uilding SUCCESS SUNDAY FOCUS sound N. Van North Shore recording industry volume grows Bob Mack News Reporter tmackin@usnews.com IT’S not a pretty building on the outside. The beige edifice az the corner of St. Georges Avenue and First Street in) North Vancouver looks like a giant shoebox made of concre The inside is what matters. The 37-year-old former welding shop is where Paul Baker works more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week. His job is to help cording artists record and mix their art. Like welding, it’s a painstaking process. But it sounds better — even at a high volume. Baker's office is the control room where he’s surrounded by an array of consoles with multi-coloured knobs and wiring. He sits between 2 vintage analogue tube amplifier and a computer loaded with ProTools digital edit- ing software. The smell of fresh paint fills the air. A sec- NEWS photo Mike Wakefield PAUL Baker is the owner/engineer of North Vancouver’s Bakerstreet Studios. The native of England works long hours helping mostly local bands get their music on tape. ond control room for electronic keyboards and effects was built at the opposite end of the building. There is so lobb:, but a main entrance and parking area in the vacant lot next door are being constructed. The heart of the building is the studio itself. Baker, 47, calls it Bakerstreet after Sherlock Holmes’ address, Gerry Rafferty’s 1978 hit single, and a stop on the London tube (subway system). Ir opened here in 1996 after Baker moved his studio out of the Downtown Eastside. “I used to live in North Vancouver and we were just driving along one day and saw a For Lease sign. We had problems in our other building with neighbours. This is a free-stand- ing, concrete block structure,” said Baker, while enjoying, a late afternoon pause between clients. “That is very grand.” North Vancouver is a hub for film and TV production, but its music recording facilities don’t yet command the same ievel of attention. The Warehouse, Greenhouse, Factory, Armoury and Mushroom are Vancouver's top studios. They depend on bands financed by major American or Toronto-based record companies, North Vancouver has Bakerstreet, Crosstown and NAL Sound/Studiv 55, bou- tique studios which sce some major label bands, but mainly t to independents. The three studios are places where musicians can commune with their muse without constant pressure to make the next chart-topping hit. Baker came to = Canada trom Gloucestershire, England, in 1972 after get- ting his start miaing a band called Tapestry. He managed Rocky Mountain Sound in both Vancouver and Calgary and served as tour manager and sound engineer for the PayolaS, Chilliwack, Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts, Blue Rodeo and Colin James — the creme de la creme of the Canadian rock scene. He's a specialist in building stages in strange places. He helped produce the Metallica/Hole/Moist concert in __- Tuktoyaktuk, and put on a Joe Walsh gig on a Jamaican Beach. But foreseeing a change in the concert market, he shifted his efforts into the studio, which has hosted the likes of Spirit of the West, Colin James, Megan Metcalfe, John — Bottomley, Stephen Fearing, Colin Linden and Tom Wilson, and Alpha Yaya Diallo last year’s Juno Award-win- ner for best world music album. Last week Baker mixed the debut by Calgary’s Barrage, a seven- piece Celtic-rock group he calls “Leahy on steroids.” He'll be co- producing the debut by North Vancouver’s Roscoe P. Coltrane with former Payola Paul Hyde next week. The studio grossed in the six-tig- ures last year, says Baker, who charges $85 an hour for his studio and engincering services. He says his favourite projects are always the most curr “Pm usually listening to what P'm doing, as opposed to what I’ve done. That’s why we still do it, we learn every day,” Baker said. “It's hot a repetitious job where you try and make this band sound like the one before. We're trying to get one step beyond where we were. That’s probably why I'm still in the business, as are 90% of the engineers.” Al Rodger shares the same philos- ophy. He runs the Crosstown Recording Studio a block east of Bakerstreet and says he’s more a neighbour of Baker’s than a com- petitor. The former furniture became a studio in the mid-’80s. Rodger, 39, assumed ownership in 1991. He learned the business by trial and error, taking advan- tage of his spare time as a teenag- er playing in a band with 30-year-olds. When they were on breaks, he'd noodle on their recording equipment. “They would leave after rehearsing and | would just mess around and got enchanted by it. Rodger, who grossed $130,000 in 199S and charges $50 an hour, estimates 250 albums have been recorded at Crosstown, by Rodger’s own band the Creators and the likes of Odds, Spirit of the West, Farmer's Daughter, Limblifter, Bobbi Smith and Rick Scott. “We had a helluva time in November doing a record because it was so relaxed. We were getting this on first take. We spent lots of time laughing and jawing because the recording process was so fast.” Rodger lightheartedly says he’s seini- retired. A steady stream of film and TV scores lets him pick and choose the bands he wants to See Rates page Sunday, Febru NEWS photo Julie Iverson HOKE Nissen (foreground) needed a place for his band Enforcer to practise, su he found an empty warehouse in North Vancouver. Now NAL Sound is a popuiar place for Lower Mainland bands to rehearse and then record at Studio 55 next doo;y. Woridrecords.com, an Internet music Web site, will move its headquarters there next month. Studio 55’s house engineer is Mark Henning (background), a former keyboardist with Pure. Serenading the Internet world HOKE Nissen is adding a record label to his recording studio and rehearsal space in North Vancouver, But it’s not a conventional label. Worldrecords.com has formed a partnership with Nissen to offer musicians “one-stop shop- .” They'll not only be able to rehearse at NAL Sound and record next door at Studio 55, but also release their music to the world via the Internet. “It used to be a studio only recorded and that was it,” Nissen said. “Not anymore.” Nissen doesn’t have space for a CD manu- facturing plant. That’s the old way of doing things, anyway. Worldrecords.com will s:rink the audio files recorded at Studio 55 and place them on the Internet for anyone, anywhere to download. If bands want to record CDs and manufacture them clsewh Worldrecords.com will sell them through its Web site in conjunction with Nissen. Worldrecords.com launched the first music search engine on the Internet in 1995 and bills itsetf as the place on the net for artists, manu- facturers, schools, studios, record labels, maga- zines, radio stations, agents and other stake- holders to meet. Worldrecords.com is the brainchild of North Vancouver cyber entrepreneur Jim Rota. ts has already produced avo compilation albums of 34 independent bands from around the world and is looking forward to signing its own roster of talent. “We think we’re currently the brand name on the Web for independent music and will one day be the brand name for mainstream music,” Rota said. He hopes Worldrecords.com can do what bigger competitors MI'3.com and CDNOW can't or won't. Anyone can get listed on MP3.com but quality is often low. CDNOW caters mainly to those who want to sell CDs and already have big distribution and market- ing budgets. “The idea that MP3 downloads and cus- tomized MP3 compilation CDs will crode uncompressed, fully shrink-wrapped CDs is like saying that paper automobiles will replace the comfort of leather seats and the power of steel,” Rota said. Worldrecords.com moves into Nissen’s expanding Mountain Highway facility in March and should i:e fully operational within a month, Nissen said it may be the pe-tect time to launch such a co-venture, A week after Tin-e Warner was bought by America Online, the new entity bought EMI, shrinking the number of worldwide recording conglomerates tu iour. The race is on: Will the independents or the quadropely control the sounds on the Web? Nissen and Rota think it will be the former. instead of the latter. — Bob Mackin NEWS photos Julle 'veraon STAR Collector (left) and Annihilator (above) are two North Vancouver bands that practise at L Sound. Alpha Yaya Diallo, Barney Bentall anc the Legendary Hearis, Colin James and . DOA are among dozens of others..