By the end of June, only echoes will remain of the most sonorous fixture of Sechelt’s Sunshine Coast Arts Centre. After 14 years, Steve Wright — composer, performer and music educator — is shutting down the Sound Space.
“It was always my dream to have exactly what you see here,” said Wright, “which is a studio where I’m surrounded by all the instruments. And where I can play with lots of different people in lots of different genres with no label telling me what to do.”
Even when silent, the headquarters for the centre’s longtime resident musician reverberate with musical potential. Guitars hang from hooks within easy reach. A deconstructed piano adorns another wall. A shelf groans under the accumulated weight of albums written and recorded in the sunlit studio.
“I thought maybe I would be an independent musician or something,” said Wright, whose four-decade musical career began as a teenager accompanying his brother on the drums. “I didn’t know that I would be teaching and mentoring.”
Wright’s own artistic résumé is impressive enough — last year he toured the Coast playing solo and alongside his Old Yeller bandmates, revisiting years of performances at local festivals and tribute shows. He is a veteran recordist, arranger and producer. But when he starts counting the emerging artists whose skills were shaped in the back of the Arts Centre, an already potent impact is amplified even further.
He estimates that he’s conducted 14,000 sessions in the studio. Wright routinely teaches the rudiments of guitar, bass and drums, but his approach to music education is uniquely recording-centric. Even with instrumental neophytes, he routinely sets up a microphone and lays down a fresh track. “I’ll record it, speed it up. I’ll sample it,” he said. “And then I’ll put a DJ beat to it. And students are like: that’s me? It still comes from them, but I have the know-how to turn it into something bigger that is all of a sudden gratifying.”
The shortcuts to sounding cool — paired with Wright’s openness to unconventional invention — led to a packed teaching and recording schedule. In the beginning, pint-sized drummers, guitarists and vocalists flocked to the studio and summer rock day camps, impressed that Wright treated them not as children but as musical colleagues.
Now adults, alumni artists like Solomon Hergesheimer are gigging around the Coast and beyond. Simon Cameron — who started lessons at the age of six by crooning bluesy improvised vocals into a condenser mic — is studying music production at Douglas College. Ana-Eve Shendebray is “crushing” the electronic music scene, said Wright, who just finished mixing their latest album. Spade Hoile’s 2022 hard rock album This is the document was a vital step in the virtuoso drummer’s self-actualization.
“It’s been an amazing series of experiences, with laughter and philosophical discussions,” said Wright. “My favourite metaphor is cotton candy,” he added, using the turntable and guitar solos as examples: such effects are best when used sparingly. “It’s bright. It’s super tasty. But too much of it will make you sick. I help students build a whole vocabulary of communication that’s applicable through so many things in life.”
Wright made the decision to shut down the studio when he began to tally the cumulative number of projects he’d tackled there — and dream about new directions and bigger collaborations beyond the bounds of the studio’s instrument-laden walls. His students supported the decision. The hardest part was giving himself permission. “What if I took my foot off the gas?” he wondered. “Am I allowed to stop?”
Listeners can sample generations of Sound Studio artists through recordings posted at its website: thesoundspace.net/recordings.html.
“We don’t talk about the [record] industry too much in here,” explained Wright. “It’s more about how to express yourself. How to write a song. Because it’s a lifelong journey to try to get that one that really encapsulates how you feel.”
