“One Track Mind: Southern Tracks Remains A Single Room Facility”

SOUTHERN TRACKS RECORDING

by

Jeff Calder

Pro Sound News , June, 1998

Despite Atlanta 's rich musical history and rampaging go-go spirit, most rock & roll recording facilities here struggle to keep the front doors open and the back doors closed. Hindenburgs explode daily in this Southern metropolis with almost every studio owner in the city shooting a fire extinguisher down his pants at one time or another.

"Including me," states Mike Clark , co-owner and manager of Southern Tracks Recording . It's taken four decades on the regional rock scene for Clark to acquire the requisite street savvy to finally make it happen in the 90's. He was first a wild-jack drummer, then a tenacious promotional man, and now: Studio Chieftain. Relaxing in his modest corner office on the ground floor, Clark denies that there's any secret to his professional longevity.

"It's mostly just a matter of coming in to work," he says, kickin g up a desert boot. "That and dealing with Coke machine problems."

Some say Southern Tracks' current success can be attributed to the presence of Brendan O'Brien, the producer who's made this studio his primary base-of-operations for the past four years.

"It hasn't hurt," confides Clark , slyly.

O'Brien is mixing Pearl Jam's new disc, Yield, down the hall. He pokes his head into Clark 's office durin g a break and catches the studio owner about to show-off his latest Atomic Age microphone.

"Why don't you open it up?" suggests Clark , handing him the old case housing a musty Austrian AKG C-24.

O'Brien cracks the lid.

"It smells like Vienna ," he says, "only without the sausage."

Brendan O'Brien could work at any studio in Atlanta , but he's had one very sound reason for choosing Southern Tracks.

"It's fantastically convenient," he says, meaning close to his home.

"That's good," says Clark , "so now I don't have to worry about another studio being better, just closer."

O'Brien retires to pour some more Pultec on Pearl Jam, leaving Mike Clark to contemplate the past and future of Southern Tracks--a state-of-the-art studio in an unstable market called America .

"I've seen the outboard boats and Stingrays melt into plastic pools more than once," notes Clark with a sideways look that suggests some drastic fluctuation in the Pop Dow has just occurred over his shoulder.

"Mike's always willing to help people out who call in with dumb questions," remarks CNN producer Bill Tullis, for whom Southern Tracks is always first call. " On the other hand, he'll lend you a 12-inch reel to go work in some other studio and then call you a traitor."

Clark 's strategy has been elegant, if elementary: fix one eye on the extravagant and the other on the abacus. He made his big move in 1993, stuffing his credenza with vintage gear and installing the South's first SSL G Plus/Ultimation console. When the new twin Studer 24-track tape machines materialized, O'Brien marched in Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. He mixed Aerosmith and Bob Dylan and recorded Matthew Sweet's latest two albums (100% Fun and Blue Sky On Mars). Last Au gust, Rage Against The Machine rolled by and dropped into red with a booting new anthem. At the conclusion of 1997, O'Brien began mixin g the forthcoming Girls Against Boys for Geffen.

On another front, producer Matt Serletic (Collective Soul) and mix engineer Greg Archilla completed an acoustic version of Matchbox 20's hit, "Push" at Southern Tracks. Indigo Girls polished their disc, Shamin g Of The Sun , mixing it here and recording about half of it, as well. Their producer, David Leonard, appreciated the privacy afforded by this single-studio facility .

"Honestly, I like being able to concentrate without anyone else around." says Leonard. "We could always go to the lounge upstairs if we had to get away."

The studio's 50's and 60's memorabilia is on display in the lounge's kitchen area. In the couch room a chalk portrait of The Tams flanks an octagonal gaming table. The single-studio concept is a hold over from the early days when Southern Tracks was essentially a private laboratory for publisher Bill Lowery's g roup of solid- gold son g writers. So doesn't it make sense to upsize in 2000, add a B-room and a Midi-suite?

"It would ruin it," shrugs Clark .

Indigo Girls found the acoustic spaces of the George Augspurger-designed studio ideal for the full string-section date in the main room. Augspurger's angles also have made Southern Tracks the ideal site of live broadcasts by Patti Smith and Michael Penn for Atlanta 's Alternative station 99X. Penn, who says that Southern Tracks is the best studio in which he's worked, recreated much of his 57/Epic release, Resigned , for the fans who crowded into the same space where he had recorded the album.

"The quality of the Live X was spectacular," comments Leslie Fram, program director for 99X. In response to the studio's roster of recording artists, Fram added, "I got the same sort of feelin g as when I walked into Abbey Road ."

Unlike everything in London--and Atlanta , for that matter--Southern Tracks is centrally located. Eight miles north of downtown in a suburb near Interstate-85, the free-standing two-story structure is tucked behind a sedate gray house which serves as headquarters for Mike Clark 's long time partner and benefactor, the leg end known as Bill Lowery. The 73-year-old Lowery is still a spry and wily raconteur, a rakish specimen sporting a temporary black eyepatch while he recovers from retinal surgery--no doubt the result of his overly sharp orb for talent.

