ATLANTA - 3 a.m., late December 1997. Glenn Matullo wipes the acoustic caulk from his hands and assesses the situation. In three weeks he has to start tracking a record in this room while his equipment sits elsewhere awaiting completion of its new home. About every 2.5 seconds, he wonders why he has committed to this nearly impossible deadline, but reminds himself how much he enjoyed recording the previous Shawn Mullins album, and that he is especially proud of it. Shawn is a friend who makes uncommonly good indie singer-songwriter records, and Glenn doesn't want to let him down.

The place is barely functional by the time they lay the first track, but it sure beats the phone booth Glenn's Orphan Studio had occupied the past two years. "Yeah, this place has potential," he muses as Shawn Mullins warms up with the now familiar guitar riff from Lullaby. The Soul's Core project was underway, and Glenn was beginning the wild ride to every underdog studio owner's wildest (professional) fantasy.

Soul's Core was to be Shawn's eighth self-released album. For almost 10 years, he had been touring around the country with his acoustic guitar, playing nearly 200 shows a year, selling his own records. Most of his songs tended to be intimate, literate narratives with sparse accompaniment, and they won him a dedicated following of fans. For this record, however, he decided to work with a full band, further pushing the limits of the unfinished studio. Orphan was functional at best. Packing blankets were nailed up over bare walls and enough equipment was assembled - some owned, some borrowed, some rented - to get the sounds to tape.

They fired up the Mackie. They booted up the Macintosh. They launched ProTools, and recorded Soul's Core in two stages: drums, bass and keyboards were recorded to D88 by Glenn and Orphan's Chad Franscoviak across the road at Atlanta's Southern Living At Its Finest studio. The tape was then brought back to Orphan, dumped onto the hard drive for reference, and the bulk of the record was finished there.

As construction of the new space proceeded, takes were interrupted by nail guns and power saws. Mullins accidentally set a wall of the studio on fire (starting with a pile of building materials on the floor). The fire was extinguished. More instrumentation was added - electric guitar, drum loops, background vocals - and a smoke detector was installed. Finally the computer was wheeled back across the street to Southern Living, and the record was mixed. Shawn released Soul's Core on his own SMG record label. And then WNNX-FM (99-X) in Atlanta put the song Lullaby in light rotation. Other stations across the country began adding it within days.

This part of the story is by now widely known, so in a nutshell: Over 30 record labels call Shawn and tell him he's a genius. They love him. They court him. They come to Atlanta, circling, darting, fins erect. Columbia Records signs him and they like the album so much they simply re-release it. They hire Tom Lord-Alge to remix Lullaby, and one of Tom's People calls Orphan on a Friday and says "send us the masters overnight."

Matullo stays awake for many hours restoring backed-up files, synching the D88 back up with the hard drive, and then loading all tracks onto D88 for Lord Alge. The single goes to number one. The album goes gold (will it go platinum?). Shawn gets nominated for a Grammy®. Orphan Studio gets listed in Billboard - Mackie, hard drive and all. Orphan hires this mystery writer (a skilled professional, unaccustomed to including the words "packing blankets" and "fire" in promotional materials) to Tell the Story.

• Soul's Core Gear List:
• Avalon 737 microphone preamp/compressor/EQ
• 1176 Urei compressors
• Rupert Neve 9098 microphone preamps
• Neumann KM 184
• AKG C12
• Shure 555S (original, and Glenn notes, an integral part of the "Lullaby sound.")
• Mackie 24X4 console
• ProTools Hard Disk
• Tascam DA-88