Sudbury's Folk Music Mecca

Meet Neale Eckstein: pediatric dentist and folk music producer.

When he's not cleaning children's teeth, he's recording music in his basement or attending concerts in his living room (not to be confused with an adjacent room filled with a collection of Groucho Marx art and ephemera).

Eckstein's dual-track began in 1997 when he and wife Laurie Laba hosted an evening of music with singer-songwriter Ellis Paul at their Sudbury home. The concert, an effort to raise money for the Justice Resource Institute in Boston, was supposed to be a one-time affair. Thirteen years and 175 concerts later (though not all of them featuring Paul) the Eckstein-Laba household is also home to both the Fox Run Concert Series and Fox Run studios. In addition to the concerts, Eckstein has produced nearly 50 albums from his house. 

To an outsider, music producers and dentists may seem like incompatible gigs, but Eckstein maintains the two professions are anything but mutually exclusive.

"You might be surprised, but dentistry is kind of a creative profession," Eckstein says, leaning back in his ergonomic chair and brushing lint off his watermelon red polo. "I spent my time working on very small, detail oriented tasks, which really is not unlike making a good CD."

The difference, Eckstein says, is that when it comes to music he always wants to be the least talented person in the room. Eckstein got his musical chops playing in cover bands in high school playing whatever was popular (think Beatles, Rolling Stones, Young Rascals), but says his favorite part of being involved with music now is to surround himself with performers who play at a professional level.

And since Eckstein does have a day job, it means three things:

1. He can be picky about the artists he works with
2. He can give 100 percent of concert proceeds to the performers (and in the original spirit of charity the series began in, attendees are encouraged to bring material donations for charities)
3. He's not afraid to run the studio at a loss. He has produced about 50 CDs in his studio and says his basic goal is to get close to breaking even

Eckstein says he wants to help bring quality songwriting forth into the world, both in the form of live music and full-length albums.  The concert series has included names ranging from Josh Ritter and Sarah Lee Guthrie to Jeffery Foucault and Mark Erelli. Even in the studio, where he has worked with numerous artists, Eckstein says all the people who have recorded with him have something in common:

"These are people that really spend a lot of time working on songwriting craft and working on their instruments," he says. "They are not bured-out rock-and-roll druggies…well, some of them might have been in their past… but these are all people who take music seriously, who feel they have no choice but to fulfill their calling at the highest level possible."

To see some of the work coming out of Fox Run Studio, check out their YouTube page or visit their website.