In Nashville’s Music Row they turned houses and other repurposed buildings into recording studios. In this post I visited and sketched two. Of these repurposed studios. One in Music Row and the other in East Nashville. But they do share someone in common: Neil Young.

On Grand Avenue is an unassuming Victorian house that was turned into a studio in 1970.

This was Quadrofonic Studios and some incredible music was recording within these walls. The studio changed hands and is now called Sienna Studios.

The album that brought me to Grand Avenue on this morning was Neil Young’s album Harvest (1972).

Young was booked on the Johnny Cash Show which was filmed at the Ryman Auditorium. He ended up recording some songs at Quad Studios with local Nashville musicians.

Some of my favorite songs from the album were recorded in this unassuming house including the opener “Out on a Weekend”, “Harvest”, “Old Man”, and one of Neil’s most well known songs “Heart of Gold”.

Many other artists have recorded here, Jimmy Buffet recorded “Margaritaville” here as well as Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away”.

I stood across Grand Avenue and sketched the studio housed in a residential home.

On Thursday morning I headed across the Cumberland River to East Nashville. My sketching destination was a repurposed movie theater and is now Woodland Studios.

It was here that Neil recorded parts of his favorite album, Comes a Time in 1976/77.

Many other artists have recorded here including Joan Baez, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jimmy Buffett, Kansas, Tammy Wynette, the Indigo Girls, Robert Plant, Rosanna Cash, and George Strait. Charlie Daniel’s wrote and recorded his biggest hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” at Woodland. The Oak Ridge Boys recorded their hit “Elvira” here.

In 1998 the studio was damaged by a tornado leaving the former movie house in a state of disrepair and condemned.

It remained unused and unusable until Gillian Welch and David Rawlings bought and repaired Woodland in 2001.

In 2020 the was damaged by another tornado which ripped the roof off the building. It was rebuilt again.

Welch and Rawlings recorded some of their albums at Woodland including “Revival”, “The Harrow & the Harvest” and their 2024 album titled “Woodland” featuring the distinctive Woodland Studios sign on the album’s cover.