Drive-In Studio

Drive-In Studio was a recording studio in rural Winston-Salem, North Carolina,^[1] founded by Mitch Easter in July 1980.^[2] R.E.M.'s debut single, "Radio Free Europe" (1981),^[3] and their first extended play, Chronic Town (1982), were recorded at the studio six months apart in 1981.^[4] The studio was established in what was initially Easter's parents' garage,^[5][6] at 4527 Old Belews Creek Road,^[7] and became an important part of the early indie rock scene of North Carolina.^[8]

"After a while, I thought, '[Working out of a garage] is kind of embarrassing, but bands didn't really seem to care," Easter said in 2025.^[9] At the time of R.E.M.'s stint at the studio, "the set-up was really simple," Easter said in 1994. "I had almost nothing in the studio back then, except a tape machine and a console and two compressors and one delay device. We couldn't do any fancy stuff."^[10]

Easter explained the studio's layout to Music Radar in 2021:^[11]

[The studio] was tiny. The entire space was probably about 225 square feet. It was a two-car garage that had been divided up before my parents got the place. The previous owners split it up and turned it into a one-car garage, and then the other half they made into a children’s bedroom and this sort of utility room. The car area was where the band stood together, the children’s bedroom was the control room, and I think the bass and guitar amps were isolated in the little utility area next to the control room.

Due to the confined space of the interior, studio sessions often also took place in the home's driveway,^[12] under the carport.^[13]

The home backed up onto farmland, and when Easter's parents lived there it had cows grazing on it. Easter recalls walking behind the house with Let's Active band mate and girlfriend Faye Hunter. "She just started sort of singing to the cows, who were like 100 feet away," Easter said in 2013, shortly after Hunter's suicide. "And they just came to her. And I don't think cows normally do that, you know? But they came to her because they knew that she was trying to send them love. And it was really touching and she did something like that every day with animals."^[14]