Empty House Studio: a community antenna of cosmic human expansion
Drummer guy, Matthew Tobias offers accessible recording specialties in the thin dystopian high desert of both New Mexico and what remains of its rummaged utopia
The Original Civilized Scheme
During the great human agency extraction that plagued our species from the very first accounts of civilization, where one human gained from the labor of another by way of mental manipulation, the deliberate deconstruction of tribes and community and simultaneous expansion of society (hierarchy) gave fatal illusion to the masses still in view today, live and in living color: individual human agency shall be reserved for the ruling class. Several thousand years after a wheat plant domesticated humans from the hunter/gatherer era, loss of agency is no more prolific, deadly, and painstakingly senseless than in present day New Mexico.
Notoriously ignored and abandoned since 1848, the people of New Mexico have undeservingly been indoctrinated by manipulation of the psyche implemented by the historic ruling class, which left newly acquired and displaced citizens of the new world order to their own devices for basic needs, language, community preservation, and infuriating logistical efficiencies now present well into the 21st century (looking directly at you NMDOT).
The multitude and varied indigenous peoples who were care takers of this territory from the beginning, now nearly extinct, cling to their ethnic threads with the hopes and desperation to rid themselves of colonial rule and return to the lush green valleys and prosperity their people once enjoyed before the global expansion of white suburbia and subsequent massacre of community, culminating in western occupation of the profoundly spiritual Diné-tah we now reside.
When I first moved to Burque in 2019, I thought the enchanted draw was individualism; a sort of hands off approach to letting people be people, which I thought was oddly cool. Something hipsters and gentrifiers hadn’t fucked up yet. {Thanks for the chat, @stxpid} I had a similar life up in Alaska. But the far more poetic draw to New Mexico is that it provides the creative mind with a blank canvas of factory original, numbers matching, human agency of the healing kind, once the shadow work takes hold, lest ye yield your agency forever to the resistance. New Mexico will unapologetically snatch your soul into permanent isolation if you hand it over to her on a greasy, Allsups chimi wrapper of helplessness.
Establishing a community; broadcasting deep into the mystic
Empty House Studio (EHS) is an actual structure in a dysfunctional industrial parcel of lower Wells Park and north downtown Albuquerque, that serves as a quasi hangout for a drummer guy-turned studio owner/operator; the latter more out of community necessity than profit or accolades. Nobody, not a single soul knows it’s there because they are likely in 3rd gear and doing 50 passing the structure getting the hell away from downtown. The building and sonic production within it, serve as both a recording studio and a creative conduit for authentic, mechanical human emotion. It serves as a safe place for those with conviction and fortitude to tell their story and becomes not only a transmitter and broadcast signal to the world, it also receives cosmic signals (love) from the collective effort of all who produce the art of music within the walls of the sole standing house in an area of industrial and humanitarian neglect.
A literal and metaphorical community for songwriters more unsure about their gift than they are about the shady street address, EHS is a clandestine conduit, tapping into those factory-original, ancient capabilities in all humans, often never before actualized by those who stumbled into the community healing antenna disguised as an empty house on a northbound one-way street to the Big Eye: their own human agency.
Matthew Tobias owns and operates EHS, but before, during, and likely well after EHS, he is a drummer guy. Damn good one too. Much like his existence, full of contrasts and enigmas that play unironically well with a wide array of musical personalities. Born to professional musicians, Matthew himself is a veteran gigging/touring/session musician, settled in the New Mexico high desert with his family, and got to work zooming in on the scene and quickly realized a need for quality drumming and “song-centric” recording services across most all genres of music. Works seamlessly well with fun, weird, and groovy projects (Los Mocos, Nara Visa, Tight Pants Corey, Justin McLauchlin) as well as intense healing and high desert soul music, as currently showcased with his longtime bud, Jimmy Deveney. (Matthew is drummer guy with Jimmy’s ultra cool, and super chill, sobering gratitude for life, and human evolution music project in The Hold Fast Union.)
Building Community with friend, fellow musician, Jeff Wilson
Likely one of the best pocket rhythm players in the industry, directly proportionate to his chill and passion for creating song-centric music, bassist Jeff Wilson responds to sonic emotional truth by adding a controlled and melodic rhythm to traditional and contemporary soul and indie music, intuitively accenting the songs most dramatic truth before settling back into the pocket of cadence and rhythm, the mechanical energy of the body. Jeff provides a subdued sense of justice and transformation that play both to his strengths of musical rhythm and to the conviction of the songwriter’s story.
It doesn’t take a respectable degree of musicianship long to figure out who is who in the industry upon arrival in Albuquerque, and while one thing led to another, Jeff acquired the actual structure (empty house) that would become the studio where Matthew Tobias does his thing. Through a deal sealed in fate, Jeff and Matthew would go on to be highly influential community shadow workers, business partners, and those noble enough to have been born with, being an antenna to those born without.
