It was a process to come to a point where the deal is sealed and contracts in place. The new album is coming out as a American/Birdman split, but for all practical purposes we're on American. Birdman is retaining the vinyl rights to all Howlin Rain records.

SFBG: So has the process of putting out a record changed for you?

EM: So far, no. In my couple years of working with Sub Pop and Comets and stuff - Sub Pop runs a big operation, as far as the amount of work done on records - and likewise on Columbia, when a Beyonce record comes out, it's probably a massive amount of work for Columbia.

But it's mostly a process I've been through before with Sub Pop. I'm not talking about choosing a radio single and putting millions of dollars behind it. It's a Iot more like, "What song are you putting up for download somewhere?" I don’t know, what song to put it on YouTube or something. I think releasing a Shins record on Sub Pop is different than putting out a Comets on Fire - same for Howlin Rain as far as the amount of work and propulsion.

SFBG: You'll probably make a video, though, right?

EM: I think we’ll probably make a video. That’s something that people are more interested in doing now on all the labels because of YouTube, though I don’t think people are trying to break bands on YouTube anymore. It used to be that if you wanted an act to be major, you'd break them on MTV. With YouTube, there's a special and interesting place for videos to go and reach an audience.

I don’t know if "single" is even the right word. "Dancers [at the End of Time]" is the song they're using right now. It's all marketing BS! They just put it out, and usually you're, like, "Cool," or "I sign off," or "Whatever you think is best." Possibly "Calling Lightning Pt. 2" - there might be a 7-inch single of it, I don’t know. That would fall to [Birdman honcho David] Katznelson's thing. We’re actually doing a Birdman-Fat Possum split single. It's kind of convoluted - if you even care about all this. The way things shook out is Dave paid for the album and Howlin Rain had a contract that extended to this album and slightly beyond, so this album is released as a joint thing between American and Birdman.

SFBG: Why make the leap to American - a big fat advance, more support touring...?

EM: Not necessarily. One of the biggest reasons is, I was very enticed by larger studio budgets - album budgets a lot grander than I get to work with elsewhere. That’s one aspect about working with these guys - they don’t flinch much when you talk about burning up studio time. It's probably nothing compared to other major label bands! And I've been working in studio for a long time and I can work pretty stealthily.

Another reason is I want to work with Rick. He talked about producing Howlin Rain and stuff, and I'd like to work with him. Didn’t have to go to American, but then again...probably did. For all practical purposes, those are the reasons.

We jived artistically and socially together and felt like we wanted to work together. Being under his tent is closest way to do it and it felt like the best way.

SFBG: Is there anything you like in particular about his production?

EM: He seems to draw out the quintessential qualities of the group. Some bands feel like, "We gotta do this. We gotta push ourselves in this direction. How do we stay current?" All these extraneous things,. He seems to chip away at that and just draw out the essential fluids onto the tape.

I don’t necessarily feel that we’re at a loss for direction, but I'm a big believer in just working with other people, taking in their opinion, and I'm not just one of those artists who are like, "I know it all and don’t want to hear what anyone else has to say." I like what he says and there was an honesty about it when we looked over the mastering of Magnificent Fiend. He can cut through the ego and bullshit and give you an honest assessment.

After we finished the record, I took him down a copy of it. He said, "Let me give you mastering notes on it." It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you hear a poorly mastered record, especially with an record like Magnificent Fiend - it's got so many textures and details to instruments.

If he's going to produce the next record, it's going to be very collaborative. You don’t want a guy like that involved and shut him out. I'm just not like that. I like being told, "That’s not a good idea. Get rid of that - that stinks!" I don’t like the concept, I'm the artist. I know what's right - stay away from me, don’t touch my ideas, don’t touch my album. I just don’t think it's good when it comes to making an album. It's good when there's trust in a team and you have ideas.

Rick's got a special knack for making records - it's his talent and gift. He was born to produce records. I feel like I was born to write music and sing music but not born to know how to make a perfect record - at least not with my own stuff, because how can you be subjective?

SFBG: How did the making of Magnificent Fiend differ from the first album, which seemed looser, more of a break from collaborating closely with Comets on Fire?

EM: The first album, as you said, was freewheeling. We went in there and bashed it out, and the basic tracks were very loose and on the run, and I developed some of the songs in the studio from basic tracks. It was like throwing a whole bunch of mud on the wall and seeing what stuck. "Well, that’s what's up there - let's call it modern art!"

We didn’t just throw a lot of mud for Magnificent Fiend - I worked hard. I worked on the songs and reworked them till the last minute we went in. It was just trying to distill ideas, rather than leaving it all up to chaos, trying to obsessively going over it, reworking it, and getting obsessed, instead of leaving so much in the hands of chance. It’s a different method than I've ever done. Also our budget was higher - we got to do more in the studio, different musicians, went in to Prairie Sun. It's on a chicken farm, and it's just beautiful up there in Cotati. I just really liked the vibes up there.

