Episode 16 of Hooked on Creek features my interview with Toni Fishman from TELEFUNKEN Elektroakustik. During our conversation, Toni talks about the production of Max Creek’s new album Acoustic Live at The Stafford Palace Theater, his deep appreciation for the band and how their music influenced his career.

This episode features the song High on a Mountain from Max Creek’s new album (available Feb. 22). To learn how you can get the album, visit this web page.

Episode 16 transcription

You’re listening to Hooked on Creek, a podcast celebrating the music, history and fans of the legendary jam band Max Creek. I am your host, Korre Johnson, and you are listening to episode 16.

Do you hear that? That’s Max Creek performing High on a Mountain from their new album Acoustic Live at The Stafford Palace Theater. If you’re curious how this new double acoustic live album was created, you are really going to enjoy this episode because it features my interview with Toni Fishman. Toni is the CEO, owner and founder of TELEFUNKEN Elektroakustik and his company produced this new Max Creek album being released Feb. 22. During my conversation, Toni talks about the production of this new Max Creek album, his deep appreciation for the band and how their music influenced his career. And if you look in the episode show notes, you will find a link with details on where you can purchase the new album.

But before we jump into the interview, I have a couple things I want to ask you. First, please subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or whatever app you use to listen podcasts. And if you enjoy listening to Hooked on Creek, help me reach more Max Creek fans by telling your friends about this podcast. You can also join discussions about the podcast and get a behind-the-scenes view of this podcast by joining the Hooked on Creek Facebook group or following the podcast on Twitter or Instagram. Just search for Hooked on Creek on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to get connected.

And as always, if you have feedback about this episode or suggestions for future episodes, head over to hookedoncreek.com, click the contact link and let me know what you think. Alright, now let’s get started.

Korre: Toni Fishman, welcome to Hooked on Creek.

Toni: Thanks for having me, Korre. It’s a pleasure to be here today.

Korre: Tony, you are the owner of TELEFUNKEN Elektroakustik, a world-class audio equipment manufacturer located in South Windsor, Connecticut, but you’re also a huge fan of Max Creek. Is that right?

Toni: Absolutely. I was raised in West Hartford, Connecticut, and started seeing Max Creek like many Connecticut Creekers, around the age of 15 years old, and was really immersed into their scene as a teen and started taping and recording. It’s been an incredible journey, met so many special friends along the way.

Korre: What was the Max Creek scene like for you as a 15-year-old?

Toni: Well, it was something to do on the weekend. In West Hartford, there’s some pretty well-known Creek shows that happened at the Agora Ballroom. The Agora was kind of a place you loved to hate. It was a pretty interesting scene there. And what happened was just really incredible. John Archer mixing in the early days. And I’m seeing gear showing up, different microphones showing up, people with different approaches on taping — just a place where I felt like, my God, I can put all of this energy into kinda capturing these good vibrations. That’s really, I think, what taping and the Max Creek experience is about. It’s a place where people can come and feel really comfortable in and go hang out and be a little weird in. And I guess in my case, I was a kind of geeky taper. I didn’t really conform to any one group in school and I was on the fringe, and here was a place I could go in and really experience music. And at such a young age, it was just really a cool scene to grow up in. It opened doors to other bands like Phish and Grateful Dead. It’s a miracle. It is an absolute miracle.

Korre: So not everybody that goes to a Max Creek show ends up being a taper. How did you get involved in taping shows?

Toni: While there were already some friends of mine that were taping and I kinda got sort of sucked in because I worked at the time, out of high school, at a stereo shop. And I was around gear and had a unique experience working at the stereo shop in Hartford, Connecticut, on Farmington Avenue. They were like a McIntosh dealer and really esoteric gear and Nakamichi cassette decks. And it’s where I became aware of vacuum tubes and how things sound. It’s how I developed an ear for listening and wanting to record and wanting to find out what the best equipment to record with would be.

I’m very blessed to have a kind of followed this different path. I didn’t go to college and I focused mainly on working within the music scene. For many years, I was a concert photographer and took pictures, working at places like the Sting in New Britain. And, it introduced me to people in production or stage management, some dear friends that kind of helped me see the professional side of a very unique scene. Tapers — carrying the gear, let alone getting the tickets or getting in line or having the wherewithal to stand by your gear all night — it’s a dedicated crew of brothers.

Now we live in a kind of convenient society where everything’s gotten so small and portable. It’s a lot easier to do now, but back in the day, carrying just an absurd amount of gear into clubs to try to pull off good recordings. It was probably the mother of invention for why my company exists and where I found my place in the world. I kind of owe it all to these guys because I grew up seeing this band. I appreciate the music. I appreciate the scene, the opportunity to make recordings and share them and in the past few years developing things within TELEFUNKEN to have soundstage and studio and now this new venture, which is the TELEFUNKEN Elektro Records.

