____________________________
Guest post by Kevin Cornell of the TuneCore BlogWith close to three million residents, a constantly evolving music and arts scene, and a virtually indescribable pace and overall vibe, Brooklyn has remained a magnet to creative types looking to find ‘their people’ and start a career. It’s a place to collaborate, a place to celebrate art, and a place to find inspiration (among high rents, a borderline cut-throat job market, and an urban environment that appears to be its own force of nature and cares little about its inhabitants).Sitting at the base of the Pulaski Bridge at the northmost point of the borough in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn lies The Creamery Studio. A lofted space hidden among auto repair garages and other industrial buildings, The Creamery offers a large live room that would make most musicians drool, and a writing/lounge space that might make them want to move in permanently. Named one of the “Top 11 Brooklyn Studios” in Brooklyn Magazine, the Creamery opened its doors in 2008, and the studio is currently run by Quinn McCarthy and Jeff Fettig.In an effort to highlight the amazing variety of bands and artists they’re happy to call clients, Fettig and McCarthy released their Creamery Mixtape last year. To follow up on that, they’ve tapped TuneCore on the shoulder to release The Creamery Mixtape 2.O on Friday, January 19th! It’s a 12-song compilation that was put together in a four-day recording sprint and, “like a subway car at rush hour, it crams together an eclectic group of New Yorkers into harmony.” You can check out this diverse array of music – ranging from afrobeat and alternative pop to singer/songwriters and garage rock – on Spotify and Soundcloud.We got the chance to spend some time at The Creamery Studio and Quinn and Jeff were kind enough to answer some questions about the space, music in Brooklyn, and the mixtape series below.First and foremost, tell us a little bit about your foray into the world of production and engineering, and how you came to open up The Creamery.Quinn McCarthy: For both of us, engineering and producing originated from the most important source: an obsession with listening to and playing music. We’re musicians. We play in bands. We like a lot of different types of music. Recording and producing has been a way to become more broad than we ever could have as singular artists. I play bass, Jeff plays guitar and we both dabble with other instruments. We started a studio because we wanted to make magical recordings, not because we wanted to open some kind of sound motel. People pay us to record and mix and use the studio, so sometimes I get a funny look when I say, “I’d rather listen to a crappy recording of a great song than a great mix of a crappy song.” When I first started listening to hip hop and electronic music, I realized there were other ways to create music other than just playing in a band. That curiosity of making sounds and sonic worlds and combining it with instruments and performances led us here. We’re both collaborators and facilitators and when we share a goal with bands, great things happen.In a music city – or borough, for that matter – it can be tough to stand out as a recording studio. What efforts have you made to make sure that The Creamery and it’s offerings stand out to artists?QM: When it started, we couldn’t compete with anybody. We had minimal gear and no business plan. My buddy I wanted a place to record our music and our friends’ bands. We both had about $5,000 saved, so we found a forgotten building in Greenpoint and started framing and drywalling. We lived in the studio for many years and worked all types of other jobs while pouring ourselves into albums that were earning us nothing.
