Flowers Studio is a recording studio in

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

founded by

Ed Ackerson Edwin C. Ackerson (July 18, 1965 – October 4, 2019) was an American musician and producer from Minneapolis. He produced or engineered dozens of records including works by prominent artists such as The Jayhawks, The Replacements (band), The Repl ...

, leader of the alternative rock bands Polara and the 27 Various, and co-founder of the Susstones Records label. Many notable musicians have recorded at the studio, including the Jayhawks, The Replacements,

Motion City Soundtrack Motion City Soundtrack is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1997. The band's line-up consists of vocalist and guitarist Justin Pierre, lead guitarist Joshua Cain, keyboardist Jesse Johnson, bassist Matthew Ta ...

Brian Setzer Brian Robert Setzer (born April 10, 1959) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He found widespread success in the early 1980s with the 1950s-style rockabilly group Stray Cats, and returned to the music scene in the early 1990s with ...

Golden Smog Golden Smog is an alternative country-rock supergroup of loosely connected musicians mostly from the Minneapolis area. At various times members of Soul Asylum, The Replacements, Wilco, The Jayhawks, Run Westy Run, The Honeydogs, and Big Star ha ...

Mark Mallman Mark Mallman (born July 20, 1973) is a Minnesota musician, film composer, and memoirist. Since 1998, he has released nine full-length studio albums, ''Happiness'' (2021) being his most recent. Education Mallman graduated from Waukesha South Hi ...

Soul Asylum Soul Asylum is an American rock band formed in 1981 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their 1993 hit " Runaway Train" won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song. The band was originally called Loud Fast Rules, with a lineup consisting of Dave Pirner ...

the Old 97's Old 97's is an American rock band from Dallas, Texas. Formed in 1992, they have released thirteen studio albums, two full extended plays, shared split duty on another, and they have one live album. Their most recent release is titled ''American ...

Rhett Miller Stewart Ransom "Rhett" Miller II (born September 6, 1970) is the lead singer of the alternative country rock band Old 97's. He also records and performs as a solo musician, and has been published as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. E ...

Clay Aiken Clayton Holmes Aiken (''né'' Grissom; born November 30, 1978) is an American singer, television personality, actor and political activist. Aiken finished second place on the second season of ''American Idol'' in 2003, and his debut album, '' Me ...

the Wallflowers The Wallflowers are an American rock music, rock solo project of American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jakob Dylan. The Wallflowers were originally a roots rock band formed in Los Angeles by Dylan and guitarist Tobi Miller. It ha ...

Pete Yorn Peter Joseph Yorn (born July 27, 1974) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He first gained international recognition after his debut record, '' Musicforthemorningafter'', was released to critical and commercial acclaim in 2001. He is ...

Juliana Hatfield Juliana Hatfield (born July 27, 1967) is an American musician and singer-songwriter from the Boston area. She was formerly a member of the indie rock bands Blake Babies, Some Girls, and The Lemonheads. Hatfield also fronted her own band, The Ju ...

, Free Energy,

Lizzo Melissa Viviane Jefferson (born April 27, 1988), known professionally as Lizzo (), is an American singer and rapper. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she moved to Houston, Texas, with her family at the age of ten. After college, she moved to Minn ...

, Jeremy Messersmith, and

Joseph Arthur Joseph Lyburn Arthur (born September 28, 1971) is an American singer-songwriter and artist from Akron, Ohio. He is best known for his solo material, and as a member of Fistful of Mercy and RNDM. Arthur has built his reputation over the years t ...

History

The Flowers building, in the Lowry Hill East neighborhood of Minneapolis, was formerly a greenhouse and floral shop before being used as a warehouse space for a guitar store. A self-described "gear freak," Ackerson had been a sound engineer at legendary Twin Cities club First Avenue and had already collected a wide variety of recording equipment on his own before deciding to start his own studio. Ackerson founded Flowers largely through money earned from his band Polara's contract with major label

Interscope Records Interscope Records is an American record label based in Santa Monica, California, owned by Universal Music Group through its Interscope Geffen A&M imprint. Founded in late 1990 by Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field as a $20 million joint venture ...

in the 1990s as well as an otherwise unsuccessful deal with

Chris Blackwell Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell OJ (born 22 June 1937) is a Jamaican-British former record producer and the founder of Island Records, which has been called "one of Britain's great independent labels". According to the Rock and Roll Hall ...

Palm Pictures Palm Pictures is an American entertainment company owned and run by Chris Blackwell. Palm Pictures produces, acquires, and distributes music and film projects with a particular focus on the DVD-Video format. Palm places an emphasis on such proj ...

. After Polara was dropped by Interscope, Ackerson went independent both as a musician with Polara and other bands, and as a producer at Flowers. Ackerson got advice on constructing Flowers from veteran recording engineers including

Glyn Johns Glyn Thomas Johns (born 15 February 1942) is an English recording engineer and record producer. He has worked with many of the most famous rock recording acts from both the UK and abroad, such as the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, ...

and Fort Apache producer

Paul Kolderie Paul Q. Kolderie is an American record producer, engineer, and mixer. He has worked with Pixies, Radiohead, Orangutang, Hole, Dinosaur Jr., Juliana Hatfield, Wax, Warren Zevon, Uncle Tupelo, Throwing Muses, Morphine, the Mighty Mighty Bossto ...

, and worked with acoustic designer Dave Ahl, who was the drummer for seminal punk band

Suicide Commandos The Suicide Commandos are an American punk rock trio from Minneapolis. They formed in 1975 and released two 7-inch EPs on an indie label in 1976 and 1977 before signing with Blank Records (a subsidiary label of Mercury Records) in 1977 and rel ...

. The second floor of the building was partially removed to create high ceilings for capturing an acoustically friendly environment. The control room was built from the blueprints of Kolderie's studio, Fort Apache, in Massachusetts. The greenhouse space became a lounge. The studio's large, open space is designed to accommodate either a full band playing together or isolated multitrack recording. Ackerson died of

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...

in October 2019. The studio remains open, now run by Ackerson's family; before his death, Ackerson chose Kris Johnson, guitarist in Minneapolis band Two Harbors, to be Flowers’ head engineer and studio manager. In March 2023, the studio hosted a recording session with

Alex Etheridge Alex Etheridge (October 22, 2009 – July 19, 2023) was an American boy from Phoenix, Arizona, whose battle with bone cancer received international attention, leading to recording with the Minneapolis rock band Soul Asylum and a viral video of a ...

, a 13-year-old Phoenix musician suffering from

bone cancer A bone tumor is an neoplastic, abnormal growth of tissue in bone, traditionally classified as benign, noncancerous (benign) or malignant, cancerous (malignant). Cancerous bone tumors usually originate from a cancer in another part of the body su ...

, and

singer

Dave Pirner David Anthony Pirner (born April 16, 1964) is an American songwriter, singer, and producer best known as the lead vocalist and frontman for the alternative rock band Soul Asylum. Early life and work Pirner was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and ...

and bassist Jeremy Tappero. The meeting was set up through the nonprofit organization Kill Kancer, founded by Mary Beth Mueller, the widow of original Soul Asylum bassist

Karl Mueller Karl Mueller (July 27, 1963 – June 17, 2005)
- accessed February 2011 was an American

, who died of

esophageal cancer Esophageal cancer (American English) or oesophageal cancer (British English) is cancer arising from the esophagus—the food pipe that runs between the throat and the stomach. Symptoms often include dysphagia, difficulty in swallowing and weigh ...

in 2005. Ackerson's widow Ashley donated the studio time to Alex. At Flowers, the trio recorded Alex's song "Home Sweet Home". The song is about how Alex's thoughts of returning home helped him deal with being in the hospital. It was largely written by Alex himself, who had worked out the drums parts, lyrics, and main guitar riff before meeting with Soul Asylum. He and the band spent four hours in the studio working on the song, which was later released on

SoundCloud SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is ...

Approach to production

Ackerson took a holistic approach to making music, viewing composition, performance, recording and post-production all as steps in a single process of creating a song. He told an interviewer in ''

Guitar Player ''Guitar Player'' was an American magazine for guitarists, founded in 1967 in San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francis ...

'' magazine, "It's all part of the same thing—amps, guitars, effects. You're playing it all." In an interview for ''

Tape Op A tape operator or tape op, also known as a second engineer, is a person who performs menial operations in a recording studio in a similar manner to a tea boy or gopher. They may act as an apprentice or an assistant to a recording engineer and d ...

'' magazine, he said that the energy and vibe of a performance was more important to him than technical perfection, saying that as a producer "sometimes you have to be willing to get out of the way of the moment."

Selected discography

References

External links

Flowers website
{{Music venues of Minnesota Recording studios in the United States