Most musicians have dreams as they start out. Many want to emulate -- even become -- their musical heroes. Young guitarists want to be Stevie Ray Vaughan or Eddie Van Halen. Young drummers want to be Neil Peart or Keith Moon. Young pianists might want to be Jerry Lee Lewis or Joe Jackson. Even young bass players have their heroes, like Paul McCartney, Jaco Pastorius, or John Entwistle.
CW Smith and Steve Hudspeth of Sound System had similar dreams and similar heroes. But as much as they loved playing music, they enjoyed the fine details of recording even more: composition, arrangement, microphone placement, the stereo image. They read books and magazines, picked apart their favorite records, and learned from the tips of the best. They wanted to be George Martin and Alan Parsons.
In October 1992, three years after Sound System broke up, and a year after their concert promotions fiasco of 1991, Steve and CW pooled their equipment, and bought out equipment from Darrell DePue of Adel, who was retiring. They subscribed to more pro audio magazines, bought numerous books on business and sound, and drew up a business plan. Former bandmate Ray Yenzer signed on to help with some of the business aspects. Now they needed two only two more things: a studio building, and a name.
The three partners knew that they wanted to do more than just record garage bands and radio commercials. They eventually wanted to expand into a record label, and maybe even a third branch -- a radio station? a record store? a guitar shop? another go at concert promotions? The possibilities seemed endless.
When a gambler bets on three horses to come in first, second, and third in a horse race, and those same horses come in in that same order, the gambler is said to have won the trifecta -- the perfect combination of a set of three variables. CW floated this idea to Steve and Ray, and although they weren't initially keen on the gambling angle, the name did have a certain flair to it: Trifecta Recording Studio.
Trifecta's first location -- as they were learning their craft and putting together the business papers -- was in the lone bedroom of CW's and Donna's rental house on Hartford Avenue in Des Moines. There, they hooked up the Tascam 16-track recorder to their Carvin mixing console and ran the equipment through its paces. CW recorded South of Dakota, while Steve and Ray concentrated on Steve's instrumental Christmas album, Winter Wonderland.
In December 1993, CW and Donna moved to a larger rental house on Evans Street. Trifecta was moved out of the bedroom and into the basement (making all parties much happier). Here, Trifecta began recording local bands, and made some really great recordings for Heather Dawn, Unfair Superpowers, The Mighty Plastisols, Vivid, the Gloryland Quartet, and a few others. But as their clientele grew, the 600-square-foot basement began to get a little confining.
In June 1995, CW and Donna purchased a house on 51st Court on Des Moines' east side. The house was on the very edge of the city limits, backed up against a cornfield, in a nice, quiet neighborhood. But the real selling point was the 1700-square-foot, four-car garage behind the house. CW, Steve, and Ray spent the next two years gutting the building, rewiring, insulating, soundproofing, drywalling, and building the ultimate project studio: Trifecta's new home. Ray left the business in 1996, moving to Wyoming.
From the time they re-opened their doors in 1997 -- now a fully-digital studio -- CW and Steve produced dozens upon dozens of great area artists: Epiphany, The Lap Dogs, Bill Melton, Valet, Jeff Brinkman, Black Market Fetus, the Lance Harrison Group, Heather Hansen, Sajjad Alam, even a top-secret session with Corey Taylor of Slipknot!
The idea of a record label resurfaced in 1998, followed shortly by Trifecta Television, a weekly 30-minute program to run on local-access cable channels in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Illinois, and Wisconsin. The idea was of course to promote Trifecta Records' own artists, but also to give attention to well-deserving Midwest musicians. There were music videos, interviews, and spotlights on regional music venues.
All was going quite well for a while, although the time commitments were staggering. CW and Steve were each working full-time jobs during the day, then coming back to the studio to work sessions, and filling open evenings with video shoots and editing for the show. Their families jealously guarded the few precious hours of downtime that were left.
Finally, Steve had had enough. In September 2002, he announced that he was leaving the business. CW begged him to stay, but Steve had a point when he said, "CW, we've been on the verge for ten years. I can't do it any more." CW tried to hold the ends together for a few weeks, then realized that in order to take up Steve's slack, he'd have to put in twice as many hours in the studio. Already working 90-hour weeks, he realized he couldn't exactly double that. And it wouldn't be fair to Donna or to their new daughter.
Steve and CW sold some of the studio's equipment, and split the rest based loosely on their shares of the company. Steve built a little project studio in his basement -- for his own music and an occasional band he feels really strongly about -- which he calls Tiller Productions. CW and Donna moved to Atlantic in 2004, where he's built a basement workspace as well: a computer workshop called WinMacTech, and a project studio dubbed Silicon Alley.
After spending hard-earned studio money on a federal trademark for Trifecta, CW and Steve aren't about to just let it go. The Trifecta Records label will resurface now and again as the two continue to produce music -- their own music, on their own terms.
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