Today we’d like to introduce you to Jesse Case.
Hi Jesse, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
After spending 10+ years based in Chicago as a composer, producer, sound designer, songwriter, musical director, and multi-instrumentalist – logging many hours on both sides of soundboards at some of the best studios in the world and countless DIY living room recordings – I discovered that the make-or-break element of creating and recording quality music is not the quality of the gear or the room or even of the musicians doing the playing, but rather the quality of the experience itself.
Once we started a family, my wife and I made the decision to leave the hustle and bustle of big city life behind and carry out our dream of moving to the country, doing a lot of remote and travel-based work, and converting a giant barn into a destination music studio where artists can truly retreat and focus on the creative process. So we bought a 5-acre property surrounded by cornfields about 45 minutes outside of St. Louis and got to work custom-building our own studio and workspace with quality and uniqueness of the experience first and foremost in our minds.
In doing this, we quickly realized that artists needed a comfortable, cozy place to stay in order to really immerse themselves into this whole thing- so we converted the upper floor of the barn into a fully furnished loft space that can sleep up to 8 people, complete with kitchen, full bath, etc. We spent a large part of the pandemic completing the design and building process and fine-tuning a bunch of virtual offerings. Once the project was complete and vaccines started becoming widely available, people couldn’t wait to start traveling again, and artists couldn’t wait to finally do something with what they had created during their time stuck quarantining at home.
We were so thankful to get a bunch of very talented people into our space pretty much right away, and it quickly became clear to us that while we may serve all different kinds of musical artists, one thing they all seem to have in common is that they really appreciate and enjoy the “escape” from city life, the highly individualized experience, the efficient and yet experimental nature of the work process, and the laid-back country vibe, and it has been so fulfilling and rewarding to watch creatives really thrive in this sort of environment.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I love the space and the fresh air out here, but as a tried and true city boy, the learning curve of country life has been pretty steep. I killed eight trees on the property pretty much immediately because I didn’t know what a bagworm was, for example. But the biggest adjustment has been a positive one – which oddly enough began about a week after we arrived when a very nice woman from down the road came knocking one day asking if we had “seen a horse around here anywhere” because “the idiot got out again.”
We hadn’t, but we chatted on the porch for about half an hour nonetheless. Over the next month or so this interaction heralded a cavalcade of “neighbors” (I use this term loosely as the nearest house is about half a mile down the road) just driving up to say hi – often coming right up to the back door as if we were already old friends. In all the years of living in our cramped Chicago condo, we met maybe two of our approximately 40 building-mates, but suddenly here we were in a small town, and life in a small town necessitates a different kind of accountability to each other that I think is wonderful and didn’t realize I was missing.
Besides the adjustment to country living, I built a music studio because I want to make music, so I started out by approaching it the way a musician would approach a project like this – which is to say, freewheeling and disorganized. It took me a while to realize that I had to start thinking like a businessman first – which, thinking like a musician, I resented wholeheartedly. I want to record bands and mix tracks all day; I don’t want to organize receipts and learn about SEO.
The good news is that none of that stuff is as daunting or as soul-sucking as it seemed at first. It just required a change in perspective and in priorities. If I can spend an hour watching Tony Maserati mix drums I can spend thirty minutes learning about marketing – and if I can spend a hundred bucks a month on plug-ins, I can spend ten to subscribe to an app that basically does my taxes for me.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
In Chicago, I spent a lot of time working at The Second City as the resident musical director where I co-created five revues, all Jeff-Nominated. There were countless hours at the piano underscoring live improv performances, and lots of sound design and songwriting for sketch revues, videos, podcasts, short films, etc. So a lot of my background and training is in comedy and improvisation as well as music, and I think that shows up in my work and in the process quite a bit.
I’m used to approaching new ideas with an open mind and readiness to build on even the weirdest and most offbeat right there at the moment and used to approaching new work very experimentally and without the fear of failing in front of people, usually with a sense of humor and a certain level of “down-to-earth.” I’ve also always had a passion for cranking out beats. So between those two major parts of my work experience as a musician, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the best comedians in the biz (SNL folks like Chris Redd, Aidy Bryant, and The Lonely Island, to name a few) as well as A-List rappers like Lil’ Wayne, Future, and Rhymefest.
I’ve done all kinds of production work though and have truly enjoyed working with classical musicians, jazz trios, and making rock/pop or even country tracks as well. I actually studied Theatre in college, believe it or not. Two of my favorite projects were getting to co-write, compose, arrange, and musically direct a show at Lyric Opera of Chicago called, “The Second City’s Guide to the Opera” and its more recent follow-up, “Longer! Louder! Wagner!” in which I randomly got to star as the crazy Richard Wagner. So genre-wise, I’m all over the place and pretty much game for anything.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs, or other resources you think our readers should check out?
I tend to seek out material that makes the “boring” parts of my job more entertaining, In my case, things related to the day-to-day workings of running and growing a business, entrepreneurship, engaging with clients- things that I’m not really passionate about, but which I recognize are necessary.
There’s a podcast called The Six Figure Home Studio that I’ve found invaluable, and back when I was traveling more- I made a habit of buying a business or entrepreneurship-related book for plane rides. My most recent purchase was a book called “The Lean Startup” which was emphatically NOT about opening a music studio and was hardly related.
However, a lot of the insights within it actually resonated- things like which gear should I buy, how I should go about reaching out to new musicians, etc.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://www.outsideraudio.com/
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/outsideraudio
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AudioOutsider
