Q&A with Leon Michels

The music producer, musician, and record label executive talks about Norah Jones, The Dap-Kings, growing up in New York City, and how he works

Leon Michels isn’t exactly sure what his sound or style is, but he definitely has one, and it’s in demand. 

Michels is a music producer, songwriter, musician, and record executive, and generally speaking his sound is a low-fi, analog mix of retro soul, jazz, reggae, funk, and hip hop that has attracted a wide range of artists looking to collaborate: Beyoncé & Jay-Z, Adele, Lana Del Rey, Aloe Blacc, Black Thought of The Roots, Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, and many others.

Michels grew up in New York City and formed his first band, The Mighty Imperials, in high school. He went on to create the group El Michels Affair, co-found retro soul labels Truth & Soul Records and Big Crown Records, and was a founding member of soul and funk bands Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Menahan Street Band, and Lee Fields & The Expressions. He was a touring member of The Black Keys and co-founded The Arcs with Black Keys guitarist and singer Dan Auerbach, and has played with Charles Bradley and the Wu-Tang Clan. 

MUSIC NERD spoke by phone recently with Michels, 41, who had just finished playing tennis with pianist and songwriter Marco Benevento. Michels discussed his most recent collaboration with Norah Jones, growing up in New York City, and what it means to be a producer. The interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

You worked with Norah Jones on her latest album, “Visions,” which came out in March. How did that project come about, and what was your approach?

The Norah Jones stuff is definitely spontaneous. She called me up and Dave Guy (trumpet player for The Dap-Kings and The Roots’ Tonight Show band)  to put horns on some of her tracks during Covid, and I did her Christmas record, then she moved close to me. She would come over with seeds of ideas, and we would jam out. She would drop her kids off at school, and we would record until she had to go pick them up.

It was pretty bare bones. We recorded with just one mic on each instrument. We thought the demo was sick and stayed with that vibe. I give her a lot of credit, she was really loose, and didn’t overthink it. It was almost always one take. The end result has a rough-around-the-edges garage sound, but her voice is so beautiful and lush, so it’s a cool mix.

You’ve worked on hip-hop projects with Black Thought of The Roots, the Wu-Tang Clan, and others. How did you first connect with hip-hop music?

I grew up in New York City, and hip hop was on the radio a lot when I was in high school. I liked Biggie [Smalls] and Junior M.A.F.I.A a lot. The [Wu-Tang Clan] video for “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” blew my mind. In the 2000s, I got into Stones Throw, MF Doom and Madlib.

From 16 to 21 I got really into jazz and soul, and then I came back to hip hop, but started listening to it through the lens of soul music. RZA in particular, he is the absolute master, the way he layers soul samples and chops up the best parts. I love the way hip hop producers sonically manipulate the music.

With my stuff I try to emulate the sampled sound more than the actual sound. It could be a shitty record, with a shitty needle, sampled into an MPC, and all those generations of fucking with the sound can create a really beautiful thing. That sound is more interesting to me than trying to emulate a perfect Atlantic Records sound. 

How do you think growing up in New York City shaped your ear for music? 

In New York, culturally, everything is so available. Whatever you're into, you’re gonna find those people. All of my collaborators today, like Homer [Steinweiss] and Nick [Movshon], I met in 8th grade. In high school I was into random soul records, and found a giant community of people who were into it more than I was. I was super lucky. I saw so many shows, and went to jazz clubs. All of that stuff is so available in New York. I had a fake ID by the time I was 15, which was sort of a ritual. No one really cared, it was so ridiculous.

You’ve worked with and collaborated with such a wide range of artists. How do you adapt to each new project?

It’s different every time. If I’m producing, you have to adapt to how the artist makes music, and also they adapt to me. I just did a record with [indie-pop singer] Clairo, and that took a long time. She has incredible taste and is very picky, so the songs had to hit her in a way that was instant. Sometimes it takes a while for two tastes to meld, but it was cool. She was patient, and didn’t care how long it took, and it was like two years. But with Liam Bailey, it took like 10 days, and we had no music when we started. He is free form, and he likes everything I do.

What’s the Leon Michels stamp? What’s your style, your approach?

That’s hard to answer. I’ve thought about this a lot. There's sonic things I do, which are tricks I always use that have a sound and personality. There’s certain tastes I have that people know and identify with.

It varies a lot from project to project, but essentially my approach is pretty fast. Overthinking music doesn’t work for me. A lot of people can pick away at a song for months and months until it's perfect, but for me if it doesn't work instantly, I’m over it. 

All the music I like has mistakes and rough edges, and that happens when you work quickly and make decisions you maybe shouldn't have made, like the vocals are blown out, or the tambourine is too loud. But those little details are really exciting for me. If you overthink it, it sucks.

