sent me the song it was just a demo version. There was the bass line and he was doing his harmony, singing “Draggin’ The Line”.
Tommy is baffled on how fast I did it because I record vocals really quickly. He sent the track to me the night before I picked it up at about maybe 7:30am in the morning and I had it back to him by like 7.50am! As soon as I got the music I downloaded it, ran it right through n-Track, played it, and laid my vocals down. I didn't do too much to the mix of the vocals because I knew they were gonna do it in their bigger studio, so I just made sure the noise compression was down and then I just sent it back as a WAV file.
Right now I have a song that I did the vocals on, it's a song called My Nightmare that I did with Rench, who produced the theme for the TV series Justified.
There’s a young lady named Rebecca Strong too. She’s out of Boston and did her vocals there - I told her to send them to me flat so I could mix them in n-Track. And of course there’s the Tommy James album. That's selling well and Draggin’ The Line is getting a lot of love.
No question about it - you're gonna see people doing that more than anything. Especially when the weather changes [laughs]!
Think about it. You're a musician in the park, you’ve got all these ideas and you don't just want to hum them as a voice memo. You have a studio right there on your phone and can actually lay your stuff over a track right there. It’s big and getting bigger without a doubt.
Check T.O.N.E-z out with Tommy James and Steve Van Zandt on ‘Draggin’ the Line' on:
YouTube
Apple Music
T.O.N.E-z’s work on the Justified theme song
You can find T.O.N.E-z on:
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n-Track Studio 10 