Avondale Sound engineer Brad Timko. Photo by David Garrett.
Brad Timko is a craftsman. An audio engineer, Timko has been the sole proprietor of Avondale Sound — where he labors over a massive console for as many as 12 hours a day — for two years. On the outside, the only beacon for finding the studio is a graffiti tag by the street artist Moist marking the parking lot. On the inside, the unassuming studio is a cozy little temple to music; Avondale Sound is filled with old heavy metal cassettes, an exceptionally comfortable sofa and more than a few telltale signs of Timko’s roots in home recording.
Timko is one of a number of engineers and producers who are helping to create an infrastructure of professionalism and community to support local musicians. Operating in what is a considerably less cutthroat business than one might anticipate, Timko was happy to reel off a list of his competitors, including Les Nuby’s Ol Elegante Studios in Homewood, Emanual Ellinas’ Magnetic Audio in Avondale, Jeffrey Cain’s Communicating Vessels in Woodlawn and Travis Morgan’s Skybucket Records, as well as a number of older professional studios.
As an engineer, it’s Timko’s job to figure out all the difficult nuances of the recording process so the musicians don’t have to. During the tracking process, when the music is actually recorded, an engineer has to carefully place microphones and turn the pre-amp knobs to hone the sound those microphones put out, all in a small room meticulously optimized for recording. During the mixing process, Timko has to listen for even the slightest differences in individual tracks, then obsessively tweak them into the best sound he possibly can during the final process of mastering.
It’s not a quick or an easy task, but it’s one that Timko clearly loves. His eyes light up when he talks about how he first started recording, working with a four-track cassette tape he found at a pawn shop. “I was fascinated with it,” Timko recalls. “I thought it was so cool, this cheapo ‘80s TASCAM four-track. But man, you’d have the meters go up and down on it, and you could record your stuff!”
After taking some early lumps, Timko interned at Memphis’ Ardent Studios and operated a home studio on Southside, building up a good reputation in a business where word-of-mouth recommendations are all-important. He also developed an ear for music from genres outside his hard rock background, working with local bands as diverse as the storytelling-driven indie rock of Ocean Liner and the operatic dream pop of Form Constant.
One of the major reasons Timko got into recording was his ability to control the process, after the indecision of working democratically in bands. There are downsides to being a narrowly driven yeoman, however.
“I get so focused over here on tracking things and mixing things – what bands do with us, that’s a totally different world from me,” Timko says. “I feel like I need to be more connected all the time, but I’ve talked to a lot of engineers, and they agree: once you’re done working here for hours and hours, the last thing you want to do is go to a club and listen to music. You just want to go somewhere quiet.”
That issue looms larger in a business that’s not famously lucrative. Business ebbs and flows unpredictably for an engineer, and Timko works a part-time job to cover his overhead, as well using his technical know-how to repair broken tape decks and compressors on the side. While staying busy just to make rent, Timko says, “I can’t afford to just half-ass a record or a song. You never know who’s gonna hear it, and if stuff comes out of here sounding terrible, that’s bad for me. There’s not much room for error, and there’s too many other people that bands can record with nowadays.”
Despite the pressure, it’s the only career Timko could see himself in right now. “Sometimes you get a little frustrated and burned-out, but I love it, man. Whenever you’re doing something you really want to do, when it’s a business you set up for yourself, it’s a satisfying feeling.”
A safe haven
Communicating Vessels HQ at 55th Place in Woodlawn. Photo by David Garrett.
If Avondale Sound is a chapel to recording music, then Communicating Vessels (CV), the Woodlawn record label and studio where Timko sometimes helps out, is a cathedral. The front room, where you can buy records from excellent CV acts like Shaheed and DJ Supreme, the Grenadines and the Great Book of John, is sleek and modern, but the studio is the crown jewel. Tastefully appointed from its classic Neve console to its antique chairs, the wood-paneled studio seems impossibly cool for a converted garage.
It’s small, “But it’s all the room that people in Motown had,” points out producer and CV owner Jeffrey Cain. Cain has been around the block and then some; the lead guitarist for alternative rockers Remy Zero has toured with Radiohead, worked with Beck, and been nominated for an Emmy for composing the theme song to Nip/Tuck. Despite his impressive résumé, Cain is just as genial and welcoming as his studio is.
That’s critical to Cain’s role as a producer. While he’s involved with the engineering process, Cain is more directly concerned with the difficult task of trying to coax the best possible work out of artists with mercurial temperaments. Much of his job is simple encouragement; talking about what’s required of a producer, Cain says, “You need someone with energy to come in and say, ‘That’s brilliant. I don’t care that people aren’t coming to your shows. I don’t care that the radio isn’t playing you. Somebody’s got to hear that.’”
