Sean Truskowski

I don’t find it easy to write a bio. I tend not to move through life with the expectations of accolades or adoration from others. I generally put my head down and keep my gaze on what’s inspiring in the moment. And as I look back on my life and career, all the memories, and all the achievements tend to fall into neat little packages of “moments in time”. But I am thankful for all of those moments in time.

I’ve been very fortunate in my life and career, but my fortune has been met with hard work and taking risks to make opportunities come into fruition. It’s a rather interesting balance to watch those two elements collide. After graduating from Full Sail, I moved to Nashville to test that process as an intern at the now dismantled Masterfonics Studios. I had the good fortune to focus all of my first 6 months taking as many shifts as possible, in part because I adored the recording studio environment, but also because I lived by the notion of “be in the right place at the right time, and opportunity will present themselves”. Present themselves, they did. I scored my first paid gig working as Studio Manager/Engineer at The Love Shack Studio under my first real mentor, Chris Rowe. As I remember those early days, I sense that I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder, not on purpose, and not knowingly, but I suspect I took that position for granted. I learned a lot from Chris, and he was incredibly generous with sharing his knowledge and experience, but I feel I could have been more humble and really taken in all the information. I’m grateful for those first two years, and the generosity of Chris.

Following my time at Love Shack, I some how finagled my way into the Head Engineer position at The Tracking Room studios, Nashville’s largest one room facility, a title it proudly toted. The years I spent learning music production at the tracking room were incredibly enriching. I was learning things I didn’t realize I was learning until years later after the lessons finally sunk in. I find that a lot in my relationship with art and music production. It’s as if we rake ourselves over the coals of creation until one day an epiphany happens…the dots are connected, and you just get it. The tracking room was a gauntlet for production learning, and it was fantastic…and dramatic…and fulfilling.

As if learning music production wasn’t hard enough, I tried my hand at starting a music group called Elliot Root towards the end of my time at the Tracking Room. What a ride that was. As I said, it’s all in it’s neat little package now, but at the time, I was hell bent on becoming the next great Indie artist out of Nashville. We achieved some amazing things and made great music. We toured the nation, played in front of thousands of people and shared the stage with incredible musicians. A couple of bourbons and the stories fall right off the tongue. I”m grateful for the friends I made and the experiences I had. It was a full experience trying to make that all happen, and all the people that were a part of that project had a profound impact on my life and career. But like all good things…

A few years ago, after leaving the group, I lost my sense of who I was in the music industry. After an admitted existential crisis that left me flailing in the great sea of “Who Am I”, my spirit and passion for creative spaces was reinvigorated, in large part by the Bohemian Rhapsody movie that came out in 2018. I don’t know why, but it shook the cob webs off, and put me back into the headspace of a 19 year old intern feeling the studio spaces for the first time. I was inspired to build a studio in southeastern WI, and build I did. But shortly after completing it, spirit spoke…and my family and I were pulled by a gravity, indescribable, to leave the dream house we built just a couple years prior and let go of the studio I had essentially finished a few months prior. We still can’t quite explain it, but “life” presented us with the opportunity to move out to where we are now, and all we could do was listen.

And that’s where the Azyl Valley starts. Nestled in the valley of Big Creek just outside of Sparta, WI, we found an inspiring piece of property that has felt like home from the moment we saw it. The house spoke to my wife, and the barn spoke to me, and now we are one year and a fourth child into a years long endeavor to renovate, build, and share this incredible space with people. This studio is my art piece. It’s and inspiration to revive the energy that’s been dormant in these buildings for decades. I’ve been driven by ambition for most of my career, and while it’s bore fruit, in many ways, ambition has robbed me of present moment inspiration. This space is teaching me to be inspired by everything that comes up, and to share it openly with others. I try now to fix my attention on the here and now, whether that’s tracking a band, mixing a record, building the studio, shoveling pig shit, it’s all right now and it’s all good. I’m dedicated to sharing this space with other artists, who want to be in a creative environment putting moments to memories and creating records. I’ve had an incredible journey, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you.