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Join us on September 2nd at 7p (doors at 6p) for a very special intimate show featuring Joseph Parsons (on tour from Germany), and local singer/songwriter Amy Fairchild.

Q Division Studio manager Ed V came back from a month in Germany with a newfound love of schnitzel, and this American born but German touring Singer-Songwriter, Joseph Parsons.

Joseph Parsons writes songs that cut close to the bone. His live solo shows live between rock and folk — stripped down, honest, and unafraid to face the dark. Over the years, Parsons has carved his own path across continents and stages — leading the Joseph Parsons Band and founding the bands Hardpan, Parsons Thibaud & US Rails.

Amy Fairchild is a multi-award-winning songwriter and recording artist based in Boston, MA. Her accolades include top honors at the Lilith Fair Talent Competition, Kerrville Folk Festival, and the John Lennon Songwriting Competition. Her 2002 album Mr. Heart, produced by Adam Steinberg, earned praise from critic Dave Marsh: “Not many people make records this good.". In 2010, she co-founded the band MIRIAM with Carla Ryder and Andy Santospago, performing regularly around Boston. Amy’s 2014 self-titled album and 2017 release Nobody’s Satellite showcased her ongoing creative growth, earning acclaim for her authentic voice and artistry.

With a career spanning over two decades, Amy continues to write, record, and perform, captivating audiences with her distinctive sound and enduring passion for music. On September 2, guitarist Thomas Juliano will accompany her.

On September 2 Joseph plays an intimate show in Studio A (duo, with Ross Bellenoit), and Amy Fairchild will perform with Thomas Juliano. This is your chance to see an internationally acclaimed artist in the intimate setting of Q Division- a living room concert at your friend Q’s house.  

Tickets are available here. IF you can't make it in person, we'll be LIVESTREAMING the show on youtube.

We're bringing back ANALOG TAPE WEEK - and turning off the computer* for a week!

Before the pandemic we had an incredibly fun week tracking to tape, and we've decided to do it again this coming September.

Did you ever wish you could record in as they did in the heyday of analog studio sessions? Don’t get us wrong, we like the computer, but sometimes we miss the smell and sound of analog tape, and well, the whole thing is just very different. You can always record to analog tape at Q Division, but this September we’re going to make it a little easier by setting everything up ahead of time: tape machines, drums, amps, headphones, even instruments; not only that, we’ll waive the tape rental costs.** We’ll be renting out the studio by the day and half day particularly for our THIRD ever ANALOG TAPE WEEK, where you can track basics TO 2” ANALOG TAPE. Are you interested? Drop us a line!

Please check out our FAQ on ANALOG TAPE WEEK, here.

* Actually, we'll most likely be leaving the computer on so that we can dump your tracks to Pro Tools lickety split, and we'll most likely run headphones from Pro Tools too - to take advantage of our Hearback headphone mix system.

**So, tape rental is 100% free; however, if you want to keep your work on 2" analog tape, we'll pro rate the tape cost and you'll need a tape flange, which we'll also have available at near cost.

Come see Todd & his band play the new record, Alchemy - in the room where it was recorded, and welcome them home from a month long tour in Germany! The show will be filmed and recorded as well (it's a recording studio!), as well as live streamed. The band will play 2 sets, starting at 7 PM.

Tix are $20/ADV $25/Door and are available via EventBrite

The Mommyheads - long time art prog band based on the East coast - were one of the first bands to let us record them live and shoot video at the same time in the old Q2.0 after the pandemic. They recently came back to the new Q and did the same thing - it was a pure blast! Check out some of these videos:

The day we tracked Exit 18's single, hello u'r mine, we also tracked the title track from their new album - Incantations. We wheeled the (very old) upright piano that lives in Studio B's lounge into Studio A, installed a light in it, and a 4K Nikon camera (held in place with the lid). Julia Perry proceeded to perform inspiring takes at the piano - presenting acoustic challenges for Chuck who had to contend with the drums and piano in the same space (Rafi wanted the drums in the big room - for a huge rock sound)... Anyway - check out their performance - which is nothing short of mesmerizing. All performed live!

