The scene at Hailey’s Club on Friday afternoon played like a rumpled, foul-mouthed version of Inside the Actors Studio with James Lipton. Denton musician Scott Porter had notes at the ready for his interview with Chicago-based punk rock musician and recording engineer Steve Albini. The near-capacity crowd in the bar filed in from Mulberry Street.

Steve Albini

Once they staked out a piece of floor, the audience was quiet and appreciative and at times, even reverent.

The North by 35 Music Conferette brought Albini to town to share his wisdom on music-making, music marketing and how to stick it to The Man, otherwise known as the recording industry. Albini, a member of punk bands Big Black and Shellac, boiled down his well-known enmity for recording industry representatives to his views of record producers.

“Royalties are a means to pay producers in the future — and in perpetuity — based on record sales,” said Albini, who is also a music journalist. “If a band does a show, blows a whole bunch of minds and a bunch of people become fans and go out and buy millions of records, the producer gets paid. I think that’s ethically unsustainable.

“I don’t think you should pay a doctor extra because a patient doesn’t die. I think the doctor should be busting his ass for every patient. I don’t think I should get paid for someone else’s success.”

But don’t get the idea that Albini, who is known as the engineer who struck indie gold with his work on the Pixies’ Surfer Rosa in 1988, is a producer.

“I don’t consider myself a producer, because I don’t make producer decisions,” Albini said. “And if you’re in the studio and a producer says: ‘I think you should consider trying this,’ punch him in the face. Nip that business in the bud.”

Albini’s antipathy for the suits in the music business is a homegrown philosophy. Albini came of age as a musician in 1980s Chicago, before bands could get recording equipment in their homes or garages with any kind of ease. When the punk scene in Chicago bloomed like the gangly thistle it was back then, bands would work for years without ever recording, Albini said. The best bands could do was to record demos to shop around. Albini learned to record because his band wanted to make a demo. He kept plugging away until he built a studio that broke Albini’s personal bank twice.

Albini held forth on a number of topics — the sad state of music journalism, corruption and greed in performance rights organizations, and the unheralded genius of librarians. But he also answered questions from a crowd that drew people from as near as Alice Street and from as far away as Alaska. His replies were occasionally laced with rapid-fire vulgarities.

“I do have some things that I do when I work with a band,” Albini told one audience member who asked how the engineer captures raw power and vulnerability of bands. “It starts with a conversation about what they want, what kind of record they want to make. A lot of the recording process is organizational. I try to get them to think ahead about what they want to do. I want to do all the overdubs in one session and eliminate the back and forth of doing an overdub, then recording something else.”

Mostly, Albini said, he encourages the bands he works with to bring their stage game with them into the studio.

“They need to do in the studio what they do live. That means if they normally blow a J [smoke marijuana] and drink a beer before a gig, then hey, do it before you come into the studio,” Albini said.

The engineer and musician said grass-roots music can thrive by making the most of do-it-yourself tools. Musicians can promote their tours, their records and sell their merchandise all from a band-managed Web site. Musicians don’t need a record deal to campaign for their art.

“You don’t need record companies,” Albini said. “You don’t need a contract and there’s no reason to get lawyers involved. At all.”

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com.