The Buzz in Oxnard Is Teatro Studio

Success in the music industry comes in two varieties. The first kind is loud, garish and generally focused on nonmusical qualities (think Spice Girls). The other type is quieter, more talent-oriented, and tends to attract artists striving for relevance (think Bob Dylan).

To sell albums and concert tickets, both types rely on that indefinable something known as “buzz.”

Buzz is a great show-business term because it adds a concise and evocative word to the lexicon of a self-important industry that demands a special vocabulary to describe itself.

It’s a cute little word, but it can be misleading. If you are a Spice Girl, what you probably want is something less like buzz and more like blare, the noise produced by a police bullhorn.

Bob Dylan types on the other hand, would likely want hum, the low, barely audible sound emanating from electrical outlets. This, after all, would be the appropriate decibel level for the excessively hip and nervously talented--those uncomfortable with all aspects of success other than fame and money.

However it’s described, there has been some buzz

recently about Teatro, a rundown former movie theater that has been converted into a recording studio in Oxnard.

This is a place of such hyper-coolness that it operated for a time without any buzz at all. Over the last year or so, Dylan, Iggy Pop and Marianne Faithfull recorded there without fanfare.

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It wasn’t until Willie Nelson recorded an album and called it “Teatro,” then featured the theater on the cover and made a movie about the making of the album, that people realized something was happening in Oxnard.

The black-leather crowd has arrived. But they certainly didn’t come for the strawberries.

They were here because the studio’s owners, Mark Howard and his partner, the famous mega-producer Daniel Lanois, did in Oxnard what they had already done in New Orleans, San Francisco, Baja and their native Canada. They created a warm, plush, state-of-the-art little corner of recording nirvana in the middle of urban, or suburban, limbo.

“We create a comfortable environment,” Howard said while showing me around the 10,000-square-foot studio he calls “the world’s largest living room.”

It is remarkably comfortable, a perfect place for somebodies to feel almost like nobodies once again, nobodies with Mercedeses, that is. And once the word gets out, the producers can up and move to the next location, like they did two years ago when they left San Francisco for Oxnard.

Much as he shuns it, Howard could use a little buzz right now. He has launched a label--Real Records--from Teatro. His latest project is “Shylingo,” a CD of 11 songs by singer-songwriter Tim Gibbons, a friend of Howard’s and a fellow Canadian. The record, an intelligent, moody and emotionally complex collection of songs, was recorded more than a year ago at Teatro.

“Tim had come down from Canada to be a part of the house band we had put together to do the soundtrack for the movie “Slingblade,” Howard said. Billy Bob Thornton, who wrote and directed the movie, liked one of Gibbons’ songs, “Lonely One,” and included it on the soundtrack.

Howard, an engineer and producer for Lanois, had been looking for his own project to produce.

“After the ‘Slingblade’ experience I thought, ‘I’ll make a record with Tim.’ ”

Which is when Howard realized that when you work in the quiet and the dark, it’s quiet and dark.

“So now I have his record and think, ‘What am I going to do with it?’ ” said Howard. He tried getting independent distribution, but no one was willing to take a chance on a record they weren’t certain would sell big.

Howard and Gibbons decided to think about things for a bit.

“We took a year,” said Howard, during which time he worked on other projects.

“I went back to Canada and played blues clubs,” said Gibbons.

Howard formed a partnership with Sophia De Silva, a French native, who has worked in the states for three years, two of them in New Orleans with Lanois. By Halloween, De Silva was modestly promoting the album.

“We wanted to start locally, focusing on California, and then perhaps think about promoting Tim in France,” said De Silva. “We believe these songs would appeal to Europeans.”

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And how will De Silva, Gibbons and Howard hype a record from a stealth studio whose higher-profile clients rely on anonymity?

“Real Records is a small label,” said Howard. “The record companies tend to be conservative and we wanted to have more creative freedom to do things that nobody else has done or heard, to take sounds to a more interesting level.

“And we don’t have to sell as many records as the majors. Our overhead is low and so is our market. We don’t need to sell 250,000 copies. If we cut 3,000 CDs, we are into profit after the first 1,000.

And so the hype and noise can be kept at a comfortable pitch. “There is a little buzz going on around Tim now,” said Howard, with a laugh. “There’s a bubble.”

Wendy Miller is a Times staff writer and can be reached by e-mail at wendy.miller@aol.com

* OUT AND ABOUT

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