You would never suspect a professional recording studio sits nestled inside a log cabin one block south of eastern Raeford Road, two doors away from a Chick-fil-A. And yet, there it stands amongst skinny oak trees, concealing a warm and quiet interior.
Started during the pandemic, Cabin Fever Studio is the brainchild of owners Lynne O’Quinn and audio engineer Currie Wayne Clayton, Jr. The studio and HOW (His Outreach Worldwide) ministry split the building down the center, with O’Quinn running HOW and Clayton overseeing the recording studio.
"We think of this operation like an “east wing, west wing” sort of deal," Clayton says. On one side there’s the ministry, and the other side is the studio.
In between, there’s a full kitchen, wood trim throughout the whole place and plenty of light streaming through the windows. Owing to its log and plaster construction, the building doesn’t budge like a regular house to bodies walking across its floors: it is unbelievably solid.
“We’ve had bands and missionaries stay here,” O’Quinn says. “It’s a really neat place. This house was originally built in 1949.”
O’Quinn is an interesting Fayetteville native. She possesses a sweet disposition, serene blue eyes and, at one time, managed Lynyrd Skynyrd. O’Quinn has connections in Nashville, and she just started a publishing company named Charted Records whose performers, Bailey Morrison and Jonathan Tucker, will perform at the Carolina Country Music Awards in Myrtle Beach, Jan. 23. In fact, Clayton will perform as well.
In what they call the “live room” (which used to be the living room) sits a full drum set and a real first generation 1959 Hammond B3 organ that looks more like a piece of antique furniture than instrument.
“We’re getting ready to mount a TV screen [over the brick fireplace] so the drummer can be in touch with everything” happening in the control room, O’Quinn says.
Entering the control room, the door on the right leads to what is obviously the studio’s point of pride: the vocal booth.
The booth is as professional as it gets, extremely private and oddly deafening because of the way acoustic sound foam (pyramidal and lining the walls) absorbs ambient noises, keeping them from the microphone that’s suspended from the ceiling at the tip of an articulated arm. That’s Ozzy Osbourne’s go-to recording microphone, Clayton says.
The booth is an intimate affair: a video monitor and camera provide two-way communication between singer and engineer.
“It was a bathroom,” Clayton says. “I converted it.”
Clayton has a silver waist-length pony tail, silver goatee and black tattoos. He’s big and intense, yet affable and responsible for every bit of the studio’s trick carpentry. Guitars hang neatly from racks on the walls, along with monitors, microphones and cables running through a hole in the ceiling to another isolation booth upstairs.
In his own music, Clayton plays every instrument except for horns.
“Whatever I hear, I can do,” Clayton says from his seat at the head of Cabin Fever Studio’s nerve center. “That’s the gift I have. It’s not mine. God gave it to me. I’ve never taken a lesson on anything I’m doing.”
That’s the truth, too. Pulling guitars and bass guitars from the racks, Clayton shreds them with the kind of ability you’re either born with or not. Playing drums, Clayton hits them solidly and with an intimate sense of time.
“[Clayton] was born and raised in Haw River,” O’Quinn says. “So, he’s a North Carolina boy, but he also grew up in Delaware” and lived in South Carolina before moving to Fayetteville.
Behind Clayton, a red and massive analogue mixer sprawls out towards a large flatscreen monitor on the wall displaying Pro Tools, a standard in digital mixing software. Incoming recordings first go through the analogue mixer before going to the digital mixer.
There are 16 channels of analogue, Clayton explains, plus eight tracks of pre-amp, giving a total of 24 analogue channels for recording instruments. Digital meaning “so you can see” music in real-time on a screen, he adds.
“We run analogue first,” Clayton says. “We go analogue to digital, and then digital back to analogue” for a super warm sound.
O’Quinn started HOW in 2008 after writing a book entitled “Sharing Jesus With Children Around The World.” Since it was published, the little book has made its way around the globe to an estimated 159 countries, including the entire African continent. Over two million copies have been published, and it has been translated into over 100 languages.
From July 2021 to July 2022, organized by HOW, thousands of pounds worth of foodstuffs, clothes, and book and bed supplies were served to peoples all over the world, as well as three new churches built in Honduras, a church in Pakistan and a primary school in Myanmar.
“It’s interesting,” O’Quinn says. “God just takes you down roads and paths that you have just no idea [about], and all of a sudden it’s really cool.”
Cabin Fever Studio specializes in country music, although they are open to working with different types of genres. In fact, Clayton is in the process of finishing a track with a local rapper.
Clayton is also responsible for much of the production that happens in Cabin Fever Studio, revealing decades worth of musical knowledge to young musicians who’re just beginning to forge their paths in what can be an inhospitable business.
Since Currie Wayne moved to town, people don’t know he’s so talented, O’Quinn says. He tours up and down the east coast performing professionally, and he’s a whirlwind of ideas.
Cabin Fever Studio is proud of Bailey Morrison, Jonathan Tucker and Clayton. In addition to performing at the Carolina Country Music Awards, Bailey Morrison is nominated for Country Single of the Year and Clayton has been nominated for the Damien Horne Humanitarian Award.
The Damien Horne Humanitarian Award is given to those who serve others in their musical pursuits.
For more information, Cabin Fever Studio can be reached at 910-476-7975 and www.CabinFeverStudioProductions.com. The studio is open by appointment only.
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