At the same time, Cain is also involved in quality control. “Musicians and artists need rough edges, they need to have the insanity that comes with the territory, but all great artists, no matter how crazy they are, know how to harness doing their job the best they possibly can,” Cain says. Cain compares himself to a coach, and in much the same way as a coach needs leaders among his team captains, the CV musicians push one another to be better through an atmosphere of creative, constructive competition.
Despite his high-minded principles, Cain is operating in the same tight market as Timko and his competitors. What allows them to pursue their craft, Cain says, is simple. “It starts with being a labor of love. We’re gonna make this no matter what. I make the vinyls for listeners, but also for musicians. We work so hard making the records and writing songs and touring and going to day jobs and then doing the gigs at night, it’s a lifer kind of gig. And just having that whittled down to an MP3? That’s depressing. So I started making records for myself and for the bands I love.”
The crash of the music market has been a blessing and a curse for small labels like CV. One the one hand, it’s hard to move records for most acts besides successful touring bands like Man or Astro-man?, let alone expect to rake in profits. On the other, the downturn has greatly cleaned up a notoriously predatory industry. “The people who were just in it for the money are taking other jobs or leaving the business entirely,” Cain says. “The lifers, the people who have to make records, are still doing it whether there’s money or not.”
Labels like CV and Skybucket Records are able to look out for artists in ways they often couldn’t before, as well as raising the standards of production to make Birmingham music more competitive. The downside to this newfound freedom is that it’s difficult to argue for the necessity of labels and professional studios in an era where artists can cut decent-sounding records at home. “The next great record will probably be made on GarageBand, or on an iPhone app,” Cain says, “just because it’s accessible.”
That democratizing effect is especially hard on engineers like Timko, since elite recording, which can really set a young artist apart, is less in demand than ever. The era of consummate professionals who were hired every day, even for something as simple as a tambourine overdub, could very well be drawing to a close.
Cain is optimistic about the future of small labels, and of Birmingham music in general, but he’s also realistic about the challenges it entails. “We’re a one, two, three-man operation, plus bands and a few interns,” Cain says. “But that’s an exciting place to be. We’re forced to look for new, different ways to do things. … When you operate at the levels we’re operating at, where there’s no safety net at all, and every song has to be so deliberate, you can’t afford for it not to be very defined. If it’s not up to par, you’re just adding to the noise.”
The scene grows up
Part of the reason for Cain’s optimism is a fresh memory of the Magic City’s bad old days. While never as cutthroat a scene as it is sometimes purported to be, “Birmingham just wasn’t ready,” Cain remembers. “We were all writing original music, but there weren’t local labels who would put your records out. There weren’t local radio stations who would play you. You could maybe get a late, late show at a place like the Nick, but most bars wanted Black Crowes cover bands. It was a hostile environment for bands who wanted to make original music that didn’t sound Southern.”
Longtime Boutwell Studios producer Mark Harrelson, who produced bands out of his home studio in the ‘70s and ‘80s before moving primarily to commercial work, remembers much of the same. “Participation by any sort of legitimate business concern – be it publishing, like Nashville was built on, or production, like the record labels that were funding (and, in some cases, building) studios in Muscle Shoals – there was nothing like that here,” Harrelson says. “The cream could only rise so far without anyone there to nurture it. I don’t think that’s the culture’s fault, or the town’s fault, or even the musicians’ fault. There just wasn’t a framework for success here.”
While acknowledging that that sad reality may have changed thanks to the hard work of a lot of dedicated individuals – and, of course, the Internet’s role in changing tastes – Harrelson is ambivalent about the current status of the music industry. “I’m all for giving power to the people. I used to have a chip on my shoulder because my home studio wasn’t a ‘professional’ studio. Well, the fact of the matter was that it had a friendly atmosphere, and people were able to get comfortable in a far more creatively inducing place. … As gear got to be put in the hands of the singers and the writers, they got to express themselves in a lot of ways they couldn’t.
“It makes it difficult from a business standpoint, though. If people can cut records in the comfort of their own home, why do they need to pay me by the hour?”
Timko, Cain and Harrelson all acknowledge the difficulties of producing music in what is still a very small scene, especially one so close to Nashville and Athens. Factoring in the David and Goliath dynamic of national distribution – a challenge only Muscle Shoals has successfully maneuvered around in Alabama history – only makes it more daunting.
Yet all three also smiled at the memory of different facets of their careers, whether recalling perfect rhythm tracks they’d cut, or waxing lyrical about the unique experience of sitting down with a vinyl record, or simply remembering an old four-track cassette recorder. Amid the excitement, it’s still too early to call whether the music scene in this town has truly grown up. Whether or not it has, one thing is certain: Birmingham will still be filled with sonic craftsmen working not for the attention – or even the money – but for the chance to make magic.