When This Bris Band Saw That COVID Had Taken Touring Off The Table, They Built A Studio

We arrived back home in Australia at the start of March 2020 after a North American tour and just a couple of weeks later the world was starting to shut down due to the pandemic. As COVID continued to spread throughout the world we realised we weren’t going to be touring again anytime soon. 

We were both living in separate houses at this time but we had a chat and decided that it might be a good idea to try to find a place where we could set up a home studio. Realising that shows were going to be a no-go for a while, we decided that it would be good to have a space where we could continue to work while things were shut down. 

Hollow Coves behind the scenes working on their new EP

We ended up finding a place that had a separate self-contained room across from the main house. This meant we could separate work and living which was great. Being a musician with undefined deadlines means that it can be easy to procrastinate. Especially during a global pandemic. However, we wanted to be intentional with our time so we wanted a space where we could start work at 9am and work until 5pm like a normal job. Before doing music I was a carpenter. So I decided to put my trade to use and built us a little sound proof recording booth for the studio so we could have some isolation to the noises outside. 

Ryan Henderson from Hollow Coves in the studio

We knew the place was not going to be anything like a professional studio but we still wanted some pretty decent gear with the goal of being able to record and produce some music that we could one day release. 

As the studio started to take shape and we had bought all of the gear we needed, we had to tackle another task; how to record and produce music. Neither of us had done something like this before so we spent many hours watching instructional videos on YouTube and talking to one of our producer friends to help us learn how to do it all. 

Matt Carins from Hollow Coves working behind the scenes on 'Blessings'

At first it was a lot of trial and error but eventually we thought we were ready so just started diving into it. Most of the songs were recorded entirely in our little studio. However, for ‘From The Second Floor’ we wanted more of a full band production style but we didn’t have the gear or space to record drums. We ended up getting the drums recorded by a friend in London and they sent back all the audio files for us to piece together. It’s pretty amazing how different elements of song can be recorded any where in the world and put together on one computer. 

A studio shot of Matt Carins on the guitar and pedals on production of 'Hollow Coves' new EP 'Blessings'

At first we had no idea and no direction of what we were trying to do with the next bunch of songs. However, as the songs started to take shape we realized that we had a collection of songs that felt like they would fit together and so we decided to put them together for our new EP ‘Blessings’. We still have a lot to learn when it comes to sound engineering and producing but we’re really proud of what we’ve come up with for the first time doing something like this on our own.

Ryan Henderson in the studio - BTS shots from their Hollow Coves new EP 'Blessings'.

Blessings is out now and you can stream it right here: