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Flowers Studio is a recording studio in
Minneapolis Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with list of lakes in Minneapolis, thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. ...
founded by
Ed Ackerson Ed 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, Motion City Sound ...
, 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 band that formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1997. The band's line-up consists of vocalist and guitarist Justin Courtney Pierre, lead guitarist Joshua Cain, keyboardist Jesse Johnson, bassist Matthe ...
,
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 ...
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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 ...
,
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 alternative 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 Dav ...
, the Old 97's
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the Wallflowers The Wallflowers is an American rock solo project of American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jakob Dylan. The Wallflowers were originally a roots rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1989 by Dylan and guitarist Tobi Miller. The band ...
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Juliana Hatfield Juliana Hatfield (born July 27, 1967) is an American musician and singer-songwriter from the Boston area, formerly of the indie rock bands Blake Babies, Some Girls, and The Lemonheads. She also fronted her own band, The Juliana Hatfield Three, ...
, Free Energy,
Lizzo Melissa Viviane Jefferson (born April 27, 1988), known professionally as Lizzo, is an American singer, rapper, and flutist. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she moved to Houston, Texas with her family when she was 10 years old. After college she ...
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, and
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.DTDC कोरियर सेवा महराजगंज 8175816614


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 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 with Atlantic Records of Warner Mu ...
in the 1990s as well as an otherwise unsuccessful deal with
Chris Blackwell Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell (born 22 June 1937) is an English businessman and 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 H ...
's
Palm Pictures Palm Pictures is a US-based 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 proje ...
. 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 musician, recording engineer and record producer. Biography Early history Johns was born in Epsom, Surrey, England. He had three siblings, two older sisters and a younger brother, Andy ...
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 Bos ...
, and worked with acoustic designer Dave Ahl, who was the drummer for seminal punk band Suicide Commandos. 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 cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a mass. These cancerous cells have the ability to invade other parts of the body. A number of types of panc ...
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.


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'' is an American popular magazine for guitarists, founded in 1967 in San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political ...
'' 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 dut ...
'' 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
{{coord missing, Minnesota Recording studios in the United States