With a background in the Southeastern radio and television scene of the 1940's, Lowery began his publishing company in 1952.

Clark explains, "Bill started everything based on the simple assumption that if they could do it in New York , LA and Chicago , he could do it with songwriters in Atlanta ."

His first major hit was called "Spanish Fireball" by Hank Snow, but Sonny James' "Young Love" and Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Lula" transformed Lowery from tyro into tycoon. Around the time Eisenhower hit the back nine, Lowery leased a dilapidated North Atlanta schoolhouse for office space. In 1957 he installed a Gates Radio Console and mono/stereo tape machines, moving up to 3-track during the Kennedy Administration. In addition to Lowery's growing pool of songwriters, many regional artists recorded at "The Old Schoolhouse," among them Gladys Knight, James Brown and the flamboyant precursor of Little Richard named Esquerita, the dark eccentric god who currently resides in Rock & Roll Valhalla, his two feet of vertical hair chiseled into position by his knave, Thor.

Buddy Buie, producer and writer for The Classics IV and The Atlanta Rhythm Section, remembers, "The old studio was located just a few yards from some train tracks. We had to time the sessions around the railroad schedule. You wouldn't believe the sound those heavy trains made in that old echo chamber they'd built."

Felton Jarvis worked at the Old Schoolhouse in the late 50's. At the time there were giant Italian record presses in a back building where Jarvis worked printing labels. Jarvis and Ray Stevens, the story goes, once printed counterfeit $100 bills and lit cigars with them after dinner--a suitable stunt for impressing "clients" in 1959. The FBI was impressed, too, when Jarvis dropped his suit at the cleaners, and a tattletale spotted a pocket still lined with the phony bills. The G-men paid Jarvis a little visit at the Old Schoolhouse, scaring him so badly that he went on to produce Elvis Presley.

One day an ambitious Atlanta high school singer named Tommy Roe turned up at the Old Schoolhouse with his drummer, Mike Clark. Roe introduced Clark to Bill Lowery, initiating an association which has survived 40 years (Clark played his first session at the schoolhouse in 1958).  As a publisher, Lowery would have a string of hits with Tommy Roe, beginnin g in 1962 with "Sheila." Other successful artists during this period included The Tams, Billy Joe Royal, Joe South and The Classics IV. His big run would continue into the 70's with The Atlanta Rhythm Section, Bertie Higgins, Alicia Bridges and Starbuck, whose "Moonlight Feels Right" was produced by Mike Clark and recorded on used tape.

Clark toured the U.S. with Roe during the days of the large multiple-act tours.

"I worked all the time in those days," remembers Clark, who can still deliver a pleasing cymbal swell. "I was out with Billy Joe [Royal], Tommy, Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars and even worked a few dates with the great Roy Orbison. I played shoebox with a brush on 'Traces,' " he says, referring to the 1969 Classics IV tower of gold bullion.

By then Clark the drummer had begun to relinquish his throne, assuming duties as Lowery's administrative assistant. He screened songs and pitched masters, sometimes engineerin g sessions at night. He promoted Lowery's tunes and productions to radio until the afternoon in 1972 when someone named Charlie Minor tried to sell him a leather coat moldering in the trunk of a derelict Mercury.

"That's just the kind of talent you need to make it in promotion. Charlie had it," observes Clark today. Clark was so impressed that he brought the outlandish Minor to Bill Lowery's attention, landing the late promotional leg end his first job in the music business.

When the Old Schoolhouse was demolished in 1983 to make way for a rapid transit station, Lowery and Clark constructed Southern Tracks at its present location.

"They decided to build from scratch," says George Augspurger, a well-known studio designer based in LA since the early 1970's. "It was a little unusual to be able to do a relatively large ground-up studio at a time when everybody was building totally dead studios for maximum isolation between tracks. But the guys at Southern Tracks were not used to working that way. So they were pretty much pioneers at the time that place was built. Southern Tracks wanted a room that sounded like a nice little recital hall. Now my recollection is that in the studio very little has chan ged. It worked very well."

In the control area the original black Harrison console gave way to an early model SSL in the late 80's. It was then that a frenetic young engineer named Brendan O'Brien began working at the studio producing projects for the South's preeminent New Wave svengali, Danny Beard of DB Recs. O'Brien relocated to Hollywood in 1990, tunneling into the vault (Black Crowes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, STP) and returning home in 1993 with his reputation established as an important American rock & roll producer.

A pioneer of the Neo-Pioneer method of "live" studio tracking , O'Brien's professional attitude remains one of imperial insouciance.

