WCA #605 with Chris Mara – Building Welcome to 1979, Restoring Tape Machines, and Saying Yes to Everything
About this episode
Chris Mara discusses his journey in building a successful recording studio and the challenges of entrepreneurship in the music industry.
Chris Mara owns Welcome to 1979, one of the larger recording studios in Nashville, along with his wife Yoli. He joins Matt for episode 605 to talk about moving to Nashville at 20, building Mara Machines and a vinyl mastering department alongside the studio, and running it for 18 years with no partners and almost no borrowed money. In This Episode, We Discuss: Growing Up in an 800-Person Wisconsin Town With No Internet and No Roadmap Community College Recording and Moving to Nashville at 20 "I Am Working Class": No Safety Net, No Umbilical Cord The Unpaid Internship and the Downtown Bellman Job That Funded It Trading Every Favor to Pull Studio Shifts Keys and Alarm Codes to Ten Studios Seeing the Same Gear Used a Million Different Ways Working Across Every Format: 2-Inch, RADAR, DAT, and Early Pro Tools The Nashville Number System and Country-Session Efficiency Bringing in Rock Bands and Running Them Like Pro Country Dates Justifying Your Existence When the Guitarist Has Pro Tools at Home Coming Up With Welcome to 1979 (and the Runner-Up: "Simulated Wood Grain") Pitching a Studio to His Pregnant Wife for $1,100 a Month "You Can Break Even As Long As You Want" Yoli Quitting Her Job…
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