Steve Fisk: Inside Sounds, Fire Juggling

When ears listen to Seattle's sonic foundation, one of the pillars they hear holding up the city's sound is that of Steve Fisk. He's been a mainstay—producing, engineering, and/or mixing Nirvana, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Calvin Johnson, Heather Duby, Steven Jesse Bernstein, Soul Coughing, Damien Jurado, Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, and more. What Fisk does with sound is innate, methodical, and unforced. He gets inside a sound or tone to understand where it should stand in a mix, and he possesses a clarity of instinct when it comes to overall mix levels. Fisk thinks with the musicians he works with and not at them, because he's a musician and a songwriter himself. See Pigeonhed and Pell Mell. Fisk also has six solo albums to his credit (four out on K Records, and one on Sub Pop). Really though, what Steve Fisk does best is juggle fire. He throws it up, looks it in the face, and catches it perfectly back in his hand—somehow taking a bite of an apple in the process.