The Barn Studios

The Barn Studios originally started in about 1976 when my parents bought property and a mobile home in Rocky Point, NC. We had lived in a house in Wilmington, NC so moving into the smaller, furnished mobile home presented a problem. We had nowhere to store all the extra furniture that we weren't going to be using. In 1976, "storage rentals" were non-exsistant. My parents decided to build a 20' x 30' building on the property to serve as a storage building as well as a place for my Mom to put her 2 large chest type deep freezers.

My Dad cohersed a few relatives and friends to help to build this building and called it his "barn raising". Ever since, the building has been referred to as "The Barn". Upon completion of "The Barn", my parents decided to throw a party for all who helped (in the old barn raising tradition) and they moved my Dad's huge console stereo system out to the building for the event. The stereo remained in the building until my Dad found the time to move it back in the house a couple of days later. Needless to say, to a 16 year old, budding teenage musician, a stereo in an empty building is as good as having your own concert hall. I was heartbroken when the stereo finally went back in the house. But then I had the best idea to ever cross my little teeny boppin head.

For the next month or two, I spent all my waking hours at home trying to convince my Mom and Dad of all the advantages of me walling in a room in "The Barn" to make a kind of... well "studio". As my bedroom was next to the living room and my stereo was louder than their tv, it didn't take too long to convince them this would get me outta their hair... and ears.

I was allowed to wall in a 10' x 14' area with a door, and to move my slowly growing guitar collection, my stereo and my large album collection out to "The Barn". It didn't take me long to collect an old couch and a couple of beanbag chairs and start "fixing" up the place. A couple of 4' black lights, a Radio Shack "Color Organ" kit (remember those?) , a bunch of colored flood lights and some posters and my "hippy" room as my Dad called it, was complete.... hey, this was the 70s. Add a couple of guitar amps, a set of drums and a cassette deck and The Barn Studios was born. It didn't take long for me to start inviting friends over for jams and then recording sessions after I got my first reel-to-reel tape recorder. My friends all loved "The Barn".

I continued to play in bands and record, well into my married life. My wife and I moved into a 2nd mobile home on the property and the barn carried on as usual. Every where I've lived since has had a room or building in which my gear was kept and eventually, my computers as well. I once lived in an apartment that had a very long closet underneath the stairwell and I used this room to house my guitars, recording gear and computer. Eventually we moved back home to my parent's property to a lot which my older brother had previously occupied. When he moved out, he had left a partially completed building in the back yard. His wife had worked for a company that made "Micro-Lams", laminated wooded beams used for housing construction, and every time they had a bad run, these "bad" beams were discarded. My brother got her to find out if they could have the bad beams and eventually acquired enough to build a flooring system consisting of 8"x12" micro-lams for the sills in the floor and 3"x10" micro-lams for the flooring. The walls were studded with 4" creosote posts and the rafters made of even more micro-lams. Needless to say, you could drive a tank across this floor and not shake it. I finished up the building and moved "The Barn Studios" in and there it resided October of 2018.

These days I do my recording with a totally digital computer setup that will be described elsewhere on this site.

As of Oct, 2018, and due to the flooding from Hurricane Florence, I've had to change my capabilities and gear list for the studio. I lost my home and studio in Rocky Point, NC and have moved to Fayetteville, NC to continue with an "online" presence for Mixing, Mastering, and Drum Enhancement/Replacement, with occasional overdub recording (on special request). It will remain in this state until I get a building set up to have another tracking room.

Bill P.