Sweetwater Studios has attracted Anthrax, Robben Ford, Eric Johnson, and Jordan Rudess – just in the last year. Can you talk about the big picture in Fort Wayne and what is driving this?
I think Sweetwater, as well as Chuck and Lisa Surack personally, are the driving force behind all of it. I came to Sweetwater as a visitor in 1998 while I was living in Nashville at the time, and honestly there wasn't a lot going on in Fort Wayne. When I visited, I was driving around wondering, "What do people do here?" Of course that has all changed now.
What was the main industry back then?
It was kind of a fall-out industry town, so you had all these old abandoned factories. Downtown, there's a 300-acre GE plant that has been abandoned for years. Manufacturing was a huge thing here up until the '80s, and eventually they closed it all down. So much of the area became depressed through the '80s and the early '90s, and then it started to come back. Now the GE campus is being repurposed into living, retail, and green community park space. There is also a river walk being constructed downtown where the rivers come together. Sweetwater has been a major engine for job growth and culture here. The company has grown roughly 20 percent each year since the mid 2000's. That's a pretty impressive growth rate; and just last year we hired about 700 people across all the various Sweetwater companies. Now Sweetwater is the largest privately-owned company in Northeast Indiana – and about 80 percent of the people working here are musicians. This is having a real impact on the arts. This has definitely bled into the community at large.
What was the main fuel for the business when Chuck started it?
Well, it started as a recording studio. He never thought about retail in the beginning at all – he was just trying to make some extra money while playing in various bands around the region. His start in retail was when he bought a Kurzweil K250 and he wanted to make his own samples for it. Ray Kurzweil told him that he couldn't do that, at that point. So, Chuck reverse-engineered it and started recording his own samples and used them in the recording studio. After all that, Chuck became a Kurzweil dealer. But he was just making samples and having fun while selling some keyboards. When the online thing came to be, Chuck got the Sweetwater Sound domain and he was on top of it.
How have the studios evolved there since they began?
Today's studios opened in 2008 and were designed by Russ Berger. Back when we opened, we were mainly doing corporate work for regional clients. What we now offer now is a very boutique and high-end service for recording clients around the world, all the while offering opportunities for our customers to become better engineers and musicians. Our studios are now very balanced, in both of those camps.
Fort Wayne seems vastly more open and approachable than other traditional music cities.
That's true. Other music cities still have labels, and there are all the politics. For example, if you are working on a pop country record in Nashville, there are still people who say, "If you are doing a pop country record, it has to be done this way," according to whatever imaginary formula that happens to be popular last week. Up here in Fort Wayne, that doesn't exist. We are isolated from the labels and everything else, and just really focused on the artists. We figure out what the goal of the project is, what the resources are, and work backwards from there. The main question is how can we reach that goal as efficiently as possible for our clients? The real opportunity is how we can engage people, find out what they are doing, and how we can help them.
Was moving to Fort Wayne a risk for you? That's a big change, coming from Nashville.
I was already gainfully employed, globetrotting, and working in many different genres of music. I spent my 10,000 hours staying diverse. My uncle [Ronnie Brookshire], who is also a producer and engineer, who still lives in Nashville, told me early on that if you want to stay busy, and have longevity, you've got to diversify. You can't go to work for one producer, one label, or one genre and expect that the work is just going to keep coming. Every gig comes to an end, and everything ebbs and flows. One thing goes out of style just as something else comes into style. My uncle was really a great influence on me in saying, "The more diversified you are, the better." If you can go from jazz, to blues, to hard rock, then that makes you pretty unique – most people in this business don't do that. I happen to have a wide variety of musical tastes since I was a kid, and it's served me well.
What was the first thing you did after coming on board at Sweetwater?
I realized we were flying in musicians on a regular basis to help out on our recording sessions. When you start to do the math on that – adding up hotels and airfare – you figure out, "Well, we'd save money if we just hired people." But we needed diverse people because we have so many different types of projects. So, I called up some people I had been working with for decades: Phil Naish, Nick D'Virgilio, Don Carr, Dave Martin. They've all made their mark in different genres of music, which makes them an interesting rhythm section. But behind the scenes, I've worked across many different genres of music with this group of guys.
So, getting in some musicians to support your sessions on a regular basis was important?
Absolutely. The talent of all these guys was really important, but probably less important than their heart and their attitude. They are all team players, and their number one goal is, "How can we make this project the best that it can be?" All in all, it makes a great team to execute what we wanted to accomplish here. They all went through the same phase that I went through on their first visits, but then they came up and worked with me a couple times. Once you work here and absorb this place a dozen times a year, people want to stay. It's all about the players. And Chuck had this vision of the studio, "I want to make this a destination."
And these guys also support your MasterClasses, right? Tell me about those.
