Live Recording

I recorded an album in the nineties with my bluegrass band, The String Creek Band. We made cassettes to sell at gigs and give away. We recorded at a studio in Redwood Valley, Ca called Laughing Coyote Studios. Spencer Brewer owned and operated the studio which was a custom built building on his property next to his home.

Spenser is a world-renowned pianist and his studio has been the birthplace for some astounding records over the years. Alex DeGrassi recorded much of his book of music there.

The studio was top notch. The building was round and big. The studio was huge, with two grand pianos in the room, (they were actually dwarfed in the expanse). The whole center of the room was maybe twenty-five to thirty feet across with an outer ring of booths behind glass. The control booth was surrounded by a huge curved section of wall with windows and raised above so they could look out over the room from an actual birdseye view.

The control room was huge and held a maze of huge mixing boards and machines, reel to reel tape decks, cassette decks, cords, microphones, and things with lights and gauges and knobs. I didn’t know anything about any of it, and when Spenser was showing us around, I had no idea what he was talking about, and completely missed it.

The band was a trio, guitar, (me), banjo, (Mitch), and stand-up bass, (Bob) and Mitch and I sang. we set up in a circle right in the middle of the big room. Spenser put up some barriers between us and we played our tunes.

While we were setting up, Spenser set up a mic to mic my guitar. It was long and skinny. He gave me the history of the mic, told me some of the recordings it had done in the past. It was an old mic, but it was such a part of recording history for Spenser, he spent ten thousand dollars rebuilding it. I don’t know if he fudged that, he seemed nonchalant about his claim and it sounded real to me.

I found out Spenser was a historian in the “old stuff” way. He had old recording equipment all either perfectly maintained or perfectly rebuilt. He had old pictures, he had old toys and knew a history of all of it with a story for each thing he had.

We returned to the studio a few days after to do a couple more tunes and I brought my two young sons so they could witness magic. Before we got started, Spenser took me and my boys out to an old Airstream trailer behind the studio. The trailer was like brand new but was easily thirty years old, and we went inside.

There were shelves along all the walls floor to ceiling, a desk, and a chair. And it was all lit up with custom lighting all the way around. The shelves were filled with kid stuff. There were model cars, model trains, model human bodies, stacks of comic books all encased in plastic clear covers, posters encased in plastic hanging on hangers on display stands. There were books, all old, but perfectly preserved and there were Matchbox Cars, all with their boxes, all perfect. It seemed never-ending.

Spenser showed my boys the stuff but told them not to touch the models. I built models when I was a kid, usually, they were a bit sloppy here and there. Spenser’s were perfect, the finished model sat on the box it came from and the boxes all looked brand new too.

Most everything he had was his from when he was a little boy. He’d built all the models, bought all the comic books and posters. He even had the human body models, male and female. They were clear and had all the organs in place and all the veins and arteries you had to paint in. His were all perfect. and displayed on the original box.

I don’t know if my boys remember that, but I do. And our recording was successful, we sold them, gave them away, listened to them, and I for one treasure the one I have left. I don’t have a player to play it on, but I know it by heart.

That tape and the memories are all that’s left of the String Creek Band. Mitch and Bob have passed on. I think Spenser is still in Redwood Valley, He still has a website for himself and also for his studios. One of the most talented men I ever met, and quite a friend from a long while ago.