Written by: Blake Guthrie
Head Engineer: Tim Roberts
Owner/Operator: Mike Pellino
Photo Album
Around the corner and up the road from the new downtown Virginia Beach a dream has been under construction. A community of musicians, friends, colleagues, carpenters, and artists got their hands dirty to help. Over a year has flown by since the first measurements and blue prints were configured. This dream, which during the challenging construction had many nightmarish of evenings, is humming and ready and willing to jam. Soul Haven Recording is a complete professional recording studio built for and catering toward the local musician, with the experience of a young and successful music engineer who has worked with every major producer in Virginia, and the knowledge of a music veteran whose insight reaches far beyond simple management.
I sat down with studio manager Mickey Pellino and head engineer Tim Roberts to discover what they were all about and their goals for their new business venture.
Writer - So Mickey, where did you get your start in the recording aspect of music, and when did you know it was going to be an integral part of your Life?
Mickey - For the past 7 years , but I have been doodling since I was 18, and started recording some of that doodling having fun, and had been playing with friends around my own place. It gave me something else to mess with while others were playing. I knew I liked to capture the music while others were into their own jamming.
Tim - Since I was 9
Writer - How did you two meet?
Mickey - At ocean Eddies, through the Big Mighty, he started coming to see the Big Mighty because a friend of his had told him to check this band out. Timmy was quite interested in recording them and knew he could get a good price through Windmark.
Writer - Why do you suppose so much time has passed since a band from Hampton Roads has made their mark in the national scene?
Tim - No one has been given hope, no one can be trusted anymore. There has never really been a love for a local artist in this area. When you’re talking about music and everything that comes with it, Hip-Hop has taken over. Look at clubs and bars, look what you are forced to listen to at those places. A band needs to learn how to properly promote their band. A recording studio needs to help mold the artist, and there has been major recording studios producing in Virginia Beach. Their main concern was to pay the bills, and they did not and still don’t focus on the artist. No one has taken them under their wings to show them what a good album needs.
Mickey - Its just record you and get you out the door.
Tim - We are different here at SoulHaven, we are trying to find the talent. We and our team are out there actively seeking talent all over Virginia. Short of Dave Mathews and Bruce Hornsby who continue to bring their music back to Virginia to be produced, everyone else might claim to love VA, and do a lot of their own work here, but locals are often left out, and that leaves a bitter taste for local artists.
Mickey - and that’s how we got started, we kept getting pushed and pushed by the people at the studio to do it and continue to do it. We stayed with them thick and thin. Anybody who has made it in any aspect of the industry has gone away from this area. They go to Nashville, they go to New York, I mean there are a lot of people in the music industry from here.
Writer - Would you say your discovery of the Big Mighty helped expedite the process of getting this studio done?
Mickey - It was all apart of the faith of this place.
Timmy - That was the gasoline on the fire, Mickey and I both wanted to find a way to build a studio, I mean I had been dying for a place of my own. I had been working in the professional field since before I finished high school. But both Mickey and The Mighty were a blessing from the music gods. They helped us build this place. A new business like this needs a spark like the mighty to kick it off on the road towards the future of new sounds and new places. Their love and devotion to music, it is their job, they have known themselves and love their work, their work everyday is their music. When I saw that, I knew I had an outlet to go forward with a new chapter of my life. It’s Mickey and my dream, to spread the music of people like them. I know Hampton Roads has more artists like them. A band that can learn from one another, and that’s what I want from an artist that record here. To learn from one another.
Writer - artists that have worked with you tell me that you are known to tell little white lies, while recording, to make their final product better. Could that be true?
Tim - Ughh, I plead the 5th.
Mickey - That was awesome.
Writer - What could local magazines and papers do better to promote and advertise local music events?
Tim - I want to read knowledgeable reviews of shows all over Virginia. Not people who just write their own interviews, and that is what gets published it’s bullshit.
Mickey - And that’s the problem with Splash and Nine-volt, the papers lack of reporters. Its not even a Q&A like this is. I mean these are all fine people, but I know some of them and they are not professionals.
Tim - Who wants a huge newspaper size music magazine. I don’t care if you put it out once or every 3 months, make is smaller and make it easier to use. Not to mention those mags are terrible for our environment.
Writer - Does Soul Haven have any preference in the style or category of music you will be recording in the coming years?
Mickey - We are more about the people.
Tim - We want people that make music, were not into booty shaking money making, we want that kid that got beat up in high school, we want to help create music that makes a person have a more positive day. We want to make music with people that will be huge.
Writer - How may an artist contact you about recording their band with Soul Haven?
Tim - Were private, were not an advertised studio.
Mickey - We’ll find you.
Tim - And were so slammed right now, eventually well have managers that control all that. Our artists, for the next 6 months, have the studio booked. But we are going to make those the best albums they have ever created.
Writer - Finally, What do you want people to leave here with?
Mickey - I have had a lot more conversations with artists about bad studios than good.
Tim - We want them to leave knowing that those songs they came in with in their mind, the ones they wrote and dreamed about 5 years ago or 15 years ago are created. And we truly want the band to want everyone to hear it.