FORT
APACHE SOUTH:
GETTING STARTED
by Joe Harvard
 This photo is from the Boston Phoenix article ("Sound Unbound") written by Sally Cragin that was our first press coverage! Mike Costello replaced original co-founder Paul Kolderie who had left the Fort to join Three Colors in England. Mike did some good work at the Fort, especially on the Barrence Whitfield demo project that he brought in. But Paul was the best engineer at the Fort and we were glad when he rejoined the team again soon after his return to Boston. "Are you sure that Boston needs another eight track studio?" "It doesn't need another another studio, it needs us". I wasn't being cocky. Far from it, as I knew it was our approach to recording that the local scene needed, not our skill as engineers- which was by no means advanced. Like many musicians the four of us had been in too many studios that were totally antiseptic and had all the personality of a dentist's office. A sterile lab atmosphere was NOT condusive to making gritty rock music. We wanted a place where you could smoke a joint or drink a beer without some assistant engineer giving you the evil eye and running over with a coaster and a "No Smoking" sign. And most studio engineers still came from a certain quasi-nerd breed. Screwed over and/or alienated by snooty know-it-all engineers ourselves we were eager to provide an alternative. With most engineers it seemed to be more important to them to tell you what you couldn't do than it was to listen to your ideas- or to try to do what you asked. That was a such huge buzz-kill when you've been looking forward to this adventurous George Martin "let's try anything" experience. "You know, Jonathan, most engineers are like critics- they aren't musicians but probably wanted to be at one time, so they're actually hatefully envious of most musicians and they love to lord over them. We think like musicians because we are musicians, first and foremost. It's that simple. There are better engineers out there than us- much better - as we're just learning. And this is certainly not going to be the best equipped studio around. What we'll be is a place where guys like us can record and still feel as comfortable as they do on stage or in their own practice space. And have their ideas respected." "Are there enough guys like you out there to keep a studio in business?" "I think so. We think so. Or we wouldn't even try this. But with four of us we can afford to keep the place going until the business takes off. Until then we can record our own stuff which we would be doing anyway but paying for it someplace else". Jonathan nodded his head. That was the plan, anyway. The Fort had its' roots in two seperate gardens, one at 82 Kenwood St. in Dorchester and another at 117 Columbia St. in Cambridge. The Dork address was the home of five members of the Sex Execs and their home studio. The studio was built around a 4-track Teac 3340, and in keeping with the sardonic humor of the residents it was known by various names at various times: Contempt Studios was my favorite, but Mix-Me-Up Mix-You-Down was good, too. Sean Slade and Ted Pine provided the genius behind the Sex Execs, and along with Paul Kolderie they motivated a lot of the studio work done at Contempt. It was when Sean invited the Bones to record there in 1982 that I got my first taste of DIY recording. Over the years the housemates invited a lot of bands to record, including Three Colors, Treat Her Right, and Arms Akimbo. They also kept their creative juices flowing by recording side projects by each member of the band. This was also a shrewd way to avoid the classic band-breaking conflicts wherein a member complains "I just wants to work on my own music". These projects were released on cassette to friends replete with cover art and phony bios. They still provide some of my favorite music, ranging in tone from hilarious to sombre and everything in between.