There were things about Prairie Sun that were good for Comets and not so good for Comets. Certain rooms that were good for Comets, I'd catch myself thinking, this is a great room for Howlin Rain. There's a not a ton of other studios in Bay Area where you can stay up on farm and go from 1 in afternoon to 4 in morning, chickens all around and shit. I developed a relationship with the owner and liked the funky vibe, the new gear and the old gear.

There's a little room - it's actually the room that we recorded the piano songs on [Comets on Fire's] Avatar in. I think it used to be a chicken coop. It's in a bigger barn where they got some other tracking rooms, and it's got wood walls, and it's very, very small. Most peple are like, "Whoa, we’re going to put everything in there?" I think they had gear stacked in it, old amps, and then Tom Waits was in there to record Bone Machine and said, "The vibes are really great in this room." There are pipes and shit coming out, and I think they banged on them in there. The owner will tell you a thousand times, "You know, Tom Waits recorded Bone Machine in there."

It does have a special vibe - that little room. We could all get in this room and set up a five-man band and track live. You mostly got to get everybody playing right - you gotta get great tapes live because the bass is all over the drum mics. If not, you just got to get it over again, because you're physically so close to each other. But then again you can also make eye contact with everybody. When everybody's on headphones and in different areas of the room, obviously you have to rehearse material. If you falter, you're up shit creek.

We didn’t really rehearse the band very much - Joel and Garrett and I, we rehearsed the tracks and got basic tracks together without Ian, who I think was still in Hawaii and Mike was in Humboldt. I put in these control elements to create a vibe of discovery or whatever it is we’re chasing down in the creation of music when we try not to over-rehearse something or completely destroy that moment of creative elation when you hear a band get it in the first take, when they lock into what it's supposed to be.

You can go either way, you rehearse it more or you do it like Neil Young - and it'll never be better than that moment when everyone clicks and maybe it's fucked up and it's loose, but there's an energy and discovery and elation and illuminating quality there. Something becomes photocopied and photocopied when it's over-rehearsed. This isn’t necessarily a truth in music or something I wanna stick with forever, but for whatever reason, I wanted to try an obsessive control over the preproduction process. I had an end vision in mind, and they didn’t necessarily get to see that, but it all came to the table right there when we were recording.

SFBG: So why do a second part to "Calling Lightning"?

EM: I think it's something to do with two things. I kind of get the feeling that, when I make records, no matter how good or bad they are or whatever, they all kind of go on a shelf for me and I don’t like to listen to them again. You kind of bury them, but the songs live on live. But at the same time, there's concepts - people do it in film and literature and poetry; especially in poetry, you get a big collection of love poems to a certain person or poems about the Cuban revolution - and you're re-riffing off the same essence. I was kind of doing that. It's a project or exercise for me, taking something that a lot of people told me was their favorite song off the first record.... I thought that it would be challenging to take something like that and try to rework it, to keep the essential feeling and change the structure and the architecture and - try to keep the ghosts up in the tower. The resonance. Even a song like "Calling Lightning" - to try to have a resonance that haunts, like déjà vu.

SFBG: What about Magnificent Fiend - is it about making a deal with the devil, a Faustian pact?

EM: That’s a human thing – making deals with the devil and dealing with the past. That stuff is always at the root of so much literature. But on the record, on a smaller scale, there's more honed, pulp-literary theme. I've kind of tangled with Faustian songs at different times. "Faust" is a good poem - there's a lot there! Some pieces of art are so good, you can keep drawing from them. The way that Goethe wrote it, at all different parts of his life, sometimes as a stage play, as prose, the quality of that book, it's almost like a collection of a lifetime of dedication to a theme.

Of course, "Lord Have Mercy" is not that strict - there are different parts of the song that have nothing to do with that setting, but it’s a point of inspiration. He is also obsessed.

SFBG: The Faustian subject matter doesn't have anything to do with your current record deal, does it?

EM: No, the song was written a long time before we signed with American – and hopefully a good song will apply to many things, or work with things that come after. I mean, I didn't write a song about videogames in 1986! But then who knew Ms. Pacman would still be around.

You know, all the songs and stories and all the poetry on the record, on the surface they're about these people or deals with the devil or a character from a Moorcock book or something, but they're all rooted - their essence, their spice, and their blood and bones - in this crazy time we’re in right now. I try to riff off them and reflect on them and sort of make sense of the times.

SFBG: What have the times been like for you?

EM: Oh-seven was not a wonderful year for me. Let's leave it at that. I wrote the album in '06, so I wasn’t drawing on those things. And '06 was probably a good year, for me, personally, though it was a fucking crazy year for the world. This is a crazy moment in history. I know every poet is saying the earth is going insane, losing its mind, but it feels true. And the album is reflective of that. We’ll have to see what I'll draw from the turmoils of '07 for the future album.

Howlin Rain performs with Black Mountain Monday, Feb. 4 at the Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. 8 p.m., $14.