A passion to create

Britt Warren cannot recall a time when he was not fascinated by music of all types. Even as a youngster in Madison, he remembers it affecting him differently than his friends.

“I was one of those kids who could be walking down the street with a group of friends and suddenly stop to listen to a song I heard coming from a nearby car,” Warren said. “It’s always sort of been a defining element in my life.”

A bit of a musical gypsy throughout his younger years, Warren found his way back home to Rockingham County in the early 1980s. In 1985, he started a business that would help define his next 25 years – Salt Mine Productions.

Warren worked as a studio musician with Sandcastle Studios in Greenville, S.C., in the late 1970s. The position allowed him to work with a wide variety of artists in different musical genres, but it also gave him the opportunity to experience every facet of the music industry.

It was during that period Warren became proficient in studio production. It was also when he learned he had a knack for composing under pressure.

Warren said he was part of a musical group called in to record a commercial jingle for one of Sandcastle’s corporate clients. The client’s agent found the jingle inappropriate for the product and wanted a new one, but the project was supposed to be completed in less than a day.

“The producer asked if any of us in the band could write a song that would work,” Warren said. “I thought I had something in mind and started writing down what I was hearing in my head.”

He showed his idea to the other musicians, and they quickly picked it up.

“We recorded it that same day, and the client loved it,” Warren said. “Then the studio asked me to become their in-house composer.”

That was far from being Warren’s first experience with composing a song. That spark of musical creativity came way back in elementary school. Although he always had a love for music, Warren felt the turning point for him came in the fourth grade.

“Our teacher assigned a book report, but at the last minute she gave us the option of doing the report or writing a song,” he said. “I thought that sounded like the easy way out, so I decided to give it a try.”

Warren said it turned out to be a lot tougher than he thought, but he did get three verses and a chorus finished in time to meet the deadline. He even turned out to be the only one accepting the challenge to write a song.

That’s when the really difficult part came up.

“The teacher not only wanted us to write the song, but we had to sing it in front of the entire class,” Warren said.

Although he could sing well enough, Warren said he was far too shy at that age to perform in front of his classmates. Fortunately, he had a cousin in the same class that agreed to sing it for him – for a fee.

“I paid her $5 to sing it for me, and the teacher allowed her to do it,” he said. “And it turned out okay.”

That’s when Warren first realized he had some gift at composing – a gift that would lead to many more opportunities in later years.

It was that songwriting skill, along with his competency in audio production and musical performance, which allowed him to make the move from Greenville back to Madison. But it was his desire to be the best father to his new twin boys that motivated him to make the move.

“My mother and grandmother were still alive, and I knew in my heart that this area was where I wanted to raise my family,” he said.

Warren and his wife, Diana, raised the twins and two daughters in a home they built on part of the Warren family’s farm off U.S. 220 south of Madison. That home would eventually house another of Warren’s passions, his recording studio.

When he first made the move back to North Carolina, Warren took a job with an advertising agency in Greensboro. In addition to offering him opportunities to work with several Fortune 500 companies, his time at the agency allowed him to expand his skills to shooting and producing video.

Warren’s Salt Mine Productions has taken on a life of its own through the last 25 years, expanding from a place for him to record his own music to a turnkey facility for audio and video recording and production.

The audio side of Warren’s business offers everything from a fully equipped recording room to a state-of-the-art sound booth.

“I grew up learning and using analog production equipment and still hold on to some of that technology,” Warren said. “But I’ve integrated that with the latest digital equipment to get the very best sound quality possible from both.”

The audio portion of the studio provides clients with the ability to record masters for CDs, voice-overs for commercials or videos, custom and original commercial jingles or just an opportunity to “sweeten” existing audio tracks.

Warren’s video capabilities include in-house or field production, lighting, graphics and animation.

Since the economy has slowed production schedules for everyone from music artists to corporate advertisers, Warren said he has added several new services to make his facility more available to the general public.

“I’ve noticed a lot of video tapes that are starting to deteriorate with age and started offering a service that transfers those tapes to DVDs and even improving the image quality some in the process,” he said.

A new feature Warren added to help attract new musical groups and artists is the option to include a “making of” video when doing an audio recording project.

“It provides the artist with something to use on their Website as a promotional piece, and they get to select which song is used for the video production,” he said.

Although there have been many changes in the studio through the years, including three changes in location, Warren’s passion for creating his own music on the guitar has not changed in nearly 40 years.

His love for music led Warren to get involved with rock bands in his teens, but only as a vocalist at that time. But that early experience carried Warren into a lifestyle that created several emotional and physical problems for him as a young man.

 “In the mid-70s, I was told by doctors and counselors that some of these problems would be permanent and that made me even more depressed,” he said.

It was during that low point in his life that Warren said he had an experience that completely transformed his life – a transformation that included healing of those physical problems.

“It changed my life from that moment forward,” he said.

Within a couple weeks of that experience, he purchased a guitar for $99 and has hardly been seen without one in reach since that time.

“It’s been such a permanent fixture in my life that some people have told me it’s become a part of me,” he said. “And I guess, in some ways, that’s true.”

His guitar-playing is an integral part of the music he has personally recorded, including a recent project of instrumental music, “Dance of Broken Chains.” His performance skills have garnered attention from fans and fellow musicians alike, even earning him first-place honors in a recent contest sponsored by “Guitar Player” magazine.

Warren views the power of the World Wide Web as one of the most significant changes for musicians in recent years. His music has seen some success with American audiences, but nothing compared to his growing popularity in Europe.

“The biggest surprise I’ve had with my music is how the Europeans are eating it up,” he said. “I can’t believe all the e-mails I get from people that are hearing the music and love it from all over Europe.”

That success overseas even brought Warren an offer to do a rock re-mix of a song by a popular Turkish musician, Evrim Tuzun – a project he completed just last weekend.

“I got the e-mail with the offer Friday morning, the music Friday evening and finished my version and sent it back Sunday,” he said.

The project was just another way the music industry has changed throughout Warren’s nearly 35 years as a professional musician.

“It’s just the way things seem to happen now in the industry,” he said. “With the Internet, the world’s at your fingertips.”

For more information about Britt Warren or Salt Mine Productions, visit www.brittwarren.com or www.saltmineproductions.com.