{"id":15821,"date":"2019-01-02T05:30:23","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T10:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15821"},"modified":"2025-06-15T11:21:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T15:21:44","slug":"western-n-c-recording-studios-help-artists-take-their-music-to-the-next-level-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/02\/western-n-c-recording-studios-help-artists-take-their-music-to-the-next-level-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Western N.C. Recording Studios Help Artists Take Their Music to the Next Level (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One…<\/em><\/p>\n

Recording in Western N.C.<\/b>
\nThe industry has a long (if relatively modest and not widely-known) history in the region. In the earliest days of audio recording, a little-known recording device was transported all across the country\u2014including Western North Carolina\u2014and used to make scores of field recordings of folk and roots artists. Bernard MacMahon\u2019s award-winning PBS documentary American Epic<\/i> chronicles the history of that device. In 1928, Asheville lawyer and musician Bascomb Lunsford\u2019s \u201cI Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground\u201d was one of the musical works captured for posterity.<\/p>\n

Yet decades later\u2014when the garage rock wave spread across the country\u2014musicians in Western North Carolina didn\u2019t have local options for recording their songs. \u201cThere were no proper recording studios in Asheville during the 1960s,\u201d says REDACTED*, music historian, disc jockey at WSFM-LP (Asheville FM) and moderator of the \u201cCarolina Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll Remembered\u201d Facebook group.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Crossroads Studio’s recording console<\/p><\/div>\n

REDACTED* notes that a handful of primitive home recordings were made in and around Asheville during that period, but the closest thing to a professional session would have been the 1965 recording of \u201cDon’t Be Surprised\u201d and \u201cBlue Blue World\u201d made by garage rockers the Satyrs. REDACTED* says that those tunes were cut \u201cafter hours at Hi-Fidelity Sales, a home audio shop located where the ABC store across from McCormick Field is now.\u201d Those performances were captured with just two microphones.<\/p>\n

By 1969 Asheville was home to a semi-professional studio run by Chuck Taylor. His Taylor Made Studio consisted mostly of a four-track Ampex recording machine; the most well-known session to come out of Taylor\u2019s studio was \u201cAcid Raga\u201d by Asheville psychedelic rockers Sunn Cycle.<\/p>\n

So in those days, most musicians in Western North Carolina wanting to document their music on tape had to travel to larger cities. Many went to Arthur Smith Studios in Charlotte, the studio where James Brown cut \u201cPapa\u2019s Got a Brand New Bag,\u201d and where beach music legends the Swinging Medallions recorded \u201cDouble Shot (of My Baby\u2019s Love).\u201d REDACTED* says that other options included Mark V Studios in Greenville, S.C. and Galaxie III in Taylorsville.<\/p>\n

Professional-level local recording studios simply didn\u2019t exist, REDACTED* says. \u201cWhen an Asheville musician showed promise, they were usually lured away to larger markets such as Nashville, Atlanta or Memphis; the regional market was quite small.\u201d Other than bluegrass, REDACTED* says that until Echo Mountain Recording opened its doors in 2006, \u201cno local musical enterprise ever captured what might be called the Asheville vibe or sound.\u201d And even if they had, few would have been \u201cable to promote it on a viable commercial or popular scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

The success of Echo Mountain has helped put Western North Carolina on the map as a recording destination of some note; while a few studios (most notably Crossroads) had been in operation long before Echo Mountain opened, the last decade has seen a substantial increase in the number of quality audio recording studios in Western N.C.; there are nearly 20 professional-class studios in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are making cool records on their own all the time now,\u201d says Kenny Harrington, engineer at Echo Mountain. \u201cBut once they\u2019re ready to bring their sound to the next level, a professional studio is where they need to be. Home setups still cannot compete with the acoustics, equipment, and experience of professional recording studios.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a whole other world,\u201d Harrington says.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Crossroads Studio<\/p><\/div>\n

