Drive-In Studio was a recording studio in rural Winston-Salem, North Carolina, founded by Mitch Easter in July 1980. R.E.M.'s debut single, "Radio Free Europe" (1981), and their first extended play, Chronic Town (1982), were recorded at the studio six months apart in 1981. The studio was established in what was initially Easter's parents' garage of their 1949-built home at 4527 Old Belews Creek Road, and became an important part of the early indie rock scene of North Carolina.
"After a while, I thought, '[Working out of a garage] is kind of embarrassing, but bands didn't really seem to care," Easter said in 2025. At the time of R.E.M.'s stint at the studio, "the set-up was really simple," Easter said in 1994. "I had almost nothing in the studio back then, except a tape machine and a console and two compressors and one delay device. We couldn't do any fancy stuff."
Easter explained the studio's layout to Music Radar in 2021:"Producer Mitch Easter shares the inside story of R.E.M.’s early recording sessions: 'It was glorious. They rehearsed a lot just because they liked to play together'", Music Radar, June 3, 2021
Due to the confined space of the interior, studio sessions often also took place in the home's driveway, under the carport.
Let's Active recorded the video for "Waters Part", from their 1984 album Cypress, in the Drive-In's studio.
The home backed up onto farmland, and when Easter's parents lived there it had cows grazing on it. Easter recalls walking behind the house with Let's Active band mate and girlfriend Faye Hunter. "She just started sort of singing to the cows, who were like 100 feet away," Easter said in 2013, shortly after Hunter's suicide. "And they just came to her. And I don't think cows normally do that, you know? But they came to her because they knew that she was trying to send them love. And it was really touching and she did something like that every day with animals."
Equipment
An early advertisement, which listed 124 Shady Boulevard, then home to Faye Hunter's parents, Dallas and Rachel, as a mailing address for the studio, itemized its recording technology:
Quantum 20-input mixing console 3M M56 sixteen- and two-track recorders Lexicon Prime Time M93 digital delay Allison Gain Brain limiters AKG, Shure and Electro-Voice mics Electric and acoustic reverb TEAC four-track Cassette Drums Organ Electric piano Amps Toys At his induction into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2019, Easter thanked "the TEAC Corporation for making the 2340 four-track tape machine, because that's where Chris Stamey and I made these unlistenable tapes that led to our careers in recording."
Artists Other artists who recorded at Drive-In include Pylon ("Beep"), Suzanne Vega ("Gypsy"), Game Theory (The Big Shot Chronicles) and The Connells (Boylan Heights).
Easter closed Drive-In in 1994, and moved to Kernersville, North Carolina, where he opened his current recording studio, Fidelitorium Recordings.
References
External links
Let's Active (Mitch Easter) on I.R.S. Records Presents The Cutting Edge – YouTube