Music

  1. Home
  2. chevron_right
  3. Music

Akers, Eric. (2019) JPG

Music has always been a big part of my life. Sometime in high school I discovered Led Zeppelin and it changed my life. When I went to see Page & Plant in concert in 1995 I made the decision then and there that music and playing in a band would forever be a part of my world. I stayed true to that promise. I practiced nonstop and fell madly in love with the blues, SRV, Jimi Hendrix, and Jimmy Page. As child of the Grunge movement, I listened to Soundgarden, STP and Pearl jam and dreamed of making it big some day.

The first major band I was in did quite well given our short time together. Lexington in the 90s was a great time for music. Although the bands were diverse, it felt like a tight community. There were some really talented musicians getting exposure then. We started out playing covers but grew confident in our song writing abilities to become a fine original band until circumstances pulled us in different geographic locations.

I moved away and as I grew older, my tastes changed. I discovered Damien Rice’s “O”, and that led me to put the electric down and pick up my acoustic. Eventually the electric drew me back in and for the past seven years I’ve been playing in a very successful classic rock cover band.

I first got the recording bug over twenty-five years ago, soon after I began working in a small music store in Lexington, KY. It started with a small Tascam 4-track cassette recorder. After recording my own music and whatever band I was in at the time for 3 plus years, I decided to start my own independent record label. Under LivingTree Studios, I continue to engineer and produce several projects, including my own.

Equipment:
Apple Platform, Logic PRO X, Pro Tools 12, Focusrite Clarett 4 Pre, Presonus DigiMax D8, mid-1980s Tascam m-320 Mixing Console, FMR Audio Really Nice Pre & Really Nice Compressor, Zen Pro Modded Golden Age 1073 Mic Pre, JBL LSR308 & Event Reference 6 Monitors, Shure SM57-SM58-SM7B-KSM137, Rode NTK Condenser Mic, Blue Dragonfly, Neumann Fet47 Clone, AKG C414 Clone, Pearl Export mid-2000s drum kit with Zildjian Custom A cymbals and Gretsch Taylor Hawkins snare, Marshall JTM45 Clone, Vox AC4, Fender Twin Reverb, Line6 POD, many, many pedals, and various other odds and ends.

Writing lyrics is not my favorite thing. I don’t even think I’m particularly good at it. I do try to tell a story, and I consciously use simple words and phrases. I don’t think you have to use big words to tell a smart story. Willie Nelson and Tom Petty are proof of that. As a guitarist, first and foremost, I hear the music and melody before I hear the story in my head. The themes of my lyrics are most always about loss or isolation. I can assure you that I’m a very happy person, but for some reason, melancholy themes interest and inspire me more than others.

Akers, Eric. (2019) “Album Cover for Fit To Square”. PNG

Menu