The Living Museum

Memphis music producer Matt Ross-Spang assembles his mid-century dream home.

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Matt Ross-Spang has two Grammys sitting on a shelf in the living room of his mid-century modern home in East Memphis. “My parents both loved music — my dad especially. I really connected with a lot of the music that my dad would play — Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, a lot of Memphis stuff. Then in the Nineties, it was Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo, that whole alt-country scene.”

On a trip to visit family in Ohio, Ross-Spang’s cousin showed him his guitar. “I remember spending the whole week just looking at it and playing with it,” he says. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but after we came home, I had to get a guitar as soon as I could.”

Ross-Spang practiced incessantly and formed a band. When he was in high school, his parents paid for two hours of recording time at Sun Studio. It turned out to be a life-changing experience. “James Lott, who was the head engineer, treated us like we deserved to be there,” he says. “It was the coolest thing I ever got to do. We were super nervous, but I loved watching him work the big board with all the knobs and faders. I kind of became obsessed with that, and he told me I could come back and intern.”

Ross-Spang became a tour guide at Sun so he could learn at Lott’s feet. “I would get off high school, give tours until six, and then I would intern in the studio through the night. That’s where I realized that I wanted to be an engineer. You learn way faster interning than you do in school.”

Creating a great record is about more than learning where to put the microphone. “The thing I learned from James at Sun was, it’s scary,” he says. “People come from all over the world to record there. It’s a dream come true for them — but you’re also in the studio. It’s nerve-wracking. We all hate the sound of our voice, like on a voicemail. So imagine singing a song in Sun Studio! James was always great at making them feel at home, making them feel welcome. You can’t get a good performance out of someone who is nervous. You have to put them at ease. I think that was one thing I got really good at, all those years at the studio.

After 11 years at Sun, Ross-Spang received an offer to record Anderson East at FAME studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The session went so well that producer Dave Cobb asked him to engineer on the new album by Jason Isbell. “I would need to go to Nashville for a month to do it,” Ross-Spang recalls. As a manager at Sun, he couldn’t be away from the studio that long. So he had to make a choice. “It was kind of the easiest and hardest decision of my life, but I decided to become an independent engineer and producer,” he says. “I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t take that chance. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

Jason Isbell’s 2015 album Something More Than Free debuted at number one on the Billboard Rock and Country album charts. Rolling Stone called it the best country album of the year, and it won the Grammy award for Best Americana album. “I probably got spoiled on that first record,” Ross-Spang says.

Since then, Ross-Spang has worked with a wide variety of artists, such as Margo Price and The Drive-By Truckers. He recorded Al Green’s first new song in 15 years. The late John Prine loved working with Ross-Spang so much, he gave him his Cadillac. Ross-Spang says he feels privileged to be a part of the long tradition of Memphis producers that goes back to Sam Phillips. “What’s so great about Memphis is the classic studios are still here, and the level of musicianship is out of this world.”

Over the Grammy shelf in Ross-Spang’s living room is a painting by Memphis artist Lamar Sorrento depicting some of the greats who inspired him to work behind the board. “I got Jim Dickinson, Stan Kesler, Chips Moman, Sam Phillips, Willie Mitchell, Cowboy Jack Clement, Jim Stewart, and Roland James,” says. “It’s just missing John Fry and Doug Easley.”

Ross-Spang says he found his East Memphis modernist gem two years ago. His first house was a Midtown bungalow on Holly Street. “It’s a little secret street between Summer and Jackson,” he says. “And I loved living there. It was a great starter home, and I had a lot of roommates at the time to help pay for it.”

But with his career taking off, Ross-Spang started thinking about an upgrade. When he saw the three-bedroom home online, he was intrigued. “I am a huge, huge fan of mid-century modern.”

The previous owner had just dropped the price, which put it in the upper range of what Ross-Spang could afford. Even better, he recognized it was an opportunity to connect with his Memphis roots. “Obviously, Sam Phillips is a hero of mine. His house is over on Mendenhall,” he says. “It’s a beautiful, mid-century ranch built around the same time.”