I grew up kind of on the tail end of vinyl. I had Rainbow and Drink the Stars. Drink the Stars was one of the first Max Creek projects. Through Scott Allshouse, I was invited to help them turn Drink the Stars into a CD when it was only available on vinyl. So I worked on that. That was sort of my first exposure working directly with Creek in a professional capacity with recording. And it’s a real trip to be here now and helping them launch themselves into their 50th year with this double acoustic album that was coincidentally recorded at my 50th birthday party. Here was a great way to celebrate with friends, have everyone come together and create this. It just worked. Something clicked. We were able to immerse the band with great lighting that night, great sound and a great production. It was real teamwork in the room. The band was enjoying themselves and we caught it. This is the best recording I’ve ever made.

And to be able to put it on to vinyl. And the fact that there’s this resurgence in appreciation for analog now and how things sound and the feel of going and putting the record on and flipping the record and sitting there and enjoying listening to music. And not just clicking and swiping and just a moment of this and a moment of that because of such short attention spans. It’s created kind of a therapy for me to listen to these tracks. And I’ve learned so much about making a record now — that it’s a really unique experience and something that I didn’t realize with a live band. And making a record, I can talk about one thing that’s a little technical in that records are different than CDs. CDs are linear and from beginning to end, every place on the CD sounds the same, whether it be the first track or the last track. But with the records, the groove is — as the spiral gets closer to the center of the record, the dynamic range changes. So across several songs you get this loss of dynamic range and it’s harder to portray the inner songs equal to the outer songs on the record, if you’ll understand.

Korre: So that’s a challenge that your team has to solve for in the production of these songs on a vinyl album. That’s gotta be really tricky to do. Is there an art to it or how do you approach a problem like that?

Toni: Well, I’m not going to claim to be an expert in the field. This is my first experience doing this. And, have been working very close with Scott Medeiros, who is a friend of mine who I met really through the scene and through taping. He’s helped me produce a lot of the record with the band. What’s great about doing it for the first time is you don’t have any bad habits and you go into this beautiful new opportunity with, “OK, how do we do this best?” And, learning along the way. I think this’ll be the best Max Creek record ever made. I certainly hope others feel so. I know we put our heart and souls into it.

Korre: Well let me just provide some of the details here. It’s a double acoustic live album. It’s Max Creek live at the Stafford Palace Theater. And this was recorded over two nights. It was back on February 22 and 23 of 2019. Toni, you’re unique in that you started with such a great appreciation for the music, but over the course of your career you’ve developed a relationship with the band. And so through that relationship with the band and doing work with them, opportunities like this came to you. Was there a conversation or something that sparked this idea to record those shows?

Toni: Well, I think over a long period of time, the band and I have been watching each other, not so much from a distance, but I think we appreciate each other’s energy. I was kinda shy growing up Creek. I would kinda like go to the show and some of my friends would come with me, but someone would spin off or there’d be people meeting people and you end up kinda wanting to be upfront. But when you’re taping in the back, you’re hiding in the shadows. So it took me a long time to kind of get my confidence up to form relationships with the members of the band. I think it was after Rob Fried passing that I really kind of made a push to get to know everyone as well as I possibly could. Life is such a miracle and every day needs to be appreciated. The body of work — 50 years of these guys grinding it out and going all over the place and playing in the Northeast — it’s remarkable. It’s remarkable, their dedication. Their passion for their music just must be appreciated as something unique in Connecticut, unique on the East coast.

Korre: And that’s really the purpose of this podcast. I was fan of Phish and I was a fan of the Grateful Dead, but I had never heard of Max Creek until I saw Mike Gordon on tour back in 2017 here in Milwaukee. And I remember seeing this guitar player on stage and being just blown away by things he was doing and I just could not understand how I had never heard of him. So I remember when I got home that night, I looked him up and was just immediately exposed to this band called Max Creek. And that really started with me watching a bunch really cool YouTube videos of Max Creek from the early ’80s.

But then the amazing part is because of tapers like yourself and others who had posted all of these Max Creek shows online, I was able to spend just countless hours researching the band and understanding the different genres of their music over, like you said, almost 50 years. And it’s been so rewarding to me to become exposed to this band that I loved so much, through all of that music. And, I just want more people to know about this band. That’s why I created this podcast. And it’s why I’m so excited that there are people like you out there who are so passionate for this music and have the opportunity to help spread the word through projects like this double live acoustic album. It’s just so amazing.