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On the Cambridge end of things was So-So Studios. Inspired by Contempt and absolutely disgusted with the handful of commercial studio experiences I'd had I decided "fuck this, I'll just do it myself from now on". I'd had a little experience already in studios. In 1978, after reading an article on production in a magazine I bought at the airport, I'd gone into Baker Street Studios and produced the sessions for a few songs I'd written. I brought in Billy West, the future voice of Wren and Stimpy (as well as Bugs Bunny in Space Jam) to sing backup, Tony Cozzone to play lead guitar and a fellow dope fiend named Kathy to sing lead on one tune. The songs sucked but the experience left its mark. Later that year I produced two songs at Baker Street for Slow Children, and in 1980 I co-produced two tunes at Polytrax for my own band the bones along with Stefan "Swine" Lovelace of the Mindless Fucks. After recording at Contempt in 1982 I knew I needed my own place, and after meeting Eraserhead soundtrack composer Peter Ivers (see Pixies article or Bones article and seeing his portable rig I knew I could do it on short cash. I built the studio up piece by piece over the course of a year. A Fostex 1/4" 8-track and matching 8 channel board were great to learn on, and I even had a spring reverb and a Sennheiser 421 mic. I recorded myself and a number of friends who volunteered as guinea pigs. By the end of the year I had a cassette release of my own. Buy American 1984: the Year at So-So featured songs by Boys Say Go, John Felice's new band the Primevals, Matthew McKenzie's group the Roosters, former Sidewinders and Paley Brothers guitarist Eric Rose, and even a horn arrangement I recorded with Ted Pine and my roommate Russ Gershon. I'd took a ten week recording course that met on Sundays, but Buy American was my real engineering education. I was happy enough with the reults to consider starting a real studio. When roomie Russ started the eleven piece Either Orchestra I got my first taste of big band recording when I made some 4-track Tascam Portastudio demos for them. Then three things happened: one, my housemates made it clear that they would be happier if I wasn't using the kitchen as a drum booth; two, the Sex Execs lost their Dorchester house-cum-studio at 82 Kenwood; and three, an acquaintance of Sean's (let's call him Mr. Cash) offered to fund a studio for Sean and Paul and the boys. Paul and I talked and he asked if I'd be interested in engineering at this new studio- we could pool resources. I said sure. This was around May of '85. Throughout most of the summer of 1985 my sole purpose was to save money. I worked at three jobs: moving furniture part-time, working as night janitor at Joy of Movement from 10 pm til dawn, and minding the store of my own home business in medicinal herbs. I took six weeks off to go to New York City and do contract archaeology along the East River by Wall Street- I would have moved there but for the irons I already had in the fire at home. The job paid pretty well, and expenses were low because I stayed at the newly opened Joy of Movement on Lafayette Street, crawling into my sleeping bag in one of the dance studios after closing. Everything I earned that summer I put into microphones and wiring harnesses and such. To show good faith Mr. Cash had bought a brand new Otari 1/2" eight track, still in the box, from an audio supply firm Paul worked at that was going out of business. This was almost at cost but that was still around six grand, so it looked as though he was sincere. Mr. Cash had promised to supply space for the studio in a new warehouse he was buying to move his own business to. Then he said he was going to lease space not buy it, but would lease enough to give the studio a portion. Finally he decided not to move at all but agreed to find a space just for the studio. The summer wore on and we were all getting impatient. MR. CASH. By September I'd saved enough to buy a used Neotek I mixing board through an agent in Illinois for just over six thousand bucks. Mr. Cash had told Paul to find a space and he'd go ahead and pay for it. When Paul located the warehouse at 169 Norfolk Ave. we were all psyched. Then Mr. Cash said he would need to wait at least a month and we would now have to pay for the build out ourselves. That was all I could take. "Look, Paul, you had to find the space, right? And we are going to do the build-out ourselves, right? And pay for the materials. Then we'll get the clients, market the place, do all the engineering, and Mr. Cash will own the business? All he's done is buy the Otari. Fuck it, why don't I be the backer? We'll do the work and pay the bills together and then own the place ourselves. We can reimburse Mr. Cash and buy the Otari back". And that's just what we did. Although Sean was my closest friend at 82 Kenwood at the time I knew that he had a rep for being a bit lazy around the house, and there had been friction around that in the Sex Execs as well. I told Paul that I wanted Sean to work with us but not as a partner. He agreed to tell Slade but apparently lost his nerve, and I was surprised when Sean arrived with Paul to the first studio strategy meeting. Sean knew about my reservations but said he wanted to be a full partner. He asked for a chance to prove himself and he promised to toe the line and be responsible. He was clearly in earnest so I agreed to a three-man arrangement. Slade was as good as his word and I had no reason to regret my decision later on. I'd always loved to work with Sean, who was and is a brilliant cat, and I was glad things worked out. Jim Fitting was the fourth member of the collective, added when we realized that expenses were going to be to much even for three people to pay. Jim was easy going and well-liked by everyone, and his personality helped to moderate the sometimes volatile mix of Sean, Paul and myself. So now we had our team together-probably the most over-educated studio staff on the planet with three Yale grads and a Harvard alum. STUDIO TAN. There