The home was in excellent shape. “It blew my mind. It’s all original from ’57,” he says. “As I pulled up to come look at it, my good buddy Scott Bomar, who’s a great producer and engineer, was driving down the street. He goes, ‘Are you coming to look at this house?’”

As it turned out, Bomar lived on the same street. “So it was kind of like destiny,” Ross-Spang says.

Once he bought the house, he set out decorating in a period-appropriate manner. He had decorated his 1930s-era bungalow with mid-century modern furniture, but says “it didn’t have the same feel. It was kind of disjointed. But these rooms have the big windows. I came here, and it was perfect. I pretty much got rid of every single thing I owned from the old house, furniture-wise. Because when you look at those old photos from the Sixties of people in their homes, it almost looked like the furniture was made just for that one wall — and I really love that.”

Ross-Spang has spent the last two years searching high and low for the perfect period accoutrements. “I travel a lot to record and make records,” he says. “I get to go to Nashville or Birmingham or Muscle Shoals and such. I always like to go on the hunt to antique malls and thrift stores.”

The giant couch which wraps around two living room walls is a vintage Adrian Pearsall. “The plan of it looks just like the shape of the windows,” he says. “I was very specific about this model, and when I found one I liked, it was down in Florida. So I snagged it up!”

Next to the couch is a white plastic Christmas tree, covered in vintage 45s. It was another gift from John Prine. “He liked to have a Christmas tree up all year-round, so he sent me one after we made the record.”

Connected to the living room via a double-sided fireplace is a sprawling great room. To the right, a couch faces a flat-screen TV on a vintage stand stuffed with a mixture of classic analog and twenty-first-century digital electronics. “The previous owner was downsizing, so he left a couple of old pieces for me. One of them was this Eames knockoff chair,” Ross-Spang says.

To the left, the great room flows into a cypress-paneled kitchen with unique, inward-sloping cabinets. “I love to cook,” he says. “I’m gone most of the time, but when I am home, I do a heck of a lot of cooking.”

The original tile floor is perfectly preserved. The kitchen also features one of the home’s most charming original touches — a built-in combination intercom and hi-fi system, unchanged since it was installed in 1957. You can choose to turn on any combination of seven speakers located throughout the home to play music from the radio or turntable.

With plenty of space to eat in the great room, Ross-Spang decided he didn’t need a formal dining room. So he chose to do something completely different. “One of the biggest highlights of my career was when I got to mix unreleased Elvis stuff. I did a box set for Sony, called Way Down In The Jungle Room. A lot of the hits he recorded in ’76 were actually done in the Jungle Room, and just getting to be a part of that project was so cool.”

Ross-Spang made his own version of Graceland’s legendary den by covering the walls and ceiling with grasscloth wallpaper. The couch, coffee table, and bar stools are all vintage Witco, the brand favored by The King in the original Jungle Room. Naturally, there’s a jukebox — a Seeburg Discotheque built in 1966.

“I love that ranch thing where you open the front door and you can see all the way to the backyard,” says Ross-Spang. A zigzag patterned planter in the foyer echoes a larger planter built along the home’s front elevation. A matching planter in the sprawling back yard is one of the few parts of the home that didn’t survive the years.

The broken-tile patio, on the other hand, is original. In the corner is a bubbling fountain Ross-Spang found in California. Echoing the tiki theme from the Jungle Room, Ross-Spang snatches up moai, replicas of the famous heads from Easter Island, whenever he finds one in an antique store, and places them around the patio.

After two years, the home is still very much a work in progress. Only one of the three bedrooms has been decorated. “I’m thinking maybe a cowboy theme for one of them,” he says.

As you can probably tell, Ross-Spang is having a ball putting together his dream home. “All the little things add up,” he says. “I still wake up every day and I just smile. It’s such a cool place. And I think it’s from my years at Sun and Sam Phillips Recording, but it almost feels like a living museum. Like, I’m not the homeowner. I’m just the curator of this place.”