Rowan McGuire details the philosophy behind his music studio
By LAILA AZHAR — features@theaggie.org
Rowan McGuire — the musician behind Davis music studio JumpDog Studios — has been a musician for as long as he can remember. A drummer since youth, McGuire grew up playing in bands ranging from jazz to metal.
When he founded JumpDog Studios in 2019, it began as a space to work on his own music. McGuire was pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter and needed a space to record and produce. Over the following years, however — and amidst the global pandemic — his relationship with music began to shift.
“I was reevaluating what I liked about music,” McGuire said. “Doing the singer-songwriter thing didn’t speak to me as much. As COVID-19 was opening up, I started playing a few shows here and there, [but] playing my own songs wasn’t really checking that box. I think music is a form of community, and the social aspect of it — sharing the performance experience with people — allowed me to be like, ‘Oh, that’s what I liked about this.’”
As he began using JumpDog Studios to help others record and shape their music, McGuire found that producing offered exactly what he was looking for. He soon focused his efforts on full-time music production.
“Producing is kind of everything that I was looking for in that, it is very collaborative,” McGuire said. “I’m working with another person or another group of people trying to help them translate their creative goals or ideas into a final product.”
The songs he’s worked on are compiled in a Spotify playlist; many are guitar-driven, including indie-rock, folk and country songs. Folk singer and fellow Davis native Nat Lefkoff is one of his most frequent collaborators.
“Rowan is a rare mix of incredible talent and gentle personality,” Lefkoff said. “The combination is apparent to anyone who spends time at JumpDog Studios and [it] keeps me coming back to work with him. We’re starting a third album together and I’m looking forward to his boundless imagination and skill, friendly demeanor and casual yet professional approach.”
McGuire enjoys exploring different sounds and genres; he produced bedroom pop track “sentiment” by shower breakfast, and is mixing and mastering live recordings of traditional Irish band Paddy on the Binge’s performance at “St. Pat’s in the Park.”
Obin Sturm, Paddy on the Binge’s fiddler, recalled fond memories of working with McGuire.
“I’ve worked with Rowan at JumpDog Studios as a studio musician on fiddle and steel guitar for a few years, and it’s been really cool to watch him scale it up,” Sturm said. “I got a chance to work on a variety of projects with local musicians and also to meet artists from out of town that he brought in. I admire Rowan’s vision and attention to detail, and how he works with musicians to make some awesome tracks.”
No two sessions at JumpDog Studios look exactly the same. McGuire is flexible based on the needs of different artists.
“I’m not super focused on one specific part of the process, whether you have a couple ideas of songs that you want to flesh out or if you have it all recorded and want it mixed or mastered,” McGuire said.
His breadth of experience as a musician has been instrumental in his work as a producer.
“It can be a very vulnerable thing to want to get your record made,” McGuire said. “Especially with singer-songwriters, for example, it’s something that’s inherently very personal for a lot of people, and sometimes it can feel weird to open it up to have other people get involved. It’s your name and your song that came directly from you, so in trying to navigate the relationship that artists have with their music, it’s nice to have been on the other side and had that relationship with my music.”
For McGuire, providing a much-needed service to the Davis music scene has been a rewarding part of running the studio.
“There’s a lot of music around here, but there’s not really a lot of infrastructure to support it,” McGuire said. “There aren’t really many venues in Davis — there are houses, and the occasional public park event. But not really venues, music studios, that kind of thing. [Davis] is a place that, despite the lack of official commercial institutions, does cultivate a lot of creative people, and it’s been a treat doing this.”
In helping artists bring their work to life, McGuire has found a way to stay rooted in the communal aspects of music that first drew him in. Artists interested in working with McGuire for recording, producing or mastering can reach him through the JumpDog Studios website at jumpdogstudios.com.
Written by: Laila Azhar — features@theaggie.org
