California Leavin’

Spending a year and a half on the road with George Clinton – recording all the funkmeister’s live gigs and producing a bevy of tracks – and employed as Snoop Dogg’s personal engineer for three years, Nate Oberman has witnessed the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle from an up-close-and-personal vantage. His working relationship with The Doggfather led to stints twiddling the knobs on projects by R. Kelly, Mariah Carey, and The Pussycat Dolls, among others, but the Madison, Wisconsin native is bringing it all back home – or, at least, closer to home than the palm tree-lined streets of Los Angeles.

“I’ve always wanted to move back to the area, like Chicago. I always dreamed about having a studio back here and I kind of just finally took that step to come back here and do that,” Oberman explains.

Beginning this month, Oberman’s Artisan Sounds Recording Studio will be up and running in Bucktown. Oberman spent the last four months working from Chicago Recording Company and Groovemaster Recording while awaiting his studio’s completion, which he hopes will settle into a full-service production company catering to both major-label projects and ones spearheaded by unsigned acts.

“We want to discover talent and we’d love to work with the next up-and-coming person,” Oberman says. But, without label backing, the cost of going into the studio can be daunting for a band, a notion Oberman understands only too well.

“One of the big reasons I’m building this studio is because a lot of the bigger projects and label gigs and higher-paid clients I can take anywhere like [CRC] or any other studio in Chicago or elsewhere, but a lot of the local clients . . . I’ve had to turn down because after I charge my fee, the studio fee, and everything – it’s just too expensive for them. So this allows me to work with local clientele, at a much cheaper rate,” Oberman says. “Right now, one in every 10 local people I meet cannot afford to do an actual record.”

Because of these financial constraints, Oberman finds himself at the helm of sometimes quick, off-the-cuff sessions. “I’m done doing the two-day demo thing,” Oberman offers. “I want to work on records. I want to make real projects that take time, and obviously the local bands don’t have thousands of dollars to sit in the studio and write songs and do it properly.”

Lending his production, engineering, and mixing talents to seven multi-platinum records since he moved to L.A. at the age of 20 (he started as a runner and steadily climbing his way through the ranks over the course of eight years), Oberman cites his skill and experience, in addition to affordable rates, as incentives to choose his studio over others. “I feel like I have the tools and experience to offer [a] quality product,” he says.

Oberman wears many hats in the studio and is accustomed to donning all of them, depending on the needs of a particular band. “I’ll facilitate whatever needs to be done whether it’s like helping them mature the songs to a full arrangement or . . . some bands come in and have everything the way they want it – they just want it recorded and mixed properly,” Oberman says. “Whether it’s like a rock band or a hip-hop band or whatever – I’ll get involved in any aspect to help them achieve their goal.”

Some may find it curious Oberman would leave the seemingly glamorous world of major-label-level artists for the third largest market, but he doesn’t look at relocating to Chicago as leaving anything behind. “I keep in contact with those people and [will] still work with them in the future. I just felt like I wanted my base to be in Chicago,” Oberman explains. “None of that’s left behind. I’m not like walking away from any of that. I’d like to work with local people, but I’m not turning down any major label gigs coming up.”

And with technology today, Oberman finds it very easy to communicate and work with artists as far away as Europe from the comforts of his new home base. Artists can send their mixes to Oberman by way of the Internet and he can send them right back upon completion.

But, what really excites Oberman is the opportunity to cultivate full-length album projects with artists trying to gain notoriety who might normally shy away from the studio setting because they fear drowning in debt. “I think one of the problems I’ve had so far is that people are a little intimidated and they think it’s gonna be super expensive. So one point I’d like to get across is that for a quality project with experienced people you can still not have to pay like 150 bucks an hour. We like to work at a cheaper rate and cut rates down,” Oberman says. “We’re willing to go down to 40 bucks an hour for local unsigned bands.”

With Chicago’s breadth of musicians, Oberman should have no problem finding artists to collaborate with in the studio. “I’m still discovering it, being new back here. But, I feel like there’s a lot of great local talent that has yet to get out there and be discovered and I’m definitely excited to work with a lot of the local bands and hip-hop artists.”

Not a bad way to ring in the New Year.

Artisan Sounds is located in Chicago. For more information call (312) 622-3229 or visit www.artisansounds.com.

BOTA STUDIO in Lake In The Hills officially opened for business December 1st. Studio owner Don Byczynski built a recording career for himself working with bands like The Atomic Fireballs and Blue October, but BOTA will cater toward extreme metal genres – Byczynski’s true love. “Long ago I once was in a national death metal band, Fleshold, so I know that it was always difficult to find a good studio with a guy behind the faders that gets the true metal sound,” Byczynski says in a press release. Byczynksi is offering $25-per-hour rates. Check out BOTA online at www.myspace.com/botastudio.

At Linder Avenue Recording in Roselle, rapper Steve Koziel laid down new tracks with Dom Palmisano. . . Female rap artist Sarah Sepe tracked and mixed a single, also engineered by Palmisano.

E-mail ed@illinoisentertainer.com to get your studio or band listed in “Studiophile.”

Category: Columns, Monthly, Studiophile