Despite economic uncertainty, Nashville continues to thrive in the music industry. What's the secret of its success?
One of the consistent ironies of the music industry in Nashville is that, historically, few of the country music stars that are so closely associated with it actually live there. They'll generally prefer the suburbs, like Franklin, Cool Springs and Hendersonville, or plop their mansions in the more rustic exurban areas, like Alan Jackson's sprawling abode near Leiper's Fork.
On the other hand, if it's pop stars you want, you needn't go to New York or LA any more to find them. Some relatively recent migrants to Nashville include Jack White, Robert Plant, Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain and others, some of whom are surely escaping the ageism inherent in rock and pop music for country's less stringent culture. Some even dabble in the country milieu, as Bon Jovi did with a surprising modicum of success, with 2007's 'Who Says You Can't Go Home'. Others, like Sheryl Crow, have set down roots and now make their music here.
Sound Investment
Some interesting things are happening in the city's vaunted recording‑studio scene, as well. While a number of the top rooms in Nashville have shuttered in the wake of the industry's contraction and the general recession, others have avoided that fate by becoming part of a larger agenda. Two of these, Sound Stage and Sound Emporium, have attracted investment from a pair of multi‑millionaires.
George Shin, the former owner of the Charlotte (later New Orleans) Hornets NBA team, bought the Sound Emporium from producer Garth Fundis earlier this year. Shinn has a church‑based charity foundation that uses music for its broadcasting components, and a son who has aspirations to become a rock star, so Nashville's long‑standing affinity for things religious and the influx of rock artists makes the acquisition a nice fit. Terry Pegula, who bought Sound Stage earlier this year after acquiring singer Ronnie Milsap's studio next door several years before that, shares Shinn's major‑league sports background — this year he bought the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL, and donated $88 million for the construction of a hockey arena at Penn State University. He now uses the studios as a hub for his Black River Music Group venture.
It's not the Nashville of Chet Atkins' RCA and Owen Bradley's Decca Records, which set the tone in the 1960s of label‑owned studios run by local record producers. Nor is it the Nashville of the '70s and '80s, when entrepreneurial producer/songwriters such as Norbert Putnam (Quad Studios, the Bennett House and Georgetown Masters) and Cowboy Jack Clement (the original owner of Sound Emporium) pioneered the way for Nashville's still‑sizable slew of independent commercial studios.
The Song Remains The Same
But it's worth looking also at what hasn't changed. Nashville continues to reign as the tracking capital of the world: more sessions are done here using live musicians playing ensemble than anywhere else. The fact that the local Musicians' Union chapter can still shut down sessions that don't meet minimum scale and pension requirements hints at the power that session musicians can still exercise. And Nashville has expanded as the centre of the concert touring universe, with facilities like the massive Soundcheck rehearsal and storage studios and a sizable outpost of the SIR (Studio Instrument Rentals) franchise here, attracting as many pop and rock acts as country ones, lured also by Nashville's geographical centrality, to rehearse and then launch their national tours from here.
And much of what's changed has been for the better. As painful as the contraction of the city's studio infrastructure has been, it made the remaining facilities stronger by distributing the remaining work among them. With label‑funded projects diminished, studio rates are down, but Nashville's leading recording facilities are owned by persons or entities that can absorb losses to some extent or another (Ocean Way Studios, for instance, is owned by a non‑profit Christian university and has been liberally endowed by multi‑millionaire and label owner Mike Curb).
Recipe For Success
Then there are the less obvious aspects of change. Cuisine and real estate aren't usually topics associated with music recording, but Nashville's increased attractiveness to other music genres has to be explained to some extent by the fact that it's now a food destination (I no longer have to tell visitors to bring a snack), and while the explosion of downtown condos could not have come at a worse time in terms of the economy, there are already signs that Nashville might mimic the renaissance of LA's gentrifying downtown neighbourhood in a few years.
Blackbird is a great studio, so it's no surprise that Dave Stewart not only recorded his first album of original material since 1998 there, but it could not have hurt that he and Colbie Caillat, the Secret Sisters, Stevie Nicks and other guest artists approved of the food and lodging choices, too.
The risk to Nashville — as if the music business isn't risky enough these days — is that its nascent sophistication could cause what has set it apart for so long to diminish. The old paradigm of a major‑label head also owning or controlling a significant recording studio and producing the label's artists there seems positively archaic in retrospect, but it was a useful feudalism that helped keep Nashville's head above water for over 50 years. Trying to be all things to all genres might be a bridge too far for Nashville. Building towering condos (the planned 70‑story Signature building has, thankfully, run out of capital) does not make you Miami, and pulling the occasional 'name' chef from Manhattan does not make you New York. But if Nashville can keep being what it has been — an oasis of organic music recording in a desert of synthesized, Auto-Tuned sand — it just might keep that balance that makes it a place people want to keep coming to and recording in for another 50 years.