Unlike numerous other pandemic-born live-streaming video projects, Live at Studio E is still around — and still kicking ass.
The YouTube series showcasing live sets by San Antonio musical acts stands apart because it's well filmed, sounds great and is expertly curated. Masterminded by San Antonio studio owner Brant Sankey and photographer Oscar Moreno, Live at Studio E recently taped its milestone 100th episode with no signs of slowing down.
Indeed, the series features a veritable Who's Who of the Alamo City music scene, from roots-forward acts such as The Last Bandoleros and Garrett T. Capps to alt-rock favorites like Buttercup and Piñata Protest.
The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered live music venues and forced performers to resort to live-streaming from their homes or rehearsal spots. What resulted was a cringey deluge of poorly shot, murkily recorded videos of performers who frankly deserved better.
Though born of the same era, Live at Studio E rose above the fray because its creators, well, actually knew what they're doing. Sankey's Studio E is a go-to recording operation that's given birth to many release by South Texas bands, and Moreno has been a key photographic chronicler of the city's music scene.
Musical origins
Sankey cut his teeth in the local music scene as part of underground three-piece rock outfit The Bombardiers, active in the early 2000s.
"We played Wacky's Cantina sometimes, but really our home was Taco Land," Sankey said. "The reason I didn't leave is I enjoyed the scene built around there. We'd head down there blasting The Replacements, that live album When the Shit Hits the Fan. Also Ween's The Pod and Bill Hicks' routines, and we'd get out of the car salty as fuck."
Though the Bombardiers could be termed pop-punk, Sankey is wary of the term. "It wasn't Blink-182," he said.
Though Sankey was only 22 years old, the drummer Steve was already in his early 40s, a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music. The older musician hinted at a way forward for Sankey in the music business.
"He functioned on a really high level but had a cool way of harnessing it, not being a dork," Sankey said. "I latched onto that."
Eventually, Sankey fell into theater, playing guitar in pit orchestras.
"I was reading charts, never done that before," he said. "I learned on the job. Right place at the right time."
Each theater production was a unique musical challenge, often in a new genre. That laid more groundwork for his desire to own his own studio.
"It expanded my vision of music. It was all over the map! And I loved that. Made it hard to go back to being in a band, a band just focuses on one thing," he added. "Being all over the map, it's similar to being in a studio. I've done jazz records, I've done doom metal, cumbia. You never know what you're gonna get."
Making the leap
Sankey learned his studio chops alongside late San Antonio violinist Daniel Kobialka, who'd performed to acclaim in orchestras across the globe.
"I would go there and help him," Sankey said. "That was my training. I skipped any formal studio training."
Another formative experience was a week spent as a session player at El Paso's famed Sonic Ranch studio.
"I learned a lot on that one," Sankey said. "The engineer was a no-name dude. Record was written and recorded in eight days. Furious 14-, 15-hour sessions. During playback, the engineer would disappear. He was an apparition. He was transparent. I loved that."
Six years ago, Sankey decided he'd amassed the experience he needed to made the leap. He started Studio E. Along the way, he's developed an approach to recording he calls being "transparent."
"I want it to sound like the people who made it: transparent. Like the band was captured under the most charismatic light possible," he explained.
If that sounds a lot like Steve Albini, the Chicago-based studio owner known for recording anyone from The Pixies and Nirvana to the Jesus Lizard and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, then you picked up on one of Sankey's guiding influences.
"He has great views on when you can be helping someone make a record, and when you're trespassing on their vision," Sankey said of Albini. "That's an important thing that not a lot of people acknowledge."
Sankey's years of doing live sound for SA venues also helped set the stage for his approach.
"For me, the difference between live and studio mixing has narrowed over time," he said. "With recorded sound, the temptation is to be real precious. But you don't listen in isolation at a live show! It's a bit more gestural. You turn something up. Is it helping? Is it not? It sounds simple, but it's difficult sorting through 20 tracks, trying to figure what contributing or taking away, what's a bad thing and what's a good thing."
Going live
As the pandemic ground on, Sankey joined forces in 2021 with Moreno, who's a musician in addition to being a preeminent shutterbug, to launch their video show. Sankey provides live sound for the typically 45-minute sets while Moreno moves through the studio capturing video.
"It was a depressing time, especially for music. Nowhere to play but bands were still practicing," Sankey said. "It ended up being a lot of fun."
To maintain the feel of a club performance, bands perform live, with the audio coming straight off the mixing console. During the pandemic the show provided a needed outlet for bands simply looking to play and connect with their fans.
Since then, it's become a means for San Antonio acts to reach a wider audience in a more organic and personally connected way than putting recordings up on Bandcamp or SoundCloud, Sankey said. He said the shows regularly get comments from people in other cities and other countries, and bands have used their sessions to help book tours.
"It put San Antonio bands on more of a global platform," Sankey said.
However, after 100 episodes, it's all begun to blur together.
"I can't remember them all at this point," Sankey said with a laugh. "When we first started, Garrett Capps was one of them. We did the first one, and he was on the phone the next day 8 a.m. 'I wanna do one.'"
Future sounds
The new music economy's shrunken budgets and oversaturated media landscape, not to mention improvements in home-recording technology, have made it difficult for studios like Sankey's to survive. Just the same, he loves his work.
"I know having a studio is not smart, but tracking a record is my favorite time to be alive," he said. "When you're in front of the microphones, making it happen, I'm addicted to that feeling."
Sankey sees facilities like Studio E as integral to the new home-recording landscape.
"Studios can still come in, play their part, and then get out of the way," he said. "It's better to spend a day or two in a studio upfront, get the rhythm section in a good place, take that home, and that's your canvas."
And though Sankey spurns the term "producer," he still loves guiding bands into giving the best performance possible — whether it's something that ultimately ends up on vinyl or reaching new fans via Live at Studio E.
"If you can steer them well, and it sounds better than they would have imagined in the first place, well, that is very rewarding," he said.
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