Skyboro Sound Making Beautiful Music
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However, while the city continues its rise as a culturally rich and artistic region, musicians may be sitting back, scratching their heads, and wondering what resources are available to provide permanence to their creativity.
One such venue exists at Windsor Mill on Union Street where Skyboro Sound — a professional recording studio — is located.
For a while, Jamie Choquette, the chief engineer of the studio, used to run a sound studio in Pownal, Vt., with a former guitar student. He hadn't planned on becoming a sound engineer.
But Choquette felt that he had to start learning to record because he was a musician, and recording is something musicians need to do.
"You write songs, you have to record. I never cared much for the recording process," said Choquette in an interview.
"Over time, I learned to like it. Eventually, after knowing [the owner] of the other studio for several years, he had to sell the business, and that's when we came to the agreement that I'd buy it and get into it."
Rural Pownal, however, wasn't the best place for a music studio, which prompted the move to North Adams two years ago.
"It was great [for a while] but it didn't work because nobody drove by us and no one ever saw us," said Choquette about the Vermont location. "They had to sort of hear us online or something like that."
While North Adams isn't yet a thriving center for music, Choquette said he gets a good deal more business now, especially through Steve Sauve's guitar shop down the hall.
His customers have ranged from folk icon Arlo Guthrie to commercial voiceovers by actors, including Allison Janney from "The West Wing" last summer. The studio has also done work with PBS, NBC and Cartoon Network.
Skyboro Sound co-owner Michael St. Pierre is a local businessman who has been supportive of the business since its taking up shop in North Adams.
"[He has] believed in this idea and has been amazing to support such a risky idea of having a recording studio in a small town like this," said Choquette.
Choquette took a risk himself, quitting his full-time job in the Office of Lifelong Learning at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts more than two years ago to pursue music full time. He's a professional musician — playing with band Plum Crazy and doing solo work — and an instructor, in addition to running the recording studio.
"I am now living my own dream in that I now make a living from music," he said. "It's an amazing experience and I love every second of it."
He's not doing it alone. Brad Martin has been working with him for a couple years now. Martin took a recording class taught by Choquette through MCLA at the studio. He started as an intern and he now is an engineer at Skyboro Sound.
Martin engineers and produces many of the bands and musicians that come through, as well as working with live sound, which would consist of making a live show sound right in terms of microphones and space, and all the electronics. And last but not least, St. Pierre's son Michael "W." St. Pierre has been working at the studio with the marketing and administrative needs.
Recording sessions at Skyboro Sound usually go for about $50 an hour. This includes setup and any preparation, plus the actual recording time. The studio does work with live sound, voiceovers, on- and off-site recording, stage lighting, commercials and space rentals.
"We have a room with a great karaoke setup that people can reasonably rent for small parties, and it's really a lot of fun," Choquette said.
Luckily for musicians, the hourly cost of recording also includes the use of the many instruments housed in the studio. This includes guitars, bass guitars, a theremin, a full 88-key electronic piano, and a drum set, just to name a few.
Skyboro Sound also offers ways to help newer composers and musicians get out there to be heard by the public. It has its own record label called Mesa Dog Records, which Choquette claims is very selective, and occasionally uses the label to help some of its clients.
"Skyboro provides all the production and publicity to give artists another venue to perform at," said Choquette. "Right now, our label is producing a country act."
In case a musician wants to get his music produced and put onto a Web site such as MySpace, or a site of his own, Skyboro Sound helps with that, too. "[We] have a couple graphic artists and Web designers that we like to work with to accomplish that," said Choquette, adding clients are featured on Skyboro's Web site and MySpace page as much as possible.
Running the studio takes a huge time commitment, said Choquette.
"It takes so much time to try and balance the administrative side with the action recording session time," he said. "In the end, there probably aren't enough hours in the day to get the work done, but we do our best to make it all work."
Choquette is not worried about competition because there are only a few recording studios in this region.
In fact, he has been working on expanding his musical business by opening a community music school, the Windsor School of Music, which will "provide quality music education to the area."
Around 20 musicians have been lined up as instructors for the school, which will operate in a different space in the Windsor Mill. Instruction will include day camps and private lessons.
Choquette is excited about the "excellent faculty and great community support."
For you musicians out there, Skyboro Sound is run by a great staff of friendly people who know what they are doing. They are a very professional studio and offer some great services with reasonable pricing. It's definitely a place to check out and to get your music produced.
