Making beautiful music in a grungy environment

Nestled away in an unassuming Scott City house that has seen better days, Brandon Drury runs Echo Echo Studios, where recording sessions with local musicians are booked up for the next three months.

It seems an unlikely, and at first glance, unfit place for a recording studio. Parts of the house have exposed floorboards and missing ceiling panels, and assorted debris fills up nearly every space outside of the recording area. But that has not prevented many musicians from asking Drury to engineer their recordings and being pleased with the results.

"It has been great," said Bob Glastetter, lead guitarist for the Cape Girardeau band Lost Possum, whose members are currently mixing their debut album at Echo Echo Studios. "I've been to a lot of studios and I've done a lot of recordings and this is the best project I've worked on."

This is quite a compliment to Drury, 24, considering he taught himself all he knows about recording and only started seriously getting involved in it about two or three years ago.

While he played guitar in bands growing up in Scott City, Drury said he was always attracted to the technological side of the music.

"I've always been the nerdy type of guy who enjoyed playing with knobs," he said.

Following this passion, Drury said he got a $6,000 loan and maxed out two or three credit cards in order to buy recording equipment. He started by recording friends' songs for free out of his mother's house.

"I was about $5,000 in debt at one point, I had $6 to live on. It was pretty rough, but I guess it all paid off because now it's all paid for and I'm doing good," Drury said.

When Drury's mother bought a new house last year, he decided to turn the old house into what is now Echo Echo Studios. Although he has yet to do so, Drury plans to purchase the house from his mother.

In actuality, the studio only takes up two rooms of the house -- the dining room and living room -- while the rest of the house looks like it is either in the midst of being remodeled or about to be condemned.

"I've had a few guys who have said 'this ain't gonna' work,'" Drury said.

For Glastetter, the rough look was part of the appeal. "It was just so rock 'n' roll, it was perfect," he said.

Mike Renick, who recorded his album "Diamond Eyes" at Drury's studio earlier this year, was not as into the rock 'n' roll look as Glastetter.

"At first it was like, 'Man, what am I doing here?'" Renick said.

But Renick, who is a disc jockey at Real Rock 99.3 FM, was confident about Drury's recording abilities because he had listened to the Emaciation album Drury had worked on. Emaciation is the band of fellow Real Rock announcer Kirby Ray. Renick was impressed with the rich, full sound quality that lacks in other locally-recorded albums he has heard.

Drury credits most of his recordings' success to his high-end equipment, the same equipment that put him into debt a few years ago. The biggest difference between Echo Echo and the multimillion dollar studios that bring in big name musicians is the acoustic properties and the space of the room where the vocal and intrumental tracks are recorded, he said.

While an expensive studio will have top-of-the-line insulation to provide soundproof rooms for recording vocals and instrument tracks, Drury has to make do with strategically placing an industrial insulation called Roxul around the recording area. Roxul has excellent soundproofing qualities, he said.

"All you really need is enough room for a computer," Drury said of setting up a recording studio. "Computers have taken over the recording business. A lot of bands are doing things at home in their basements."

Glastetter agreed. "You don't need these fancy things to sound good," he said. "Those things are starting to fade away."

What is not fading away is the number of local musicians who are recording at Echo Echo Studios.

In addition to mixing Lost Possum's album, Drury is working on a live recording of The Father's Arms Fellowship's praise and worship band, finishing up an album by Catatonic and is about to start recording with Transit to Venus and the Sexton Brothers.

Drury will also have the bands Mass Diffusion, Emaciation, Blackened Soul and Fist of Phoenix coming into the studio in the near future.

"I probably have a band in here three days a week," Drury said.

"It's word of mouth," Glastetter said of Drury's success with local bands. "When they find a place that's good, everybody just flocks there."

Drury plans to move to a better studio location in about two years and continue to expand his knowledge of recording and engineering.

"My plan is just to learn. You put in your dues and hope for something better in the end," Drury said. "It's fun, so I can't really complain too much."

kalfisi@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182