The Many Sound Treks of
RON UBEL

© 1994 Mike Metheny


"A recording engineer has to be a combination bartender, psychotherapist, technician and musician... and have the ambidexterity of an octopus."

So goes a favorite quote of Sound Trek's Ron Ubel; a man who should know about such things and one who has been proving his mettle in each regard for over 30 years.

Ron Ubel working his magic

Ron Ubel's Sound Trek Studios are where a good chunk of Kansas City's musical magic is captured, distilled, polished and eventually released. And it is the congenial, relaxed atmosphere created by Ubel and his staff of engineers that virtually assures the best performance an artist is capable of bringing to a studio date.

"The general feeling we aim for," says Ubel, "is to make the musicians on the other side of the glass as comfortable as possible. The lighting, the temperature, the surroundings, a well-maintained and tuned piano... even the little amenities like coffee and drinks; it's all part of an overall attitude: to make the musicians and the artists feel at home."

Ron Ubel's love affair with recording began in his native St. Paul, Minnesota, where, as a teenager in 1959, he stumbled upon an opportunity "quite by accident" to record a friend's performance on a neighborhood church organ.

"A friend of mine was the organist in a local church, a church with wonderful acoustics. One night we stopped in there and he started playing some very beautiful French church music. I asked him if there were any recordings of this incredible music; he said 'no' and I said, 'well, why don't we make some?!' So I borrowed a tape recorder and two mikes and went back to the church to record my friend at the organ. I remember being absolutely mesmerized by the fact that I could do something like this. And I was hooked. To make a long story short, I later went to the bank and borrowed enough to start my own studio. That's how it all began."

After setting up shop in St. Paul with that first studio, one of Ubel's road projects involved traveling to Omaha, Nebraska where, for the next five summers, he would record the performances of visiting choral groups at Boy's Town. These trips eventually led to an unexpected career detour.

"In 1966, after the studio in St. Paul went out of business, I was asked to be a counselor at Boy's Town. Seems they'd noticed I had a good rapport with the kids when I was there those summers recording, so someone suggested I join the staff. I did that for a year, working with kids from troubled homes and backgrounds. It was a very rewarding experience and completely unrelated to recording. To this day I try to stay in touch with many of those kids."

In 1967, however, an engineer friend in Omaha heard that Ubel was in town and successfully lured him back into the studio, thus beginning what would be a 13-year association with Sound Recorders, a studio that eventually opened a branch in Kansas City, sending Ubel here in 1974 to oversee the new operation. Then, in 1980, the opportunity to strike out on his own came along, and Ubel started up Sound Trek, a studio that has spawned several additional branches in Overland Park, the Plaza, and one back in Omaha.

In the 14 years of Sound Trek's existence, Ron Ubel has had numerous musical encounters and associations that remain etched in memory. And of the many notable performers who've laid down tracks with Ubel at the controls, a few stand out. Like, for instance, singer Marilyn Maye.

"We've done a lot of recording over the years with Marilyn. There was one session that was really incredible but was never released. She had an accompanist for a while by the name of Mark Franklin; it was uncanny how he could just crawl inside her head and anticipate her every move. One time they both came in and recorded some beautiful ballads; just the two of them. It's still in the can... Maybe someday someone will come along and want to release it. It's vintage Marilyn."

Although sessions at Sound Trek cover the gamut from big band and classical to voice-overs for TV and radio, audio-visual for in-house productions and some jingle work ("our bread and butter... helps keep the doors open..."), it is Ron Ubel's involvement with the Kansas City jazz community that piques his passion for a music indigenous to the area. He clearly enjoys that facet of the job.

"Kim Park, Bob Bowman, Todd Strait, Paul Smith, Gary Sivils, and so many others I could name... they're all legends to me. Working with Karrin Allyson on her first album and having the conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, William McGlaughlin, on board as an A&R man, that was great. And then there was the big band thing we just did (The Kansas City Spirit Orchestra). Working with all these fine musicians reminds me that jazz is alive and well in this town."

Another interesting part of being a recording engineer, as Ubel readily admits, is keeping up with the many technological advances that seem to define so much of what is going on in the studios of the 1990s. For someone who started out with an old reel-to-reel and two mikes, it can be a mind-boggling thing to behold.

"It's all going beyond my gray matter! And to think that I started out as a hobbyist with that one tape recorder. Since then I've seen the evolution of the mixing console and its perfection in the '70s; then digital came along in the '80s... and now there's DAT (digital audio tape). DAT has been the real savior. It's very clean, no noise reduction (is needed), and it's a great storage medium and a great way to mix down to two tracks. There's also digital tape multi-track recording, audio-on-computer, ADAT (8-track digital) on 1/2 inch video tape, digital work stations where everything goes right to hard disk... It's a lot of fun trying to stay up with the advances that are leading into the 21st century."

True, such wondrous hardware may make for new challenges and revelations, but in the final analysis, it's still the music itself that keeps Ron Ubel going.

"(Although) we do want to be on the leading edge of what we're doing, we still want to maintain this wonderful association we've been blessed to have with recorded jazz in this market. I'd love to see a whole collection of artists come along, develop and stay right here in Kansas City."

A wish shared not only by those who would like to see a return of a thriving Kansas City jazz scene, but by those who have grown to admire and respect someone who is both the aforementioned hybrid of ambidextrous technician-musician-therapist-bartender, and one who thoroughly enjoys what he does while doing it so very well.

Ron Ubel: skillful engineer, gracious host, unabashed jazz fan and consummate gentleman. And after all these years, still having a great time on the other side of the glass.


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