Robyn Hitchcock Visits Indie Memphis, Ardent Studios

Famed independent singer songwriter Robyn Hitchcock made his way across the pond from his native England to attend this year’s Indie Memphis Film Festival, which is held every year right down the street from Ardent Studios. Hitchcock had several ties to this year’s festival, not the least of which was an opportunity to record at Ardent.

First, a Sebastian Gutierrez film that Hitchcock scored, entitled “Women in Trouble,” was playing (The film premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March and is scheduled for a November theatrical release by Screen Media Films). Second, the John Edginton film entitled “I Often Dream of Trains in New York” was shown at the festival; it documents the 2008 concert performance by Hitchcock of his 1983 record I Often Dream of Trains. Hitchcock also put on a solo acoustic show on Thursday night (October 15th) to close out the festival, which this year aimed to showcase how film and music are so indelibly tied together.

Hitchcock’s stop at Ardent was originally intended to be a very quick trip, including very basic tracking and mixing of a couple songs which were then going to be immediately mastered to vinyl and were to become the first release under Indie Memphis Records. The whole process was to be documented by filmmaker Peter Gilbert. When they arrived at the studio and began tracking, the help of studio manager and Big Star drummer Jody Stephens was enlisted, and the project ended up being extended into a full day in the studio. Hitchcock recorded a simple acoustic version of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line,” and then a song that he wrote called “Thank You, Time Girl” to which Stephens lent his talents in the way of drums and additional percussion. Jeff Powell engineered the tracking and mixing with Lucas Peterson assisting. The Tracks were mastered to vinyl the next day by Larry Nix of L. Nix mastering, inside Ardent. Look for the release to be out of Indie Memphis Records soon. Stay tuned to ardentstudios.com for release details!

Take a look at Robyn’s Web site to keep up to date on his various endeavors (he is also a painter, actor, and general multimedia guru) or take a look at his offerings on Amazon.com today.

(In the picture, L to R: Robyn Hitchcock, Jeff Powell, Jody Stephens, Peter Gilbert)