Keith Urban Brings A Nashville Classic Back to Life, Part 2

Don’t Pass Up Part One!

Considering that The Tracking Room facility was now 30 years old and had essentially been mothballed for the last five, Keith Urban and the team expected to face at least some updates to the electrical infrastructure. They brought in Art Kelm, who also specializes in studio power and grounding schemes, but found that there wasn’t much to do during the renovations, thanks to the original tech work performed by Masterfonics chief engineer Frank Wells [coincidentally, editor at Pro Sound News for 15 years].

“When you look at Frank’s electrical work, the way he designed it and his guys installed it, everything is just right,” said McMakin, who noted that he had long conversations with Wells and studio builder Mike Cronin, who has built many, many facilities in Nashville—Masterfonics, Blackbird and Ocean Way, to name a few—to familiarize himself with every aspect of the complex.

The studio, which sits next to a busy interstate, is of a room-within-a-room construction and the control room floats on German-engineered springs. “The isolation between the outside and the inside is second to none,” McMakin confirmed. “It looks like everybody involved said, ‘This is going to be the best studio ever built.’”

The Levinson-powered Rey Audio RM-7 main monitors, designed and built by Kinoshita, codeveloper of Pioneer’s famed TAD drivers, still need to be reconditioned. “But, man, they sound pretty good,” McMakin reported. “Michael Moore, who was an assistant to Frank Wells when they built the place, has also untangled some history for us. Michael has got a couple of new horn drivers for us to install, then we’re going to evaluate the woofers and get those back up and slamming.” A Rey Audio RM-5BC provides a center channel for LCR applications.

For years, visitors would remark on the large bass trap in the floor in front of the console—except, that’s not what it was. The interior boards were oriented front-to-back to act as wave guides, a Hidley design to align the sound waves passing above and below the console before hitting the rear wall, McMakin explained. The pit, finished only with fabric, proved to be a safety hazard and has since been covered.

A BIG PLACE TO PLAY

Of course, the highlight of the studio has always been, well, the tracking room. Seventy feet long and anywhere between 25 and 45 feet wide, with 20- to 25-foot ceilings, the space can easily accommodate an 85-piece orchestra. The long rear wall is divided into five iso rooms, each with different acoustic responses and designed for a variety of applications.

The Stone Room, Iso 1, is often used as a reverb chamber, with the door open or closed. “Tom Hidley designed the Stone Room with the perfect decay,” Urban observed, adding that he was recently working with a songwriter who had rolled a big joint. “He goes, ‘Where do I smoke this?’ And I go, ‘Where else do you get stoned but in the Stone Room?’”

Iso 2 includes an amp locker designed to produce natural compression. Iso 3 and Iso 4 are both acoustically dampened. In Iso 5, referred to as the Wood Room or Piano Room, every surface is hardwood, and it houses the studio’s beloved Yamaha C7 grand piano.

Studio manager and engineer Mark Dobson said that the iso rooms came in handy when Urban rehearsed his band for his recent Las Vegas residency. “We had the full band and all the techs; we had front-of-house in one of the booths and monitorworld up against the wall. They came in with their own power and ran everything independently.”

The first outside sessions were recorded in late March. “We had a band in from Tallahassee called The Retrograde. David Huff produced that one, and it went well,” Dobson said. Brandon Lake and Jelly Roll, dueting, and Chris Tomlin came in for separate Spotify sessions. One of the studio’s longtime repeat clients has booked the space for their next album.

“Everyone that’s come in has been so grateful to have it back,” Dobson shared. “It’s a great space and it’s very private. It’s such a great feeling, as a client, to know that this whole place is yours.”

AT HOME IN THE STUDIO

Meanwhile, Urban recently did a string of global radio interviews from The Sound to promote his latest album, High, and conducted some writing sessions, setting up a control room in the tracking space and using several iso rooms as vocal booths. The studio’s tech team has set up video and audio lines to enable Nicole Kidman, Urban’s Oscar-, Emmy-, BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winning actress wife, to record ADR at the facility.

Urban is not yet sure how many commercial sessions The Sound will accommodate.

“It was never my intention to get into owning a commercial studio,” he admitted, “and the most heartbreaking thing would be if I wanted to use it spontaneously one day and it was booked. But the idea is that this space can be used by people I know who want to rent it when I know for sure I’m going to be on tour.”

For now, though, Urban is enjoying having the studio all to himself. “I just like hanging out in here,” he said in summary. “I’ll wander over to the piano and write a little bit or go into the guitar room and play. I’m in heaven.”