Haxton Studio Moves Downtown

It’s no surprise that Neil Greenhaw, a musician, songwriter, producer and the owner of Haxton Road Studios, gets his best creative ideas in the recording studio.

While those flashes of inspiration usually come in the form of lyrics, riffs, melodic lines and drum beats, it’s a place that has also given rise to some big-picture ideas — not the least of which is a collaborative effort with Lamplighter Restoration LLC, a Bentonville-based design/build firm, to build a co-development project dubbed the “Haxton District” in downtown Bentonville.

Greenhaw has a background in real estate development, and Patrick Sbarra and Todd Renfrow, the co-owners of Lamplighter, both also have a musical bent, so the collaboration seemed like a natural fit.

Plans to create the Haxton District, which Greenhaw describes as a place “where art and business collide,” first took root about a year and a half ago. The conversation began when the aptly named Renfrow band, composed of Renfrow’s three young adult children, recorded its debut album at the Haxton studio. The Haxton District is planned for a half-acre collection of properties near the southwest corner of Southeast B and Southeast Second streets, less than a quarter of a mile from the downtown square.

Lamplighter purchased the land for $355,000 in 2014, from Victor and Glorene Case. Greenhaw, through his TNG Properties LLC, then purchased the two westernmost parcels for $184,000 last year. The planned district will consist of a set of townhouses from Lamplighter and a planned multiphase, mixed-use development from TNG. Lamplighter intends to break ground on the Haxton District Townhomes, on the east side of the district, sometime this year.

Three townhouses are planned, ranging from 2,000 to 2,600-SF, Renfrow said.

Like Lamplighter’s other work, the intention is to lend a timeless feel to the property, so it looks like a natural extension of the town square, he said.

Greenhaw hopes the same can be said about the TNG development, the first phase of which he designed with the help of Bentonville design company Taylor Boswell LLC. He also worked with local architect Dave Burris.

A new studio for Haxton will be the cornerstone for the project. Right now, the studio is housed in a 500-SF space Greenhaw built in June 2011, on the second floor of what was then his family home at the corner of Haxton and Gaston roads in south Bentonville.

The new studio will occupy the bottom floor of the planned 10,000-SF, three-story building at 222 S.E. Second St. The second floor is also leased, and there is class-A office space still available on the third floor.

TNG plans to break ground soon.

 

Audio Calibration

The Haxton District is the culmination of a more than decade-long music career for Greenhaw.

An Arkansas native, he played electric guitar professionally in a Nashville-based contemporary Christian band, The Katinas, for about three years starting in 2005.

He toured about 250 days out of the year, but it was in the studio that Greenhaw found his niche. 

A few years later, he moved to Northwest Arkansas and opened his studio.

“We wanted to bring Nashville quality, what we’d seen in Nashville and in LA, that caliber of recording to NWA,” he said.

Greenhaw says the studio had seven full-length albums in the queue before it opened its doors. “We’ve been booked solid ever since.”

Since its inception, the studio has played a role in the careers of local success stories, including country music artists Barrett Baber and Backroad Anthem.

Baber made it to finals on the last season of NBC’s singing competition show, “The Voice,” and is currently planning his tour while in the meantime opening for the famed country band, Rascal Flats.

Previously, the Haxton studio’s work with Baber included a project that served as a gateway to the Grammy Gig of a Lifetime contest, which landed Baber a performance at the 2014 awards ceremony.

The same year, Haxton recorded Baber’s singles, “Razorback Game Day,” and “Arkansas, Get There From Here,” for which Baber and cowriter Kenny Lamb, who moved to NWA from Nashville, won the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism’s “Song of Arkansas” contest.

Before that, Haxton worked with Backroad Anthem, starting with the recording and coproducing of its first full-length album, “Small Town Fame.”

The band ultimately signed with a manager in Nashville, and it plans to tour and release new music soon, despite the recent, tragic death of bandmate Craig Strickland late last year.

