Arts & Entertainment
‘Startracker’ shoots for Lincoln’s stars
Basement studio
offers personal,
casual recording
By Chris Burchard
Staff Reporter
It lies within the bowels of Brett
Holihan’s house: a mass of black and
silver shapes with words like Lexi
con, Alesis and Korg glaring from
their surfaces, bound together by
strands of life-giving electric wire.
They arc portions of a greater crea
ture named Startracker.
But what lurks in the basement of
933 N. 45th St. isn’t a brain-devour
ing science fiction monster or the
latest Pentagon financial snafu. It’s
Holihan’s baby.
“Having my own studio was al
ways a dream,” Holihan said, refer
ring to the recording studio he opened
in Lincoln 12 years ago. Startracker is
one of only a few full-service record
ing facilities in the Lincoln area.
“It started small and grew slowly,”
Holihan said. When it opened, the
studio consisted of four pieces of
equipment, the most sophisticated of
which was a recl-to-rcel eight-track
recorder. Now Startracker’s compo
nents number in the dozens and arc
worth about $80,000, he said.
And the basement housing the
equipment is hardly a dank, creepy
boiler room or cellar. It’s a $26,000
structure complete with slanted walls,
ceilings and floors, quarter-inch-thick
glass separating the sound room from
the mixing room, and hundreds of
feci of aluminum screen inside the
walls to deflect radio interference.
It’s comfortable, too. The walls
arc paneled with angled wood; thick
carpet covers the floor. A large couch
dominates the mixing room.
“I think it’s a matter of style,”
Holihan said. “It’s a more personal
atmosphere. It helps create a relation
ship w ith the client. Going to a com
mercial building is a little scary for
many artists ... the woodwork here,
the couch, the house — it just helps.”
Startrackcr certainly hasn’t scared
away any busincs's. The studio 4&
operating debt-free, Holihan said, with
its facilities and equipment paid for.
“I just seem to make the right
business decisions intuitively,” he said.
Holihan said he saw the studio as a
compromise between business and
music.
‘‘I love music, and I love being
able to hook my artistic talent up with
being able to cam a living,” he said.
“The recording studio is a viable
medium to connect an artist to the
business world.”
That connection can take many
forms, Holihan said. He arranges and
orchestrates the works of other artists
to their specifications, duplicates
cassettes (up to 30 at a lime) and rents
out his sludio to those needing his
equipment.
He also composes with artistic
license, he said, which includes writ
ing musical pieces for private indi
viduals, corporations and businesses.
Companies characteristically want
his music for use in grand openings,
dinnerparties, promotional purposes,
theme songs and ceremonies. Indi
vidual needs get a bit stranger, from
psychologists who want background
music for guided imagery tapes to a
woman who wanted music to accom
pany a video of her horse.
Startrackcr produces commercials
and jingles, too. Remember “Video
Fever at the Video Station?” That
grand opening theme was Holihan’s.
He’s also jingled for Havelock Bank
and the Volunteer Connection in
Lincoln, Gcrhold Concrete in Nor
folk and businesses in Wisconsin,
including the Elegant Farmer and Alien
Import Auto.
Jingles arc complicated orchestra
tions, Holihan said, sometimes in
volving weeks of planning and sludio
time. They aren’t cheap, either, rang
ing from SI,500 to S4,000 apiece in
Nebraska’s market to more than S6,000
in other states, he said.
Holihan’s talents don’t end with
jingles, though. Startracker has re
corded demo tapes by such groups as
the Yard Apes, Stale of Shock, the
Echoing Green, Sawhorse and the
Demagogues as well as a host of
others.
Holihan said he’ll record anything
— country, classical, rock, folk and
alternative.
The Millions cut its first tape at
Startracker, and the band’s new label
— Smash Records — accepted a
number of Holihan’s original tracks
for the recent album, as well as his
trumpet solo for the song “Ruth S lark -
man.”
Marty Amsler, bass player for The
Millions, said Startracker is “great
It’s a really good, inexpensive way to
gel some great-sounding demos.” •
Amsler said Holihan “gets so into
the bands he’s working with — he’s
likea mad scientist behind themixing
board.”
And Holihan is more than a good
producer and recording engineer,
Amsler said.
“Brett’s a very talented musician
and we loved whal he came up with
for ‘Ruth Starkman,’” he said.
Holihan credited what he calls his
family’s “musical gene pool” for his
abilities. His father played piano with
the famous Sammy Kaye Orchestra,
and his mother was an accomplished
concert pianist, he said.
“Whether I can stand up to those
standards remains to be seen,” he
said.
