Saturday, December 15, 2012

Poorly Researched Local History: Hugi-Lewis Studio


In the late 1970s, Anchorage native Hugi "Huey" Lewis and his rock and roll band "The News" had developed a strong local following, primarily built on the reputation of their captivating live shows; their legendary appearance at the 1978 state fair in Palmer is generally cited (with little competition) as the greatest live music performance ever to occur in Alaska.

Looking to record a first album, Lewis and the band stayed local, renting a small space in a retail strip near the Spenard area of the city; there, they spent several months working with legendary Anchorage producer Pete Harskins, eventually releasing their self-titled debut in June of 1980. The album's modest success, in conjunction with the band's increased visibility from their regular appearances as the house band during the final months of the Chuck Woolery-hosted era of Wheel of Fortune, provided both opportunity and public demand for additional recordings. The band returned to Alaska to record their breakout self-produced hit Picture This in the fall of 1981, and again in early 1982 to reunite with Harskins for their third effort, Sports, which would eventually go on to become the best selling album ever recorded in Alaska.

The success led to change, as the band expanded to 14 members (including six saxophonists - the most ever in an Alaska-based band), and with the modest Anchorage studio no longer sufficient to host the growing horn section (and, some might say, the equally inflated Lower 48-style egos), all future albums beginning with Fore! in 1983 were recorded in a spacious abandoned distribution warehouse in Las Cruces, New Mexico.


Despite global success, Lewis returned home often, primarily to fish and tend to his Hip To Be Square Diner in midtown, which he co-owned and -operated from 1986 to 1994 with childhood friend and former New Jersey Devils defenseman Rich Gartleby. On occasion, Lewis would revisit his old studio in Spenard, notably to record three critically-panned solo records, the last of which he released just prior to his death in 2003.

Although not often mentioned in guidebooks or walking tours of the city, the building remains, now all but hidden amongst shops in a thriving but unassuming strip mall on Northern Lights Boulevard. The suite housing the historic studio space was purchased by Lewis's estate in 2009 and named for him, using the traditional Yup'ik spelling of his given name. Today, the storefront houses a small museum showcasing band memorabilia, including several buckets of sand taken from the set of the music video for If This Is It, which was filmed on the shores of Kachemak Bay, near Homer. 

Poorly Researched Local History is a recurring feature in which an Anchorage landmark is examined through a lens of outright lies and fake anecdotes that I totally just made up right now.

2 comments:

  1. Their early work was a little too new wave for my tastes, but when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far much more bitter, cynical sense of humor.

    In '87, Huey released this, Fore, their most accomplished album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip to be Square", a song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it's also a personal statement about the band itself.

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  2. I saw Huey Lewis and the News at a concert in August. They were touring with Joe Cocker.

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