Bangor area teems with recording studios

New Year’s resolutions are always a tricky thing. Personally, I don’t care for them. Why decide to make positive changes in your life on Jan. 1? Why not do it whenever you want to during the year? July is as good a time as January to lose weight or quit smoking.

But some people like to have that concrete marker – “The first day of the year is the day I start (or stop) doing blank.” And as a musician friend of mine said to me a few weeks ago, “Starting January 1, I’m going to begin working on recording my album,” – something he, as a longtime guitarist and songwriter, had been thinking about doing for years.

His question then, however, was where to record it. And that got me thinking: How do you find out about recording studios in our area? I know of plenty of them, but unless you know people, you might not know where to go. So I figured the new year would be a perfect time to inform readers about some of the great facilities we have right in our own backyard, in case you’ve got a goal for 2008.

Here’s a list, most likely incomplete, of studios in eastern Maine. If you know of other ones, feel free to e-mail me at eburnham@bangordailynews.net and let me know.

. My Thrill Studios in Winterport (223-5082) gets its name

from the Fats Domino song, which makes sense, as the place is located on Blueberry Hill Road. You find your thrill on Blueberry Hill? Get it? Anyway, owner Mark Francis opened the studio just over a year ago, after spending years perfecting it. He’s got a state-of-the-art, all-digital facility, including a 32-track mixer, and built it with an eye toward the customer feeling like he or she is in a real, professional studio. Which they are, as Francis has a long background both in recording and performing and is as comfortable recording a garage band as he is spoken word. And with some of the best rates around ($30 per hour!) you can’t beat the price.

. 32 Central in downtown Bangor (917-603-3825) is the business of one Mike Flannery, a New York transplant who moved up to Maine a few years ago. Flannery’s old band, Little T and One Track Mike, had a Top 40 radio hit in 2001 with “Shaniqua,” (“Shaniqua don’t live here no more!”), and was signed to Atlantic Records for four years, after which he managed a studio in Brooklyn. He’s an industry professional, to say the least, and is very proficient at both recording and mixing, though his specialty is the latter. If you’ve got some tracks you’ve laid down on your own, you can bring them to Flannery, and he’ll make them sound like a million bucks. Flannery also records for radio and television.

. A nice surprise in downtown Bangor is Andrew Clifford’s studio (992-6169), which runs out of Knapp’s Music on Main Street. Green Tank Productions, which operates dually from New York City and Bangor, is Clifford’s production company, which focuses mainly on hip-hop producing and commercial work (he has done background music for ESPN, Verizon and Aquafina). The Bangor studio, though, is open to anyone and everyone, from local rapper Affiliate and other Flophouse Records artists to rock bands such as Shoot the Messenger. The best way to contact Clifford is by his MySpace page (www.myspace.com/greentankproductions), and as he says, the rates vary, since he wants to focus on music, not time.

. John Dyer’s Unintentional Music on Webster Road in Blue Hill (374-9980) has been in operation for around 12 years now, where Dyer has recorded, mixed and mastered countless local and regional musicians, such as the Beatroots, Soundbender and Poetic Acrimony. Dyer, a longtime Los Angeles musician who moved to Maine in the mid-’90s, also produces his own work with the band X-Ray Actress, music from whom appears on MTV on a regular basis. Rates at the studio are $45 to $60 per hour, though Dyer’s all booked up until March. He’s a popular dude! His new Web site, www.unintentionalmusic.com., will launch in the coming weeks, so check back soon.

. Angrysun Productions (827-8020) is the moniker for Chris Gagnon, formerly of the local punk institution Dugen. Gagnon and his fellow band members founded Angrysun a couple years ago after Dugen dissolved, working out of a facility on Penny Road in Old Town and recording some well-known Bangor-area bands such as Bad Island and P.R.O.P.E.L. At $25 per hour, the rates are incredibly competitive for the quality of the sound. Angrysun also supplies live sound and video and DVD production.

Visit Emily Burnham’s blog, RockBlogster, at www.bangordailynews.com, for news and commentary on music, entertainment and nightlife in eastern Maine.