Fort Apache Studios

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Fort Apache Studios is a New England recording studio internationally renowned for alternative rock sessions produced there since 1986. The studio is currently located in the village of Bellows Falls, Vermont in space leased in an old hotel called The Windham, owned by the town of Rockingham, Vermont, within which Bellows Falls is located. The studio was first located at 169 Norfolk Street, a warehouse in a rough Roxbury, Massachusetts, neighborhood outside Boston. Fort Apache relocated its facilities above the Rounder Records warehouse and offices on Camp Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1988. An early business card of the studio showing its name as "Fort Apache Studios" is displayed on Joe Harvard's Boston Rock Storybook: Fort Apache South webpage, although the studio is often referred to as simply "Fort Apache."

Among the many major groups and artists who have recorded there over the years are the Pixies, Rvon, and many more.

The studio was initially built by a collective begun in 1985 by musician/producer Joe Harvard and members of a band called the Sex Execs: engineers Paul Q. Kolderie, Sean Slade, and Jim Fitting. Harvard became sole owner, and the studio became very active recording Boston-area indie-rock groups in 1986, although their first project to reach vinyl was a North Carolina act, the Connells, who released the Joe Harvard produced "If It rding artists like Dinosaur Jr, Buffalo Tom, Throwing Muses, The Lemonheads, Radiohead, and more. The album review by Jeff Bateman sums it up with "A better primer on contemporary American rock would be hard to find."

In 2002 Gary Smith, who by then was sole owner of the company, moved the studio from Massachusetts to Bellows Falls, renaming the recording studio part of his business "Windham Studios," while continuing to operate it under the famous Fort Apache Studios name as well. Smith now uses "Fort Apache" as the name of a multi-faceted company with offices near The Windham that operates the studio business, a concert promotion business, and a business managing artists such as Tanya Donelly and Natalie Merchant. Fort Apache additionally operates a music venue in the lobby of The Windham, where it sometimes also records live concerts. The concert venue was originally the brainchild of Smith and Charlie Hunter, owner of the Bellows Falls booking agency Flying Under Radar.

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