The Bomb Shelter’s Andrija Tokic on Home Recording and Upcoming Projects
Nestled along the Cumberland River, just a few miles from the neon lights of Nashville’s Broadway teeming with the city’s honky tonks is East Nashville. One of the neighborhood’s nondescript, renovated shotgun houses is home to the “analog studio wonderland” known as The Bomb Shelter. At the helm of the studio’s controls is Andrija Tokic, whose credits include blues rocker Benjamin Booker’s self-titled debut, Hurray for the Riff Raff’s critically acclaimed Small Town Heroes and the Alabama Shakes’ Boys & Girls. We caught up with the 31-year-old Tokic in-between sessions and spoke to him about his start, the birth of The Bomb Shelter and what he’s working on these days.
Paste: I’ve read you were a musical prodigy.
Andrija Tokic: [laughing] I don’t know about that.
Paste: Putting modesty aside, can you tell me about your musical beginnings?
Tokic: I started in Suzuki lessons when I was a little kid and played violin for a very short time. Then my mom, who is a piano teacher, tried to give me piano lessons and realized I probably wouldn’t listen to her and practice. So she got me a guitar when I was in first grade for Christmas along with some music lessons from a dude who looked like he was in like Guns N’ Roses.
Paste: You started working in studios when you were 13. How did that happen?
Tokic: We had some neighbors that were in a band in our town, and they had a home studio that they would take me to and let me hang out in while they did little recording sessions. And I got really fascinated. They gave me an old four-track, and I started recording at home on that. Then, whenever they went to the studio in town to start making their bigger production record, they brought me to the studio. I already kind of knew the principles of punching in and out and tape operations because it’s the same thing on a four-track as it is on a big 24-track. It fascinated me, so I just started doing that anytime and on weekends. I’d go and hang out in studio and try and run the tape machine, or get my hands on any mic, or anything I could.
Paste: Is this the only job you’ve ever had?
Tokic: Yeah, pretty much I guess. I mean, maybe the occasional odd job here and there, helping as a kid, helping an adult do something. Maybe helping dad at the construction site, once in a while, or like family friends with chore stuff, but never really had a job job, ever. In high school, I was valuable enough in the studio to start engineering for pay.
Paste: So I guess you feel like you’ve missed out on having a cubicle and a nine-to-five?
Tokic: [laughing] Yeah. Totally, man. That’s what I miss the most. The security of a cubicle.
Paste: You’re originally from Maryland. How did you end up in Nashville?
Tokic: I was recording a big band jazz album in D.C. The band leader was so stoked with the sounds I got, recording a big live jazz band, and he was just pumping me up and said, “You need to go somewhere else where there are more musicians playing in studios.” A lot of what was happening in D.C. was half electronic or all electronic. You know, it wasn’t nearly as often there, at least in the market we were in, that you would get an entire band of musicians playing instruments. And he was like, “man, you got to go down there,” and I don’t know whether or not he actually thought I was listening to him or taking him seriously, but I imagined this thing down here where there would be a million bands and everyone played instruments and recorded live together. And I just went for it, not really knowing anything about Nashville.
Paste: How long ago did you move to the South?
Tokic: It would’ve been 10 years ago.
Paste: Where were you recording when you first moved to Nashville?
Tokic: Well, really, out of my house, for the most part. You know, in bedrooms recording on very minimal stuff, and then, at one point, I got into a bigger studio and saw how that end works and was introduced to the bigger industry kind of recording process, which was a lot different than what I really imagined. In my naïve, younger mind, I imagined everyone wrote their own songs and recorded with their live bands and everyone worked together. I wound up in the world of where songs were played for the artist in the studio for the first time and there are these incredible musicians that can nail radio-ready versions of songs in one take. It was a very different process from what I was used to. I was used to working with a band’s musicians. Maybe somebody can’t get this thing they’re trying to get to, and you help them through it, and then, they do something they didn’t know they could do. Or people wrote their own songs, and it might be like, “Hey, this song is totally cool, but man, what do you think about it if we shorten the bridge, or maybe, let’s toss a bridge in there, or it’d be really cool if the drums were more dynamic here,” you know? All that interaction between all the people in the studio is what I was used to and what I’d seen in professional studios, but I hadn’t really done this big of industry stuff that I was getting into, and it kind of threw me for a loop a little bit. I wasn’t too sure that the reasons that I got into music and what I liked about recording music was really what I was going to be doing anymore, and I just had to get out of that and just go back to recording bands out of the house only.
Paste: What happened after that experience?
Tokic: At that point, I picked up a lot more equipment, like the board that I used at a young age had come up for sale. At this point, my house was becoming a full-on studio. Every room had all kinds of big analog pieces of gear and lots of guitars, drums and amps that I had been accumulating. Getting back into the home recording world, I was armed with way more equipment and a lot more know-how too. From intern to assistant to engineering, I learned a whole lot about better techniques and faster process, and I came back with a much higher education in recording with hands on experience with some really incredible musicians. It made more sense that I could, now, start doing something much better out of my house.
Paste: When Bomb Shelter Studio launched from your living room, what was that experience like?
Tokic: It was terrifying at first because I never knew when I had a gig or not, but pretty quickly I found a lot of camaraderie with bands that were inspired by music that was performed live during recoding. And that was kind of the only option too. In a house there’s really only so much isolation you’re really gonna get. So out of necessity, we had to record things in a pretty stereotypical old-fashioned way. That attracted more people that felt like that’s how they wanted to make music, and I really started building alliances with really good musicians who were not necessarily on the mainstream radar. Great players who were inspired by something a little different, more into the arts and music and creating unique sounds, and capturing takes that have a lot of energy, and just interplay between musicians, and it just kind of snowballed out of control pretty quick. It just kept growing and growing.