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When musicians Josh Gray and Rachel McCann moved to Nashville from Mississippi, they bought a historic 1935 property called Ivy Hall and set about building what was meant to be a rehearsal space in the basement of their home.
Since then, Ivy Hall has become so much more than a rehearsal space. Their charming Tudor-style home now houses a state-of-the-art recording studio with an impressive mic locker, spacious live room, and a brand new, analog-meets-digital modern-day console—the API 2448.
Read on to learn about the long journey to get their studio going, what inspired their recent upgrades, and what made the API 2448 the right choice to capture that beautiful, world-renowned Nashville sound.
Tell us a bit about Ivy Hall Studio and the work you do.
Back in Mississippi, my wife and I had a house and a small studio with enough equipment to do demos. When we moved to Nashville, we purchased Ivy Hall. We were touring at the time, and the house had a really large basement, so we decided to convert part of it into a rehearsal space.
We wanted the room so that we could record vocals, overdubs, and things like that, so it started as a very simple idea. An engineer friend of ours found a Neve VR console as part of an estate sale, available for a really low price. We soon realized that a rehearsal space was not the right thing for this piece of equipment, so we decided to build something around it, and it just spiraled out of control. [Laughs] Anything in the music world has a tendency to do that—whether you're dealing with microphones, effects processors… The possibilities are infinite.
We hired Michael Cronin Acoustic Construction to design the acoustics of the space. My wife is an architect, so she did all of the space planning, and it took almost three years to put together. We were very meticulous because we renovated the house at the same time and replaced all of the electrical and plumbing systems, which added a lot of time to the process. That was the genesis of the studio.
At the time, there was a big legal battle in Nashville because studios weren't legally allowed in homes, but in Nashville, everyone has a studio in their house. Right as we finished building the studio that we put three years of time and money into, we got reported to the local government by someone in the neighborhood and got a cease-and-desist letter.
Since Ivy Hall is a historic property, an attorney who deals with this kind of issue got us in touch with the historical commission in town, and we found out that there's a neat little clause in Nashville law that allows historically significant houses to use part of the home to generate income for preservation. We fought for almost two years to get approval for that, and finally got the legal right to operate as a studio here. And the next year, Nashville changed the law to allow home studios! [Laughs] We teamed up with another musician called Lij Shaw, who was at the forefront of getting that law changed. Since then, we've had a really good experience with the studio, and we love having different musicians here. They’re fantastic!
That sounds like a real battle! But you’ve built a beautiful space, and you cater to many different types of musical experiences at the studio as well.
Yeah, it was our dream! Since we have such a unique property, we wanted people from out of town to come and stay, have a peaceful, calm place to work, and still have access to everything that Nashville has to offer.
You can interact with the cultural fabric of Nashville, and talent is just a phone call away. So you have all of that, but you're also in a park-like atmosphere, almost like you're out in the middle of nowhere, which is really cool.
Last year, my wife and I met this fantastic classical guitarist in rural Spain. When he found out we were from Nashville, he said it was his dream to go to Nashville to record. I said, “Well, I've got just the space for you!” [Laughs] And he was so happy to learn that. We've had a few international clients here: people from Brazil, England, Italy…
We streamline things for any kind of project. We had a songwriters’ retreat last year that was very successful. We also had a family that came for a month to record an album. We provide engineers, producers, session musicians… anything that you need. This is probably the best place in the world for that kind of thing. I am a little biased, though. [Laughs]
What drew you to the API 2448 console?
The Neve VR that we had was well over 30 years old, and with old analog equipment like that, it sounds amazing when everything works, but there is constant maintenance. And, as Murphy's Law dictates, if something's going to decide to have an issue, it's going to be in the middle of a session. [Laughs]
That happened a few times, so I wanted to find a console that was modern, had interconnectivity with the digital world, and offered a really solid analog experience. The API 2448 was exactly what we needed for this place. We opted for the 24-channel board, so we have 24 channels for recording and 48 for playback, and we’re really happy; we never wanted more channels. It’s a perfect fit.
It's so amazing that we had this huge VR console in there, and now we have a much smaller 2448, and it does everything that the VR did, plus so many more things. Also, the interface is so much more user-friendly. That was another issue we ran into—people would call and say, “We've got an engineer who knows how to do everything.” Then they would come in, and they didn't know how to work around or troubleshoot things [with the Neve]. So we wanted a console that was really easy to use and understand in terms of signal flow, and workflow of a session, and the API just nailed it.
One of the engineers who works here uses API exclusively at Southern Ground Studio in Nashville. He’s kind of our wizard, and he’s going to teach the rest of us how everything works, so we're really looking forward to that.
What are some of your favorite features of the new API 2448 console?
