Keith Urban Brings A Nashville Classic Back to Life, Part 1

Nashville, TN (May 19, 2025)—Tucked away on a cul-de-sac at the edge of Music Row, The Tracking Room holds a special place in the hearts of musicians, engineers and producers everywhere. Opened in October 1995 by the late Glenn Meadows, owner of nearby Masterfonics, and boasting the largest live space—6,500 square feet—in Nashville, the facility operated continuously until March 2020, when it suspended operations.

The Tracking Room was designed by renowned studio architect Tom Hidley and outfitted with Shozo Kinoshita’s in-wall monitors, a standard feature in Hidley rooms worldwide. For 25 years, the studio attracted the crème de la crème of talent from Music City and beyond, from Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, Shania Twain and Taylor Swift to U2, Deep Purple, Megadeth and King Crimson.

Any expectations that the studio would reopen were scotched when a group of developers purchased the 9,300-square-foot building in March 2021. But when they discovered that the half-acre plot was unsuitable for their plans, they put it back on the market, and in June 2024 the facility was acquired by Keith Urban, who has renamed it The Sound.

“The land was all they wanted; they were just going to bulldoze it,” said the four-time Grammy-winning country music star, who jumped at the chance to rescue the studio where he had recorded several of his own projects.

The recording studio has long been Urban’s happy place, and he has more than a dozen chart-topping albums and awards—13 CMAs, 15 ACMs, three AMAs—to show for his endeavors.

“I have always been passionate about recording,” he said. “I don’t have any hobbies. I don’t play any sport. I don’t play golf. I don’t hunt. I don’t fish. I just play music and write and create, and I’ve always felt at home in studios.”

MOVING INTO THE SOUND

Urban had worked on a vintage Neve 8068 console for the past 10 years at his home studio, but he had no tracking space. “Chris Lord-Alge said to me, maybe a year or two back, ‘I hope you’re recording full bands on it.’ I said, ‘I don’t have the space.’ He said, ‘That’s such a waste of a great console; you should try and find a space to put that console in.’ I started looking around town for a small room that I could buy and happened upon The Tracking Room.”

Ironically, there was just one drawback—the studio came fully equipped, from microphones to console. “The absurdity was that there was an 80-channel SSL 9000 J Series console in here, and it was so big that I couldn’t fit my Neve,” said Urban, who then asked his team to come up with a solution. “The engineers worked tirelessly to figure it all out.”

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“Nobody’s ever going to mix 80 inputs on a console; that’s just not going to happen in a Pro Tools world,” said veteran Nashville engineer and producer Pat McMakin, who acted as project manager during The Sound’s rehabilitation and reopening process. Working with local freelance SSL expert Vinny Fast and Art Kelm, formerly of Capitol Studios, who handled the Neve side of things, the 9000J was reconfigured with 48 inputs, fully re-capped and married to Urban’s 32-input 8068 to create a 15-foot-long desk. “I’ve named it The Beast,” McMakin said. At Urban’s request, the control room credenza was removed and the original outboard racks were restored.

The wiring between the two desks remains a work in progress. Currently, the Neve channels feed directly to Pro Tools, with various ins and outs also coming up on the room’s patchbay. “But if I’m tracking, I might decide I want to mix on the Neve side, so it’d be nice to have that option available,” McMakin explained.

COME BACK TOMORROW FOR THE CONCLUSION!