The end of an era in Huntsville music: ‘I get to be around my dad’

There are no computers inside Downing Sound Studios. That means there’s no AutoTune and no Pro Tools either.

Located in Huntsville, Alabama, Downing is the city’s last all-analog pro recording studio. And an anomaly throughout the state and industry wide.

Sure, there are other studios, excellent ones, that have a tape machine and analog gear. But they have some digital in their recording chain. They mix to digital, or record to digital and dump tracks to tape (or record to tape and dump to digital), to summon the warmth analog famously imparts.

But all-analog studio recording? The way most classic rock, pop, jazz, blues and country records were made up until the late ‘80s? It’s a rare species. Teetering on extinction.

Downing Sound founder, recording engineer and music producer Gus Hergert III says, “I think that the biggest thing that tape does to any recording of any kind, to me, it sounds like when you speak to someone in person. The natural tenor of your voice has ambience to it. And I don’t think digital quite has that.”

But now after 50 years, Downing, which Hergert runs with son Gus Hergert IV, is making the transition to digital. The studio has made its last all-analog recording, which is Hergert IV’s latest studio album, titled “Volume 1.” They’re switching to a Pro Tools/computerized tracking. They’ll still mix to analog tape, though.

Why move to digital now? Gus Hergert III, who turns 69 in January, says, “I [once] asked [late great FAME Studios legend] Rick Hall, ‘Why are you retiring, Rick?’ He said, ‘I can’t hear anymore.’ Well, my ears aren’t good enough to do it anymore. I can mix everything below about, oh, I don’t know, maybe 7,500 [kHz sound frequency]. But I can’t hear the maracas. I can’t hear the hi-hat [cymbal].”

Hergert III and his brother Paul founded the studio in 1976, in a space above his parents’ Downing Street home. The studio later shifted operations to Cole Drive.

Over the years, they’ve recorded around 250 projects there, he says. Those include recordings by local singer/songwriters like Hergert IV and Clay O’Dell and rock band Seminole Strut. About 18 months ago, country singer Lee Greenwood tracked at Downing.

Back in the day, loads of gospel recordings were done there. “We made a lot of money on gospel,” Hergert III says. Downing also did jingles for local businesses like sandwich shop Stanlieo’s Sub Villa and Redstone Federal Credit Union. The University of North Alabama, too. “I got six months of free school out of that,” he says with a laugh.

Hergert III’s favorite recording ever made at Downing is a vinyl single titled “I’ll Remember You” by a yesteryear local band called Papaya. “They were a little bit like Steely Dan. “Very talented musicians, great singer, very tight band. They won the battle of the bands down at the Huntsville Speedway, and the winner got a recording session. And they came in and we recorded a single, oh, all in about eight hours.”

The song was released on the studio’s Downing Records imprint. The business also has a publishing facet. The studio has been a decades long revenue stream for Hergert III.

In his youth, he made his living as a sports broadcaster, including time as a sports anchor for Huntsville’s ABC affiliate WAAY-31 and doing play-by-play for high school football on the city’s public TV channel.

Hergert IV, who speaks in a very TV voice, says his time local broadcasting taught his valuable skills in time management, budgeting, and attention to detail. “Recording music is the same way,” he says.

Gus Hergert IV’s new album is a worthy finale for Downing Sound’s all-analog era. Recordings of songs like “Fade On Out” and “Come Home With Me” sound old, in the best way.

New vinyl with digital in the sound chain can often sound like a less compressed compact disc. But the sonics on Hergert IV’s all-analog album are what you’d hear on super-clean vintage vinyl. If you like Tom Petty, The Band, and Wilco records, you’ll probably groove on this.

Hergert IV says the limitations of all-analog recording – you can’t copy and paste or AutoTune, for example – makes him more creative. “I like the fact that it does limit you,” he says. “It was really fun to play the tightrope game of how many track can we put on here and how uncluttered can it sound.”

To be fair, today’s high-quality high-resolution digital recording is damn close to analog tape. A vast improvement from digital’s often brittle and cold sounding earlier incarnations. What really matters in recording are the songs and performances.

“You’re right, the new [digital recording] is very, very, very good,” dad Gus Hergert III says. “The best records in Nashville are better than what I do, and it’s all computer based. But they have to invent a plug-in [computer app] that allows them to have that warmth. Everybody wants to have something that sounds like analog without having to pay the freight.”

Ah, the cost. To make an all-analog album, analog tape for both tracking and mixing adds around $2,500, dad Gus Hergert III says, to a project’s budget. That’s before a single hour of recording studio time is paid for.

To offset the costs thereof for son Gus Hergert IV’s new album, Downing purchased used tape reels from sessions in Nashville for a recent album by Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant. The reels still have the label “RP” on them. Vinyl copies of the album were pressed by Echo Base in Athens, Georgia.

Musicians on Hergert IV’s “Volume I” album include: drummer Ryan Tillery (an early member of Jason Isbell’s solo band), keyboardists Newt Johnson and Clint Bailey (of local faves like Dawn Osborne Band and Dave Anderson Project), pedal steel guitarist Whit Wright, electric guitarist Conway Campbell, and bassists Zach Thomas and Nick Walker.

There’s also the horn section Billy Bargetzi, Ken Watters and Taylor Cheatwood, and backing vocalists Ana Ronado, Matt Michael, Morgan Sloan and Kira Hughes. Even a string section, featuring Jacob Frank, Jeffery Dortcg, DeAndre King and Kevin Lay.

It all adds up to an uncommonly strong release by a local Huntsville artist. But more than that, Hergert IV says it was special making the music with his dad behind the recording console. “Working with him and learning and soaking up all the knowledge that he’s got. I get to be around my dad, you know?”

Gus Hergert IV celebrates his album’s release with a show tonight, 7 p.m. November 21, at Tangled String Studios. Vinyl and CD copies of “Volume 1” will also be available at local retailer Vertical House Records. The album hits streaming platforms in February.