Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 1, 1994 TAG: 9402030001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now, it seems, they all do.
You see them in area record stores, a rack away from the latest Pearl Jam release. The bands will peddle them at their shows. They send them off to the major record labels and, occasionally, they pop up on alternative radio shows - both here and elsewhere.
So, what has happened?
Their names are Chuck Crush and Tom Ohmsen.
You see them listed on nearly all of these new tapes and CDs.
They are rivals - in a sense. They run competing recording studios.
Chuck Crush runs Southwest Recording in Roanoke.
Tom Ohmsen runs Flat Five Recording in Salem.
They are where the bands go to make music - and together, in the last few years, they have turned the local music scene on its ear. In fact, without them, some say there wouldn't be a local music scene.
But their positions couldn't have been reached more differently.
Nor could their studios be much farther apart - or, oddly enough, complement each other better.
Crush operates on a shoestring. He's had zoning problems. He's had IRS problems. He's had equipment problems, and his clients don't always pay on time. "In theory," Crush says, "this place shouldn't still be here."
Ohmsen, on the other hand, is state-of-the-art digital. And by chance, his very first client turned out to be a world-class guitarist. "It was never really a plan to go into this business as a full-time thing," Ohmsen says.
Yet they complement each other like a two-man musical farm system. Crush and Southwest Recording is like a AA club. Ohmsen and Flat Five is like AAA. And the bands they handle are all, one way or another, shooting for the majors.
Crush, 34, opened Southwest Recording four years ago after spending a dozen years bouncing around in cover bands that played the nightclub and lounge circuit from here to Iowa. It was fun, he says. He ate well and he drank well.
"But you'd be lucky at the end of the week to come back with $50."
At the same time, he had bought a simple four-track recorder for making demo tapes. He started recording friends and other musicians in their basements and garages. "I'd charge them like $20 just to cover the cost of gas and some tape," he says.
Then his father showed him an advertisement for office space for rent, on Memorial Avenue around the corner from the Grandin Theatre. Tired of the traveling life, Crush signed a year-long lease - and the problems soon began.
After signing the lease, he discovered that the Grandin area was not zoned to allow recording studios. After straightening that out, he found that his listing for the studio was left out of the telephone book. C&P Telephone reduced his bill by $25 a month to compensate, but still, it was a handicap, particularly for a new business in its first year.
On top of this, the IRS came down on him.
During his years playing with bands, Crush, like many musicians who get paid in cash, did not pay income taxes. So, when he opened Southwest Recording, he went to the IRS to settle up. They negotiated a settlement in which he would pay $4,000 in back taxes over five years.
But less than six months later, the IRS seized both his checking and savings accounts. Crush says it happened because of an IRS oversight. Either way, he was out $500. "They had to leave $5 in there to keep my accounts open," he says. "I was sick."
Somehow, though, he survived. "Actually, I had a great first year," he says.
The first band he recorded was a young alternative rock band called Fallout. "Those guys just kept running their mouths about this place," he says. Soon, other young bands followed - bands that Crush never knew existed. "I thought I'd only get country and Top 40."
These were mostly high school and college bands without much money. They were drawn to Southwest Recording's relatively cheap $30-an-hour rate. They also liked Crush, who was patient about late payments, easy to work with in the studio and game for just about anything.
Dave Austin, singer for the band Suppression, is one of Crush's many supporters among the local music scene. He points to his band's first session with Crush. Suppression, Austin says, is purely a noise band. Some of the group's songs only last a matter of seconds.
This surprised Crush at first, Austin says.
"Then he laughed, and everyone laughed, and it was cool." And it turned out Crush liked what Suppression was trying to do. He understood. He even helped them sound noisier. Elsewhere, Austin doubts his band would have received the same reception.
Tony Weinbender of Swank, another area band, also praises Crush.
He once helped the group record one of its songs as a polka. For another song, "Rent a Pig," he helped the band add in some dialogue from one of its favorite movies, "Wheels of Fire," in which a security guard is fussing at a skateboarder.
"Chuck lets you experiment a lot," Weinbender says.
Or as Crush says: "I let them turn the knobs."
Joking aside, Crush does acknowledge his honored place among young bands. To them, it means the world to have a tape or record they can send off to nightclubs or record labels or sell at their shows. He is very content to provide that service.
Weinbender and others say it is a credit to Crush that there are probably twice as many local bands now than there were before he opened. "He's probably helped out the music scene more than anybody," Weinbender says.
However, Crush hasn't been completely alone.
In Salem, Tom Ohmsen at Flat Five Recording has become to the area's more serious-minded bands what Crush has been to the younger set. To these bands, Ohmsen represents the digital age and a serious shot at the big time.
Ohmsen, 39, opened Flat Five three years ago after working in radio and then at Fret Mill Music for 11 years and after years of making basement recordings on his home eight-track. In fact, it was one of these recordings, of local guitarist Brad Jones, that persuaded him to open his own studio.
Soon after recording Jones, Jones was honored by Guitar Player magazine and courted by legendary guitarist Chet Atkins to tour Europe. "That opened my eyes that you could have a little cottage industry going here and make some money at it," Ohmsen says.
He rented space on Main Street in Salem and stayed busy mostly with acoustic acts and bluegrass bands that knew him through Fret Mill or through his own bluegrass band, Home Brew. He started off as a 16-track studio, but recently went to 32 tracks. Crush has four tracks, but he hopes to move to 16 tracks soon.
Also recently, Ohmsen has been attracting more rock bands - bands that he says want to make more mainstream recordings and compete with other bands using digital technology. Ohmsen says digital equipment is more available now than it once was, and as a result, small studios like Flat Five are opening up more and more.
His rate is $45 an hour, about half the price of high-tech studios elsewhere and way less than half compared to some of the major studios. Technically, he can match about 90 percent of what the bigger studios can do, although he says he doesn't have their expertise.
Still, to more serious-minded bands in the area, he is hailed.
Steve Sellers of Thee Wanderers, which is working on its second CD at Flat Five, says Ohmsen has been as influential as Crush on the local music scene. He sees Ohmsen's influence growing as some of the younger bands mature.
Ohmsen is content with these roles.
He and Crush are good for local music, he says. "In certain ways, we're competitors."
But more, they are a breeding ground for creativity. Bands who go to either studio, Ohmsen says, come away with a more focused sound. "They actually see themselves in the mirror for the first time, and they almost always end up having a better live show and writing better songs."
The end result then is: "You have a more vibrant music scene," he says.
by CNB