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Lounge Studios in New York City, located on 39th Street and owned by Walt Randall, has been operating for over 20 years and remains one of the most popular recording studios among upcoming and established artists. In an interview with New York State Music, Randall opened up a little about his journey to becoming the owner of one of the most successful recording studios in Manhattan.

We previously featured Lounge over the summer, on our list of recording studios in New York City, one in a series of articles.

The interview took place in the Brown Sugar Lounge, the first room Randall built for the studio after graduating from Northern Iowa State University in 2001 and moving to New York City with $50 to his name.

Established in 2003, Lounge Studios is an 11-room professional multimedia studio that houses some of the finest equipment in the music industry. Each of the eleven lounges has been meticulously designed and built by Randall himself to create the most comfortable atmosphere and highest quality. From 2013 – 2016, Lounge Studios served as the East Coast Recording Studio Headquarters for Atlantic Records and Warner Chappelle.

Of the various reasons an up-and-coming artist should aspire to record at Lounge, the number one selling point would be, Randall says, “The engineers and the environment.”

Randall continues, “Those things sort of go hand and hand because the engineers help create the environment. Like I said we’ve worked with a lot of big people, but we’re made to do independent artists. That’s where the bread and butter comes from and I’ve always kept our prices low to do that.”

Randall finishes, “That being said, we get a lot of first-time people in the studio. They’ve never been, they’re a little nervous, and you need to create a good environment for them. So our engineers are some of the best and fastest but, outside of being the best and the fastest, they’re very personable. They know how to make you relax, they can read the room, for a first-timer.”

In all his over 20 years of operating Lounge, Randall says his favorite artist to work with throughout his career is Solange Knowles.

“A Seat at the Table, the first time I ever heard the album front to back, I was like ‘Oh, this is a cultural shift album,” Randall said.

Randall continued, “At the time I was with Atlantic Records, and I used to always tell them ‘This album is going to be the album.’ Not only was it critically acclaimed, it got Album of the Decade with Noisy Magazine, she got a Grammy, that album was at the top of the Obama’s playlist. It was just a cultural thing.”

“To me it was spiritual, we’ve had a lot of artists here but I have yet to hear an album that moved me like that immediately,” Randall finished.

Randall says he isn’t surprised by Lounge’s success, but, “Believing it’s coming, and then living the reality of not being able to pay rent sometimes, not knowing if you’re even going to be in business next year, just the struggle to make it and survive in the landscape that we were in, and trying to build a name for myself as a studio. I always had a belief that this was going to be big, and I took joy, I was in shock and awe every time there was a big artist here, but it never made me feel like I was ‘above it.”

Before opening Lounge in the early 2000s, Randall was headed towards a career as an athlete, although his passion for music was always there. After suffering injuries that prevented him from continuing to play Football, Randall leaned in fully towards this passion, a turn of events that worked out for the better in his view.

“I think music was my destination from the beginning,” Randall said.

Randall feels, that while football was a craft he was skilled at, it was never the end goal. “I was an athlete, and I was always competitive, but I never loved football.”

Despite suffering intense physical injuries in his athletic career, nothing compares to the struggles he overcame during his journey to opening Lounge.

“I’ve had three ACL tears, I’ve had all types of injuries in football, all types of adversity. None of that was even a fraction of what I’ve been through building this studio, this business, this enterprise. Not even close,” Randall said.

In a way, Randall’s injuries were an unexpected twist of fate.

“I think I got injured on purpose,” Randall said.

Randall continued, “I’m not the type of person that ever looks back and regrets anything, but specifically in this situation, I can look back and say, ‘That ended for this to start.’”

Randall concluded his interview with NYS Music by offering words of advice to anyone trying to make their dreams a reality, in the face of the curveballs life can throw at you.

“I needed to understand, personally, that there was something bigger than me,” Randall said.

“It gets so hard on this journey, that I’m not strong enough to do it on my own. There have been so many days where I’ve stepped on this floor while I was building it, and just cried, and said ‘I want to go home,” Randall said.

“It was taking forever, I didn’t have any money, I was falling behind on rent, and stuff was falling on my head in the middle of me trying to put it up. I wasn’t strong enough by myself,” Randall continued.

Randall finished, “When those insurmountable things happen, those insurmountable obstacles happen, the thing that has gotten me through is understanding that it’s not just me. I can lean on something else, I can lean on something bigger than me, that is pushing me through this when I’m tired when I don’t feel like it will ever end, I feel like a lot of times, I’ve done the work but I’ve been partially carried through those times. I get to the other side and I’m like, ‘I have no idea how I just did that.’ and I understand it wasn’t just because of me. It was because I had faith that there was something bigger than me that I could depend on.”