From Garage to Hall of Fame

Posted on Jan. 14, 2020

The induction of Mitch Easter ’77 into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame has been a long time coming. But he made it in October as part of the 2019 class alongside hip-hop producer Patrick “9th Wonder” Douthit, rapper Big Daddy Kane and posthumous inductees Merle Watson and Elizabeth Cotten.

The hall cited Easter’s four decades of work as producer, engineer, studio impresario, songwriter and guitarist with acts including R.E.M., Loud Family, Ben Folds Five, The Connells and his own band, Let’s Active. He took the honor, like most things, in low-key stride.

“I thought the whole thing was great and flattering and strange,” Easter said with a laugh soon after his selection was announced. “So many great musicians are from North Carolina, and I’ve always felt just lucky to be in the band somewhere. Sure, I’ve had my moments. But when I think of myself in relation to other musicians in this state, it’s sort of mysterious. Better not to examine something like that and just appreciate it, and I do.”

He’s being modest to a fault. His recording studios, including The Drive-In and Fidelitorium, have been known as oases of cool for artists who have beaten a path to his door for almost four decades. His most notable credit remains R.E.M., a leading light of the 1980s American rock underground. Easter co-produced R.E.M.’s 1983 full-length debut album Murmur, establishing him as one of the top alternative-rock producers of his generation.

Growing up in Winston-Salem, Easter acquired a budding reputation as a young virtuoso early on. Don Dixon ’73, co-producer for Murmur and R.E.M.’s 1984 Reckoning, recalled meeting Easter when he was 15 and already a formidable guitarist.

“He impressed me as a young man with a Prince Valiant hairdo playing guitar magnificently through a Marshall 100-watt amplifier,” Dixon said. “He has a healthy level of self-deprecation, but he’s one of my very favorite guitar players in the world — one of those people who has a certain sound, a great unique musicality and tone to the way he plays. He is such an interesting and colorful guy in so many ways, how he talks and the kinds of things he intuitively understands.”

As a teenager, Easter played in a series of bands with names like Sacred Irony and Imperturbable Teutonic Gryphon and made his first recordings with childhood friend Chris Stamey ’77.

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“I feel like I’ve always functioned to a certain batch of people as an example,” Easter said. “You know: ‘If that guy can do it, then I can do it, too.’ “

— Mitch Easter ’77

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After high school, Easter followed Dixon to UNC. While he took a few music classes, Easter wound up in UNC’s radio, television and motion picture program. But he said he might as well have been majoring in rock ’n’ roll all along. “I was spending almost all my time reading New York Rocker and thinking, ‘I have to get in the studio and make records!’ Maybe 10 percent of my brain was actually there at school, which was stupid on my part,” he said. “But it’s what I did. I didn’t fail, I just wasn’t as engaged as I should’ve been.”

After school, he attempted to start a recording studio in New York, then retreated to his parents’ house and started a studio in the garage called The Drive-In. That’s where Easter produced the first R.E.M. recordings as well as albums by Let’s Active, three of which made the charts.

Eventually Easter built the studio of his dreams, Fidelitorium, in nearby Kernersville. It opened in 2000, and Easter is still as busy as ever there, with everything from big bands to bluegrass.

“I feel like I’ve always functioned to a certain batch of people as an example,” Easter said. “You know: ‘If that guy can do it, then I can do it, too.’ The studio and the band I was in worked into that, and I’ve been doing it a long time — 40 years next year, which feels weird. Some of the very first things done in that garage long ago turned out to be kind of successful, which was my incredible good fortune.”

— David Menconi

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