They are exactly the sort of shadow workers that would rather this story not be widely published, not out of fear, but out of notable humility and potential misdirected focus of the music produced there. They hate the business side of music more than I do, and that is a lot my friends, because they themselves have had to live by it. For years.
There is no cosmic music community without those who actualize themselves first, then identifying a lacking among all the peoples, then setting up the antenna, I mean studio, to embrace all those in the darkness and blindspots of their own doubt. Matthew was a positive force multiplier for me, as a brand new writer, new-ish to Albuquerque, and brand new to a profoundly diverse music scene, way back when he first noticed I had an odd curiosity and repeated attendance at live music shows around town. Eternal gratitude for all the love and inclusion I have received into this community of healers.
Deconstructing and rebuilding individual agency
Music is both an art and a language on human’s chosen planet of occupation in the infinite cosmos.
It is not necessarily however, a universal language of community.
For songwriters with very little nurturing from the outside world, getting the song out to the public becomes an arduous series of deconstructing, actualizing, and knowing, all wrapped in a warm tortilla of trusting. All foreign invaders in the damaged psyche of an unhealed artist.
During the subconscious turmoil that occurs in a songwriter’s extraction, the path to effective and often immediate healing and recovery begins with one expertly crafted human interaction: being heard.
The language of community.
Once the songwriter has been heard, community is born and begins to morph itself into a cosmic and spiritual antenna of love. More accurately, acceptance of human life. Rinse and repeat until every human on the planet has been heard, but with the power of exponential expansion. It becomes its own force multiplier.
Whether it be a wayward songwriter or an elite recording artist, being heard and understood is the magical transition of caterpillar to butterfly: the transition from human being to antenna.
Antennas are the OG of quantum existence; no matter its composition, it can both transmit and receive cosmic frequencies and existential energy (music) from whatever keeps us all sort of connected in the ether. All musicians are antennas, but not all antennas are musicians.
Closing
Great songwriters apply a formidable force to the theater of asymmetric warfare within the realization and healing from human suffering; music that deconstructs the resistance and illustrates the blatant, disproportionate lacking in our society.
Through solo or collaborative production efforts, musicians expand the emotion of one’s suffering, often resonating across large demographics of oppressed people. (They also have the same ratio of power in joyous celebrations of life, such as in traditional and indigenous music.)
Matthew Tobias adds a unique and cinematic celebration of life to both his drumming style and his passion for recording those who lived through an ordeal and chose music to convey the story.
As a drummer and operator/producer of a recording studio, Matthew knows exactly what he and his equipment can and cannot do, yet to tell another human being (the songwriter) that they can do a thing without them knowing they can do the thing runs counter to the processes of our (damaged) vane brains. Matthew knows how to override the doubting feature in musicians (and new writers) to revive the dormant power they were born with: human agency buried beneath the rubble of life.
As performing drummer guy with love for all humans with a story to tell, he expands the theater of human celebration; as studio guy, he expands the theater of human experience through his EHS antenna.
Matthew as community-actualized guy, expands the theater of human agency.
Stringer.
Author’s notes:
The piece written above can be altered to suit nearly anyone’s taste in music, or in life; could be any studio, backroom bar hideout, basement, or garage in America. Anyone who makes music can record and produce it in any manner or variety of methods.
In theory, I began “writing this piece” way back when I met Matthew, maybe December-ish 2022, and the emphasis of it reveals not only the origin of abandonment, gross negligence, and complete lack of community throughout “civilized” history and the parallels of modern-day Albuquerque, especially in the downtown area and music scene, it also reveals the origin of our acquaintance and subsequent friendship that really is nothing more or less than a mutual respect between creators and brotherly seekers of human truth.
The story also highlights my 2-year-old and still ongoing research on 1) highly effective indigenous community actualization that was white washed from our nation and others 2) the blatant and endless array of unsustainable lacking in all human societies/systems and 3) music as therapy for anyone who seeks to heal from their trauma or toxic blindspots. Matthew, Jeff, Johnny, Jimmy, Charlie, Paul, and other music shadow workers like Dee Brown, Artha Meadors, Adam Hooks, Alex McMahon, Felix Peralta, Mo & Karie, Dave Purcell, Claudio Tolousse, Jesse Mortensen, @stxpid, @firebirdfm and a very unknown grouping of other “others” out there I don’t know about, all have inspired me to begin writing in my truest voice and passion, without self-imposed fear or doubt.
Regardless of the artist’s or citizen’s views on music and how it should be produced, published, and distributed or performed to the world, there is no vibrant contemporary (post Covid) New Mexico music scene without EHS and the community antennas, I mean efforts, of all session musicians who swing by to help produce and deliver the songwriter’s message.
The story is but one example of how an actualized human performs on an individual level which, by ancient tribal and indigenous design, serves community in a capacity utterly foreign to the western global system of oppression.