Toni: There’s a lot of similarities, but uniqueness. Within the band, the procession of drummers throughout the history of Max Creek — such interesting periods. I guess if it weren’t for my relationship with Scott Allshouse in the ’90s — that’s really where the work started with Drink the Stars. And this acoustic record is hopefully going to be a time capsule, if you will, for all of our experiences together.

Korre: So the album is coming out on February 22 and it’ll be on vinyl. It’ll be on the streaming platforms and there’ll be a digital download available, as well. And now that the album is finished, have you talked with members of the band and what are their impressions of it? What are their feelings now that the album is ready?

Toni: Everyone’s really excited. Working with Bill Carbone — it’s always sort of been the drummers in the band somehow that have been the catalyst to pull the rest of the band in. My relationship with Mark and Scott and John has always been really close. It’s a miracle. And I keep saying it because there was a rap that Scott gave. I don’t know if it was StrangeCreek, but in 2017, out there he gave a rap. And it really connected with me about you have a choice when you get up every morning to look at the day. It’s a difficult thing to do — to be in the manufacturing business, to go from design and music production and there’s a lot of people involved in getting the product out. We are grateful to be able to do what we love, to come to work and to pull the fabric together to create good vibrations and share them.

It’s not just gathering, collecting these vibrations with the microphones, but this is the first opportunity to really get those vibrations in the analog world onto a record and be able to share them with people. It’s a really unique experience and I got goosebumps talking to you about it because I truly believe that not only did I find a niche with TELEFUNKEN on the technical side with the microphones, but it’s turned into something much deeper. Hopefully that will resonate with making some great records here in Connecticut. Who would’ve thought, right?

Korre: So this Live at the Stafford Palace Theater double acoustic album features an incredible combination of Max Creek originals and covers. Now I’d like to take a minute and list all the songs included on this album and I’ll start with the Max Creek originals. They include Backstreet Women, which dates I think back to the early ’80s. We’ve got Hard Love, I think the band started playing that song around 1990. Dark Water, that, of course is a deep track that dates back to the early ’70s. The song Three, which is a song that Scott debuted back in 1997. And that is such a beautiful song. I really can’t wait to hear that on this album. And That’s What They Say, which is a song the band has been playing since I think around the mid ’90s.

But in addition to those Max Creek originals, the album also features a mix of covers that for the most part I think are sourced from the folk or country/folk genre of music. And I’m just looking through a list of the songs here. These include There’s a Time, and that’s a cover of a song from the early 1960s by a bluegrass band called The Dillards. Darlin’ Corey, that’s a cover of an old American folk song I think that dates back to early 1900s. Cecelia, which of course is a Paul Simon song that dates back to 1970. High On a Mountain, that’s a song originally recorded by the folk singer-songwriter and banjo player Ola Belle Reed that dates back to 1973. We’ve got Rock of Ages, a cover of a Gillian Welch song that she wrote with David Rawlings that was released back in 1998. Then Come Together, which of course is a Beatles song from their ’69 album Abbey Road. And then A Song for a Winter’s Night, a tune from the Canadian folk singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot that he released back in 1967. Toni, this looks like a beautiful assortment of music. Was it hard choosing songs to feature on this album?

Toni: Well, we had the material from those two nights. We’ve been working on what songs would sound best where on the record. I think the performance of each of these just have a really nice feel to them. It was just such a good night. I just can’t believe we captured it. It’s remarkable to just see all this come together, to have a hand in pulling all the friendships together. The fans and the fans that I’m friendly with — I can’t explain it. You could say its family, but it’s more than family. Sharing these songs together, it’s awesome.

Korre: From a big picture perspective, how much work goes into setting up the recording of these live sets? Is that a lot of work? Is that something that your team has had a lot of experience doing or was it something you kind of learned along the way?

Toni: You can’t just record, track it. The tracking is one thing, but the mixing of the songs and the mastering of the songs is a unique process. Alan Venitosh — who is director of operations at TELEFUNKEN, who’s helped me for the last 18 years, with a big hand in running the business and helping me keep the studio creative — helped me mix the vast majority of of all the songs. And the mastering was kind of a cooperative effort between us and the place where the stampers are made in Nashville. So there are some engineering people in Nashville who helped emboss the grooves. The stampers are the opposite impression. So it’s a really unique process.

I’m overjoyed that when I go into the bookstore now or a music store, there are records there and there are more and more records showing up all the time. I think people were frustrated with CDs and that they’d scratch them or lose them or take them in their car and then loose — it’s just so hard to keep it together. The album is going to come with a digital download so that people who wanna buy the record, if they don’t have a record player, they can buy the record, still get the digital download. They can listen to it on their computer or media device and they can keep the record as a collectible and bring it to a friend’s house and share the music. I’m hoping a lot of people get to — Creekers get to — sit around and do it the old-fashioned way and really appreciate a moment in time. We’re moving into our 50th year and it’s just a tremendous journey these guys have had and I want to help give them as big a push as I can.

