165 Hillcrest Avenue
Historical Research and Compilation by Meghan Mundy
Photos by Matt Brewster, Marigold Solutions
House Instructions:
Upstairs is off limits. Other off-limits areas will be clearly marked.
House History:
165 Hillcrest Avenue, formally recognized as Keane Studios until its closure and residential sale in 2016, is one of the most recognizable places in Athens for anyone who is interested in music history. Located in a turn of the century home built around 1916, Keane Studios provided musicians with a comforting feel while recording and mixing music with Keane. John Keene purchased the home in 1976, but he did not transform the home into his world-renowned studio until 1981. For Keane, music mixing was simply just a hobby, and some of his first music was recorded through a Teac reel-to-reel 4 track tape machine which he mounted in a Kroger shopping cart! In the early 1980s, he started making demos for local bands and taking them to the local college radio station for airplay, and by 1985, he was recording music for some of Athens’ music greats such as R.E.M., Love Tractor, Pylon, the B52s, Widespread Panic, Cowboy Junkies, The Indigo Girls, 10,000 Maniacs, Vic Chesnutt, Robyn Hitchcock and Uncle Tupelo.
John Keene received a Grammy nomination in 2011 for his work on Widespread Panic's Dirty Side Down album, and he often played the guitar on the tracks he worked on.
As stated by Keene on his website in 2011, “Many of the bands I work with are self-contained and want to record mostly live with as few overdubs as possible. At the other end of the spectrum, I sometimes work with artists who want me to spend some time working on their music in pre-production, helping with song arrangements and putting together a rhythm section, horns, strings, etc., from the vast pool of talented Athens musicians. These projects are fun for me in a different way, because I enjoy building arrangements from the ground up and often end up playing guitar, bass, pedal steel, or whatever might be needed for the project.”
Keene closed the studio in the early 2010s and sold it to Joe Gunby in 2016. While the house may be residential today, its mark on Athens remains.