Wow, Spinnakers. That's a blast from the past! Leftoverture was recorded at "Studio in the Country". That is a studio built a couple of miles from my house, designed by my dad. The building is absolutely incredible. There is not a right angle anywhere in the place. The recording room itself has been hailed as the most acoustically correct room in the world. Pretty fucking awesome for my little country hometown. And yep, my dad designed it. Pretty cool. ETA: the control room and the recording room were actually 2 separate buildings, built under the same roof. Two separate slabs, to isolate any vibrations from the musicians to the tape. The AC condensers were literally 1/4 of a mile away, sitting on 8" rubber pads, just to make sure there was no vibration. The a/c ducts were huge, so that they could do very low velocity air, but high volume, to make sure that there was no air noise. The glass between the control room and the studio was a huge double pane. The space between was pulled to a vacuum. Again, to isolate any transmission of sound from one space to the other. They had baffles in the ceilings that they could reconfigure to make the room sound like any famous room anywhere. Very cool place. When it was built, it was one of a very few studios in the world to have a 24 track board. Stevie Wonder recorded there. He played 3 free concerts to all of the schools in town. Again, pretty damn cool for a little county town. BTW, if any of you would ever like a tour of the place, I can arrange that.
Our mutual Bogalusa friend Bruce (refresher, we roomed together in college) got to know Stevie while he was there recording. When I spent a weekend at his house, he showed me a picture they have in their den of Stevie and Bruce's family, sitting in that room. Dude entertained Stevie Wonder in his house. When Stevie did his concert at Bruce's school, Bruce was the person who got to escort Stevie onto the stage and get him seated at the piano.
Cool stuff KyleK!!. I remember when I heard Kansas recorded in a Bogalusa studio thinking what is a top recording studio doing in Bogalusa. I was in the heavy equipment business then and only related Bogalusa to paper mill smells. So is your dad an architect specializing in acoustics or something like that?
Back when Dad went to LSU, they didn't offer a BS in architecture. His degree was architectural engineering. He supplemented his degree with a ton of continuing education on acoustics. They designed a huge number of churches. When Bill Evans came to him about designing the studio, Dad spent about a year visiting and studying studios around the world. Bill's goal was to have the best recording studio in the world. For it's time, many top recording artists think they succeeded. One interesting aspect is the baffles in the ceilings. They can change them around to duplicate the acoustics of practically any room or venue. It's pretty slick.
Between there and LaVela I could have called that place home. We played more in Panama City than we did around Baton Rouge.. If I could just remember half of it...
