Scott's Mom

Scott Hull studied audio in the "Tonmeister Studies" Sound Recording Technology program at the State University Of New York at Fredonia. While he was there, he formed a long-term friendship and working relationship with another student in the program named Al Garzone. Before graduating, Scott took an internship under Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk in New York City. He did well enough there that, upon graduation in 1984, he went to work at Masterdisk. He's been there ever since, first as an editor and now as a mastering engineer (he "inherited" Bob's room when Bob left to open Gateway Productions in Portland, ME). Scott's credits include a lot of major releases, including Donald Fagen's Kamakiriad. It's fair to say he's no slouch in the recording business.

Anyway, while working at Masterdisk, Scott began to miss writing music and engineering and producing bands. Living in Hoboken, NJ at the time, he picked up a Tascam 8-track and a little Studiomaster console, and started doing stuff in his apartment. Does this part sound familiar?

About the same time, Al Garzone (from Fredonia) got in touch with Scott to do some mastering for a band Al was producing, found Scott had an 8-track set up in his living room, and suggested that Scott should open a studio that he, Al, would book for his various bands. Scott was also developing a band at the time, so he said sure. Does this, too, sound familiar?

Meanwhile, Scott was feeling a little stretched for time. One aspect of this was that he wasn't getting enough family time in with his mother, who lived in upstate NY (LaGrangeville, to be exact). His father had passed away while Scott was in college, and Scott felt that he wasn't giving enough attention to his mother, or helping her with simple things around her house, like mowing the lawn, fixing stuff, etc. Another typical Twenty-Something young-professional sit-com scenario.

So, where you or I would have just felt inadequate and stressed out, and started muttering about how life's too demanding and blowing stuff off, Scott did some integrating of life elements. With his mother's enthusiastic blessing, he built a 24-track studio in her house. More specifically, in return for maintenance and just being around the house a lot (how many of you go visit your parents every weekend?), he took over half the basement of her house, set up a control room and started bringing Al's bands up from the city to record in the garage. Mrs. Hull found the bands to generally be a nice bunch of people, with one exception which did not return - Mrs. Hull wisely retained veto rights on obstreperous clients. When I talked to her she said she enjoys having the people around and isn't bothered by the noise. Al Garzone is Scott's primary client, bringing in a succession of alternative bands on the way up (Brenda Kahn, Chicken Scratch, Poopshovel, Agitpop and others). As Scott puts it, "Albert's work paid the bills, and the engineering kept me happy."

Meanwhile, Scott is slowly moving into more of a producing role with many of the bands, and he and Al are beginning to increasingly function as a production team for bands on the rise.

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