Music is seamless. The quintessential genius, Albert Einstein, credited music for his discovery of the theory of relativity.

Writer Aldous Huxley once said that after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Even Adolf Hitler loved composers Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner enough to fit them into the standards of his Nazi regime. Music means something to everyone who hears it and it possibly means more to those who create it.

“Music is a lot of things for a lot of people,” said Lee Dyess, owner of Earthsound Recording Studio. “I feel like it’s something that connects on an emotional level that gives people an outlet that they might not have in their daily life.”

Dyess opened Earthsound in 1999 after moving from his hometown in Cairo, Ga.

“At the time, there was a fairly healthy underground music scene here, so there was a lot of local business for me,” said Dyess.

For those of you who have never heard of Dyess, he is known locally as sort of a music god. He has become the “verb” in every sentence pertaining to the local music scene. He wears many hats. He’s a recording engineer, a producer, a mixer, an esteemed musician and an overall guru of anything musically related.

“I’ve been playing music for over 20 years now. The recording side just really took hold for me and I just really focused on that,” said Dyess.

Dyess started playing music around age 9 or 10 when his mom helped him purchase his first instrument, a drum set.

“From about the time I was 9 or 10 years old, music really struck a nerve with me,” said Dyess. “It was definitely something that I wanted to do.”

Dyess joined his first band when he was only 13 years old.

“We were just kids playing in my friends’ bedrooms. That’s where it all started for me,” said Dyess.

Eventually Dyess found himself making demo recordings for his band at his house and that was the seed that grew into Earthsound today.

It was those little bands that brought Dyess to Valdosta. Initially, Dyess went to Bainbridge College to study electronics in 1996. He dropped out in 1998 when all of the stars aligned and he took a risk by opening a studio in Valdosta.

“I was in a band at the time and two of our members were moving over here to go to Valdosta State and it just kind of made sense to give it a shot,” said Dyess.

The risk certainly paid off. Dyess has worked with a number of high-profile bands including Mayday Parade, Go Radio, I Set My Friends on Fire and From First to Last. He even worked with the new musical sensation Skrillex who just took three Grammys this year back when he was just a nervous teenager making his first visit to a studio.

“Over time, as some of the bands I worked with from North Florida really became nationally known, it has really helped me pull in clients,” said Dyess.

“At this point, I’m getting clients nationwide.”

It is because of his reputation that he has never had to really advertise.

“The word of mouth has always worked out so well so I have always just let it be,” said Dyess.

Recently, Dyess worked with a band from Long Island called the Heavy Empty. He worked with one of the band members when he was younger and, according to Dyess, he returned to him because of a comfort zone.

“I think for him it’s a comfort zone,” explained Dyess. “This place has always been a place where he could come and feel comfortable putting himself out there.”

Dyess said recording for several artists is a very intimate process. Performing music in a studio is deeply emotional and artists need to feel comfortable wearing it all on their sleeve in front of a producer that understands them.

Dyess reflected a bit and thought that surely there must be someone who could do the same work but is closer than 3,000 miles.

“I’ve made something that they respect at some point and I think they want to work with someone that has made something that they thought was really cool,” said Dyess.

A lot of artists and bands also tend to flock to Dyess because of his talent as a musician. Aside from drums, Dyess plays bass guitar, guitar, piano and cello.

“I started out playing drums and a lot of my further ventures wanting to branch out into other instruments were just based on me wanting to have a better grasp on those instruments so I can do a better job in the studio,” said Dyess. “It’s really handy for me to be able to play anything that’s in their band.”

Though for a time Dyess faded from the local music scene as a result of his work with more mainstream bands, he has recently injected himself back into the scene.

In the early 2000s, Dyess worked with many local bands and helped them establish their sounds. By the mid to late 2000s, he began doing a lot of label projects for bands outside of the area.

“There was a time where I sort of lost connection with the local scene and I wasn’t doing work with a lot of local bands,” said Dyess. “That wasn’t anything I decided to do, it just sort of happened.”

More recently, Dyess has selected a few more local artists. For instance, he’s working on a new project with Ninja Gun and he’s also doing a little work with a band called Dying Whale. Dyess even branched out from his typical umbrella of rock and recorded a local country artist named Ben Wells.

“I’d say easily 70 percent of the work I do are independent artists who are local or regional bands that no one’s really heard of yet per se,” said Dyess.

Dyess’ studio is a reflection of him. On the outside, it’s unmarked. It’s not fancy and it’s just a regular building. However, once you tunnel through “the cave” of a hallway lined with guitars and hung with glass-blown lights and venture into the brightly painted studio, dawning flags of skulls filled with music equipment, you begin to get it. Then when you go into the mixing room with a vintage, mixing board that takes up an entire wall.

“Music is so many things for me. It’s definitely a little bit of an escape from reality,” said Dyess. “I’m so driven to create music that it’s definitely an outlet for that energy for me.”

To contact Lee Dyess, email him at earthsound@yahoo.com.

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