There’s an alchemy that happens in the recording studio. It’s a place
where sound meets vision — where meticulous craft butts heads with
wild-eyed artistry. Studios are also often the pivot points around
which a music scene can revolve.
Detroit, of course, has a storied history of this magic happening. From
John Lee Hooker’s after-hours recordings at United Sound in the ’50s
and the sounds pumping out of the factory that was
Hitsville USA in the
’60s to the racket rising from basements, backrooms and converted
spaces in the ’80s and ’90s where producers, soundmen and engineers cut
their chops making records for would-be next generation stars.
A
sampling of the current studios representing the city of Detroit bears
out a connection between past, present and future.
Detroit’s sonic reputation
In fact, in 2004, the connection between Detroit’s past and its future
was strengthened when attorney Roger Hood and his wife Aretha re-opened
United Sound in its original location in Midtown on Second near I-94. Simply enough, the Hoods bought
the space from the city. It had been disused and rat-infested for
years. The Hoods saved United from that fate – and, in the process,
turned it into a steady business.
Now, they’ve got both Studio A and storied Studio B up and running
recording, the future sound of the city. This includes everything from
critically-acclaimed Ann Arbor afrobeat orchestra Nomo to Christian
hip-hop artists like Detroit’s CPR. Those two points of reference – a
10-plus member improvisation-friendly band and a young hip-hop artist –
help explain part of the reason studios are still critical even in the
current do-it-yourself-enabled cultural landscape. This is an age
where, according to fellow downtown producer Jim Diamond of Ghetto
Recorders, “you need to keep in mind every other band has a home
recording studio in their practice space these days as well.”
Studios are magnets for the kind of folks on the front line of establishing a city’s sonic reputation.
Heck, they are oft-times the architects of that rep. Such is certainly
the case with
Ghetto Recorders’ Jim Diamond. For the last 10 years,
Diamond has operated Ghetto as a one-man operation in a former poultry
processing plant adjacent to the State Theatre, recording the bands
that have become icons of Detroit’s recent rock ‘n’ roll visibility
like the White Stripes, the Dirtbombs, the Witches and others. Recent
projects include work with locals like the blues-punk trio Cuckold as
well as bands from Brooklyn, Pittsburgh and Seattle who all traveled to
the D to get his sound after either hearing it on one of the MP3s on
his site or reading the studio name on one of his high visibility
clients’ liner notes.
Diamond’s philosophy is straightforward: “(I want) to give bands an
opportunity to record in a relaxed atmosphere, so they feel more like
they're in a live performance or rehearsal situation as opposed to a
doctor's office, which most studios seem to feel like,” he says.
Jam on it
That feel for the live jam also guides the work that comes out of the
White Room at State and Griswold. White Room’s got a solid track record
and an enviable longevity. Michael Nehra opened the studio in his
parents basement in 1987 and it is now run by engineer John Smerek.
According to Smerek, their success is due in part to the unparalleled
mix of vintage gear and the ability to be creative utilizing the
studio’s 6,700 square feet of recording space. The location works out
well, too, when a label wants to set up a band from the Midwest with a
New York or Los Angeles producer, White Room meets them halfway –
literally.
But what keeps the lights on is that the White Room is, says Smerek, “all about any type of live music.”
White Room’s recent-release CV is impressive and bears out Smerek’s
live-music-first proclamations. From the green-bottle winter country
blues of the Deadstring Brothers and the warmth of singer-songwriter
Ben Cyllus to the raucous Detroit Cobras and the supercharged rock
swagger of The Paybacks, Smerek and company’s work at the White Room
lets the music speak for itself.
Engineering creativity
Not far away up Woodward Avenue is Warn Defever’s Brown Rice studio. Open
for just a few years now and steadily gaining clientele, Defever’s been
hard at work helping craft sounds for both up-and-coming and
established independent artists such as Loretta and the Larkspurs, the
aforementioned NOMO, Ida, PA and Defever’s own band
His Name is Alive, among others.
Despite the constant stream of city-borne distractions – everything
from ambulance sirens to street folk showing up uninvited to sit in on
congas during a recording session – Defever’s business has been steady.
“The demand for friendly, creative engineers and studios will always be
around,” he figures. “However, I think musicians are finally get hip to
the idea that an overpriced ‘professional’ studio with a long list of
crappy sounding major label clients that made truly shitty records is
not worth the effort.”
It’s this kind of demand that would move a young sonic entrepreneur to
open their own space.
One of the newest studios in town is High Bias, owned and operated by
engineer/producer Chris Koltay. Cincinnati native Koltay officially
opened in October of 2005 after laboring over renovating his Corktown
building by himself, by hand. "I did buy the place for really cheap. So
I was able to sink a lot of money into gear for the studio.”
His first clients were up-and-coming indie-rock outfit Rescue. “They
waited a long time for me to get this place open,” he chuckles. “They
asked me to do their record a year and a half ago.”