We're really pleased to hang Coleman Rogers' photos in Studio B's lounge for the next few months. Coleman is a long time music nerd, if you will - he's an engineer, a tech, a teacher, a photographer, and like the rest of us - a devoted fan. The work that hangs in Studio B's lounge is a combination of concert photography and art photography. In his own words:

Coleman spent his high-school years near Detroit, working in his darkroom for the school newspaper and yearbook, as well as the theater. The theater is where he learned to love shooting in the dark. After thirty-plus years in and around Boston and New York recording studios, as an engineer and service technician, Coleman retired and spends most of his time photographing shows and experimenting
with film, Polaroid, and digital photo techniques.

In his live music photos, he tries to capture the raw energy of the moment by becoming emotionally involved in the music, paying full attention to the interplay between the artists on stage.

His photo experiments grow out of his Guided Chaos process, where randomness and entropy are part of the process. This current body of work represents a release of intention, where his creativity is centered on play for the sake of play, embracing mistakes and eschewing perfection, with no attachment to a specific outcome.

Coleman's work will hang for the rest of the year (prints are for sale btw!), and we're planning on hosting an opening at the end of October. While the work is easy to see if you're working at Q, we're happy to show it to anyone by appointment. Please drop us a line to schedule a visit!

Last summer we had Le Couteau in for a two-day lockout session in Studio A. At first the goal was just to capture their sound and release it as close to live as possible. But after hearing everything, the band decided to take their time with the process and we are glad they did. Save for a few hours of guitar overdubs in Studio B, the band tracked their whole record in those first two days. Driven primarily by frontman/guitarist, Jean-Francois Blain, the band blends their various influences to make something familiar to shoegaze fans but unique to each of the players in the band. Phil Murray sang backup and played bass, and Faris Albayya played drums.

Q Engineer Terrance Reeves co-produced and recorded. The album was mixed by local friend, Dereck Blackburn (of Quiethouse Recordings).

We were incredibly happy to host local icons Count Zero a couple of months ago for a very ambitious project. They wanted to perform their new record "thought so," AND a bunch of older songs, live with and without an audience, while we multi tracked the show AND filmed with multiple cameras.

This session would require the highest possible quality of recording (including isolation), careful lighting, and multiple cameras and angles, alongside live sound reinforcement for the audience, and in ear monitoring for the band. We spent quite a bit of time getting to know the material and plotting the set up - and working through all the possible technical pitfalls we'd run into. The band booked two days - one entire day was dedicated to set up, then to recording/performing the set once with out an audience. On the second day we ran through the set at least one more time - with costume changes, and then the audience rolled in and they performed the set a final time (two sets, to be exact). We were able to capture a full multi track of the performance, mix the show live for the in house audience, and capture as many as 7-9 cameras of the performance (oh, and we also ran a secret livestream out to close friends and family of the band:).

Chuck Hargreaves engineered the recording, Izaak Biewald assisted and mixed the live sound, Rafi Sofer oversaw the entire production and took care of lights and cameras, with additional help provided by Q interns Kieh Blevins and Lydia Hazzard-Lael.
Peter Moore and Will Ragano (of the band) mixes and edited the resulting videos - check out this one for their song SOUTH.

Check out With A Feather - featuring keyboardist Jude Heichelbech on lead vocals

And here's Big Wig, featuring Will Ragano on lead vocals (Will also edited all these videos):

And... Tail Bites Dog:

And their hit, Radium Eyes:

And one more...

A few months ago Bob Bradshaw brought his band of killer players to Studio A, alongside a very talented video crew, and proceeded to record a live album in a single day!

The band, which plays regularly with Bradshaw in haunts as near as the Lizard Lounge and as far as Tipperary, Ireland, is a finely tuned band. Featuring (the Amazing) Mike Connors on drums, Andrew Stern on guitar, John Sheeran on bass, and special guests James Rohr on piano and Andy Santospago on pedal steel and guitar, this crew pulled no punches during an incredibly long day. They recorded upward of 12 songs! The video crew, helmed by Mark Steele captured multiple cameras with fantastic lighting, and the resulting album will be released soon - the videos have been trickling out in anticipation of this release. Rafi Sofer recorded the band, and Dave Westner mixed it (not at Q:).

