Recording Studio Guide 2004: The studio next door

In and around Austin, musicians are laying down tracks in myriad recording facilities. You just can't see them.

By Michael Corcoran
July 8, 2004

On a quiet street in Tarrytown, an elderly couple heads out for an evening walk, unaware that in a converted garage just across the street, a British singer named Sally Crewe and members of the alternative pop band Spoon are bashing out tracks for Crewe's upcoming album.

In far South Austin, producer Mark Hallman pokes his head out the door of his nondescript Congress House studio because he's expecting a van carrying a band from San Francisco that should be arriving at any moment. In a white house in a subdivision just off Hamilton Pool Road, meanwhile, Blue World studio owner Gina Fant-Saez sets up a mic for Shawn Colvin so she can add backing vocals to tracks sent by Sting's office in London on a computer file.

On East Seventh Street, a woman herds her three children as far away from the rushing traffic as possible as they head for the nearest bus stop. A young man with tattoos and a rockabilly haircut steps out of an unmarked storefront to smoke a cigarette. When the sound of punk band the Ends escapes the Bubble, as the studio inside is called, the mother looks up, then goes back to focusing on her kids.

Outside a clubhouse in Briarcliff, about 30 miles west of Austin, a trio of vacationing businessmen in pastel colors unload golf clubs from a minivan, parked next to a black car that belongs to Houston gangsta rapper Slim Thug, who's inside recording at Pedernales Studio.

The local recording industry is like a secret music scene.

While live music clubs flash and wink to passers-by, Austin's recording studios -- ranging from laptops in bedrooms to majestic 64-track consoles in converted country clubs -- are hidden from the street, discouraging drop-ins and curiosity-seekers.

One studio, filled with more than a million dollars worth of vintage tube equipment in a house high on a hill off City Park Road, is so private, so secluded, that its owner, a former NASA engineer, hasn't named it and won't allow journalist to view it unless they promise not to reveal its location.

Even if the studios remain hidden, the music isn't secret for long. The dream is that the tracks recorded in these storefronts and converted living rooms will one day be heard by many.

The studio is the womb; the CD release is the birth.

Drawn to Austin

Given the current studio activity -- the Texas Music Office lists 191 studios in the Austin area, employing more than 700 people -- it's hard to believe that 20 years ago, there was almost no recording business in Austin. Major-label acts didn't fly down here to soak up the vibe before they laid down tracks. There were almost no studios for local acts without the help of a major label budget or a trust-fund fan.

Today, Austin can boast the country's top jingle factory in Tequila Mockingbird. The likes of Sublime and Barenaked Ladies have holed up here to make multiplatinum albums. Acts fly in from as far away as Japan and Scandinavia to record at Sweatbox, the garage-rock mecca. And hometown talent such as the Dixie Chicks, Jimmie Vaughan, Robert Earl Keen and Eric Johnson no longer have to go to Los Angeles or Nashville to record; they can make their CDs just blocks from their favorite breakfast taco joints.

"You've reached Ped-er-nales," co-owner Lisa Fletcher says on the studio's voice-mail message, pronouncing "Pur-de-nales" the tourist way. "We do so much business with out-of-towners," Fletcher explained, "that it's just easier to pronounce it the way we want the checks to read."

Austin as a recording destination is a relatively new development. "They like our laid-back lifestyle and our approach to music," says Hallman, who, like almost all local studio owners, began his career as a musician.

Well, not everybody has that attitude, as Hallman became well aware when British bad boys Oasis stopped in at Congress House for a night of revelry and recording about seven years ago and did about $2,000 in damage. "They got ahold of my BB gun and shot out a window of my car," Hallman says, now able to laugh about it.

Current Congress House client Emily Lord of San Francisco is a more typical guest. "Austin is known for its support of singer-songwriters," she says. "It just has a cooler feel here than at an industry town. Plus, we wanted to work with Mark."

Music in pieces

Once best known for its guitarists, Austin is also gaining a reputation for its producers: Craig Ross, Stephen Bruton, Lloyd Maines, John Croslin, Lars Goransson, Rich Brotherton, Gurf Morlix, Tim Kerr and Mike Mariconda are among those who have helmed projects that would've gone elsewhere in the past.

It's the newer, less expensive recording equipment which has made the biggest impact on the local recording scene.

Photo by Sung Park/AA-S The Congress House studio in far South Austin appeals to out-of-town musicians because it offers lodging, says producer Mark Hallman.

"The technology just wasn't here in the early '80s," says Wire Recording owner Stuart Sullivan, who worked as a janitor at Lone Star Recording in the early '80s in exchange for studio time he would use to record the likes of Wild Seeds and Dino Lee. "Back then, it would cost millions of dollars to build a studio that could compete with those in Nashville, New York and L.A."

In the late '80s, the advent of ADAT tape machines, which for $2,500 apiece could replace a multitrack tape machine that cost up to $100,000, put the means of production in the hands of those without deep pockets.

