rows and rows of revitalized warehouses; past the old Sears building—the new Starbucks headquarters; past the galleries and espresso shops and cleverly designed logos on neatly painted offices for Information Age technologies already obsolete; into the heart of SoDo, South of Downtown, an area that twenty years ago was a dangerous place to go after dark, where companies preferred razor ribbon over welcome mats, but has since become home of the hipsters and shakers, and home to Billy Marx’s recording studio, which is the ultimate badge of cool.
The Sound Factory. The place where any movie, commercial, music video, or album worth a damn is recorded. It’s a massive, squat three-story building filled to the brim with rehearsal spaces, Foley rooms, and high-tech studios jammed with millions of dollars worth of the latest digital gear that can handle just about anything anyone can think of.
Billy, the consummate nice guy, knows how the balance of power and money works in the recording industry: the labels have all the power and the money, the musicians don’t. So he has a floating rate scale. Hollywood pays a million dollars an hour, anyone who was cool enough to be with The Sound Factory guys when they started, over a dozen years earlier in a little building in Pioneer Square, pays a dollar. A modern-day socialism. To each according to his needs, from each according to his familiarity.
As soon as they enter the building, Evan relaxes. The lobby itself isn’t very inviting. It’s a hollow, stark-white room with high ceilings of exposed I-beams, industrial lighting with a purplish glow, and poured concrete floors. But everything else about the room is welcoming. It’s the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. The air circulates enough to keep everything fresh, but not so much as to create a breeze. There are no windows, no clocks, no indication of time whatsoever. Once inside, one loses all temporal reference; literally, one loses one’s ability to discern day from night. Like a casino, The Sound Factory is a biorhythmic obfuscation chamber. Time is not the issue at The Sound Factory. It’s never late at The Sound Factory. Work through the night. Work through the next day. Our staff is happy to serve you, and we have comfortable couches for you to nap on. Work forever. And please pay your bill within thirty days. Thank you.
Evan notices Dean’s mouth, which is agape at the spectacle.
“Pretty nice, ” Evan says.
Dean closes his mouth and shrugs like it’s an everyday thing in Yakima. We’ve got places like this on every corner. He coolly plants himself in one of the arm chairs and picks up a magazine.
Evan is too high to sit. He’s charged up and ready to go. He’s cleared the weekend out. (Evan, one of the best commissioned salesmen on the floor at Fremont Guitar, always gets the prime hours: Thursday through Sunday afternoons and evenings; times when guitar buyers are at their peak. So Angel, the new kid, was happy to take Evan’s spot in exchange for Evan working Angel’s graveyard days: Monday through Wednesday.) And Dean, who’s turning out to be a pretty cool, self-reliant kid—probably the result of growing up without a father—has been great. Evan told him he needed to practice for the session, and Dean, without so much as an eye roll, hopped a bus and spent the day at some upscale video arcade in a new shopping center downtown. He had a blast, and it only cost Evan forty bucks. Parenting ain’t that hard, but it can be expensive.
A doorbell rings, a pleasant electric chime. The receptionist, a pretty young blonde, glances at a video monitor set into her desk, and then presses a button. The lock clicks, and in comes Lars, toting his stick bag and cymbal case. Right behind Lars is Billy Marx.
Billy notices Evan, stops and smiles.
“Evbee.” He strides over and greets Evan with the obligatory hip-hop embrace. “I ran into Lars in the parking lot. I didn’t know you guys were
The Sound Factory. The place where any movie, commercial, music video, or album worth a damn is recorded. It’s a massive, squat three-story building filled to the brim with rehearsal spaces, Foley rooms, and high-tech studios jammed with millions of dollars worth of the latest digital gear that can handle just about anything anyone can think of.
Billy, the consummate nice guy, knows how the balance of power and money works in the recording industry: the labels have all the power and the money, the musicians don’t. So he has a floating rate scale. Hollywood pays a million dollars an hour, anyone who was cool enough to be with The Sound Factory guys when they started, over a dozen years earlier in a little building in Pioneer Square, pays a dollar. A modern-day socialism. To each according to his needs, from each according to his familiarity.
As soon as they enter the building, Evan relaxes. The lobby itself isn’t very inviting. It’s a hollow, stark-white room with high ceilings of exposed I-beams, industrial lighting with a purplish glow, and poured concrete floors. But everything else about the room is welcoming. It’s the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. The air circulates enough to keep everything fresh, but not so much as to create a breeze. There are no windows, no clocks, no indication of time whatsoever. Once inside, one loses all temporal reference; literally, one loses one’s ability to discern day from night. Like a casino, The Sound Factory is a biorhythmic obfuscation chamber. Time is not the issue at The Sound Factory. It’s never late at The Sound Factory. Work through the night. Work through the next day. Our staff is happy to serve you, and we have comfortable couches for you to nap on. Work forever. And please pay your bill within thirty days. Thank you.
Evan notices Dean’s mouth, which is agape at the spectacle.
“Pretty nice, ” Evan says.
Dean closes his mouth and shrugs like it’s an everyday thing in Yakima. We’ve got places like this on every corner. He coolly plants himself in one of the arm chairs and picks up a magazine.
Evan is too high to sit. He’s charged up and ready to go. He’s cleared the weekend out. (Evan, one of the best commissioned salesmen on the floor at Fremont Guitar, always gets the prime hours: Thursday through Sunday afternoons and evenings; times when guitar buyers are at their peak. So Angel, the new kid, was happy to take Evan’s spot in exchange for Evan working Angel’s graveyard days: Monday through Wednesday.) And Dean, who’s turning out to be a pretty cool, self-reliant kid—probably the result of growing up without a father—has been great. Evan told him he needed to practice for the session, and Dean, without so much as an eye roll, hopped a bus and spent the day at some upscale video arcade in a new shopping center downtown. He had a blast, and it only cost Evan forty bucks. Parenting ain’t that hard, but it can be expensive.
A doorbell rings, a pleasant electric chime. The receptionist, a pretty young blonde, glances at a video monitor set into her desk, and then presses a button. The lock clicks, and in comes Lars, toting his stick bag and cymbal case. Right behind Lars is Billy Marx.
Billy notices Evan, stops and smiles.
“Evbee.” He strides over and greets Evan with the obligatory hip-hop embrace. “I ran into Lars in the parking lot. I didn’t know you guys were
Similar Books