“When I moved here, nobody was moving here,” says Koltay. “No one’s
moving here now! But once you’re here, there’s no place else I’d rather
be. People can do things here. It’s a place for misfits to do what they
want to do.”
Koltay figures he’s got a solid niche in the Detroit rock studio world.
Somewhere between the aesthetic of Diamond’s Ghetto and the higher-end
prices of White Room. His other high profile clients thus far are the
critically-acclaimed artful-garage-rockers SSM who have pricked up the
ears of the New York Times and other wags.
“I moved here to do this. I figured there was a niche I could fill. The
SSM and the Rescue record, I don’t think you could make a records that
sound like those any other place in the city.”
Koltay’s vibe is guided by his desire to create a comfortable, creative
atmosphere where acts can both explore their sounds and capture a
moment. To that end, he says, “I don’t want people to feel like when
they’re in the studio they have to worry about the clock. There’s no
clocks, there’s no phones.”
And he figures his rates and location across the street from one of the city’s better barbeque restaurants (
Slows) and a homey dive bar (
LJ’s) make High Bias an attractive joint for bands to swing by while on tour to document their new road-tested jams.
“All I wanna do is be busy,” he says, simply. On his upcoming docket
are records from Lee Marvin Computer Arm, Shoe, Hoss Burly and other
bands.
Business and sonic pleasures
Nestled among the tree-lined side streets of downtown’s cozy Harmonie
Park is the aptly-named
Harmonie Park Studios. Open since 1996 and run
by brothers Mark and Brian Pastoria with in-house producer Michael J.
Powell, HP has gained a reputation nationwide thanks to high-profile
clients like Aretha Franklin, the Four Tops and Kirk Franklin and
welcomed marquee-names-in-the-producer-world like Rodney Jerkins and
others to create Grammy Award-winning jams (Mark won a Grammy for his
work on Franklin’s track “A House is Not A Home” from the recent Luther
Vandross tribute album).
They’ve carved out a successful enterprise in a highly-competitive
environment. Detroit has its fair share of advertising production
studios, but Harmonie Park manages to mix the artistry of original work
with contract production work for the local ad biz.
“A studio is a hard thing to open these days,” says Brian Pastoria.
“Our studio is mostly for our own work and we happen to work with
associates who need a studio. [Audio editing software] ProTools has
changed everything. If you don’t do advertising work or you don’t work
with clients who have budgets it’s hard to maintain the overhead. Most
local musicians and artists who are great…don’t have a lot of money.”
Keeping the Balance
Indeed, some quick-penned pundit once wrote that when the nation’s
economy catches a cold, Detroit gets pneumonia. So how does a business
like a recording studio survive – especially when a recording studio is
something which some could see as an extension of the extravagance of
supporting the arts in tough times?
Detroit’s sound architects have varied strategies. At Ghetto, Diamond
is the sole employee with gear he owns outright in a studio with
less-expensive rent. So he keeps his overhead low. Defever, similarly,
is his own sole employee in a one-room operation.
Some, like the White Room, get creative to help keep the business
flowing. Since musicians are often not averse to late-night hours, and
since the wee hours are usually not booked for recordings, White Room
is able to offer up “After Hours at the White Room,” where, Smerek
says, bands can record at a deeply-discounted rate.
For their part, in addition to the commercial work, the Pastorias and
Harmonie Park also keep themselves firmly rooted in their neighborhood
and their city, supporting the neighborhood summer concerts and
becoming a proud part of the community in which they live and work.
It’s exactly this mix of art, commerce and community that unifies the
studios that support Detroit’s vibrant and varied music scene. They’re
all, to one degree or another, interested in not just staying in
business, but doing so here in this funky, funky city, capturing its
funky, funky sounds. From the Hoods’ embracing United’s legacy to
still-working ’60s Detroit R&B stalwarts like Nathaniel Mayer and
Andre Williams recording at White Room and Ghetto, respectively, the
past is prelude to a future that looks to thrive in Detroit’s recording
studios.
Or, seeing as sound engineers typically speak in more concise terms,
let’s leave the summation to the professionals. In this case, White
Room’s Smerek: “There are some fantastic studios around, and hopefully
artists and bands will continue to see the value in working with
professionals in a commercial facility that was built as a recording
studio.”
For an annotated trip down memory lane, click here.
That’s the Soulful Detroit tour of
recording studios past. Much of United Studio’s back-story can be found
there. If you’re a true aficionado of R&B and pop music past, be
prepared to be alternately inspired by what once was, and depressed by
modern-day photos of the sites where so much of our city’s cultural
legacy lies anonymous, unmarked, burned out or disappeared. It’s an apt
reminder in general of the ephemeral nature of pop culture and a
thought-provoking place to ponder how Detroit specifically regards its
heritage.
Photos:
Brian Pastoria, Bill Donahue, Mark Pastoria of Harmonie Park
United Sound
Jim Diamond
Chris Koltay
Interiors of Harmonie Park
All Photographs Copyright Dave Krieger