was a lot of tearing down and rebuilding to do in the space. The building was enormous but we chose the first space at the top of the steps leading in from the front door to make load-in easier. We had no elevator and bands had to drag their gear up the two flights of cement steps. A heaviness hung in the air that came from human sweat and toil and much drudgework over years and years. A hand written sign hung on the door greeting visitors that read "no jobs". Bleak. There were four windows against the outside wall but we would have to wall them up to insulate for sound. So much for light and ventilation. I thought of an interview where Donald Fagen said he and Walter Becker had spent most of their 20's in windowless spaces with no natural light like some kind of musical vampires, and wondered what the next few years would be like.ELECTRIFYING DEVELOPMENTS.We went for the cheapest insulation and building methods. A 2"x4" frame was thrown up to section off our space and then covered with sheet rock, taped up and covered with moving blankets to cut down reverberation. For the framing job we needed help, and Billy Conway (then with Treat Her Right) gave us a hand with the tricky parts like the double wall between the studio and control room. I had my uncle Bob come in to help frame the doors and other friends also contributed essential labor. My old pal Rick Risti came in from East Boston to remove the flourescent lights and together we designed our rather unique electrical layout. The building code says you must enclose the main line coming from the fuse panel in steel tubing. The tubing would run all the way around the room- and our room was pretty long. That runs the cost way, way up- far beyond what we had to spend. Our solution was to run about a foot of tubing from the fuse panel out to one industrial strength outlet that constituted the entire energy source for the space. To that outlet we attached what amounted to an enormous extension chord made from the same guage wiring we would have put in the tubing anyway, minus the tubing. It was a hundred feet long with 4-outlet boxes attached every 20 feet or so. It was almost as good as the thousand dollar solution, and for a hundred bucks all we were missing was the metal. When we moved to a new space a few years later we simply unplugged our "electrical system" and took it with us! CHRISTENING. One day Billy Conway was in framing the control room. When I arrived I'd found a kitten that had been badly abused wandering in front of the space, and I had her in my arms when I came into the space. Walking in I was told Billy's truck had been broken into and some of his drum gear stolen. I was about to leave to take this cat to the vet and Sean came upstairs to announce his car had been rifled. We went down to see and Billy's truck had been broken into AGAIN! Back upstairs I shook my head and said "Jesus, if we're going to stay in this place it's going to have to be like Fort Apache!" There were laughs all around, and we started using the name unofficially until we adopted it. 
TROUBLE IN PARADISE. The initial collective lasted less than a year. In January of '86 we came close to a falling out over who was doing how much work and who wasn't. This is the sort of thing that happens in any kind of collective effort, be it a kibbutz or a rented crash pad. Friendships have been lost over issues that are raised in such situations, and the pressures of running a business with overhead to be paid don't help much at all. I preferred to keep the friendship if it meant losing the business and I offered to move to a new space, but instead Paul suggested that I become sole owner and he and Sean and Jim become "employees". I agreed and assumed the title of sole proprietor with the proviso that we were still a group of equals. Nothing really changed in that respect. It was understood and acknowledged that there was no difference between any of us, no boss-type bullshit, that we were a team. Most important issues were discussed together to suss out a consensus before moving forward, although this admittedly changed somewhat later when Gary became a partner.
YEAR ONE. At first the four of us worked on our own personal projects so we could get used to the room and to the new equipment. Paul had the most engineering knowledge by far, while my strengths were more in the use of different amps and guitars to achieve distinct sounds. Sean was the best producer and arranger, while Jim's high profile with Treat Her Right helped to advertise our existence. As the year passed each of us made great strides in defining our own personal styles. Sean worked with his band Men and Volts, Jim worked with THR, Paul used most of his time for Three Colors, and I spent over a hundred fifty hours working with Lifeboat. In the meantime I was hitting the clubs almost every night handing out business cards to all the bands and musicians I knew. Slowly work began to trickle in at the whopping rate of $5.50 and hour for eight track recording time. Before the year was out we went to 7.50 and then ten dollars an hour. The first sessions that made it on to vinyl were the Connells record, followed by the Oysters single, and then a watershed event in the self-released Treat Her Right LP that Paul engineered beautifully. These were all eight track recordings. It was a compliment to Paul's skill when the record was released a second time by Demon Records in the UK, and then a third time by RCA after the group was signed to their major label deal. The only other eight track record on a major that I knew of was the Eurhythmics LP, and that had all sorts of virtual tracks generated by sequencers and keyboards so it hardly counts. The next article to come will cover the details of the Fort Apache South sessions in our first year and a half, leading up to the release of the Pixies' Come On Pilgrim, the Neats Crash at Crush and other seminal early work.
 Go to Part 3, Fort Apache North- the New Digs Next, Part 4, Fort Apache North- Music Business Blues |
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