Andrews Lane Recording Company taps into the Seacoast music scene

"Hit it with some balls, dude,” requests Ryan Stack, the young man behind the mixing board. It’s Saturday afternoon and the boyish proprietor of Andrews Lane Recording Company in Eliot, Maine, is working out levels inside his control room. He is about to record a drum track for Massachusetts straight-edge hardcore band The Effort. On a couch behind Stack, the rest of the band members sit relaxed, as if lounging in a friend’s basement. They’re discussing music, playing songs unplugged and waiting for their turn to lay it down while drummer Alex Carmona continues hitting his bass drum—this time with balls.

Now on to the snare drum. “Hit that with some balls, as well,” Stack says. The LED display on Stack’s mixing board peaks higher as Carmona, who is cordoned off in an isolated room nearby, smacks his drum harder. Though the snare is louder now, Stack knows damn well that the volume will go up even more once he actually starts playing the song, because that’s the way it is with every drummer in history, he explains. Drummers always claim they are playing as loud as possible when levels are being adjusted, but somehow, without fail, their playing gets a whole lot louder when the real recording begins.

The fact that the 22-year-old was a hardcore drummer in his younger years could account for his insight. Or, it could be that the self-taught Stack, who has been recording bands since he was a teenager, has an intuition for the unique minds of musicians.

“I got really interested in audio when I was in high school and then, through friends and through curiosity, just kind of figured it out,” said Stack, who lives in Amesbury, Mass. “I got started out of my parents’ garage in Massachusetts, recording my own stuff, and then I started recording some friends’ bands.”

Now all grown up, Stack still brings the same homegrown attitude to recording, but now he’s able to make a living at it. Since 2006, Stack has spent most of his time recording, editing and mixing records at the studio space he rents on Route 236 in the Eliot Business Park. And his work is generating a buzz. Stack has become somewhat of a go-to guy for a new generation of local bands, including Portsmouth’s Tiny Whales, which recorded its recent EP, “II,” with Stack. Dover’s Vaast and Buzzard also recorded with him recently, and fellow Dover band MJ-XII is in the process of scheduling recording time at the studio.

“I do find that the music is much more diverse up in the Portsmouth area,” Stack said. “It seems like a lot of stuff that comes out now is very fad oriented. I think that’s why it’s so cool with the stuff around Portsmouth, because I’ve gotten so many different kinds of projects.”

Andrews Lane Recording Company, which takes its name from a street in Amesbury that was named after Stack’s grandfather, is a relatively recent addition to the Seacoast’s rich tradition of quality recording studios. There are several active studios in the area, including Thundering Sky, which is located in a barn in South Berwick, Maine. There’s also Jon Nolan’s Milltown Recording Company in Newmarket, Marc McElroy’s Imaginary Cat studio at his home in Eliot, Maine and Jim Tierney’s Electric Cave behind The Button Factory in Portsmouth. In a very different time, the revered Fishtraks studio operated out of a storefront in downtown Portsmouth, providing stability to the rich local music scene of yore.

Andrews Lane brings to the table another studio with a DIY feel and a sound engineer who is not far removed from the music scene he records. Stack still carries many of his communal ideals with him, even if his tastes have been refined a bit with age.

“Naturally, I get a decent amount of work from the people I’ve met or played with,” said Stack, who has played drums in a number of hardcore bands and most recently played guitar for Oest. “The heavier stuff that I record I’m not so much into as I used to be. I probably would have liked it more when I was younger.”

The Effort, whose members Stack knows through his connection to the Massachusetts scene, was visiting the studio to record an unreleased song set to appear on an upcoming Welfare Records compilation. With cables draped around his neck, Stack talked fluently with his visitors about bands that are good and bands that suck, all while twiddling knobs and patching cables seemingly without thought, as if the process had become as natural to him as breathing.

The homey feel inside the studio is deliberate and is reflected in Stack’s recording philosophy. A traditionalist in style, Stack prefers warm sounding analogue gear to digital, and he tends to track instruments one at a time. He thinks recordings should sound as natural as possible, like people casually playing music together in a room. But he’s also very interested in collaborating with bands to come up with a sound based on what they want.

“I definitely know that my style is a lot different than the studios now. A lot are computer-based,” said Stack. “I kind of take pride in the fact that I still use those techniques, that’s kind of part of my thing. Mainly it’s because, when it comes down to it, I like to have real knobs at my fingertips. I don’t really like staring at a computer screen.”

A selection of tracks recorded at Stack’s studio can be found on his MySpace page, www.myspace.com/andrewslanerecordingcompany, along with a list of the two dozen or so bands he has recorded since opening the space. Stack’s future ambitions are modest, but he is undoubtedly focused on keeping the studio successful for a long time.

“I like where it’s heading,” he said. “I feel that there’s somewhat of a buzz. I don’t charge tons of money. Basically, I just hope to be able to pay my bills and grow the studio a little. Eventually, I’d like to get a bigger space, but that’s pretty far off. For now, I’m pretty content.”