Holihan, who grew up primarily in
Ohio and Wisconsin, said he was
always interested in music. At age 10
he tried to write his first piece of
music called “The Clock.”
Since then he’s studied with such
famous performers as Ted Jackson
and Jimmy Cheatham, the last living
member of Duke Ellington’s original
band.
“I grew like a weed studying with
him,” he said.
Holihan loured in a number of
bands during his college years, in
cluding Jcttin Janes, Minstrel (which
opened for The Monkeys on the reun
ion lour) and Chucky and the Dip
sticks, the band which made him the
most money, he said.
He eventually quit those bands to
pursue his studies, he said. He re
ceived his undergraduate degree in
music history and theory from the
University of Wisconsin at Madison
before coming to the University of
Ncbraska-Lincoln.
He said he was drawn here by
Randall Snyder, a professor in the
School of Music, who offered him a
teaching assistantship.
“It was a gofer assignment,’’ Holihan
said. He graded papers, made up class
rosters and checked for student pla
giarism. “I thought it would be more
teaching.”
That time in his life, Holihan said,
was a period of soul searching in
which he weighed teaching music
against opening a recording studio or
performing on the road.
“I had a burning desire to open a
studio,” he said.
“1 decided I was not going to teach
unless 1 totally chose to, absolutely
100 percent, with my full mind, body
and soul. 1 knew that’s what it lakes to
be an cncourager — to be able to
influence children, adults, whatever.
For me, I hadn’t chosen. If some day
my heart says 1 really want to teach,
I’ll do that.”
So Holihan tried to open the studio
while he worked on his thesis.
“That didn’t work. My thesis is
silling upstairs with an inch of dust on
it.”
He said he plans to finish it some
day.
“Sure, I made some mistakes,”
Holihan said, but he has few regrets.
"I struggled a lot of years to open
up to understand myself,” he said.
“At this time I feel successful. I feel
very confident. I feel very whole as a
person doing exactly what I’m doing.
I get to perform at the studio. 1 get to
write music, and I get to help people
bring their music into the world.
‘‘I’m having a blast. I love it.”
Erik Unger/DN
Brett Holihan sits in his homemade basement studio, Startracker, where Lincoln bands such
as The Millions have recorded.
Fates Warning wraps up
tour with show in Omaha
coru'prt
By John Payne
Senior Reporter
If you look closely ai “Parallels,”
the fifth and latest album from Fates
Warning, you might notice that the
old man adorning the cover is the
same wrinkly gentleman from those
Mctallica videos.
And if you listen closely to the
eight tracks inside, you’ll hear what a
fully matured metal band sounds like.
The Toronto-based quintet, which
has drawn comparisons with
Queensryche, will wind down its
American tour tonight at the Ranch
Bowl in Omaha (tickets are $9.75,
available at the Ranch Bowl or Tick
etMaster outlets).
Calling from a truck stop “some
where between Chicago and Omaha,”
Fates guitarist Frank Aresti said the
tour has been the most fruitful of the
band’s eight-year career. Fates has
picked up new fans in every city,
Aresti said.
“We’ve been surprised by the sell
outs,” he said.
“I think ‘Parallels’ has brought us
a lot of new fans. We’re doing belter
in certain places, like San Francisco,
where we didn’t have that broad of a
fan base before.”
If “Parallels” is the reason for the
band’s snowballing success, it would
make perfect sense. Produced by Terry
Brown of Rush lame, “Parallels is
Fates’ most polished work to date,
retaining the group’s flare for musi
cal exhibitionism, but with the em
phasis on accessible rock melodies.
The vid^o for “Eye to Eye,” the
second single Trom the LP, was re
cently picked as the best new clip on
MTV’s “Headbanger’s Ball.”
“He just did a great job,” Aresti
said of Brown’s studio help. “He made
us sound better, and at the same time
he didn’t interfere too much. If we
were having one of those days when
things weren’t going well, he’d be
like?Don’t worry about it, let’s go get
a drink and we’ll come back to it.’”
Brown and Fates also taper the
Courtasy ot Matalblada Racords
Metal-mongering Fates Warning will be at the Ranch Bowl tonight.
songs considerably. Unlike previous
efforts, such as “Perfect Symmetry”
and “No Exit,” the tunes are closer to
four, rather than eight, minutes this
time around.
“In the past we were into that pro
f;ressive sound. I think with our first
our albums we went so far in that
direction that we didn’t need to do
any more," Aresti said.
“I think we’re through with that
phase where we were constantly prov
ing ourselves as musicians.”
Today’s show starts at 9 am. Doors
open at 8 p.m.