Well, I was only able to get into the studio yesterday for the first time since it was finished, so I don't have the experience to really comment on it, and I'm not the most technical person in the studio. But we pulled up some sessions, played them back, and I was really impressed—things were super clear, and we really did open it up. It sounded beautiful!
When we started pulling up sessions, I knew that we had made the right decision because there were a lot of times along the way where I was like, “What am I doing with this big shift?” We had to rewire the entire control room and all of the connectivity, and I wasn’t sure if I'd made a mistake or not. But when we started to listen, we said, “This was the right thing”.
We opted for Final Touch Automation, which is great, because people wanted to know if the automation on the VR worked, and no, it did not work. So I'm glad we're able to tick that box too with the API.
We have a 500 Series rack that’s all API EQs. We already knew that we liked using the EQs—the 550A and 550Bs—so it's fantastic. We’re really happy.
How did you customize the console for your studio’s needs?
We did get the API 529C bus compressor, but otherwise it's pretty much the standard console, out of the box. The real customization had to do with the patchbay.
I really wanted to have a patchbay as a part of the console, but unfortunately, we didn't have the space to shift the console in the room so that you'd be in the center of the listening triangle. We were going to have a lo-boy, but that just took up too much space; it was really clunky and was going to cause some issues referencing playback.
So we built the patchbay into the wall, and had to go through layers and layers of isolation, insulation, and dampening, but now it's perfect. It's better for me actually, because I'm really tall, so leaning over a patchbay all day is not good. Now I can stand, read everything, it’s perfectly labelled—that was the most customized thing.
How do you imagine the console will impact the workflow in the studio?
Things will definitely speed up, knowing—reliably—that everything is going to work when you set up for a session. Whoever is behind the console will be a lot more relaxed now because it is a much simpler interface to deal with.
It’s visually attractive as well; it's a nice place to sit. I’m super excited to work with this new console.
What was it like working with David Fisk and Vintage King during the purchase of the console?
Fantastic! The guys at Vintage King are always so responsive and on top of everything. David was very good about pointing out anything I might have overlooked that would have been a problem later on. I can’t say enough good things about them. Anytime there's any kind of issue or a need, they’re just a phone call away.
They've just recently put a Vintage King showroom on the east side of Nashville, which is really cool because there are a lot of musicians on the east side, and now the commerce side of the industry is finally starting to grow here, which is great.
Which microphones do you find yourself using most often?
I really like the AKG C414s. It has the same CK 12 capsule as the C12, and I really like those a lot. We also have a vintage RCA 44.
Another mic that gets used almost every session is the AEA R88, which is fantastic. It always gets put up in the piano room and on drum takes.
We’ve got a set of vintage Coles 4038s from England, which are another fantastic set of ribbon mics to have close on the piano. I look forward to hearing them through the console, using the preamps and the EQ together. That'll be really cool.
What are some of your favorite pieces of outboard gear at Ivy Hall?
There are several things that I’ve bought from Vintage King, like the Universal Audio LA-610 preamp, for example. That thing is like a Swiss Army knife! You could do anything with it, from kick drums to vocals; I go to it pretty often.
We got our BURL Audio AD/DA converters from Vintage King as well, and they’re absolutely fantastic—you really feel like you're in the analog world!
We also got the Trinnov system for tuning the room through Vintage King. In fact, we haven't even retuned the room since installing the API, but it already sounds really, really good.
Do you have a go-to signal chain for recording, or do you use something different every time?
For vocals, I like an SM5 into the Tube-Tech CL1B—that's probably my favorite thing. So the CL1B and a little EQ; I’d probably use a 550B on that. I try to keep things as minimal as possible.
I've got a REDDI DI Box that we use for a direct bass signal. We’ll do it analog and through an amp at the same time and blend the two—I can’t imagine recording bass any other way. I'm sure there are much cooler, more fun ways to do things, but I try to keep it simple, personally.
What's a typical day in the studio like for you?
Typically, with a local artist, the engineer or producer will come in the evening before and do a rough setup. On the day of the session, between 9 and 10 am, we have the drummer here getting sounds, and by 11, we're tracking. After about 2 hours, we have a nice, long lunch break. There's a back terrace people can go to, and fortunately, Nashville is a food town, so we can get anything anyone wants delivered. Then we go back in by 2 pm, and the session goes until 9 or 10 pm with overdubs and vocals. Maybe a pizza gets ordered during that. That’s the situation I've seen happen the most.
Are you working on any exciting projects right now that you're able to talk about?
We haven’t had anything recently, as we have been down for several months while installing the API. A really great ongoing project worth mentioning is our partnership with a producer in town named Kory Caudill, who works with the Episcopal Church. They have a project called Concert for the Human Family that's geared towards racial reconciliation. That project has brought tears to our eyes on more than one occasion and is definitely something we are proud to be a part of.
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