19 FEBRUARY 16-22, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Still Blasting HOW THE BLASTING ROOM WENT FROM A DIY MOTHERSHIP TO A SOUGHT-AFTER HISTORIC STUDIO. BY JUSTIN CRIADO Bill Stevenson didn’t bank on punk rock pay- ing his bills for this long. As founding drum- mer of Descendents and ALL, Stevenson played in punk bands for most of his life, including stints with Black Flag and the Lemonheads. But it wasn’t until 1994, when he and his ALL bandmates relocated to Fort Collins and opened the legendary Blast- ing Room recording studio that his punk passion became an unexpected full-time profession. While it started out as a DIY home base for the band, the studio has “been booked solidly for 28 years now,” says Stevenson. “We got a sizable recording contract, so we thought, ‘Well, rather than continue to pay for studio time when we record, we should just build our own studio. Then we’ll have a practice room, studio and place to do demos all in one spot, now that we have a little bit of money to make that happen,’” he recalls. They located the “big, huge, empty build- ing” at 1760 Laporte Avenue and thought, “‘Yeah, this will work,’” Stevenson says. “At fi rst we were all kind of living there,” he continues, “just crashing on the fl oor, practicing there, and we had our mail order in there, too, and a T-shirt printing press. The building was kind of our whole world. We built it for us, the band, but no sooner than we got the walls up — we didn’t even have paint on the walls yet — bands started calling, saying they wanted to record at the studio. We were like, ‘Oh, wow, cool, bands want to record here.’ We hadn’t even recorded there yet. The fi rst project was the ALL album Pummel [from 1995]. After that, the studio kind of took on a life of its own.” Stevenson hasn’t spent a penny on ad- vertising or marketing since then; he points to the famous Field of Dreams line — “If you build it, they will come” — to describe the phenomenon. He’s the studio’s current co- owner, continuing with the venture when his ALL bandmates moved on. Seattle musician Jason Livermore, who held down the kit for such bands as Wretch Like Me and Drag the River, was one of the people attracted to what the guys in ALL were doing. He even moved to the Front Range shortly after the Blasting Room opened to see for himself what it was all about. “I was selling beer for a living at Miller Brands and didn’t want to wear a tie every day of my life,” Livermore says, adding that he knew Stevenson from touring, and their bands shared a manager. “I just jumped in, and these guys taught me a lot. I worked my butt off, and it just kept going.” Livermore offi cially became a co-owner of the Blasting Room in 2015. The studio now employs six producers and engineers, and has worked with thousands of bands, including Rise Against, Alkaline Trio and As I Lay Dying. Local fi lm- maker Aaron Pendergast is even making a documentary about his hometown’s studio, simply titled The Blasting Room, which is due out sometime later this year. But Stevenson, who is humble and shies away from pointing to a “favorite” project he’s worked on over the years, isn’t relying on this impres- sive résumé, especially given the fi ckle nature of the music industry. He’s also quick to credit others for the studio’s success. “Personally, I wake up most mornings and my very, very fi rst thought is, ‘Okay, is today the day that the bottom falls out beneath this half-assed career I’ve put together out of punk rock? Or is that day going to actually be tomorrow?’” he admits. “It might just be in my nature, but I don’t have a sense of security from any of this stuff. You can turn on the radio station that used to play Descendents or Rise Against or whatever, and you’re hard-pressed to listen for thirty minutes and ever even hear a guitar,” he continues. “It’s all synthesizers and drum machines. That stuff is largely outside the area of our expertise. We’re making art. The whimsical tides of the art community are unpredictable, so I don’t put much stock in stability in this or my band. But I do appreciate the fact that it’s thus far been pretty stable.” The Blasting Room has attracted many other artists from various backgrounds and musical leanings. Longtime ska band Mustard Plug has recorded four EPs with Stevenson at the studio, and the group was back in Fort Collins to work on new material last month for the fi rst time since complet- ing 2007’s In Black and White. Lead singer David Kirchgessner loves the magic of the studio, even if he can’t quite put his fi nger on why Mustard Plug just seems to sound better after recording there. “Every time we don’t go there, we’re slightly disappointed,” he says, “and when we do go there, we’re happy with it. It’s defi nitely getting harder for us, just because we’re getting older, to take a couple weeks out of our lives to go out there and record. We decided it’s worth making that invest- ment of time and money and energy. We’re really excited to head out there.” There’s not necessarily anything unusual that goes into the Blasting Room process, as “there’s not a right way to do it,” according to Livermore. “There’s many, many differ- ent ways you can get to the same result,” he explains, adding that some bands prefer to come in and play a full album from top to bottom, without much overdubbing. When it comes to the music recorded at the Blasting Room, Stevenson applies a Charles Bukowski quote — “As the spirit wanes the form appears” — to explain that the appeal doesn’t just stem from the leg- endary studio it was recorded in, or the work of the people behind the board. “The reason I quote that is that I just want to give a shout-out to the song. ... The most important tool that we have is that the person brings in a good song,” he says. “Then you can record that song in a lot of different ways and end up with a great situ- ation. But if you don’t have good songs, you end up adorning mediocrity. Somewhere between those two eyes is really where the recording process lives, trying to make something cool and make it spectacular.” Calling himself the “grandpa” and “stupidest” of the group, Stevenson semi- jokes that there’s one big secret behind the studio’s success: “The trick is only hire geniuses.” But seriously, adding talented producers and engineers over the years, including through internships, has helped the studio grow and cement its reputation. “I think that we’ve had a little bit of good luck, and the benefi t of being able to launch this on the heels of my tenure and pedigree with Black Flag and Descendents and ALL. That’s what we launched it on, but at the end of the day, the cream rises to the top. After Jason moved out, it became really apparent, the level of aptitude. Jason really just became far more expert than the trajectory that Stephen [Egerton, of ALL] and I had been on,” Stevenson says. “It very quickly developed its own wings. Currently, the way the studio runs now, very little of that has to do with my musi- cal history,” he continues. “It functions more like a cooperative, quasi-communal in the sense that we work as partners- and musicians-in-arms.” “It didn’t start as a business, per se. It’s like a lifestyle. It’s just what we like to do, and we happen to get paid for it,” Livermore adds. “Somewhere in the 2003 to 2005 range, we were sort of booked up every day for, like, years with no time off. That was an all-consuming event, like, ‘Holy shit, we’re working a lot.’ We were giving everything that we possibly could for a long period of time. It’s still going kind of like that, but for a period, it was like all we were doing.” The Blasting Room is becoming a fam- ily business at this point; Stevenson’s son Miles is an intern there. And like father, like son: Miles is a punk rocker himself, and is the lead guitarist of Fort Collins band Hospital Socks. “That’s afforded me a chance to bond with him in a way I hadn’t previously had an opportunity to. It’s been great; that’s been special. As a father, that’s given me a joy that I haven’t known for many other things,” Ste- venson says, adding it’s a bit of a trip to see Miles work alongside Livermore, since the families babysat for each other over the years. What keeps the Blasting Room collec- tive going is that same punk-rock ethos Stevenson has subscribed to his whole life. “We’re just showing up there every day and working and trying to do our best,” he says. Email the author at [email protected]. MUSIC Blasting Room co-owners Jason Livermore, left, and Bill Stevenson. COURTESY THE BL ASTING ROOM
