Building my smaller studio in the mountains of NC - Bird Youmans - Blog 3

Today's Video

After I "retired", I started spending most of my time at the Mountain Cabin and was enjoying some time off and remodeling the cabin while making some woodworking vids for my new wood channel.  I still had my larger studio The Bird's Nest in Covington GA but was finding it harder to get back there to do any projects and really was trying to not have to go back there too much anyway since I love these mountains.  Linda was still heavy into her real estate company and she would join me on week ends and I would occasionally go back to the "flatlands" for whatever.  This was around 2010 ish.  

This sort of went on for the next 5 years or so and that's when I discovered the music channel was doing something without me doing anything to promote it and it was those primitive vids that people were watching.  Almost embarrassingly primitive by that time.  So that prompted me to think about using my new equipment and software to make a serious attempt at better music vids of my Gospel songs that had been recorded 10 to 15 years earlier.  And when I started doing that, all of a sudden the views and subscribers went up quickly.  I learned to do green screen work and developed the style I now use in a lot of my vids.  I call it studio magic.  You shoot the parts in front of the green screen and then the software can remove the green and leave it transparent where the green was and you can then take what ever wasn't green and put it over what ever else you could shoot whether it be more video or even stills.  That opened a flood gate of ideas and we proceeded to make about 35 to 40 videos.  we soon hit 100K subs.  Less than 1 percent of youtube channels achieve that.  I was stunned.  As of today we have over 280K subs.

My wife Linda, my soul mate if anyone ever had one, has always supported my music career.  In fact, being a sales lady, she became my manager after we were married which was later on in my career and when my life changed and I started doing Gospel Music.  But that's for another blog and it'll be fun to write, but for now let's get the little studio built.  

I had started by 2015 or so thinking about building another studio, much smaller since I was no longer taking any new outside work, and moving all my studio equipment up here to NC so I could record and have my video set up here and not have to go back to Covington to record or shoot the green screen etc.  There's an old garage/barn just behind the house and I was thinking of taking it down since it was about to fall down anyway and put the studio there.  But Linda has wonderful ideas at times and knowing that might never get done she suggested I go up the hill a bit where the land was somewhat level and build it there.  No tear down involved.  Great idea!

All our land is on a slope so calling it level is a bit of a joke!  But I had figured out how to build on these slopes after I built a shop and a shed using several posts planted in the ground in a 4 foot grid and then 2 foot "tweeners" between all that.  Very sturdy floor and lots of "teeth" in the ground so the building doesn't go rolling down hill!  This talk got serious about 2018 so July 4th I started clearing the ground and had the first load of lumber delivered.  I thought I could build it in about 3 months.  Turns out this S on my chest does not stand for superman lol!  Stupid comes to mind!  But all seriousness aside, we got started.  I built my first studio and it was much bigger but I did it between my travels and it took 4 years.  Somehow I did get this one finished almost a year from the day I started and that was July 2019.  OK.  Now what?

In my next blog I'll tell you what happened.  

If you'd like to see the studio being built, here is a play list for some video I shot while building it.  I got so busy with my livestream that I am still trying to finish the editing, so there are still some videos to come, but they will be added to the playlist as they become available.  Here's the link:

A Play List for building the Little Studio 

To explore my other youtube channels, click the links below:

A Play List of all my Gospel Songs

Bird's Old Time Gospel Music Sing Along

My Wood Channel

The sing along channel is where I do a livestream each Friday night at 9PM EST.  I put the words on the screen to my videos and we all sing along and I tell stories about the songs as well as some "Philosophiz'n" here and there.  We have what might well be the most loving chat room on the internet.  Hope you'll join us if you like the old songs! 💔

And the link to my Music Store for my CD's:

Click here to go to My Music Store for CD's

See you soon!