But Which Studio?<\/b>
\nIf and when an artist makes the decision to go the professional route rather than DIY, there remains the matter of choosing from among the variety of studios. Proximity is a consideration, but it\u2019s probably not the primary criteria. For an Asheville-based musician, for example, the most distant studio in western N.C. would be Saloon Studios Live in West Jefferson. But even that represents a scenic drive of just over two hours each way. Most of the region\u2019s recording studios are in or close to Asheville, Boone, Columbus or Hendersonville.<\/p>\n

For most musicians considering a studio session, cost is often a deciding factor. Rates vary widely depending on the facility and services offered, but in general musicians can expect to pay anywhere from $20 per hour to to over $100 (most fall into the middle of that range). Most studios publish their rates on their websites, but because every project is different, there are exceptions. If the session calls for extra gear rental\u2014say, a fully functional Hammond B3 organ like the ones at Echo Mountain Recording, something that a smaller studio might not own\u2014then costs go up accordingly. Independent producer-engineer Sarafin says that in his case, \u201cthere\u2019s no hourly rate; I sell my services, not time.\u201d So like many producers and studios, he quotes on a per-project basis.<\/p>\n

Nearly all of the studios in Western N.C. are single- or two-person operations; Echo Mountain and Crossroads have slightly larger full-time staffs plus part-time employees. Most note, however, that they also make regular use of session musicians working as contract labor.<\/p>\n

One notable studio with a larger staff is Sedgwick Studios and its satellite facility, Artists International Songstage. Run by Jim Georgeson and recording artist Andrew Reed, Sedgwick employs five full timers and seven part-time staffers. Sedgwick is secluded deep on an expansive property in the middle of the Green River Reserve near Flat Rock. And the more accessible Songstage is \u201cwhere we capture live performances,\u201d says Reed. \u201cIt\u2019s set up like the old Midnight Special<\/i> TV show.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of facility, at the most versatile end of the scale is Echo Mountain Recording. Not only does the downtown Asheville studio feature four sizable main rooms for recording (one of which is an old church sanctuary with superb acoustic qualities), but the two-building complex features seemingly countless rooms, all of which serve dual purposes. For example, thanks to a complex custom wiring system, a bathroom featuring tiled floors and corrugated metal walls doubles easily as a recording booth with natural echo. Even the lounges and game rooms are set up for recording, meaning that Echo Mountain can accommodate most anything from a voice-over narration project to the Asheville Symphony.<\/p>\n

Most studios are much more modest, yet they still offer isolation rooms for good sound separation, top-notch recording consoles and outboard effects gear. While most studios today offer a mix of digital and analog technology, a few of the larger studios feature full-analog recording on tape as an option.<\/p>\n

To be continued…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* The name of the individual has been removed. Revealed as a neo-Nazi, he was convicted of a felony and sentenced to prison. I don’t want to give him any publicity at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Recording in Western N.C. The industry has a long (if relatively modest and not widely-known) history in the region. In the earliest days of audio recording, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,3668],"tags":[3675,3682,3336,3685,3678,237,3680,3676,3673,3690,3669,3679,3684,3677,3681,3674,3670,3688,3683,1638,3672,3689,3686,3671,3687],"class_list":["post-15821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-music-business","tag-2bruce-studio","tag-alex-reese","tag-andrew-reed","tag-andy-bishop","tag-anthony-dorion","tag-asheville","tag-brad-rudolph","tag-bruce-sales","tag-crossroads-recording-studio","tag-donovan-murray","tag-echo-mountain-recording-studios","tag-falling-waters-recording-studio","tag-giraffe-studio","tag-good-flow-productions","tag-hilltop-studios","tag-jeff-collins","tag-jessica-tomasin","tag-matt-williams","tag-matthew-helton","tag-ozric-tentacles","tag-robert-george","tag-saloon-studios","tag-sedgwick-studios","tag-sound-temple-recording-studios","tag-the-eagle-room","cat-41-id","cat-3668-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15821"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29619,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15821\/revisions\/29619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}