|
NOTEWORTHY
|
RECIPES
|
FE ATURES
|
EVENTS
|
GOOD NEIGHBOR
Sound Man A TUPELO NATIVE COMBINES HIS LOVE OF ART AND MUSIC TO CREATE HANDMADE WOODEN VOICE RECORDERS AND UNIQUE INSTRUMENTS. WRITTEN BY LESLIE CRISS
T
LAUREN KALLEN
CALENDAR
|
PHOTOS CONTRIBUTED BY BRAND NEW NOISE
upelo native Richard Upchurch is a connoisseur of sounds. A visit to brandnewnoise.com will yield plenty of proof. But beware: It won’t be a quick trip. Hours can be spent checking out Upchurch’s handmade wooden creations. A lover of music, Upchurch toured for a time with the Emma Gibbs Band as rhythm guitarist after attending Wake Forest University. In 2004, he moved to New York City, and in 2009 he decided to attend New York University and work on his master’s in audio technology. “It was mostly software-related,” he said. “And I didn’t love it. I was more interested in physical musical hardware and circuitry. I loved building stuff.” It was while living in Brooklyn in 2010 that he created his first voice recorder. It may not have been his intent for a Christmas gift he crafted for his nephew to turn into a successful, well-tuned business; but that’s precisely what happened. “What I built that long-ago Christmas was a rudimentary voice recorder,” said Upchurch from his Dallas, Texas, workshop/ studio. “My nephew took it to school for show and tell, and his teachers wanted to know where they could buy one. So, I built five for his teachers.” His sister encouraged Upchurch to put his voice recorders on Etsy. He did, but business only trickled for a time. He sold a few in a row, including one to singer and instrumentalist Justin Vernon. Then a connection with a contact at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City opened things wide for Upchurch.
“An email was sent to the buyer for the MoMA store about my work,” he said. “My connection told me not to get my hopes up. But 10 minutes after the email was sent, a response came asking when we could meet.” The next day, the MoMA store buyer asked Upchurch how many voice recorders he could make for the store. He asked how many she wanted. Her request for 1,000 recorders took Upchurch by surprise. “At that point, I was making five or 10 at a time,” he said. “I did the woodwork on the roof of my apartment building and the electronics in my kitchen. But after the order from MoMA, the business kind of grew.” Upchurch opened a shop in Red Hook, in upstate New York. His works could be found in the MoMA store and several highend boutiques. For a time, they were even carried by Square Books in Oxford. And more musicians were buying Upchurch’s creations. In 2015, Upchurch married Jill Montgomery, a Dallas pianist and music teacher whom he’d first met when they were kids in Tupelo. Along with a wife, Upchurch got a 7-year-old daughter, Reagan Buvens, “a total joy.” “Jill convinced me over Tex-Mex and margaritas that Texas was the place to be,” he said. “So, I joined the two of them.” Since then, Dallas has been home to BrandNewNoise. There, Upchurch has two shops and a handful of employees. The main shop is a 1924 decommissioned fire station. “It’s not a big business,” he said. “We make a couple thousand units a year. I’m kind of a one-man band: If you call our tech
