LEXINGTON — Lexington graduate Ron Robinson Jr. has always been interested in “making stuff.”
It started with illustrations. During his childhood, the Canton native discovered he had a knack for drawing.
“I was a bit of an introvert, so that was kind of my way of getting out and connecting with people through the artwork that I would make,” Robinson said.
At one point, he entertained the thought of pursuing filmmaking, but something else caught his attention–music.
“It all kind of harkens back to this idea of making things,” he said of his interests. “It’s just all production one way or another.”
When he entered high school, he began playing bass guitar. “Everybody needs a bass player because nobody’s like, ‘Hey, I’m going to play bass,'” he said with a laugh.
He enjoyed the camaraderie and being able to collaborate with others in the creative process.
“I think, not to sound cheesy, but maybe I have more of a spiritual connection with music than I did with art,” he said. “I felt like it moved me in a way that I hadn’t been moved before and I could communicate through that medium in a way that even though I could draw and all that stuff, I didn’t feel like I could ever fully express myself the way I wanted to.”
Robinson later became interested in recording as a means of capturing music and sharing that with others.
“We’d borrow whatever (equipment) we could get our hands on to try to make a record,” he said. Robinson even purchased his own four-track cassette recorder. “It was enough that you could tinker around,” he said.
After graduating from Lexington in 1999, he attended Malone University. At the time, Malone had a budding commercial music program, Robinson said.
“It seemed like a really good chance to get in on something that was just starting,” he said. “There was a very small student body in the commercial music program, so it gave us the opportunity to have a lot of hands-on time with the equipment.”
Eager to learn more about recording, he and his classmates discovered an unused Pro Tools program in one of the computer labs, so they decided to install the software on one of the computers and use it to record demos for their friends’ bands.
“We didn’t really know what we were doing,” he said, “but we figured it out as we went and had a lot of fun in the process.”
After getting his liberal arts degree with commercial music, business administration and art concentrations from Malone in 2006, Robinson attended The Recording Workshop in Chillicothe–a music, audio and sound production school.
From there, he loaded up his car with his guitar and amp and headed out to San Francisco to work at The Plant Recording Studios.
That experience gave him the chance to see what it was like being in a commercial recording facility as popular artists like Dave Matthews Band and Third Eye Blind dropped by the studio for recording sessions.
In 2007, he married actress Jenni Barber, a Mansfield native, and the two moved to New York City. After arriving in the Big Apple, Robinson began working for Wolfgang’s Vault, an audio archival company.
Not long after he started, though, he was offered a freelance opportunity at Atlantic Records. “And that opportunity came by way of Mansfield, strangely enough,” he said.
While in college, Robinson recorded an album for The Winston Jazz Routine, a Mansfield-based band that Robinson’s brother-in-law, Derek Barber was part of. That album was picked up by The Record Machine of Kansas City, Missouri.
Robinson later met one of the co-owners of The Record Machine, who was also working for Atlantic Records. Robinson said, “He told me, ‘We have this little project studio at Atlantic that’s kind of like our last resort, worst-case scenario makeshift studio that we use sometimes and it’s in really bad shape and we need an engineer–would you be willing to do it?'”
Robinson took him up on his offer.
“I got into the studio and started cleaning it out, fixing things ups, figuring out which pieces of equipment worked and which didn’t and got the room working again,” he said.
And the more he fixed it up, the more projects started coming to the studio on a regular basis.
“It was exciting for me because I had gone from working with undiscovered, independent artists to people that were just starting their career like Estelle and Serena Ryder,” he said.
Just last year, Robinson moved into a new studio space on the north side of Time Square.
“Santigold worked on a large portion of her album here, Sturgill Simpson, pretty much anybody that’s on the label has come to our (new) studio for a day or so to work on something at one point or another,” he said.
Robinson’s current title is creative and editorial director, but he also wears the hat of studio director, producer and mix engineer. On top of that, he manages an interactive design team in the digital media department, and he also oversees the Atlantic Records socials and website.
While his day-to-day looks different each day, he said, “It’s all about making stuff–whether it’s an album, or an artist website, or even a story for a website.”
Robinson saw the fruit of his labor just recently when the cast of “Hamilton” won a Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album. “That was worked on and mixed entirely in our new studio,” he said of the album.
“That was like icing on the cake,” he said.
Robinson said he’s thrilled by the label’s success, adding, “I feel inspired to take it to the next level now.”
He continued, “I want to be a part of rebuilding this amazing legacy that Atlantic Records has had in New York City. The original studios were run by Jerry Wexler and the amazing engineer and producer Tom Dowd. These guys pioneered the field that I work in now, and I feel this incredible responsibility to their legacy and this incredible opportunity to continue that now that we’ve developed a new program.”
He also has many personal goals related to his development as a producer and mix engineer.
“More importantly,” he said, “I just want the stuff that I work on to connect with people in a meaningful way.”
