Grant recipient focuses on creative, custom music

In the world of music, typically, people are either creators or producers. Charles Allison is both.

Mr. Allison has long been a fixture on the local music scene as a solo artist and as front man of the experimental rock band Land Camera.

Earlier this summer, he used money from a MakeWork grant from CreateHere to purchase the inventory of a commercial recording company to pursue his dream of opening a studio to create music for web, film and television.

Q: Why does Spanner Sound focus on music for film, TV and Web?

A: It's something I've wanted to do for a long time but just didn't know how to get in to. My real interest is in really creative, custom music. I'll do all the other stuff, but my interest is in film music and scoring and doing custom music.

Q: What inroads have you made to getting contracts?

A: I have a friend who is tied in with Viacom, which is a parent company for a bunch of networks. When new programs come up, they'll put out a blanket e-mail that says, "Here's what we need," and you demo things for them. If they like what you send them, they'll move forward with it.

Q: What consideration did you give to the economic climate before opening Spanner Sound?

A: Having low overhead is big, whether you're a studio for band production or doing a custom agency. Basically, (we're) setting as many things in place to not have crazy overhead ... because that's one of the most likely reasons to go under, having this looming monthly payment to make.

Q: Do you have a favorite piece of equipment in the studio?

A: My (Korg) Kaosilator. It's basically a little, tiny synthesizer that can do beats. I've got it Velcroed to my guitar. It's usually a good starting point for me.

Q: What's your most indispensable piece of equipment?

A: Probably my Fender Precision bass (guitar). That's what I write from a lot of times. I like to start with rhythmic stuff and set up the foundation of the song.

Q: How is running the studio affecting your own musical projects like Land Camera?

A: It's not really. It's all tied into what I'm doing anyway. One of my models for this is Peter Gabriel. He had a regular rock 'n' roll career, and then he branched off on his own when he left Genesis to start Real World Studios, which is his label and his studio.

Basically, he's set up his own machinery that lets him do whatever he wants. That's a big part of what Spanner is, everything I need to do what I want to do on my terms.

FUN FACTS

* Birthday: Feb. 28, 1974

* Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii

* Family: Wife, Kate Allison, 32, and daughter, Finley Allison, 3

* Education: English major at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

* Hobbies: Carpentry and rock climbing

* Favorite movie: "The Big Lebowski"

* Favorite book: "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornsby

* Top five favorite albums: "Soft Bulletin" by The Flaming Lips, "Viva Hate" by Morrissey, "The Queen is Dead" by The Smiths, "Songs to Learn and Sing" by Echo and the Bunnymen and "This Year's Model" by Elvis Costello

(Chattanooga Times Free Press music reporter Casey Phillips spoke with local musician and sound engineer Charles Allison about his newly fledged project to record a new song every week for a year.

Check out Mr. Allison’s blog with updates on his project at http://www.charlesallison.org)

Q: Tell me about the song-a-week project. How and when did that get started?

A: This is the fourth week of it. It's weird, I don't even know what I saw that was the impetus for it, but I didn't even think about it for a week. I posted something on Facebook asking if anyone would be interested. There were a few people who said they were interested, but I decided this was something I wanted to do for myself.

Over the last couple of years, I'd become really precious about my songs. I was killing a lot more creativity than I was nurturing just because of the way I was thinking about songs. I was planning things out more than I needed to. There were times when I could have sat down and made music, but I had some preconceptions. I was wanting some way to get away from that. The pressure and discipline of saying, “OK, every week, I'm going to write a song and produce it and it's going to be high quality enough to put out in the world. Whether anybody cares or not, it's going to be produced enough and brought to fruition to the point where you can listen to this.

I quickly decided that I wanted to do this, a song every week for a year. Why a year? Because it seemed like a manageable amount of time but also kind of epic. A couple of months or six months just didn't seem to have the gravity I thought a year did. I've heard of people who have done it - I'm definitely not the first person to do it - but a lot of people would start a blog and do it for a couple of weeks then give up. It was just something I decided I wanted to do. It would compliment all the things I'm doing. It's great for me as a songwriter, great for me as a creator of music for other people, just a great exercise to do.

Q: So how do you avoid the pitfall of giving up? How do you plan to stay invested in this for 52 weeks?

A: Well, the technical end of it is already taken care of. I own a studio, so there's nothing that's going to slow me down as far as the technical stuff. That's something that I'm sure slows some people down, their one microphone or whatever dies. That's not an issue for me. One of the things I'd like to do is have a lot of the people I'm working on records for take the time and just jam or improv with me. I want to get some emotional investment from other people, too. That's another way to keep it going. I don't see it as a big problem in terms of “How do I keep the steam going?”

Really, I was making a song a week before I started doing this, but now it's sort of official and I have to do it. I've put the pressure on myself to actually finish a song. Before, I might write a song every week but only one out of four actually got finished because I lost interest. Now, there's pressure to actually take it to completion.

Q: Three weeks in, what's the experience been like so far?

A: The fourth is pretty much done now. It's been really, really good. I've gotten lots of positive comments, and people seem to be really interested in it. We're now just trying to think of ways to publicize it. My fear is that other people's enthusiasm for it is going to wane, and that's going to affect me, but I'm definitely dedicated to doing it. There's no part of me that thinks, “No, I won't do this,” but it's great when you have people cheering you on. The other side of that is that year is a long time, so I need for there to be some outside cheering along, some continued interest in watching it go along. Part of that is a dialogue about my struggles with it.

My hope is that other people that write songs will be interested partly for the process of songwriting. There will be hard times, and that actually is one of the exciting things to me. There will be times when it will be really, really hard to make a song that week, but that's what I'm most interested in, breaking through that. The way it's presented is on a blog with a Sound Cloud link so there's a block of text talking about what I went through and then the song.

My hope is that songwriters will find it really interesting and see that this is someone who's really dedicated to becoming a better songwriter and getting through the tough times of songwriting. That's something that all writers can relate to, having to muck through it. Hopefully, there will be people who follow along and offer encouragement to keep me going.

Q: Has songwriting always been something that comes easily to you?

A: Sometimes, yeah. Hopefully, something this will do is help me hone my approaches to songwriting. Generally, with my own stuff, I would write from an acoustic guitar, which generally goes in a certain direction. One of the things I want to do with this is write from different instruments. If somebody brings in a sitar, then hopefully, I'll write a song from the sitar. One of the things I want to do is find ways to write songs with instruments that aren't my instruments, to be able to sit down with whatever I have and make these songs interesting and be interesting to listen to also.

Q: What's the end goal of the project?

A: I haven't decided absolutely, but there will be a release of all of these songs. Because of the size, it'll probably be like a jump drive with all the videos on it and all the songs and everything. I would love for this to develop into something even bigger where there is other media that can be included in this. The experience is the primary goal, but this will also be a pretty epic record for me, too, with 52 songs on it and a year of my life.