We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jamie Uertz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jamie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents kind of let me be free to explore any interests growing up and this was something I have grown to appreciate. I went through a sports phase, a gaming phase, and then the music phase. So whenever my interests shifted there was never the, “No, you need to stick this out,…” speech. This gave me the freedom to explore without being worried I would disappoint them.
By the time I was in High School, I was in a band and my folks had no issues with me going to practice after school every day or playing shows on the weekends. They trusted I would not get into trouble. They just always said the minute I break their trust it was over. So I was always honest with them about what I was doing, where I was going, and who I was with and there was never an issue. It was a lot of freedom for a high school kid, and this allowed me to do things like play shows at house parties, out-of-town shows, etc.
Then when we were all seniors we saved up enough money to go to Florida and record at a famous studio we all loved. No help from our parents. We saved our own money, organized the whole trip, and booked everything. A great life experience.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Growing up playing in a band in the 90s there was no such thing as “home recording” really. So we would always have to spend our very hard-earned money to record. This was always with a varied result so when it turned out bad it was a huge bummer. Eventually, we got a hold of a very basic home recording setup and started to record ourselves and I was hooked. It was so hard! Making our music sound good was very challenging and this made me want to understand even more. So I started buying magazines about recording (yes, real paper magazines, this was pre-internet) and reading everything I could. Then I started spending any money I had on basic recording equipment like microphones, etc. I would borrow from friends in other bands too and piece together very basic recording rigs to record my band and eventually got into recording other people.
From there it just took off until eventually I was a senior in college with a decent recording setup in my house that I ran with a couple of close friends, After college, I went to the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences to further educate myself in Arizona. Came back to Alabama and continued to record whoever I could for years. Eventually got into touring with bands and running live sound as well.
But the big break came when I met a member of a very established band who wanted to build a studio and asked for my help. As I helped him build his place we struck up a friendship and decided to become partners in the studio as I had some recording gear in storage I was not using at the time in 2014. From this Silver Cord Studio was born. His band Gojira was the first project we did there and that album actually got nominated for 2 Grammys!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I started my first studio at 18 years old. It wasn’t until I was about 42 that I feel I really got going. There were lots of bumps in the road that ranged from personal to just thinking it was never really going to lift off but I never stopped trying and kept in touch with everyone. Thats a huge lesson here: ALWAYS stay in touch with people in your field that you meet. You never know when a connection will lead to something.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Word of mouth. Bands always talk to each other, “Where are you finding gigs, what are you posting these days for content, where did you record that?” If you do a good job capturing the bands’ vision AND are personable/ easy to get along with then people will recommend you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.silvercordstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/silvercordstudios?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SCNY1080