Kilgore News Herald"Those scuff marks near the baseboard? Johnny Cash’s boots. That orange scrawl on the wall? A quick autograph from Jerry Lee Lewis. What’s special about those pistachio-green tiles? “They say Elvis used to lay on this floor and read comic books,” Chad Mauldin says.
Walking into Gladewater’s T.W. Lee Building is instantly stepping into the past, one that includes some of the biggest names of Rockabilly – from the antique, oversized buttons and spinning dial of the clanking Otis elevator to the hand-painted gold lettering on the frosted glass of office doors, the old building still has a tight grip on its heyday.
Entering Mauldin’s new, fourth-floor domain, the vintage design and décor lingers while, at times, making way for the new, the improved, the cutting edge in sound design technology. The Kilgore resident didn’t relocate his Mauldin Productions operation to the Lee Building just to hang up a shingle in cool digs. With established clientele, he’s not overly-focused on pulling in patrons off the street.
Rather, Mauldin’s keen to expand his business in the well-preserved KSIJ Radio Station and studios by giving musicians something they can’t get anywhere other than 800 E. Broadway Ave.
Rising over Highway 80, the Lee Building became familiar territory for the big names of rock ‘n roll and country music after it was built in 1950. The late, legendary radio-man Tom Perryman welcomed many other legends to KSIJ.
More than just the history, more than the rockabilly legacy, Mauldin wants his clients to experience the signature sound of the space. The dim recording studio glows with amber light, reflected off curved birch diffusion panels lining the walls and ceiling.
“It’s a beautiful room,” Mauldin said this week. Beyond the visual appeal, “It makes the sound pleasant. The room just sounds spectacular, and it looks cool too,” a throwback to a particular era but with enough staying power that it recently made a contemporary acoustic designer’s jaw drop. “Studios kind of went through difference phases and trends. You get the vibe of the history … This reverb is unique to this room.”
It now has modern instruments and microphones, and it was necessary to replace the old, antiquated wiring in order to accommodate Mauldin Productions modern. Beyond that, “This is as it was,” Mauldin says. It didn’t even require that much cleaning: “It was in this condition.”
The space is buried treasurer for a production company cultivating a signature sound and ready to expand after two-and-a-half years in another space.
“We’d been working out of the Bullard studio. We knew that we wanted to make a move by the first of this year,” he added. The Lee Building was an early, lasting discovery. “We teased out our other options then circled back here. We just really felt like we could make some good records.” “We were dumbfounded that this was here, that there was this historic studio not in use.
Albums and artists’ pictures line the hallway leading into the studio and the control room. It wasn’t in as good as shape as ‘the live room,’ Mauldin said, but the necessary clean-up and repairs didn’t take it too far from the original design – with the exception, of course, of putting 21st century tech in the mid-20th space.
“We feel like we got it back in a place like it was, but it’s still very functional for us.”
Mauldin entered the profession in his 20s, running recording session out of his house. He’s opened two other facilities in the past.
“Where I cut my teeth and really learned how to make records,” he said, “I was chief engineer at Fossil Tracks Recording, a facility near Fort Worth.”
Since coming back to East Texas, he’s worked more in Texas country and Americana. Mauldin frames his career in names: like three-time Grammy winner Larry Franklin, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee The Soul Stirrers and Gospel Music Hall of Famer Greg X Volz, formerly of Petra. The new studio’s wall-art includes Kirk Baxley, Chris Colston and Riley Redding.
“Because I make and produce records from the perspective of a musician, this is not just a technical effort for me. This is an artistic endeavor for me,” Mauldin said. “For me, the vibe really plays into how you’re creating art. I think most of the people I work with feel the same way.”
The well-preserved studio fits smoothly into that mindset.
“It has a really cool, vintage-y vibe to the sound. The way people make records now, they’re always striving to get back to that vintage sound – Even though we gained a lot of convenience when we moved to digital recording, we lost a lot of the vintage vibe.”
Not so in the KSIJ Radio Station, newly-converted for Mauldin Productions. The company is hosting an open house at the studio from 5 p.m. to about 6:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30, ready to give visitors a taste of its one-of-a-kind vibe.
“It’s seeping out of the walls. That sound is just here. It’s just up to someone like me to capture that sound. A lot less work had to be done in post production to imitate that. We just have it here,” Mauldin said, ready for musicians, new and established, to embrace it: “When Elvis was coming through here he was not a famous guy. He was just some guy. That’s exactly why I do what I do here.”