Could you tell me about your work on this record ?
Let me explain to you exactly what had happened with Jimmy Eat World. I was responsible for bringing them to Capitol. I worked on all their records on Capitol. They eventually got dropped from Capitol. This was a turning point for them. Morale was low. Zach, Jim, and I got on the phone. I explained two things to them :
1) Mark Trambino (the producer of Bleed American) is hitting his stride and was ready to make a huge, breakthrough record
2) Even though the band believed that radio did not want to play them, I explained to them that was not true, and that radio was looking for a hit record from Jimmy Eat World. So, we decided that we do that. We worked on Bleed American together. I hooked up them up with Doug Messenger’s recording studio, Hard Drive, in North Hollywood. The band paid for the studio time via t-shirt sales.
In conclusion, Jimmy Eat World took their career in their own hands, everything from songwriting, to recording, mixing, and mastering and they came up with one of the finest records of that decade : Bleed American which was released on DreamWorks.