EAR TO THE GROUND: Macon the band

With the announcement that the Capricorn Sound Studios building on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard will undergo a large-scale restoration, it seems that a long-empty block will again be alive with activity, as plans for the building include a music incubator, exhibit and performance space, all surrounded by the largest residential development project that downtown Macon has seen in a generation.

However, this new project isn't the first sea change that the building has seen.

Shortly before Otis Redding's untimely death, Phil Walden -- along with his brother Alan, Redding and local engineering student Jim Hawkins -- had completed the purchase of a building in downtown Macon. The idea was to install a studio that would allow artists associated with Phil Walden's management group to record high-quality demos without the cost associated with outsourcing the work to studios like Stax or Fame.

Amid an uncertain future after Redding's death, a small group of musicians with little to no experience in the business of producing records worked to build the studio from the ground up.

The large building was nothing more than a makeshift control room and live room with a homemade board, but artists started to fill in as the space grew. In fact, Hawkins remembers construction going on between takes of songs.

Gradually, Phil Walden's energies turned to the construction of a record label and the hiring of a studio band to back his artists. One of his first moves was to buy Duane Allman's contract from Rick Hall at Fame Studios. Although not entirely certain about what to do with the guitarist, Walden took a chance on him after being impressed by the consistency and energy of his studio work, especially on Wilson' Pickett's version of "Hey Jude."

Walden also contacted other members of Allman's former band, the Hour Glass, in an attempt to bring them to Macon and continue to make recordings along the lines of a few tracks they put to tape at Fame as the band was falling apart.

Though they didn't want to get the band back together, Pete Carr, Johnny Sandlin and Paul Hornsby agreed to join Walden in Macon to be a part of his studio house band.

As the studio was still being constructed, the three men, along with local bassist Robert Popwell, began writing and testing out the new system. A 7-inch resulting from those sessions, "Pulley Bone" b/w "Ripple Rap," two sides of heavy, psychedelic takes on MGs-style, in-the-pocket soul, was the first release on the Capricorn label under the unimaginative -- yet fitting -- moniker, "Macon."

As fate would have it, "Macon" didn't last long. Changes in the music industry and the type of talent -- self-contained rock bands -- that was coming through the studio in the wake of the success of the Allman Brothers Band meant that there wasn't much need for a house band to back soul singers.

However, their single release stands as a testament to a time when the Capricorn Sound Studios building was undergoing a drastic change. The two rocking, psych-soul tracks released by the band simultaneously offered a view of the city's musical past and a vision of its future.

As another change comes for the building, it's interesting to think what other moments like that might happen within its walls.

The story of its past is well known. The planned restoration will help ensure that there's a space for new musical creation in its future.

Jared Wright is a member of Field Note Stenographers, a collective of local musicians who write about shows in Middle Georgia. He is also a musical historian, curator and archivist. Contact him at fieldnotestenographers@gmail.com.

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 5:09 PM with the headline "EAR TO THE GROUND: Macon the band ."