Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series about the past, present and future of 3 Elliott Studio to commemorate its 10-year anniversary.
When the time comes for folk-rock, four-piece Southeast Engine to record a new album, its members kick into their fifth gear.
“Josh Antonuccio is the fifth gear of the Southeast Engine,” lead vocalist and guitarist Adam Remnant said of the band’s longtime producer. “That was our fun little metaphor.”
As co-owner of 3 Elliott Studio in Athens since its founding in 2001, Antonuccio has overseen almost all of Southeast Engine’s in-studio career. Their work together culminates with Canary, the band’s fourth studio album, which was released Tuesday.
“Southeast Engine’s kind of grown up through the studio,” Antonuccio said. “Beyond a working relationship, we’re all really good friends.”
Both the band and the studio experienced growing pains at about the same time in 2004. Southeast Engine was tackling a lineup change and finishing up its first studio album, Coming to Terms with Gravity. Meanwhile, 3 Elliott was planning its renovation from a two-room facility in co-owner Chris Pyle’s Elliott Street garage into its current five-room form.
“I think Southeast Engine was also kind of coming into our own on that album, shedding the band that we were and becoming a new band,” Remnant said. “When that album was done, 3 Elliott had a new studio and we had a new album, and we were all looking at that in a new way.”
Antonuccio got along with the band so well he was even a part of it for a few years. He played on Southeast Engine’s second studio album, A Wheel Within a Wheel, and was a fixture in its lineup from 2005–2007 before his commitment to 3 Elliott tied him to Athens and left him unable to tour.
On Canary, Southeast Engine’s current lineup — Adam Remnant; his brother and bassist Jesse Remnant; drummer Leo DeLuca; and multi-instrumentalist Billy Matheny — took another step forward with its harmonizing folk sound, receiving glowing reviews from acclaimed indie sites such as Paste and The A.V. Club in the process. Adam wrote the album, an ode to Southeast Ohio during the 1930s, after a chance encounter with the son of the man who built his house in Athens.
“We got to talking, and he started to describe … what life was like for him and his family at that time,” Adam Remnant said. “They built (my house) out of clay block because it was the cheapest material at the time during the Depression. I didn’t think that much about it, but then when I started writing some new songs, I was writing about that.”
In the studio at 3 Elliott, Southeast Engine went back to basics after a haunting session recording 2009 album From the Forest to the Sea in an abandoned middle school in Stewart. Though Antonuccio and the band didn’t have to relocate any equipment this time around — and avoided the sweltering heat and swarms of bats — the overall vibe was the same, Antonuccio said.
“It was the same thing. It was a long weekend, all of us here together, everybody playing in the room,” he said. “Aesthetically, we’re all on the same page that we want the sound of a band playing together. We don’t want to do a lot of stacking or layering of the tracks … it’s like letting the songs kind of move organically in space. They’re all about that.”
For the members of Southeast Engine, one of the best parts about recording at 3 Elliott is the ability to let go and immerse themselves in the music. Jesse Remnant, who in addition to playing bass in his brother’s band is finishing his second solo album at the studio, often heads to 3 Elliott when he needs a boost of creative energy.
“There have been days where I’m doing demos by myself — I actually just sat down for 12 hours in one day, and it goes by super fast,” he said. “I just think about nothing else but that. It’s an environment that allows that.”
Although Southeast Engine has already made four albums with Antonuccio, Adam Remnant said he’s in no rush to work with a new producer.
“It feels really natural working with Josh,” he said. “Like I said, it feels like the fifth gear.”
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