"Most studios have stultifying atmospheres," he says, quick to add, "I like things to be fantastically exciting ."

Southern Tracks--already at the front end of the old gear craze by about 30 years--met the challenge of O'Brien's demands. The studio installed a full-range PA in the main room so artists could sing , play and record simultaneously. An exquisite EMT 250--the first digital reverb--was pushed into position at one end of the SSL. A Fairchild 670 compressor was nabbed from a local tape duplicating facility where it had been collecting dust for two decades. Shelves of Neve, API and Trident A-Range modules were assembled.

Clark is philosophical about the old equipment.

"The nice thing is that you don't have to cut on the heat in the control room," he says. "But seriously, it's like a dad buying stuff for his kids. It's really great to watch guys like Nick using it all, having the tools."

Nick DiDia , who has been Brendan O'Brien's chief eng ineer for the last five years, takes issue: "Honestly, it's not the tools, it's the people. That's what makes Southern Tracks the best place I've ever worked. I do have to tell you, though, that I have a real problem getting the temperature right in the control room for some reason."

In addition to the highly desirable Neumann, Telefunken and AKG workhorses, a stroll around during a session with the LA-based band Gordan (57/Epic) reveals an RCA 10001 ribbon mic from Disney and--facing the drum kit--a matching pair of Leipzig 7151s (big black bottle canisters with lollipop capsules made in the 50's). The Neumann QM69 quadraphonic mic--a true oddity--is suspended over the grand piano; an even stranger Neumann MM3 test mic has its 18 inch rod inserted gingerly into the open back of a Clavioline amplifier. With O'Brien's dizzyin g erection of exotic instruments, the parquet floor becomes a Utopian pawn shop churlishly converted into a frozen kinetic sculpture.

Why is it all necessary to make a rock & roll record?

O'Brien renders his view in axiomatic, if cryptic fashion: "One must always remain open to the most befuddling of new grooves."

It makes about as much sense as anything in the music business, and it would certainly be nice if a studio like Southern Tracks could survive solely on so grandiose a spectacle. As a single-room facility, however, Southern Tracks has had to maintain maximum flexibility, securing a reputation as a dependable mixing room for a wide variety of projects. Members of Atlanta 's R & B scene have completed many chart-toppers here, notably Organized Noize and Keith Sweat. Karl Heilbron has mixed some of Sweat's last two albums at Southern Tracks, as well as the current smash, "My Body," for the super group LSG (Gerald Lavert/Keith Sweat/Johnny Gil) and the platinum remix of "Freak Me" by Silk.

A graduate of Orlando 's Full Sail audio engineering school, Heilbron first worked in his hometown Miami before moving to Atlanta in 1994. The day he walked into Southern Tracks, Mike Clark made him an assistant engineer on the spot.

Heilbron comments, "The studio business in Miami is real cut-throat. Since that was the first experience I had, I thoug ht all studios were all like that. Mike would let people at other studios borrow microphones, and I didn't know what to make of it. Mike has to be crazy, I thought. Everyone here refers business to each other. Another cool thing is that Mike would give me sessions. Studio mana g ers where I came from would never give an assistant a session unless there was a dire need."

Songs mixed here have been included on the film & TV soundtracks such as Money Talks, Dumb and Dumber, and Bevis and Butthead. From time to time a stray comedian pops up, e. g ., the indubitable Jerry Reed. Gospel groups still record at Southern Tracks, as they have since the days of The Old Schoolhouse. Errant pop paupers sneak in after hours and, inevitably, they encounter "Rip," the 70 year old custodial firecracker in pink Bermudas who always appears at dawn, notes the tears of fatigue and suggests that, "you look just like a rat eating an onion."

Of course, Bill Lowery still has plenty of success licensing the back catalog . By all the rules of the game, however, his situation should have ossified long ago. With a company destined to turn a profit until the return of the prophet, why has Lowery bothered to come into work for the past 20 years, much less bankroll a risky venture like a luxurious recording studio in the middle of Georgia ?

"The young talent, the song writers and artists have always excited me," says Lowery with septuagenarian sincerity. "I've just always believed in Atlanta ever since I moved here from Louisiana in the 1940's. I love it here and just want to see it continue."

Through his office window Mike Clark spots Brendan and his second engineer, Ryan Williams, under the parking lot backboard, shooting hoops and hard-charging invisible opponents. Clark 's assistant, Maureen Doran, stands outside the line of fire, trying to alert O'Brien about the day's life-changing phone calls and right-now disasters. Some tumbleweed blows by, yet Clark seems content for the moment. As much as anything else, the quest for camaraderie has motivated the studio chief to keep the levels red, the budget black, and the fire extinguisher within easy reach. And what about the future? Will Southern Tracks expand, perhaps move into the post-production racket?

"I could move to 'Post', " answers Clark, "but, if that were the case, I'd rather move to retire."