How do you see the job of a producer?

When you make a record with a singer or artist, you have to become friends with them. Those are the good ones, when you actually become close. There’s a bit of therapy and friendship to it. There’s an emotional process to it. People want to hang out with you, so there’s a social part, and that’s the hardest part. Then the other part is making them comfortable. 

They have to have confidence in your taste and sensibility, so they can relax and be comfortable, but songs may not sound great at first, so you have to be like, just wait, it will be cool. You have to assemble the right people, the right drummer, engineers, and the right studio, the right food. It's a lot. It takes a physical toll. You have to sacrifice your body. It’s a lot of sitting, hanging out, and a lot of drinking at the end of the day. 

You’ve had a great run so far in music. Does it all just feel normal, or do you stop sometimes and think, damn how did I get here?

Yeah I think where I’m at right now is that I work on a lot of things and it’s working, in general. For every ten songs, you're gonna get maybe three, so you gotta make a lot of shit. You can’t think about anything except the music. You can’t think about how things will be perceived. The best producers work so much. For many years, I just woke up and made music. Not just to finish a record, but more of a head-down approach. 

After Aloe Blacc [the album “Good Things,” which contained the hit song “I Need a Dollar”], I had my first taste of success, so I got this manager who put me on these blind date writing sessions with singers or a new artists with a deal, but never really liked their music. It was pop music, which is out of my element, so that was two years of wasted time. Nothing came of it. After that, I was like let’s just do my own shit, so we made El Michels Affair records, and that’s the stuff people reached out to me about. Any success I’ve had is because of music that was probably a long shot, but I loved it. 

Growing up, how did you first get interested in music?

I had incredible teachers. I started on clarinet in third grade, and my teacher introduced me to jazz and asked me to play drums. She saw I was excited and handed me Duke Ellington cassettes. By the time I was 12 I was pretty full-on focused on music. I played in my high school jazz band.

Did you grow up with a lot of music in the house? 

Not really. My mom is a writer and my dad’s a painter, so I had a super artistic upbringing. They were super into me doing music. 

You started off playing with the The Mighty Imperials in high school, and that quickly led to other things.

I played the organ, and we made a record in 1998, which is when I met the Dap-Tone guys, and they needed a sax player for Sharon Jones. I was only 16, but Gabe asked me to tour with them. I had to make up my final exams because I was on tour in Europe. It’s insane that my parents let me do that. It was my first time playing in front of people in something other than a school recital. Everyone else in the band was like 28-35. It was my first time smoking weed.

That was the early days of the Dap-Kings, so nobody knew who we were. We made like $50 a day and played weird underground raves and these funny little factories in Plymouth, England. We were grinding it out. I played with them from ages 16 to 24.

Why do you reckon you were drawn to jazz and soul music at a young age?

The jazz I liked was the melodic stuff like Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. Lou Donaldson really resonated with me, then James Brown and The Meters. There were these older kids in my high school who were super cool who were into The Meters and [Parliament Funkadelic], and I wanted to be like them. I liked Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley. It’s jazz but groovy. I liked any jazz song with a bass line that repeated.

You prefer studio work to live performance. Why do you think that is?

I hate playing live. I’m not the kind of person to lose myself in front of an audience. I’m too self aware. There’s just a handful of times where I was fully lost on stage and into the music, and usually that involved alcohol or weed. I don’t like the lifestyle of being on a tour bus in different cities. I have three kids, and had my first kid at 24, so being on the road wasn’t gonna work. Now my kids are 17, 13, and 8.

What’s a new musical challenge you’ve embraced lately?

I’m playing the guitar now. I’m not that good, but I can get by. I just played a series of concerts with [rapper] Freddie Gibbs in front of 5,000 people, which was terrifying. I’ve practiced a lot and my chops are getting better.

What’s next for you? What are you looking forward to most?

The Clairo record comes out in July. That one is really special. We’ll do a few TV performances and a concert in the city. Big Crown Records just signed a Turkish band called Derya Yildirim & Grup Şimşek, who make very cool, gorgeous Turkish psych music. I’m producing their record, and I’m working on a Lady Wray record, and an El Michels Affair record.

Last question. What are you listening to lately?

I’ve been collecting a lot of vinyl, 45s. I have a friend who lives in Thailand, a hip hop dude, who spends his days digging for records, so I’ve been buying a lot of vinyl off of him that you can’t find on the Internet. It’s some of the coolest music, like rock, funk, and soul. 

There’s so much music from around the world, if you decide you’re gonna get into it, it becomes a bottomless pit that goes on forever. That’s the great thing about music, you will never run out. You can go to any country in the world and you could spend years trying to figure out the music there.