OUR TEAM

Blue October’s former lead guitarist C.B. Hudson likes to point out that he landed his career-making gig at Kismet Cafe in San Marcos, TX.

One might say kismet has been playing a role in his life ever since. It led to his friendship with Blue October bandmate Matt Noveskey, which led to countless hours spent plotting every detail of their ideal recording studio. Over time, their concept evolved from dream to plan and finally, to reality.

That’s basically the way Hudson operates in most areas of his life. Kismet might put him in the right place at the right time, but he knows what to do when he gets there.

In December 2000, played his first show with the band.  Hudson went on to co-write three of the band’s most popular tunes: “Dirt Room,” “18th Floor Balcony” and “Somebody.” After 10 years in the band, he started building Orb Recording Studios, where he hopes to help other bands produce professional work that will move their careers to the next level — and beyond.

Born in Oklahoma City and raised in Dallas, C.B. Hudson gravitated to music at an early age. He got his first guitar for his 10th birthday, followed by years of lessons, a stint in his high school’s jazz band and a six-week summer program for promising talent at Berklee College of Music. He attended Southwest Texas State (now Texas State University) as a psychology major with a business minor, then began pursuing an MBA in finance.

And then kismet kicked in. He was studying for finals that day at Kismet Cafe; he’s still just a few credit-hours away from earning that MBA.

Maybe he’ll have time to finish it after fine-tuning operations at Orb (and adapting to first-time fatherhood). Hudson also plans to explore possibilities such as voice-over and commercial work; Orb’s two studios and configurable extra spaces were designed with versatility in mind. Orb also was designed to offer the comforts of more expensive studios—without the accompanying costs or attitudes. “We wanted to bring a really nice, more modern, clean, new, big facility to Austin,” Hudson explains. “We wanted to build a nationally competitive studio with the laid-back vibe of Austin’s hill country. Part of our mission is to provide super-friendly, easy-going, quality service to our clients.

“In this industry, sometimes you run into negativity and other things that really hinder the creative process,” he continues. “We want to alleviate that. We just want to make good music and be able to nurture artists.”

Hudson and Noveskey share a perspective honed from recording in myriad studio environments and releasing both major-label and independent work. According to Hudson, too many people harbor the misperception that they no longer need recording studios. “It’s extremely difficult to make a record at your house with the quality that major labels are looking for,” he notes. “A lot of artists don’t realize that if you go in and you make a real record, when you shop that to major labels, they see a turnkey deal.”

These days, labels are more likely to consider signing an artist who doesn’t require a major financial outlay to get something released. Hudson says artists who already have a professional-quality record in their hands gain a valuable advantage — and appear more established from the get-go.

At Orb Recording Studios, the idea is to pass those opportunities along to other music-makers — whether they’re first-timers, stars-in-the-making or bona-fide legends.

“He saw that every time we came home, I was working. I would go right back into the studio,” Noveskey explains. “One thing led to another, and we just came up with a plan together.”

That plan, now realized as Orb Recording Studios, reaches far beyond the mere brick and mortar of a recording space, Noveskey says.

“I also have this grand image — it goes back to the very first day we even started talking about the concept of the studio — which is development,” says Noveskey, now married and a father of two. “I want to get back to the same ideals and philosophies that Barry Gordy started at Motown. I want to have writers and artists we can go to in our own backyard, a community of producers and musicians. It’s part of a family, not competition.”

Noveskey’s Midwestern-bred sense of loyalty is strong, and one of his goals for Orb is to help launch new artists who will choose to return no matter how famous they become. He knows Orb will earn that loyalty by caring for clients and offering them every resource in the studio’s extensive arsenal.

“I view myself as a fundamental producer,” he says. “I’ve worked with a bunch of artists that were really unknown when I got together with them. The thing I’m most proud of is being able to take the training wheels off these artists and watch them go on to bigger and better things.”

Noveskey’s first major-label experience was Blue October’s 2000 Universal Records debut, Consent to Treatment; he also did the album art and co-authored “James” with bandmate Justin Furstenfeld. Another Noveskey composition, “You Make Me Smile,” became wildly popular, but the band stopped playing it when he took a health-related two-year leave of absence in late 2002.

In 2002, he began working with acts such as IAMDYNAMITE and started to envision a future in production. His ever expanding resume includes an impressive roster of genre-bending artists, such as IAMDYNAMITE, Alpha Rev, CAVO, Daryl “DMC” McDaniels, The Unlikely Candidates, Waterloo Revival and Joshua Radin. He’s also crossed project paths with notable recording and mixing engineers such as Jay Ruston, Adam Hawkins, Greg Archilla, Chuck Alkazian and Sterling Winfield. In just a relatively short time producing other acts, Matt has independently achieved some of the following benchmarks:

#1 iTunes independent (producer)
#1 iHeartRadio Alternative (producer/co-writer)
Top 10 iTunes pop (producer/co-writer)
Top 20 iTunes overall (producer/ co-writer)
Top 30 on Alternative US charts (producer)
Top 40 on HOT AC US charts (producer)
Top 30 Texas Country charts (producer/co-writer)

“I always joke, you know, ‘how do producers pick their field?’” Noveskey remarks. “It’s not like you wake up one day and you’re like, ‘Today I’m a record producer.’ You just have to keep plugging away until something happens and then people start to approach you, instead of you going out and hustling for work.

“I’m a song guy,” he continues. “I’ve always been that guy who hears the structure. When we worked with our first couple of producers, I was like, ‘This guy’s doing what I already do in the band.’ I loved watching him work — we worked with Nick Launay on our first record — and it had such a profound impact on me because I realized this is something I could do for the rest of my life, and be so happy. Before then, I didn’t really know what a producer did.”

Each lesson became a building block used to create Orb’s environment, which, Noveskey says, is the sum of “little things that C.B. and I loved about each place we worked.”

One critical element, they agreed, is multiple recording rooms, “not just one room where you’re stuck with one sort of vibe.”

Another is a space built specifically for recording, not converted from another use. Clean, comfortable areas to spread out and relax are also vital. But there are intangibles as well.

“This studio is all about the experience,” Noveskey explains. “The most important thing about a studio is not to have a sense of arrogance. The things I remember about the best studios have just as much to do with the interns and the people there you had conversations with as the space.

“We’re just trying to be a place that people feel good about, and want to come back to.”