Since he started producing records about five years ago, Will Hunt has worked with some big regional names, including The Polyphonic Spree, Green River Ordinance, and The Burning Hotels, and he’s currently writing and recording with Evanescence’s Amy Lee. But the 31-year-old Fort Worthian is closing the doors to his studio, Spaceway, in Dallas, because he’s going to be doing so much work in New York City starting this summer. “The Fort Worth music scene is diverse and impressive,” he said. “It has been a pleasure to contribute in some small way.”
Hunt started out as a drummer. A long time ago. “I would constantly bang on pots in the kitchen and use pencils for drumsticks on hymnals in church,” he said. His grandparents bought him his first drumkit – when he was three.
Hunt, who’s lived in several different cities, started playing professionally in high school, and in his early 20s, he began to write and perform electronic pop and hip-hop. He signed to an indie label when he was 22. Since he couldn’t afford to buy studio time, he built one in his and his wife’s Oklahoma City home. “I had very little experience as an engineer/producer at the time, so I just locked myself in my studio for weeks and started to learn things the hard way,” he said.
A couple of years later, while living in Nashville, he agreed to write songs for Warner Bros.’s publishing arm. “I had decided to stop traveling and try to settle down a bit,” he said. Two musicians with whom Hunt had done some session work, Shane Barnard and Shane Everett, told Hunt they were building a studio in Dallas and asked him to be the resident producer. Hunt possessed the perfect combination of experience and know-how to spearhead the project. He and his wife moved here about a year later.
“Those years of touring and being a studio musician were really the foundation of my production career,” Hunt said. “Working under different producers taught me a great deal about which methods I thought did and didn’t work well. … I identify with the players I hire and with the artist because I have been in both of their shoes.”
Hunt was immediately welcomed into Fort Worth’s hipster underground. One of his first projects was The Burning Hotels’ Eighty-Five Mirrors, the EP on which the Fort Worth quartet’s most popular single, “Stuck in the Middle,” first appeared. “When I met [Hotels co-frontmen] Chance [Morgan] and Matt [Mooty], they didn’t tell me they were in a band,” Hunt said. “We actually knew each other for awhile before they handed me a demo.
“I was nervous about listening because I didn’t want it to be terrible and have to avoid the topic every time I saw them. I got in the car that night, put it in the CD player, and I was very impressed. I loved the songs and the whole feel of the thing. It was so original but a bit familiar at thesame time. I was sold at first listen.”
