Today we’d like to introduce you to Bret Max, Nick Hein, and DrewBeats. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Nick Hein is the Owner and CCO of the business. He has been my best friend for almost 15 years. DrewBeats is a local DJ & Producer that started to revive the studio about 2 years before it officially became Station 8 Productions. Nick’s family acquired the studio in 2009 from some old Blues heads that built it up in the ’70s. It’s located on the edge of the neighborhood that housed music legends like Johnny Cash and a plethora of other famous Memphis musicians.
Nick’s grandfather is Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley’s guitar player. A lot of Scotty’s recording equipment, including his original reverb chamber and his 80th anniversary Gibson ES-295, sits in the studio as we speak. Not to mention the mics that we have pictures of Paul McCartney singing out of… it’s just a special place with a lot of history and Memphis music legendry is at the roots.
It operated as a studio for about 3-4 years starting in 2009 and went dormant after Nick went to work in film with Hot Key Studios. Nick is a brilliant musician and producer/engineer, but his passion has always been film. Over the years, he developed highly professional skills and collected top-tier equipment for full film productions. After leaving Hot Key, he came back home.
Around this time, DrewBeats was growing as a local Producer and DJ in Memphis, TN. He needed a home to make music and it was clear that Station 8 would be a perfect fit for what he wanted to accomplish.
So we had a capable arm for film and a capable arm for audio and all the equipment to do it in premium quality. A business was forming. Nick asked me, Bret Max, to meet him in September of 2020 and told me he thought this could be a business but that he had no idea how to make it whole. He asked me if I could help him. I had been operating in business management since I was 19 years old across a multitude of industries and had just spent the prior 4 years helping people open businesses quite successfully. I thought about it heavily and then agreed.
It began by taking the remainder of 2019 and completely rebuilding the space. After not being used for so long, it needed some major remodeling. I have a background in carpentry/home building and design, so we put together a plan. We tore everything out and completely refreshed the studio. It became the home base, and in February of 2021, we officiated the business as an LLC.
We decided that the best thing to do to create awareness of our brand and studio was to give back to the thing that made the studio possible in the first place: Memphis music. So we took advantage of the space and formulated our first production called The Hum. It’s like Tiny Desk concerts, but way better. We do not charge artists, and it’s for Memphis artists more than anyone else. It’s an all-inclusive experience centered on creating content and celebrating the artist.
We build a custom set to represent the artist and their sound, we photograph them, we film their set, record/mix/master their set, we do a podcast with them, and we give them tons of marketing content to celebrate the show and themselves. The list goes on. It’s all about the artist and lifting them up for what they do and giving the audience every way we can to engage with them in the world of multi-media. There is something there for everyone.
Memphis music talent is abundant and quickly accelerated the reach of the show. Memphis hadn’t seen anything of this kind of quality and we were happy to bring it. We started to break it down. The Hum: Live at the 8 for bands in Memphis. The Hum: After Dark for DJs and electronic artists. The Hum: Legends Series to capture Memphis legends and preserve/document their history. The Hum: Discover 901 to highlight Entrepreneurs, innovators, and business owners. It has not even been a year and already it has grown so much.
We are particularly proud of the chapter we did for The Hum: Legends Series with Al Kapone, a Memphis legend who also wrote Whoop that Trick for the renowned Craig Brewer film “Hustle and Flow”.
You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJfiHgsa1qw&t=1063s.
As we produce The Hum, our network started to grow quickly. DrewBeats stays busy in the audio world at the studio making magic with Memphis artists. We have grown on a team of cinematographers with Tatsuya Graham and Trevor Finney because work has become more and more. It has been beautiful!
We still produce The Hum at no cost to the artist and we are getting ready to start filming Season 2. We have found our major revenue sources as a business. A bulk of our revenue as a business comes from marketing media and marketing strategy/consulting for local businesses like Forward Counseling, Memphis Mushroom Festival, Gill Family Law, and beyond.
The companies we work with are highly successful and do tremendous things for our community and we couldn’t be more thankful to be able to sustain ourselves while we do it and even continue to grow.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Of course not. Donating our time and money to create The Hum was a real struggle and a big gamble. But we went all in. We believed that if we put other people first, success would follow. So we invested in our community and the people that make it happen. We created awesome content and got great exposure and became a part of a much bigger network. It was even more difficult, in a way, to shift from that mindset into one that was profit-driven so we could continue to operate and create more.
The attention The Hum brought us has taken us very far in not even a year. But we still had to ‘last’ through 2021 all the while paying ourselves and for our in-house productions. Not to mention the hurdle of building a contract to protect us and the artist.
It took us a long while to find a solid and consistent format for the show. The amount of preparation is extensive and heavily relies on the artists, all of which are different. We had to really work on establishing expectations and conditions in making these without making them too business-oriented. We want to take care of the artist, but we also can’t waste our time.
Getting the first contract with a business took over 6 months. I was holding a lot of stress around it, but after that first domino fell and they saw our work, the referrals started to come in and now we are staying busy!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Station 8 Productions?
These questions have been well answered in my previous response, but it’s worth mentioning that we would love to grow The Hum. Tiny Desk with NPR has been wildly successful and we know that what we do is better and more intimate and deserves a better platform than YouTube.
We are also patient though. 21 productions this year for The Hum, and we hope for 30 next year! Though it’s built by Memphis artists and unifies them across all genres, we would welcome artists from outside to be a part of the show if it were the right fit.
We are a full Creative Studio with a specialization in Audio/Visual work of top tier quality.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
Bret: The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj, The Leftovers – A series by Damen Lindelof made from a book, all of Anthony Bourdain’s work. Books by Yuval Noah Harari, A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, books by Graham Hancock, Terrence McKenna’s Work, books by Carlos Castaneda.
Honestly too many to list.
Nick:
Directors like Mike Flanagan and Ari Aster’s film work.
Drew:
Stealing Fire by Jamie Wheal, Steven Kotler, Pretty Lights Producers like The Alchemist, Timbaland, and Scott Storch.
Contact Info:
- Email: create@station8productions.com
- Website: www.station8productions.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/station_8/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Station8Productions
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/station8productions
Image Credits
Jenny Max (@jxenvisions)