Check out this video of the song Albuquerque.

Did you know that Q Division has a mailing list? Because social media posts are so unpredictable, the mailing list is a great way to keep in touch with us and hear about events and studio news! Please sign up so that you don't miss any news! And, don't fret - we don't send out a ton of emails. You can sign up for our mailing list here, AND through the CONTACT form on the website (the contact form assumes you might want to book time, the other link just lets you sign up for our list. Confused yet? I am :).

In the meantime, enjoy Jon Strymish's photo of Jonathan Richman that's hanging in Studio B's lounge (2025)!

While thinking about the new studio we discussed having an area that could serve as a gallery. It turned out that Studio B’s lounge wall is almost perfect for that (it does get some blinding winter morning sun). The inaugural show is now hanging and features 54 black and white photos taken and printed by photographer Jon Strymish.  Photos taken in rooms all over New England of artists who’ve worked at Q and those we hope will stop in some time soon, including Dennis Brennan, Melissa Ferrick, Peter Wolf, Richard Thompson, Hazel Royer, Anne Heaton, Billy Conway, Laurie Sargent, Jonathan Richman, Dave Robinson and many more.

Jon writes:  “Music is the only universal, effective tool for keeping troubles at bay, and I’ve always felt a need for the largest dose possible! The streams of music that run through the bars and basements of Camberville and Boston have been very welcoming to awkward nerds like me, and I’ve tried my hardest to preserve some of the beauty I’ve been lucky enough to witness, and am very grateful for anyone who has allowed me to get away with it!”

Jon’s photos will hang for the next few months, and we’ll have an opening at some point in the near future. If you’re not planing on recording at Q and would like to see the show, please drop us a line and we’ll be happy to find a time for you to visit. 

Ours (and everyone in Boston's) friend Hazel Royer joined the Colorado based bluegrass band Big Richard a while back. While they do most of their recordings in Colorado, Hazel does drop in at Q on occasion to cut a vocal or bass part.

Their new album is called Girl Dinner, and the vocals for the first single, Town Line, was recorded in Studio B by Rafi.

Shotgun Waltz returns to Q Division to track to new singles, Pity Party and Sink or Swim, out now on Bandcamp! Produced and mixed by Ed Valauskas with mastering by Pat DiCenso and recording by James Bridges, these sessions were bound to rock out and rock they did. Pulling influence from Indie, Americana and alternative rock, Shotgun Waltz delivers a fresh sound while holding on to a 90's rock vibe.

Alisa Amador came to Q to shoot a live version of her song 'Enough' for The Kelly Clarkson Show. Backed by the incredible Cilla Bonnie on bass and long time friend of Q, Dave Brophy on drums, it was magic in gorgeous Studio A! Chuck Hargreaves recorded and engineered and Dave Brophy mixed.

Alisa Amador made history in 2022 as the first-ever Spanish language song to win the Tiny Desk Contest and has since gone on to release her highly praised first full length album Multitudes.

We're really pleased to share the news that we've partnered with our friends at the Ronan Fund to create a special apprenticeship program. This apprenticeship will give a high school graduate, who's not college bound, the opportunity to learn on job while earning a stipend. Q Division has for decades run a robust internship program - in fact, all our engineers started out at as interns.

Ronan Jeanotte was an incredibly talented musician who recorded and then interned at Q Division. The Ronan Fund Apprenticeship at Q Division seeks to keep his memory alive and enable youth, who much like Ronan, want to learn by doing.

Details about the apprenticeship can be found on our website here. One part we need your help with is spreading the word to potential candidates - high school grads who aren't headed to college. Please help us spread the word of this unique opportunity. In addition, the Ronan Fund can use support - please visit their website to find out how you can help them - they're supporting aspiring musicians/engineers/producers, and kids who're looking to strike out on their own in a variety of fields.