Korre: That is incredible. So you were there when Max Creek was performing these two shows. To what extent is the audience part of the magic that makes these recordings so beautiful? I mean, does the audience have a role in helping that band perform at the high level they always do?

Toni: Absolutely. I’ve always kind of been a part of the audience, gazing back at the audience. The dancing, the camaraderie — it’s all a part of a real family experience where I think for a large part, everyone really feels really welcome. Going to a Creek show — to me it’s a unique thing to see the energy flow from the band to the audience and back again. And they know how to change it up. They’re such professionals at what they’re doing. Whether it be Scotty with the guitar work or Mark with the keys and John’s big-tone base sound, the vocals, Bill and Jay have brought great energy into the band and it’s moving along.

Korre: So you’re in a position now where you probably are exposing this band to more and more people. I wonder how do you describe this band? Can you succinctly say the band is “like this” or how do you describe who they are?

Toni: They have such great original music. And for many years, I think people referred to them as a jam band. But I think of Max Creek as a band that yeah, plays some traditional songs, but their originals are so well written and it’s just a part of the lore of Max Creek. They are the best kept secret within the scene. I think that people who are in the know are in the know — you want to be in the know.

Korre: I feel like that. I listen to a lot of Max Creek live recordings just because I take the bus to work most days. So I have a lot of time in the mornings and in the afternoons just to consume more and more live shows. And I feel like when I finish a show, I look up at the people around me, either at home or at work or on the bus, and I’m like, “You have no idea what you just missed.” Right? So I feel lucky that I have the opportunity to be able to go through all these years of live shows that have been posted online and it’s just so incredible to me. So I know the feeling, at least from that perspective.

Toni: The technology here, to be able to go to Archive and pull up a certain show that you were at. The devotion of the tapers to have archived this body of work is astounding. And that’s the great thing is that there’s literally 50 years’ worth of music. The band knows no limitations. They are constantly evolving and pushing the limits of what they can do within these songs. And to be a part of it. At this point, it’s overwhelming. To be able to create with them, it’s a miracle. It’s majestic and hopefully people will hear a difference when they listen to this record. I’ll find it hard to believe if I’m the only one to think it’s that special.

Korre: Well, I’m so incredibly excited to get my hands on a copy of this. I just really can’t wait. So what does the future hold for Max Creek and TELEFUNKEN? Can we expect more projects like this in the future?

Toni: I’d really like to keep going. Yeah. There’s a lot of older shows that we’re working on. We’ve been able to pull a large body of their work together. I’m sure there will be some more announcements to come. But I would really like to have this body of work speak for itself. I’m hoping that it kicks down the same doors it did for me when I was 15 years old. The ability to go out and have a good time on the weekend, be with friends, be safe, travel to some of these unique venues. It’s so special. I hope all listeners out there help Max Creek celebrate their 50th year. They’ve accomplished a miracle and they deserve every moment.

Korre: I just can’t believe it, that they can keep doing this for 50 years. I think it really says a lot about who they are and the music they create — that they can maintain this fan base and their music is still just so incredibly interesting to listen to. It really, really is special.

Toni: The band really helped create me, helped create my career, helped me create an appreciation for microphones and recording music. And this is very much a gift back to them.

Korre: Toni, we covered a lot of ground in our interview today, but I’m wondering, is there anything else you think fans of Max Creek should know about you or this album that your team at TELEFUNKEN helped create?

Toni: TELEFUNKEN is a family business. Its people who work here are musicians, lovers of music, people who are dedicated to what they’re doing. I want to thank my team at TELEFUNKEN from everybody cooperating to bring this all together. I’m really looking forward to growth potential and doing things within the music scene, more recording, more records, more microphones, more life imitating art and creating, hopefully, jobs for people to get involved with what we’re doing.

Korre: Tony Fishmen, thank you for sharing your stories with me. Thank you for producing this album. And thank you so much for joining me on Hooked on Creek.

Toni: Korre, thank you so much for having me today. Really appreciate what you’re doing — helping spread information about the record and the band and thank you so much for your time.

And that concludes my interview with Toni Fishman. As a reminder, Max Creek’s new album Acoustic Live at The Stafford Palace Theater will be available Feb. 22. Click the link in the episode show notes to learn where and how to get the album. And if you have feedback about this episode of Hooked on Creek or recommendations for future episodes, visit hookedoncreek.com and click the contact link to send me a message. Thanks for tuning in.