Nathanael Stone is one of the owners of StoneRidge Recording. It's a commercial recording studio in Siloam Springs. The studio recently conducted a marathon-style recording session with 24 regional artists for 24 hours straight to raise money and awareness for EverHope Children's Shelter. Ozarks at Large's Sophia Nourani spoke with Stone to learn more about the charity event. Originally from Lincoln, Nathanael first got into music as a pre-teen playing violin with the North Arkansas Youth Symphony.
Nathanael Stone: When I was in my teens, I started just recording myself for fun and a band in Orlando heard me and asked me to join their band. So I moved to Orlando for a little bit and recorded some albums with them, and I knew I wanted to settle down and have a family, and they were touring like they had been touring for the past 18 years, and I knew I didn't want to do that. So when I moved back to Arkansas, I started the studio just for fun in my bedroom. And then it just started getting bigger and bigger and eventually turned into a commercial studio.
Nourani: Awesome. That's very cool. I'm glad you made it back to your home state.
Stone: Me too.
Nourani: Tell me about when the idea for 24 bands, 24 hours first came to you.
Stone: My wife and I had been thinking about doing something special that helped a not-for-profit, and we weren't really sure what that would look like. And then thought about doing 24 bands and forcing ourselves to stay up for that amount of time and work on all these things. So at the time, it was just me and a part-time helper. And we talked about it and I was like, oh man, that's pretty overwhelming. So we pushed it off. And then Raif with Anvil Sessions came and started working with us at StoneRidge and we're like, hey, I bet the three of us could do it. So Bob Breazeal, Raif Box and myself, we went for it.
Nourani: That's so cool. All the strong recording powers coming together for a cause. That's very exciting. What's your connection to EverHope, the nonprofit that you chose?
Stone: So there's our wives that were involved. And so we talked through, hey, what do we want to do this for? And so we made a list of about 10 different not-for-profits that we thought were important to each of us. And then we just started doing process of elimination and got down to EverHope Children's Shelter.
Nourani: I saw on the webpage that you have some kind of personal connection to fostering.
Stone: Yeah. I have three children of my own, biological children. But my parents fostered when I was a little kid. And then my aunt, she's actually fostered hundreds of kids and she's adopted almost 20 kids over the years. So not all at once.
Nourani: Cool.
Stone: But so it's been important to our family.
Nourani: So it's an easy cause to get behind. Tell me a little bit about the process behind choosing. I mean, 24 artists, getting those groups involved. I'm sure there's a lot of coordination that gets into that. So tell me about that process.
Stone: For sure. There's so many really good artists in Northwest Arkansas and it was difficult to narrow it down. We had to list probably about 100 and then started talking through, hey, what's that look like? Some of it's personal connection and what seems to make sense. And then we just started figuring out what bands would care about EverHope. And it was really hard to get down to 24, but we got there.
Nourani: Yeah. You managed it. You also filmed these in addition to recording them. Tell me about what that was like.
Stone: So we partnered with Solo Motion Company and I hired Solo to come in and he's an awesome film guy. And so we talked through it. We did a few tests and he's worked with us on different music videos and things in the past. And he's really been on our team for the past few years. And so we worked with him and thought through how we were going to do it. And he was the one that worked literally all 24 hours without any stops.
Nourani: Oh, wow.
Stone: Most of us were able to take breaks. But he went all the way through. I mean, he took a 5-minute nap here and there.
Nourani: But that's so cool. I just would ask also just what your personal experience was participating in that and what it was like being at that event.
Stone: I was up for almost 40 hours because you got to prep for it. And then the bands come and you have the 24 hours and then tear down and then going to sleep.
Nourani: Right. Yeah.
Stone: It was definitely tiring. But with every band, it felt like it kind of got rejuvenated, and it was exciting. We limited it to one hour per band. So it was a lot of set up and kind of scrambling. And then we'd record a take and then tear down. And we allowed each band two takes. And then we just picked the best take out of the two. So they didn't get, we didn't edit anything and it was just what it was.
Nourani: Tell me about how you're planning on releasing these songs, these videos, and how people are donating to EverHope, how people can get involved in this.
Stone: So we will be releasing all the songs on YouTube, and we'll be doing one every hour on July 14. So starting at 6 p.m. on July 14. And then just as we recorded it, we'll be releasing it. So one every hour. There's different businesses that have partnered with each band and they just gave a gift to EverHope and then they have their logos on there. So that generated a little bit of money for EverHope. And then the hope is that when people see it that they want to give as well to EverHope, help out children.
Nourani: Yeah. Awesome. And, you know, KUAF is also participating in some way in that release. Do you want to maybe comment just about that and why you chose KUAF?
Stone: Yeah, we were really thankful to you guys, to KUAF, for joining with us on talking about this. And it's really cool that a local radio and public radio cares about the cause in this area and the musicians in this area too.
Nourani: Yeah, we're excited to be a part of it and we'll hear more about that soon. But in the meantime, how can people find more information about the bands, about this event and about StoneRidge?
Stone: You can go to 24bands24hours.com, and the links for all the releases will be there when they release, as well as you can find out what bands are on the list for the 24 bands.
Nourani: Awesome. And you hope to do something like this again in the future, right?
Stone: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of energy. So doing it another year is a little daunting, but I feel like now that we've done it, we'd like to do it every year.
Nourani: Yeah. Also, if it did happen again, would you want to have more bands involved, more groups to participate?
Stone: I think that we would kind of cycle some of the bands, we'd find different genres or we'd do different styles or we might get a little bit more regional. But I think we'll always probably keep it at the 24. It's cool that the original bands and the artists in this area really care about people and different causes. So it was fun to see that everyone joined together to do the 24 bands, 24 hours. It's definitely a group effort and I couldn't have done it without them. And it was really cool to see everybody come together.
That was me, Sophia Nourani, speaking with Nathanael Stone, one of the owners of StoneRidge Recording, about their upcoming fundraising effort to record 24 bands in 24 hours to raise money for EverHope Children's Shelter. You can visit 24bands24hours.com for more information. We mentioned that KUAF is collaborating with StoneRidge on this project. Through the month of July, KUAF will be playing all 24 songs in full on Runtime, a local music show that I host on KUAF 3, our digital jazz station. All 24 songs will play on two separate episodes of Runtime on HD3 on July 4 and 11, with those two episodes replaying on FM on July 15 and 22. For more information on that, visit kuaf.com/runtime24.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
