Screen Door Records is a recording studio located in the disparate rock'n'roll wasteland of  Nashville, TN.

 

In our minds, records should not be "engineered" -- they should be captured. Therefore, we provide the equipment and environment necessary for bands/artists to record their music in an organic, energetic, and fast-paced manner, and present it to their fans as an honest representation of their sound.

 

Or, to put it less eloquently:

 

FUCK AUTO-TUNE.

FUCK SOUND REPLACER.

FUCK "TRADITIONAL" STUDIOS

 

I've been playing in bands since I was 13, recording them since I was 15. My interest in engineering arose from a general disgust with the way records sounded, particularly the records I made.  I got my degree in Recording Arts and graduated top of my class from Full Sail University in Winter Park, FL. I moved to Nashville in 2007 and started out as an intern at Sony/Tree Studios on Music Row. After 2 months, they hired me on as their staff assistant engineer. I worked at Sony for 2 years. I got my name on a few albums by some big-time pop-country artists (nearly all of them complete dickheads), and got an insider's perspective as to how the recording industry truly operates.

 

It's bullshit.

It's complete bullshit.

 

Like everything else, it's become about making products, not albums. Recordings are edited and processed and re-edited and re-processed until virtually nothing remains of the original performance, all for the sake of appealing to every possible commercial outlet available. TV and radio compresses the dogshit out of everything, so vocals are highlighted to the point of absurdity. Drums are processed, if not completely replaced by pre-recorded digital samples, and then buried in the mix (WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS HAPPEN!?! Anyone who has ever been in a room with a live drummer is aware of a singular truth: drums are gloriously loud). Guitars are stripped of all their ferocity and polished into slick, ceramic bathroom furniture.

 

Fuck that.

 

Our goal at Screen Door is to operate in total opposition to the recording "industry". Personally, I HATE studios. They're like hospitals. Our shit is not like that.

 

You will walk away with a great fucking record, a record that actually sounds like your band. No digital trickery or electronic witchcraft.

 

Like I said before, we capture records -- we do not "engineer" records. You come to us with a great song, and you'll walk out with a great recording of a great song. It's that simple.

 

-J. Kirkland