Alongside Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens is the likable drummer and only other constant member of Memphis' legendary rock band Big Star. Big Star was basically created out of John Fry's generosity towards younger musicians, allowing original members Chris Bell, Andy Hummel and their friends to come in an learn the recording ropes. Since then, Jody's been working at Ardent for several decades now, in various capacities.
Your introduction to Ardent Studios was through Andy Hummel and Chris Bell?
Andy said, "Hey, some of my friends and I are putting a band together. Do you want to come out and jam a little bit?" We got together in Chris Bell's back house that was on his parent's property. Terry Manning was there, maybe Tom Eubanks, and Chris, Andy and myself — maybe Steve Rhea, too. It was loose and everything, but there were all these suggestions of something really creative coming out of it. That led to late night sessions at Ardent.
How did that lead into Ardent?
Chris Bell was friends with John Fry. Chris, Andy and Steve Rhea were getting into the studio in the off hours and I think Steve was getting ready to go to college. He played drums, so they were looking for another drummer. I got introduced to Ardent via Chris and Andy and played in the off hours and really didn't see much of John Fry. It was like Disneyland for somebody into music. I thought what Chris and Andy and Steve were doing was so different from what everybody in Memphis was doing at the time. It's what I was into — very, very British invasion. I've always been fascinated with the whole creative process and how things just spring from people's minds. I felt pretty lucky.
So, Big Star — you go through the era of that — 1975 was the last recording for Big Star's Third?
Yes. I came back to Ardent in January 1987. I was on the fourteen-year program at the University of Memphis. I started in '70 and graduated with a marketing degree in '84. I continued to wait tables for a while and then had a pretty straight gig for a year and then was looking to change jobs. I handed in a resume to a radio station and I called John Fry to let him know that I'd used him as a reference. I hadn't talked to him in a while and he said, "I'll say something nice about you." He rang me up the next day and said, "Hey wait a minute. We're creating a new position here at Ardent — somebody to do the marketing." I managed to wind up with the job and I was ecstatic. My first day in the studio I discovered The Replacements were here — I didn't know who The Replacements were at the time, mind you. I was really lucky because it was the time Joe Hardy was developing as a producer/engineer. John Hampton was developing as a producer/engineer. We had Terry Manning here. We had just exceptionally talented people to work with. Also John Hampton and Keith Sykes, a fairly well known singer-songwriter here, were doing a little artist development themselves and had a guy named John Kilzer. John Kilzer's project became the first that I shopped. I wound up placing it with Geffen, but it open the door to relationships at A&M and some other places. The next project to shop was a band called Tora Tora. I wound up placing them with A&M and again, developing other relationships in shopping this band. Then there was the Eric Gales Band. We had talented producers and engineers and we also had this talent pool that we were drawing artists from. The guys that produced the demos were able to produce the records when the artists got signed.
Yeah, keeping things in-house. At that point, were you a studio manager, did you stick with doing the label type thing?
No, we had a dedicated studio manager at that point. My efforts were focused on the production company and the marketing. The production company helped tremendously with marketing because A&R people don't necessarily want to hear about a studio over and over again. But they were always interested in new artists. Ardent Productions was a potential source of a future signing for them. I'd talk a bit about the artist and the engineer/producer that did the demo, so we gained a lot of exposure for our talent behind the board and to our artists.
Is there still some of that going on here or is the focus more on the label?
My focus is more on developing artists for the label. The last band I actively shopped was Skillet. They are now signed to Atlantic for mainstream marketing and distribution. Some of our producers and engineers develop artists independently and have their own connections with A&R people. Like, Pete Matthews pitched Evanescence to Wind-Up — he did that directly and twenty-three million records later... He didn't get to produce it, but they were nice to him and gave him a royalty.
At this point in time, what do your actual duties entail?
Well, a little bit of everything, although I'm getting away from doing so much scheduling and booking — although I still do that from time to time for clients that we've had for a while. I'm trying to get more involved with A&R and more involved with just marketing the studio. We have a marketing plan that we're trying to implement. There is much less business out there these days then there was fifteen years ago. You've got to look under all the rocks and everything you can to bring things in.
In the local Memphis scene are people that used to use studios going into home recording or smaller places? What do you think the changes are on that front?
There are more options, I guess, of places to record. Many of them are very small studios and in some cases they're home studios. If there's a talent behind the console, and the tools he uses to work with are commensurate with his talent, you can do some pretty creative things. But a lot of people come in and say, "I tried a home studio and didn't feel like I was really making a real record."
There's something to be said by having staff on hand, rooms that sound good — there are headphone systems, a collection of microphones and a person that knows how pick the right one.
We have a whiz kid of a tech here, so things go right. Or, if for some reason something should go wrong, we have someone here that can fix it and get back on track. There is a lot of support coming through a studio like this. There can be that sense of community, where you come to a studio like Ardent — you're not recording in somebody's home — and all of a sudden more resources become available to you. You meet more people. It's an opportunity to network. There are probably four different engineer/producers that are pretty much around the building all the time, so your exposure to them can be another stepping stone.
Is the studio staying consistently busy? It looks busy today.
