How a lavender farmer and a musician launched a recording studio in SLO County

Tucked away in a canyon between San Luis Obispo and Avila Beach, in a small barn on a lavender farm, is a recording studio where Hunter Nakazono and Finney Smith are helping each other pursue their parallel dreams.

With nearly 40 years between the two, their meeting was as serendipitous as the creation of the studio they now operate.

A SLO County native, Smith graduated from Cal Poly in 1975 and followed a myriad of career paths that eventually led him to owning and operating a lavender farm.

In 2017, Finney and his wife, Stacy, were in Santa Monica. Amidst a personal cancer scare, Stacy wanted to clear her mind with some dancing, and dragged Finney to Harvelles, a historic blues club.

The band playing that night was The Tens, headed by Hunter Nakazono. With hardly anyone else in the venue on a Tuesday night, it was easy for Finney and Stacy to make their solitary presence on the dance floor known and converse with the band during set breaks.

After they “yucked it up,” as Nakazono said, the couple eventually offered their farm up north as a place to stay if the band ever needed it.

The cancer tests came back negative and the Smiths started calling Nakazono their “good luck charm.”

Born and raised in Denver, Nakazono started playing guitar at 12 and moved to Los Angeles to pursue music seven years before that night. Inspired by Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” and the origin stories of classic rock bands, he practiced three to four hours a day and played about 120 gigs a year.

He also spent many nights with his band busking on the street until 2 a.m. for the bar crowd.

“It was just five hours a night. We were just free to explore and people gave us real honest reactions, like if we sucked, they would just walk away. But if we were good, they would hang out on the street,” Nakazono said.

Months after their winding paths led to their first meeting in Santa Monica, Smith received a text that started a string of visits from Nakazono and his bandmates over the next few years.

When COVID hit, Nakazono left LA and asked Smith if he could live full-time on his farm. Smith accepted and Nakazono became, mildly to his chagrin, like a son to him.

Music studio at a SLO County lavender farm

Even with the two living together, the recording studio needed a dash of coincidental luck to come to fruition.

Since the pandemic had halted all live gigging, the only way of life that Nakazono had known for the past decade, he had an “identity crisis” and had to ask himself, “what have I created?”

Looking at the network of people he had met — from musicians and producers to engineers and graphic designers — Nakazono realized he had, “essentially what a record label is … a hub of resources that produces music and puts it out there.”

After creating a list of assets, a business plan, an LLC, and “feeling great” from getting laughed at by the bank when he asked for a loan, Nakazono was ready to pursue his record label: Heavy Crush Records. The only thing missing was a studio.

Smith, who originally met his wife on a dance floor, always had a love of music in his blood. Without music, the glue of his life, he would never have met his wife or Nakazono.

While Smith was originally inspired to build a jam room, Nakanzono suggested a recording studio to go with his record label, and the two passions meshed.

With the help of contractor Mikel Robertson and sound engineer Thomas Rojo, the group was able to convert a “beat-up old barn” on the property into a fully functional recording studio. They started the project in spring 2022 and had their first music session in winter 2023.

Shiahma Recording Studio now boasts a full industry-standard setup with a range of equipment, instruments, digital audio workstations and configurations for any act. The studio is also capable of live set video recording.

Origin of the studio’s name

The name “Shiahma” came through Smith’s experience with transcendental meditation and is, “my prayer for my mother,” as he said.

A special education teacher in the Lucia Mar School District, Mary Jane Smith was, “an incredible lady; incredible giving person,” Smith said.

Having substitute taught in her class on numerous occasions after college, Smith said, “The love in that classroom was pretty incredible, and I was inspired by her professionalism, her giving, her love and she was very well liked by people that knew her and was good at helping people out.”

A picture of his late mother now hangs in the studio and is posted on the website.

This passion for giving back has motivated Smith throughout the entire studio process. “I had in the back of my mind, even before the recording studio, that I wanted to come up with some kind of ‘pay it back’ program,” Smith said.

Through “pure luck,” Smith’s brother-in-law came in contact with Infinite Music, a youth music nonprofit, and Smith saw it as the perfect opportunity to bring his “pay it back” idea to life.

Partnering with Infinite Music’s “Rising Stars” program, which awards tuition-free music instruction and potential studio recording time, Smith and Nakazono have been able to help about 15 students in three years, one of which is now on Nakazono’s label.

Then came a record label

Alongside Smith’s desire to give back is his facilitation of Nakazono’s music-producing dream.

Smith’s respect for Nakazono is for good reason: “He certainly works hard; he is dedicated to this. There is no day that goes by that he is not playing music,” Smith said.

Operating out of Shiahma Recording Studio, Heavy Crush Records currently consists of eight acts: The Tens, Ryn Callarman, Mike Melchione, Rookie Takao, Erik Dawson, Viktor Najarro, the Electric Lavender Train and Noach Tangeras.

Nakazono has also worked with numerous other acts to help record their own projects. Regardless of the group or genre, he always starts with the same question: “What’s your dream?”

With this, he is able to tailor his services to meet the needs of his clients. “Everyone’s got their own path. Everyone’s path is unique, which is cool,” Nakazono said.

He has also come to realize that the modern way of consuming music is a lot different than when he started in the industry.

Following the advice of the old guard, he has done seven national tours, all with many miles on the road and meager profits at best.

“That’s a crazy amount of work to think about, lots of driving. And now to hit that city, people just have to click a button,” Nakazono said.

With the addition of the studio into his life, Nakazono is able to accommodate this new way of the industry and focus on releasing quality, recorded music.

His goal this year is to keep a steady flow of releases from the bands on his label and keep building the business. He wants to keep making interesting music that opens new doors and eventually allows him to tour the world.

As Nakazono said, “I will keep releasing music until that happens.”