Chicago
Recording Company: The Art of Staying In Demand
by Andre Calilhanna
Chicago Recording Company’s
catalog of clients is a who’s who of hit aritsts. Billy Corgan,
Cheap Trick, Ice Cube, Kanye West, Pearl Jam, Michael Jackson…
the list is insane. Ask Chris Shepard, CRC’s General Manager,
what makes the studio home to so many top-notch music icons, and he
doesn’t hesitate. “It’s easy,” he says, “it’s
our staff.”
“In the music game,
people will pay a little extra if the engineer is of the caliber to
deliver the goods,” asserts Shepard. “If they can literally
hear the difference from one studio to another, it’s the guy.
So I keep the guys happy by buying them the gear they want, and making
sure the set up is as perfect as can be. I mean, everybody’s
got ProTools and microphones and different gear, so that isn’t
so much the sell. For us it’s the big analog console, big accurate
playback systems, and the guy in the chair.
“Making a record really is a craft, and it’s a craft you
work on every day. If somebody does it every day, they get really
good at it. And there’s so much flow through here at CRC that
you get to work with a lot of cool producers who have different ideas,
who do things differently. So my guys see so much flow through –
they’re good to start with, and they just keep getting better.”
Located in downtown Chicago, CRC occupies two adjacent buildings and
boasts three music studios, nine post-production rooms, and several
dubbing rooms. There are over 50 people on staff, including nine engineers
and eleven assistants on the post-production side, seven engineers
and ten assistants on the music side, and three full-time techs who
float between the studios fixing gear.
“The techs make a huge difference,” says Shepard. “I
think that’s one thing people overlook when they’re staffing.
They figure that when something breaks, they can just send it out.
I believe you’ve got to have that guy in the building, because
stuff breaks, and there’s just so much equipment. So we have
the old school techs on staff.
“We even have a
guy on staff who maintains all the Digidesign ProTools systems. He
used to write the code for Digidesign. That’s a lot of work,
maintaining and upgrading all the systems so they’re identical,
so you can go from one room to the next with a project and not worry
about not having the right plug-ins. That’s a full-time job.
Talk about a busy cell phone.”
A growing percentage of
CRC’s business involves audio mixing for DVD, including a good
amount of surround mixing for major projects like Elvis Costello’s
upcoming live DVD. It’s a remarkable transformation from the
one-room, one-engineer studio that was the original CRC in 1975. With
each success, the studio grew in increments to the industry-renown
institution it is today.
The model was always steeped
in the development and nurturing of the staff, and Shepard is proud
to continue that model, which includes maintaining the intern program
CRC has built into its foundations.
“Success in this business comes from doing the basics consistently
well,” Shepard quips, “and it’s all in the training
of the younger guys. Everybody comes up in this company through an
internship. We have ten interns at all times. It’s just like
going to school for three months, and if they want to go on, we’ll
try to find a slot for them so they can stick around and learn more.
I came up through the intern ranks in 1986 and now I’m the general
manager.”
As the general manager, Shepard makes no bones about it: his job is
to sign the checks and keep his staff satisfied.
“There’s no better place for an engineer than here,”
boasts Shepard. “No other studio is going to build you your
own room, equip it the way you want it, design it the way you want
it and keep up with it – when HD ProTools comes out or the next
thing or the next computer – we just keep re-gearing these rooms
for these guys. They have a certain amount they can spend each year,
and they spend it.”