The recording classes seemed to make sense. We have a great facility here to do these, and I had done Pro Tools certification classes for Avid for years. One thing I was never a fan of was a classroom with just laptops – how does that teach people how to make music? That only teaches people the features of software, which is fine if you are just transitioning into Pro Tools or something similar. But what really lights people up is getting to experience what I get to see every day – building a song from scratch. I don't take that for granted, and I'm very grateful for that. I think once a class participant sees that firsthand, it changes their perspective and they learn that. While the gear and the technology are both important, if the guy or girl can't play drums, the microphone choice doesn't make a difference. Musicianship is what matters most and the quality of the musician is in the eye of the beholder. That said, if you play a song for ten people and ten people say it sucks, then it is probably an indication that it sucks.
What kinds of people attend these classes?
I've done almost 100 of them now and I've interacted with customers who are just starting out, to customers that have been recording for 50 years, to people that are retiring and want to get back to their passion. I also have attendees that went to college, hated it, and are seeking some real-world knowledge. We have also had professional musicians who are on tour and who want to record their demos better – including some big-name artists. It is all over the place. The common denominator with all of them is that they are impressed that the actual sound of a guitar, for instance – including the reverbs and delays – are coming from the musicians themselves. It's recorded that way, not reinterpreted later by someone else in the editing or mixing process.
It's not just about playing with gear. You are interacting with customers and teaching them how to read an artist's intention.
At an early age, they teach you that music is the universal language. When I started playing guitar at age 13 and started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, it always came back to music. Because if I can help people do this well, the by-product of what they are doing has the potential to reach so many other people. We are all fans of different artists, and that is one of the reasons I like doing these workshops. I know how to approach a lot of different types of music. People come to these workshops, we teach them, and then they buy more gear; or different gear than they had. Our sales engineers can help them navigate these choices.
That's a cool way to get a practical education, since some people have other careers or don't have time for a long commitment.
There are many great universities, and if you are out of high school, that is an excellent option if you've got time. You can go explore and take classes as an elective, if you want. You've got that window in your youth to figure out whether you want to invest two or four years to do this. Most people don't have that luxury – music and music production for them is a hobby and a passion. And that is okay. If you are a working musician or audio engineer, if you work full-time in the music business and that's how you make 100 percent of your income, you are in the top five percent.
You have more gear than anybody could want here. It's like Christmas Island. Is there a downside of having too much choice?
Paradoxically, having so much choice takes the equipment out of the equation and puts the focus on who is on the other side of the gear. The obsession over all the expensive gear is either for people that have a really expensive hobby, or people who work professionally and work on projects that are getting high exposure. When I am talking with people about equipment, it's a conversation over a beer or a cup of coffee. It's not a big deal. Most people don't listen to a record that I've done and ask me, "What's on the snare drum?" They just enjoy music and don't think about the behind the scenes. They are listening to the songs and the performance. I can be picky and precious about my own workflow and how I like to bring sounds together on a technical level. But I am not precious about a whole bunch of technical things. I just like to get a bunch of talented people in the room and see what they think. I want to hear where the musicians are coming from. I'm an orchestrator, an arranger. I bring people and projects together and then I find places to put projects. Above any gift that I have, that's probably at the top of the list. The rest of it just comes organically.
You've recently worked with Russ Taff on a worship record and, of course, there are many fans of this genre. What was that like?
Well, Russ has already won six Grammys and fifteen Dove awards – he's a legendary Christian gospel singer. When I started working with him, he was fresh off of coming out as an alcoholic and dealing with those issues. I ended up doing a recording workshop with him here at Sweetwater Studios simply because Phil Naish and I were fans of his, and we started working on songs. Eventually it turned into this really beautiful album. Meanwhile, he's got a documentary that came out [I Still Believe] about his battle with alcohol, which we didn't know about when we were starting the album. Both projects happened to come out at the same time, and everybody in the Christian music world stood by him. We worked on that album for three years. It took so long because of his schedule and all the other things he had going on. But, in the end, it turned out great.
Which studio did you end up mixing the record in?
At Sweetwater Studios C. That's the smallest room here. I like the speakers being really close to me. Also, there is just something about that room because when I got to Sweetwater, I re-did that room first and I got used to it very quickly. I work extremely fast in there and know the room really well. Plus, Studio A is always booked – there is always somebody in there tracking a rhythm section. So, I will go into Studio A, mix some things and then take it back to Studio C and finish it; or I will mix something in Studio C and take it into Studio A and listen to it. But for me, I don't need a lot. I mean, I used to mix records on a laptop in hotel rooms and nobody was the wiser!
Do those rooms translate with each other well?
Absolutely. All the rooms have ATC monitors so every room has the exact same midrange, as well as the exact same tweeter and crossover points. So, you can go room to room, and it sounds the same. Studio C is a smaller room –it's got the ATC 25s in it – but 150s would probably be too much in that room. Technically speaking, when you go from the smaller speakers to the bigger speakers, there is more low end, but every room has the appropriate amount of low end for the size speaker and the size room - so, they really feel almost the same.
