Throughout his childhood, Garrett Starks spent untold hours on the family tractor blasting the radio. It was in that very seat that he decided to become a drummer. In middle school, he performed with friends and recorded some of their original songs. After high school, he studied audio production at New York University. When he returned to Oklahoma, the Cherokee native built a small studio in his home. But then, he started thinking bigger.

“I realized Oklahoma City needed a commercial studio,” he says.

After a few months of searching, Starks found an empty, beat-up building tucked into a Del City side street. Nestled among other retro spaces, the more than seventy-year-old structure’s entertainment history dates back to the 1940s, when George Epperly opened the Del City movie theater here. Years later, the voices of Vince Gill, Merle Haggard, and Dolly Parton graced the halls of Del City Music and Woodside Studios.

“It had been a music store that offered lessons and a small recording studio for demos,” Starks says. “Reba McEntire took vocal lessons there too.”

It took two years to gut the old movie theater, but Starks’ Castle Row Studios opened in 2015.

“I had a small recording studio in my home, and the entrance to my home looked like a castle entrance,” Starks says. “Then, moving to this building in Del City, it had a sort of grand entrance as well. So the name stuck.”

Starks hoped his studio would elevate the state’s musical reputation—and the local artists working within that industry—but also attract A-list talent from elsewhere. So he tapped award-winning architectural and electro-acoustic engineer Steven Durr of Nashville to design the studio. The results include a 10,600-square-foot multipurpose space with three state-of-the-art sound studios, a live performance venue, tracking room, mix room, band studio, and numerous production rooms.

Starks also has assembled a production team to take on projects for music of any genre. Their tools include an analog mixer, which amplifies sounds from microphones or instruments and blends them together using an SSL 9000 J console, which is an analog mixing control. The team also uses a state-of-the-art Avid S6 console and an Avid C24 control surface for mixing, recording, and editing. In addition to the studio’s superior acoustics, this specialty equipment makes Castle Row Studios a musical mecca for recording artists.

In addition to recording services, Starks and his team also help independent artists learn how to market themselves better. Photo by Brent Fuchs

Now that Starks has nabbed Ada film producer Kevin Waller as a partner and co-owner, the duo tackles film, television, music production, custom audio production, sound editing, audio mixing, animation voice recording, post-production, and advertising. Their crew scores movies, makes albums, and records radio spots.

“In a typical month, we’ll have thirty or more musicians working here,” Starks says. “We’ll work on as many films as are coming through, and we often have music events. We’ll also have promotional shoots, and we shoot projects for educational content. Now, we’re working on Opentrack master-class-style online film and music courses.”

Though Oklahomans are happy to have a professional studio in their own state, the industry at large is taking note as well.

“We’ve landed sessions with Kanye West,” Starks says. “We just did a few tracks on Blake Shelton’s latest record. We did work for NBC’s The Voice, and we worked on The Lion King musical and films such as I Can Only Imagine. We’ve worked on television shows such as Family Guy, Robot Chicken, and Reservation Dogs.”

This grand palace of sound is certainly making waves within the entertainment industry, and it doesn’t look like things are going to calm down any time soon. That’s just the way Starks likes it.

“We made studios more in line with how studios are built in New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Miami,” Starks says. “We’re looking to grow the film industry here. There’s so much more that can be done in Oklahoma.”

Written By

Carol Mowdy Bond