hello spring!

things are heating up once again around the studio. many cool concert and community sponsorships are about to be announced. stay tuned. our current crop of interns are literally making things move at the studio. much spring cleaning being done, new paint and lots of fun sessions are being had. good times for all.

Intern(al) View

Spring cleaning continues with the painting of the main office. Everyone seems to love the "SugarHill Blue". In the last couple weeks the interns have been very busy. Brandon, Sam, and Adam shadowed Andy at the Houston Grand Opera at the Wortham Theater. All three of these interns were drooling over the selection of Neumans and Sennheisers used to record the Opera. Lindsay drove to Galveston to record The Rob Landes Trio with Andy. Lindsay was glad to get out of the studio and record in a new environment. Pyle, Chris L, and Adam helped out Three Fantastic with backgound vocals for their upcoming release entitled: Hot Fantastic featuring Captain Charles Peters the IV and Truman Cox the III, esq. MD.

Intern(al) View

As the smell of paint lingers in the waiting room after the past week's spring-cleaning, a certain Congresswomen booked Studio A to record an endorsement for Democratic presidential nominee. Grammy Award winning artist Cynthia Clawson is recording her up coming album this week in Studio A. Intern Chris L. was here at the studio to see Cynthia's Steinway piano delivered and setup. In Studio B, The Rogues recorded bagpipes and bodhrán. Intern Chris P sat in on The Rogues' session, learning Andy's method to mic-ing bagpipes. Intern Adam will be receiving an album credit for background vocals on The Rogues' cover of "Centerfold" by The J. Geil's Band.

Next week - jazz, opera and answering phones, lots of phones

Intern(al) View

With the advent of the spring semester, a new crop of interns come to SugarHill Studios to learn a thing or two about the day to day work involved in running and working in a recording studio. We have decided to give these interns a sounding board. A place where they can provide the lowdown on the current state of SugarHill Studios. The Interns will be posting a new blog once a week to give you a peek inside the studio.

Busy Work

Studio A has been locked out by a company that trains executives to deal with public media opportunities. This is different day at the office compared to our usual day to day music sessions. The hallway and break room have been filled with rock-star execs. Even the guys teaching the course left in a white stretch limo. The corporate world never looked so,....well,... rockin! I think that the execs are having a great time hiding out in the vibe and tech heavy world of the music studio.

I guess I can use this forum to make some sort of public proclamation: that Gina Miller has been tearing it up lately. We've got some cool new SugarHill buttons, and we are involved in all sorts of concert series around town. Oh yeah, the vacuum cleaner. It actually rocks. It should for what we paid for it. But damn it looks nice around here. Got a new website too (thanks, Jeremy Osborne!)

Speaking of getting organized, Steve Christensen has the messiest desk in the whole building. I'm not sure, but the dumpster might be more logically arranged. Anyway, office-mate, John Griffin shamed Steve by cleaning up his half of the room. I completed the shaming by informing Steve that it has become embarrassing to drag my clients past the refuse mound of his desk.
Now I'm telling the world. Ha. Clean it up, Steve.

the phantom blogger

vacuums and reality shows.

the studio has a new baby today. the DYSON Absolute. this vacuum cleaner is the mother of all of its kind and we love it. when i brought it in, all the engineers in the office gathered 'round the box like proud parents and of course -- checking out the features. they plugged it in and gave it a test run -- and i think there is some dust from the 70's that got sucked up in that chamber. anyway this piece of office equipment has become a celebrity around the office.

and speaking of celebrities - the daughter of a certain boxer came to the studio today to record herself singing the National Anthem for an upcoming Indy 500 race. Turns out he and his family are the focus of a new reality show being taped in Houston and the producers have asked to come in and shoot some scenes inside the studios.

not too bad for a wednesday.

There is a sucker bought every minute.

Today the big debate was whether our ancient vacuum cleaner had bitten the dust (and regurgitated it) once and for all. Our Operations Manager, Jimmy Jaymes had borne the brunt of trying to repair this old hoovey on more than a few occassions. Last night - in preparation a well-known client coming in at 7 a.m. this morning, the machine disrespected us for the last time. Now the search is on for its replacement machine. Any suggestions?