studio services

Barn Swallow Music Ranch ("We rassle up them notes!") is a joint production of Towndowner Records and Polyhedron Production Services, Totally Unincorporated.

Operated by multi-instrumentalist and witty conversationalist Dan Easley, ably assisted by songwriter/filmmaker Mark Lane and producer/photographer Kevin MacNutt, Towndowner-Polyhedron's Barn Ranch provides audio/video production/engineering services for Towndowner Records, independent artists, and media distributors, all for just fifty cents a minute (video and drumsets cost extra).

The Studio used to be housed in a forty-year old garage which Dan and friend/filmmaker Mark Lane renovated. Its primary purpose was the recording and mixing of music in a casual setting. Control room and recording space were one and the same, facilitating an immediate connection between engineer/recordist and musician/recordee. Now we're in a nice little country house with two rooms devoted to the durned thing, and it's much nicer — completely disproving all that flowery rhetoric above (though it's still very casual).

While tailored to music production, the Studio and its team can also create and manipulate photographs, animations and video, can author CDs and DVDs, and offer web site hosting and development.

Current projects include field recording, archiving and documentary work on local old-time music and traditions, hosting and administration of ShenandoahFolk.org (a website for local folk musicians and artists), work on future Towndowner Records releases, and ongoing live reinforcement and production consulting work.

Dan Easley has spent over a decade volunteering with and working for public radio and television, whilst writing, performing and producing avant-garde, pop, and folk music records and films on the side. His technical direction, camera work and video editing have appeared on nationally broadcast news programs; work he's done as sound engineer has been broadcast on NPR and the BBC. He's directed daily live call-in television and radio programs, produced animations, and mixed and produced live music for stage, tape and broadcast. His post-production audio work has appeared in award-winning television documentaries. Dan's IT experience began with high school programming classes taken at the age of nine; he currently works with a number of networks comprised of linux, windows, and osx machines. A personal resumé is available here.

Kevin MacNutt spent over fifteen years on-air at a local college radio station, always pushing boundaries, and has the most comprehensive personal collection of vinyl, cds, and prerecorded tapes (both cassette and reel-to-reel) within at least one hundred miles. Due to his encyclopedic knowledge of rock, jazz, and classical music, it is told he possesses Platinum Ears™. Kevin is also a first-rate photographer and film developer; he's taken many of the photos used in Towndowner's album art. Additionally, he is a Grand Master of yard saling and thrift storing (having purchased our reference monitors for the cost of two modest meals), and he can recalibrate tape decks.

Mark Lane brings to the fold a refreshingly reasonable demeanor, a degree in English Literature and Religion, and an understanding of what a singer-songwriter really is. He happens to have the largest book collection of us all - we stand impressed and envious. Mark makes short films and music videos, and is lead singer and songwriter for The Shakes.

Please contact Dan directly to discuss your wants/needs and how we might fulfill them. Examples of services we're capable of include anything found in Dan's resumé, the full catalog of Towndowner Records' releases, as well as numerous utility services, such as format conversion from VHS to DVD, cassette/vinyl/minidisc/reel-to-reel to CD, etc.