 

Collaboration is Key

“It’s fun for me to see local artists who start here get to the next level,” Greenhaw said. “We’ve seen a lot of really neat opportunities happen for artists that have come through here.”

The “we” to which he refers includes chief mixer and engineer Ryan Ceola, who has been with the studio since its inception and has been instrumental to its level of success, Greenhaw said. 

In Greenhaw’s opinion, he and his team are impacting people’s lives.

“Music is one of the most powerful things in languages. Always has been; always will be. It connects people with a feeling, an emotion, a time and place — a story,” Greenhaw said. “It puts kind of a mile-marker in their life of something that touched them and affected them. We want to do our best to translate that to quality music, quality lyrics and a message for that artist  — whether it’s a fun, quirky message or a serious, for many of them, a faith message. For country artists, a lot of time, it’s just out of the diary page, turned into lyrics.”

“We see the importance of that,” he added. 

By the same token, businesses and brands use music for their marketing content. “They need their customers to feel a certain way. So, our job is to bring that emotion through music.” 

In addition to working with musicians, Haxton records voiceovers and produces jingles for all types of companies.

Most recently, the team wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered a song for the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. marketing department, based on a requested musical style and lyrics written by the retailer’s creative team.

Before that, Haxton recorded music for the soundtrack of “Greater,” a locally shot film based on the life of accomplished University of Arkansas football walk-on, Brandon Burlsworth.

That recording experience afforded Greenhaw an interaction with Bob Brumley, whose father wrote the gospel song “I’ll Fly Away.”

Brumley was recording the classic piece for a scene in the movie, which is scheduled for release this summer.

In addition to the fact that Haxton’s work spans a variety of mediums, its artists fall within a wide range of genres and geographical locations, including Nashville, Chicago, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Austin, Texas.

The Haxton Studio has stayed busy, but Greenhaw believes it’s only the beginning, for his company and for the rise of the local music scene.

 

‘Let ’Em Run’

The bar has been raised in recent years for both the quality and visibility of the arts in NWA.

Visual arts beacons including the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art have been established, as has a game-changing event, the Bentonville Film Festival — which promises to bring A-list celebrities in the area on an annual basis.

“We’re excited about everything that’s happened thus far downtown. I would say the musical arts is just now starting to really come around what’s already been done in the arts,” Greenhaw said.

If you ask him, it’s time for the local music scene to have its moment in the sun. “I think it’s right around the corner,” he surmised. “Most people don’t realize this, but there are Grammy-award-winning producers and writers that live in NWA,” he added.

Greenhaw also pointed to both long-standing and budding establishments in the local music industry, in the form of recording studios and live venues.

 “What we are going to be bringing to the table with this new studio, because of the space that we’ll have and the technology and innovation that we have, it will be state-of-the-art,” he said.

And indeed, Haxton’s new, 4,500-SF studio will be a significant upgrade from the original, with features that include a mezzanine-level VIP green room.

Greenhaw said he aims to “stamp downtown Bentonville and say, ‘Hey, we believe in the arts and what’s happening here. Let’s bring something to the table and put our money where our mouth is.’” 

Greenhaw added that the project complements the city’s plan to add density to downtown, with both residential and commercial properties.

Troy Galloway, community development director for the city, confirmed Greenhaw’s assertion.

“The project is very consistent with the downtown redevelopment plan in terms of providing different forms of density for potential residential, potential mixed-use, with office services and retail potential there,” Galloway said. “We’re very excited to see the project and are looking forward to it coming out of the ground, knowing that it’s going to add significant value to that part of our downtown fabric.”

For Greenhaw, it’s all part of his efforts to round out the art realm by setting off a thriving music scene, which he says is bubbling just below the surface.

“There’s an excitement and anxiousness — in a good way,” Greenhaw said. “We have a lot of Millennials that are amazing artists and creatives who are at the race, and they’re behind the gate waiting for someone to pull the pin and let ‘em run.

“I say it all the time, but I think Bentonville, Arkansas, will be in the history books for the arts, and we’re proud to play a small part in it.”