Then, in the past few years, Pro Tools software and digital workstations have made it possible to record and mix a professional-sounding album in your kitchen or bedroom with about $1,000 worth of equipment. One of the best-sounding local albums of the year, "... In All Their Splendor" by Li'l Cap'n Travis, was recorded on friend Michael Crow's laptop in a North Austin storage space.

But despite the good news, all is not well with the local recording business. The home studio boom coupled with a downturn in the music industry has made for tough times for some Austin studios, whose owners struggle to keep up with the rising rents. Jay Hudson's beloved Hit Shack on South Lamar closed earlier this year. Another longtime studio, Music Lane, recently economized its space to reduce overhead and cut rates in half.

"I think I'm the last big studio that'll open in Austin," says Sullivan, who opened Wire three years ago. "More and more acts are booking the studio for just a day to do drum tracks or vocals, then finishing the album at home."

A professional ear

Studio owners used to frown at such piece work, but now they accept it as the new way to do business. "Beaver Nelson's new album is a good example of how things are done these days," says Top Hat Recording co-owner John Harvey. "He and his band recorded the basic tracks in Mississippi, then they took them to (bassist) George Reiff's apartment to do overdubs on Pro Tools. Then they came here to mix the record on analog (tape, rather than digital)."

The home studio has democratized the recording scene, but the big commercial studios that have been able to adjust, that have been able to, in the words of Bismeaux Studio's Ray Benson, "give 'em a little somethin' that they can't get at home," have been able to rebound.

"I was really worried about two years ago when I had three cancellations in a row," says Hallman. "One act said they had a friend who was going to record them at home and I thought, 'Oh, boy.' " But Hallman, whose studio offers lodging, making it a favorite of out-of-town acts, says 2003 was his best year ever.

"The difference between recording at home and at a studio is the difference between amateur and professional photography," Asleep at the Wheel's Benson says, pointing to three things that set the studios apart from the bedrooms. "Number one, gear. We've got microphones that cost $8,000 each. We've got all sorts of vintage equipment that wouldn't be feasible to put into your home studio. Number two, we've designed our rooms to sound great." Your garage was not constructed with acoustics in mind. "And the third thing -- and this is major -- is the people, the engineers with decades of experience, the producers that can tell you when you need a little more zip on your vocals."

Photos by Sung Park/AA-S After Carolyn Wonderland, top photo, recorded some tracks at Bismeaux Studio, engineer Chris Burns, above center, listens to the playback with Wonderland and members of her band.

Ex-20/20 guitarist Ron Flynt, who recently opened the Jumping Dog studio in his home near Lake Travis, says there's no more valuable piece of audio equipment than a pair of good ears. "One of our old producers used to say, 'You can have all the latest pots and pans, but that doesn't make you Betty Crocker,' " he says.

Bennet Spielvogel of Flashpoint Recording says that, as the means of production have become more accessible, the ever elusive "vibe" has become an important commodity. "We provide a space to create, to complete your vision of what your music is," he says. "It's all about maintaining the fragile chemistry of the creative process."

Producer Brian Beattie, who works out of a professional-quality home studio, says the advent of computer recording has changed the attitude of the bigger studios for the better. "They used to be the only game in town and they knew it," he says. "You had to do everything their way, which meant recording in a dead-sounding room, with lots of separation (between musicians) and an engineer whose idea was to put dorky reverb on everything. But now the studios have become more open-minded, especially in terms of using natural acoustics."

Flynt says the fantasy of going to a recording studio is a strong allure. "When you're just starting out, you think about Keith Richards sitting at a big console, drinking Jack Daniels and listening to playback, and you want that to be you one day." When you feel like a rock star, you're more likely to sing and play like one.

Spoon's Jim Eno, who has converted his garage into a top-flight studio with the help of a vintage Neve console, says that there are minuses as well as pluses to having a studio at your disposal all the time. "Sometimes you can take all that free time for granted and maybe get a little lackadaisical about what you're doing," he says. "When you're in a studio with the clock ticking, it forces you be to prepared. to take everything a little more seriously."

Michael Crow, who plays in Grand Champeen when he's not producing records for his friends, agrees. "Sometimes you need a little pressure or you just sit around and drink beer and talk about what you want to do instead of just doing it," he says.

But, as Flynt is all too aware from the days when 20/20 was pegged as the next Knack, sometimes the pressure of recording in an expensive studio can be too much. "We were signed to Columbia (in the late '70s) and our producer had been virtually kidnapped by Carmine Appice. While he was finishing up Appice's record, we were sitting around while the studio bills mounted and Columbia was calling every day, going, 'We're gonna drop you if you don't get going on this.' We were so incredibly stressed out."

Being away from the East and West Coast pressure cookers is a plus for Austin. Especially with the Internet's capability to send music files back and forth, says Benson, who recently co-produced a duet between his old pal Willie Nelson and reggae singer Toots Hibbert, whom he's never met.

"The Austin recording scene is really just starting to crawl," Benson says. "The new computer technology is changing everything for the better. We're just on the cusp of fully comprehending that."

---

More Stories:
Entrepreneurship serves the Fletchers well
For the punks | Mastering by Tubb
16 sweet studios in Austin | Complete list of area studios
XL Online