Shirk Music – Not Duty

Great things happen at the annual South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. Between the bands on every street corner and the consumption of Lone Star beer, networking on a massive scale takes place and big ideas are born (usually within the vicinity of a bar). During such a BBQ-drenched night, a few Miami Of Ohio graduates cosmically ran into each other and turned their indie rock obsession into an aurally lucrative venture.

Stephen Shirk, owner of SHIRK Music + Sound in Chicago, got on board that fateful night with the fellas in charge of HearYa.com and hatched a plan to give the Chicago-based indie music blog not just something to write about, but to sing along with as well.

Simply put, bands traveling through the city on tour can make at pit stop at Shirk’s state-of-the-art recording studio for a few hours to lay down some live tracks at no charge. The songs, an eclectic mix of covers and alternate versions of the bands’ resp-ective catalogs, are then posted on HearYa for fans and casual brow-sers to enjoy. A sponsorship deal with Beer Nuts helps offset the costs of the project.

Since implementing the Live Sessions last April, Philadelphia darlings Illinois, Cincinnati trio Buffalo Killers, and alt-country crooners The Morning Pages have participated in this little experiment, and so far it’s a win-win situation on all sides, according to those involved.

“I view it . . . as an alternative way to do advertising for my studio,” Shirk says from his perch in the cozy control room of the loft he shares with an entertainment lawyer and his sister’s graphic design business. “Instead of posting ads in the paper, this is creating new content, showing people what we can do here. I figure rather than spend money where I have to do hours in the studio to earn that money and then go spend it on advertising . . . why don’t I just do the work that is the advertising?”

For HearYa.com co-founder Scott Osler, these sessions allow him access to “different versions and different takes of music we care about.” For the bands, visibility in a crowded market makes all the difference.

“It’s beneficial for the bands just because they’ve got an audience that’s just there waiting. It takes an hour out of their day. They get a great producer, they get high quality recording, it’s free to them other than an hour of their day, and then they get exposure to thousands of people everyday that are going to see it,” Osler says over the phone from his home base in San Francisco. “And on the site [the sessions] get archived, so there’s 50,000 people a month that are going to go there, listen to the tracks, download the tracks, and then see when they’re on tour.”

Like an in-demand bootleg, Shirk’s sessions for HearYa.com accentuate the unpredictability of live performances. Different from recording a full-length album, the songs (five or six on average) are recorded live with everybody in the studio at the same time, tripping over cables and floor monitors. Usually the phrase “take two” is inconspicuously absent from the proceedings.

“We try to keep it moving forward one take a song and capture it as raw and as live as possible. We don’t fix stuff in the mix. People ask for auto tuning,” Shirk explains. “I’ve had a few people ask me to fix notes, and no, this is about just doing it the way you do it, bruises and all.”

Osler likens the sessions to having the band set up shop in someone’s living room and performing for an audience of one.

Scheduling conflicts play a major role in which bands take part in Live Sessions (Shirk has to pay the bills somehow), but the final decision lies with the men behind HearYa. com. As their pet project, the blog’s contributors handpick the featured bands from the submissions that pour in daily. In addition to their personal faves, bands with some buzz attached to their names also garner attention, like the group Illinois.

“They’re playing Lollapalooza, they’re on the tour with The Hold Steady right now. A lot of good stuff is going on for them,” Shirk says thinking back to when the Web site pitched the idea to the band. “There’s tons of press about them right now, it would be a good session to do because they’re in the radar basically.”

Shirk takes great pleasure in helping out with these sessions. While he takes on double duty as producer and engineer on the studio albums he has churned out for artists such as The Record Low and PJ Loughran, Shirk mostly keeps his mouth shut during the HearYa projects.

“The idea behind these sessions is to capture it live and raw and me coaching them and telling them, ‘oh you’re out of tune here,’ is counterproductive,” Shirk explains. “If it’s a train wreck, like really bad, [I’ll say], ‘Guys that really wasn’t that great.’ For the most part I stay out of the way on these sessions.”

Shirk cut his teeth in New York by twiddling the knobs for television advertisements that featured music. He did this for a few years after graduating with a business degree before packing up and moving to Chicago (he grew up in Bloomington) in 2004 to open his own studio. After losing his first space in Bucktown to condo development, Shirk moved his operation to its current location a year and a half ago.

Despite a lucrative career in the advertising world, Shirk longed to create something more substantial.

“I was tired of selling soap and toothpaste. I wanted to branch out a bit. And my boss was really encouraging me to do that even though he had made a career in the jingle world. He was like, ‘You know, at the end of my career I’m going to look at the catalog of work I’ve done and I’m gonna have 10,000 commercials I’ve done that nobody’s going to want to hear. At the end of your career, if you can stay with it doing the music, you’re going to have a whole catalog of records you’ve done and you’re gonna want to listen to some of those and people are going to like those and they’re going to stand up as art for time,'” Shirk says. “It feels better not totally whoring it out to the corporate world.”

The HearYa.com sessions average about one a month, and as the blog inches toward its one-year anniversary come September, that serendipitous meeting at SXSW will take on a profound meaning.

Shirk Music + Sound is located at 1648 N. Kinzie. For more information call (312) 563-1870 or visit www.shirkmusic.com.

At ENGINE STUDIOS in Chicago, Brian Deck recorded Probably Vampires as well as a new record by The Assembly . . . RD Roth & The Issues and The Interiors also worked on projects . . . St. Paul, Minnesota’s Ben Weaver finished his CD, Paper Sky, with Deck.

At JEFF FRANKEL RECORDING in Chicago, engineer Ed Tinley mastered Suite by Le Concorde, featuring Stephen Becker. This forthcoming release is on Le Grand Magistery Records.

Yakuza frontman Bruce Lamont began recording his solo debut at VOLUME STUDIOS in Chicago with Sanford Parker at the helm. No word on a release date, but Yakuza’s most recent effort, Transmutations (Prosthetic), also recorded with Parker, will be released August 7th.

Hey Studiophiler: To get your studio or band listed in “Studiophile,” just e-mail info on whom you’re recording or who’s recording you to ed@illinoisentertainer.com, subject Studiophile, or fax (312) 930-9341. We reserve the right to edit or omit submissions for space. Deadline for the September issue is August 15th.

– Janine Schaults

Category: Columns, Monthly, Studiophile