Down From Up Heads to Nashville for Recording Session

Down From Up has always benefited from good production. Not that the unsigned local alt-rock quartet needed much help, but the band has recorded both of its previous albums with Travis Wyrick, Knoxville’s reigning modern-rock studio guru. Wyrick helped turn the most recent disc, 2009’s From Ashes to Empire, into a breakneck showcase for the band’s technical chops.

But the band has raised the bar this month, heading to Nashville’s storied Blackbird Studio for a three-week recording session with Knoxville expat and Grammy winner Nick Rasculinecz, who has worked with Foo Fighters, Rush, Alice in Chains, and Marilyn Manson.

“Let’s say you fall asleep and are having the best dream of your life, and then you realize, ‘Hey, wait a second, I’m not asleep. This is my life,’” says Down From Up singer Matt Brewster on a break during the band’s first week in the studio. “It’s amazing. I hadn’t worked with a ton of people, but it’s a different world. You can tell. All of his ideas are just gold.”

Brewster says the environment has pushed the band to a new level of professionalism.

“There’s pictures on the wall and autographs and memorabilia from all the different artists that have worked here,” he says. “It’s like, ‘I’m in the same building where people laid down awesome records that everybody has.’ It was intimidating the first couple of days. ... For major recordings that we’ve done, we’ve always worked with Wyrick in town. You go home and sleep in your own bed, do your own thing. This way, just the band, the four of us, are together 24/7 and it helps us focus and get into a groove. You know you’re working with Nick, and you’re at Blackbird Studio—it’s almost like you’re kind of forced to do whatever you need to do. It’s almost the perfect environment to get whatever needs to be done, done.”

Right now, the band is recording five new songs. Brewster says the band may use the resulting material as a demo to entice a label to finance enough additional time at Blackbird to complete a full album.

“I guess the plan is to see what we can get done with those five songs,” he says. “Hopefully you could get a deal and a record label will want to pay for the next five songs to make it a full record. That’s one of the avenues to look at, if we can get something good rolling with it.”

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