Studio Provides Musical Retreat

Eric Schabacker has come full-circle. He started a record company that failed, then a recording studio that succeeded, garnering him more than 100 gold albums along the way. Both were in Orlando, Fla.

Then, in 1994, he decided to slow the tempo on his music career. He left the city and settled down near Eureka Springs to relax and enjoy the Ozark Mountains.

While building a 6,000-SF house and 3,000-SF cottage on 85 acres he bought a decade earlier on Beaver Lake, Schabacker decided to add a studio for his “songwriting habit.”

After seven years, he decided to open the studio for other artists to record. What was once just a habit became a business — again.

With $175,000 worth of equipment, Schabacker’s Winterwood Recording Studios and Lakeside Cottage produces and engineers albums for local and regional artists like Joe Giles, the Cate Brothers Band and Jimmy Thackery.

The studios and cottage are so different that when author Jeff Touzeau was compiling a list of the 18 “most unique recording studio environments” in the world, he included Winterwood. It’s in his book, “Making Tracks.”

The cottage has become a place for bands to stay while working on albums, or for anyone who can find their way through the winding roads off Arkansas Highway 23 to stay for a weekend on the lake. What they’ll find is a place to get away from the distractions of the city — a perfect retreat for artists.

Early Days

In the 1970s and ’80s, Schabacker produced and engineered gold albums for several top artists in his recording studio in Orlando, including Molly Hatchet, Judas Priest and Menudo. He also worked with Michael Jackson, Gladys Knight, James Brown, Emmylou Harris and Randy Newman.

But after almost 30 years of working his way up and eventually making it big, he said there was no where else to go.

“I’ve been there, I’ve done that and I got my T-shirt,” he said. “It was time to go home.”

That time, home meant Eureka Springs.

Schabacker, originally from Buffalo, N.Y., got started in the music business as a junior in high school. He produced and engineered four albums for local high school rock bands and school glee clubs.

After he graduated from high school, Schabacker attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., where he received a master’s degree in business education. But it was through the breakup of his first band, The Starfires, and the failing of his first record company, Tener Records, that he gained success in 1967 with Bee Jay Booking Agency and Recording Studios in Orlando.

The studio became the first eight-track studio in Florida and then evolved to a 16-track facility. Artists flocked to his studio because of the new technology Bee Jay offered.

By 1975, Schabacker said his heart wasn’t into the booking agency anymore. He sold the agency to John Bird, who renamed it J. Bird Agency, and it’s still operating today, making it one of the oldest booking agencies in Florida.

At that time, Schabacker was ready to put all his efforts into the studio, but the studio had outgrown the local music scene and was still too small to be national.

He raised $1 million and built a studio complex in Orlando. It was completed in 1977 and became the first 32-track automated mixing studio in the U.S. and the third in the world.

“At that point, almost everything we recorded and worked with turned to gold,” Schabacker said.

Some of those gold records were Judas Priest’s album “Screamin’ for Vengeance,” Blackfoot’s “Strikes” and Molly Hatchet’s “Flirtin’ with Disaster.” But Schabacker is most proud of his first gold record, which was in Canada, by Long John Baldry, titled “Baldry’s Out.” A notable musician in his band was a pianist named Reginald Dwight, who later became known to the world as Elton John.

By 1984, Schabacker said he realized he’d gone as high as he could with the studio and decided to sell it. After a couple years off chasing boyhood dreams of being an amateur radio operator, he decided to settle down.

Schabacker found Eureka Springs by accident. He was on his way back to Florida after a business trip to Dallas when he decided to drive through the prairies to see Oklahoma, and then took a right turn, ending up in Northwest Arkansas.

He spent the night in Eureka Springs and said he fell in love with the Ozark Mountains. After a few more trips, he ended up buying property just south of the town on Beaver Lake.

Then in 1994, he moved from the Sunshine State to the Ozarks.

Mountain Music

After seven years in Nashville, Tenn., shopping songs he’d written, Shabacker decided to add more space and equipment to his studio in 2001 (expanding it from 130 SF to a total of 1,300 SF). He became more active in seeking out clientele, by going out on Dickson Street in Fayetteville and meeting artists.

“Marketing a studio has always been hard,” Schabacker said. “I’ve never totally figured it out because you’re talking about selling something that not many people want to buy. This isn’t a restaurant.”

Since 2001, he’s had a number of local and regional artists who have recorded at Winterwood — including Giles, Thackery, the Cate Brothers, Crow Johnson and Claudia Burson.

Winterwood’s clientele now consists of about half local and half regional artists. Many of the artists are from Texas, Florida, California and Missouri. They’re not major groups, Schabacker said, but “there’s a good pool of musicians and talent out there who want to record with somebody who understands and knows their music or somebody who has the reputation of understanding and knowing their music.”

The small size of his three studios makes it a lot more intimate than large studios, Schabacker said. He also doesn’t need the technology that many big studios have.

A studio can have a $200,000 recording console, but all Schabacker needs is a computer. His total equipment cost doesn’t even add up to $200,000.

“If you know what you’re doing, you can make incredibly good sounding records for the fraction of the cost of what the big studios do,” he said.

And for the area, that’s what he has to do to make a living. Schabacker charges $60 an hour for producing and engineering work, more than half the cost of what he charged when he had his recording studio in Orlando and was making major hit records in the ’80s. But it’s Northwest Arkansas, not Orlando, he said, adding that the music recording business isn’t large in the area. And he’s not working with large labels.

Because it’s Northwest Arkansas, many bands also don’t have the budget to spend making a world-class album.

“One of the frustrating things about recording in the Ozarks is that the budgets for making good albums just don’t seem to be available … or the groups aren’t willing to provide the budget,” he said.

Many groups in Northwest Arkansas think spending $5,000 on an album is too much, Schabacker said. But if they sold 1,000 albums at $15 a piece, they would double their profit.

He said he works about 30 hours per week on engineering and production. At $60 an hour, that adds up to about $93,600 a year. He also has his own publishing company, Schabraff Publishing, which is an additional source of income.

His business has grown about 20 percent over the last few years, he said, but he wouldn’t say about how much he makes annually.

Much of his growth comes from people finding out more and more about his work because he doesn’t go after clientele like he used to. However, he said, the music business is very cyclical.

Schabacker is branching out into other aspects of the music business. He started Nashville Song Evaluation, where beginning songwriters can have their songs evaluated, and he’ll work closely with them to get their songs pitched in Nashville. He said he charges about $100 an hour. He evaluates other genres of songwriting as well.

He also provides counseling to educate music artists on their careers. Another option is to hold seminars on the music business at Winterwood. He would take about 12 people to stay the weekend for about $500 each and give seminars about the music business.

Winterwood Lakeside Cottage provides a unique setting for artists or anyone who wants to stay there a chance to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city. The 3,000-SF cottage sleeps eight people and has a minimum two-night stay.

Last year it was booked for 227 nights, and this year Schabacker said it looks to be the same. The cottage cost $195 to $350 per night (depending on the amount of space needed).

“Making Tracks” hit the shelves in March, giving Schabacker’s Winterwood Recording Studios some much deserved attention. Other studios on the list were those owned by Peter Gabriel, Backstreet Boy member Kevin Richardson and Al Jardine, one of the founding members of The Beach Boys.