For a while when I was in college, Smart Studios was famous. It wasn’t as well known as Abbey Road or Electric Lady, but I don’t recall the names of any other recording studios from the era of the late eighties and early nineties. It was the one-two punch of Nirvana’s Nevermind and Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish that did it. Both records were produced by Butch Vig and recorded, at least in part, at Smart Studios, and the seismic thump that both releases had on college radio caused it to seem like there was a little bit of magic existing inside that space.

Of course, I also knew about Smart Studios because it resided in Madison, Wisconsin. Loving music in America’s Dairyland can be tough sometimes. You invariably feel so distant from the epicenters of audio coolness. While I was in school, all of the coolest band were from Athens, Georgia; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; or Seattle, Washington, about as far away from us as could be. The cool club of the moment was The Knitting Factory, impossibly distant in New York City. Our favored bands didn’t even come to our state on tour, often figuring that Chicago was far enough north as the trekked through the middle of the country. To have Smart Studios in Wisconsin made it feel like the music we loved was finally coming to us a little bit to match all the time we spent venturing off to find it.

After college, I eventually found my way to a house on East Washington Avenue, just a few blocks down the road from the nondescript brick building that housed Smart Studios. Like others who lived in close proximity, I never had any personal interactions there. I never saw any rock stars stumbling out of there, or got any sort of access to their mystical confines. I never even heard any stories, beyond one about Winona Ryder that was fourth- or fifth-hand, probably false, and too unflattering to share. Still, it was good to know it was there. It kept our city, our state connected to the music. We didn’t just play it, we didn’t just listen to it, we didn’t just love it. As least a few people in the heart of town were working to make it too.

Young Fresh Fellows, “Sitting on a Pitchfork”

(Disclaimer: The album Electric Bird Digest by Young Fresh Fellows is one of those albums that was produced, at least in part, at Smart Studios. According to allmusic, it was recorded in March of 1991, so they may very well have been the next band booked after Smashing Pumpkins vacated the space. The album is also out of print, so this song from it is presented here with the understanding that it is unavailable for purchase through any means that will provide money to the band. If anyone with due authority to do so asks me to remove it from the Interweb, I will gladly comply.)