A few months back, I stumbled upon the work of Truxton, a boutique creative shop right here in town, and it stopped me for a minute. The energy and high-caliber quality of their work felt like a big-city agency’s touch brought to our local scene. I reached out. What follows is a conversation with Alex, the sharp-eyed photographer and visual engineer, and Dan, the maestro of sound engineering, who are injecting a dose of West Coast LA flair into the heart of Richmond.
R. Anthony Harris: I am here with Alex and Dan with Truxton. Who are you? And what do you do? Let’s start with Alex.
Alexander Kent: My name is Alexander Kent. I am a photographer, director, and visual engineer. I create websites and am essentially the creative force behind Truxton. My buddy Dan runs Blackbird, a division of Truxton that handles all the sound work.
Dan Creech: I’m Dan Creech. I run Blackbird Sound out of the Truxton wing. I do sound engineering and sound design for everything from up-and-coming new artists to ad agencies, video game companies, and a bit of film work as well.
RAH: How’d you guys get together? Within Truxton.
DC: Within Truxton, Alex and I worked together over a decade ago, in 2009. I owned a studio in Santa Monica, California, and ran it for eight years. I was doing post-production and music for about 20 years out there in Los Angeles, specifically in Santa Monica. I got kind of burnt out on that scene. I had some family that had moved out here from California—transplants as well. Alex was out here, running Truxton. We decided to get together and collaborate.
RAH: And did you meet Alex in LA? Because he spent time in LA also, right?
AK: Yes, yeah, we actually met in the Outer Banks first, at a wedding
DC: —his uncle’s wedding. My wife’s best friend was getting married to his uncle.
AK: We were both just kind of walking around. Everybody else was dressed up, and we were wearing our black T-shirts. We were just like the oddballs out. We started talking and gravitated toward each other. It was then that I thought, “You know what, maybe I should go out to LA.” I was graduating that year from Virginia Tech. So Dan was like, “Hey, you want to come out and intern with me? You’re more than welcome to.” I took him up on that offer. I remember driving back across the bridge, calling in, and saying, “I’ll be out there as soon as I graduate.”
RAH: So he was already out there.
AK: And then that’s when I went out.
RAH: After that experience, you stayed there for a while, and he came back, and then how did that all work out?
AK: I worked with him and then got a job as a marketing manager on a film called Forks Over Knives, which was a big vegan film at the time—a film about veganism. Then, I got a job working with LucasArts on a video game he was working on. After that, I got a job at Siegel and Gale, which is one of the world’s largest branding firms. They did the NBA logo and a lot of other major work. I got kind of tired of LA as well and moved back here. I started working at Martin, and that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. The people there and everything about it were just amazing.
RAH: About what year did you come back?
AK: 2017 I think?
RAH: I got you. And then so you came back, and then you talked Dan into coming to Richmond but he was already coming or?
DC: He had a hand in me coming out here for sure.
RAH: So it would seem like that’s natural. Yeah. Like hey, I’m back in Richmond, you should come.
DC: “Yeah, come check out my place, and let’s get together again and start working together.” Like I said, I was kind of burnt out on Los Angeles. We decided that needed to change, and I had some family transplant out here as well. So it seemed like a logical move at the time.
THE TRUXTON STUDIO
RAH: You know, coming from agency stuff to now, you have your own studio. Has that been a good transition? Do you have more freedom?
DC: Yeah, definitely, there’s a lot more freedom in what we get to do now. I still pick up a lot of jobs working for large corporations and stuff like that, but to be able to do my passion and pick and choose what we get to work on is also just a huge plus.
RAH: You’re in a band, right?
DC: I used to be okay, I played in bands throughout the 90s and early 2000s in the Pacific Northwest
AK: He’s a Portland kid.
DC: I moved up to Portland from the Bay Area when I was about 18 years old and lived up there till I was about 28.
RAH: So, sound engineering, it’s kind of it’s a natural evolution of what you were doing already.
DC: Exactly, exactly. I started out with music, and then got into sound engineering, then got into doing more post production stuff for quite a long time. Got back into doing sound engineering again. That’s my passion, my love all throughout it, but focused on post production for good 20 years.
RAH: You have to do the corporate work to be able to do the passion work. Right?
DC: Exactly.
RAH: Alex, you’ve done music videos, and photography. Is that still your focus?
AK: Of course, I think that anything creative is my focus. When somebody comes to me with a problem and they say, “Hey, I’m not connecting with this audience, or I need help engaging,” I figure out what the plan is to get it moving. My passion is directing, shooting, and photography, right? But I had to learn coding and website development, SEO, and logo design. I learned logo design from a guy named Aaron Draplin. Working at Siegel and Gale, with all their logo designers, I would spend the weekends getting critiqued by a Creative Director. He would help me see what I was doing wrong, using vectors and stuff like that. So I try to approach every situation with, “How do we actually formulate a plan?” Not “Hey, let me show you exactly what you need to do.”
RAH: Yeah, gotcha. And I guess with you and Dan, together, you pretty much can solve any problem right now, creatively, right?
AK: That was the whole understanding of what we were going to try to do. That was one of the things that we had developed at, or I had developed, with a couple of my buddies at Martin Agency that now became a division called Superjoy. We basically wanted to be the one stop shop where you could come and get everything done in one place. One of the things that we found was, so many clients were having these roadblocks in their in their process, because they’d have to go to this person, this person, this person, this person. If we can get it done in one space with the technology available, then why not do it that way?
RAH: Absolutely. We met through your work with, with local musicians. And I see that, yeah, you’ve been doing a lot of great work. I really feel like you’ve elevated some of the photography that I’ve seen from local bands. Is that something that you also enjoy doing?
AK: Of course, that’s also always been my passion, right? If I could just do that for the rest of my life, I would. One of the photographers that was a big mentor for me, Sam Jones, out in LA, was a great influence on how I shoot photography. His advice was to make it simple and bring out the personality. Don’t overdo it. I think that that’s what propelled me. I think that that’s what you see when you look at that Cassidy photo that you had posted, right? All I did was single light her, backlight her and then have her yell at me with her hair all out. But it showed so much emotion. I could have done so much more, and done all this different stuff, but it’s that raw emotion I try to find in everything that I do, that speaks loudest. No matter whether it’s a website or a logo, writing a piece, or photograph or directing, you know? Find that human emotion because that’s what people connect with. We’re tired of being told what to feel. Let us feel it.
RAH: I like that. I’m guessing that since you guys work together so closely, that’s something that you work on with your, you know, engineering.
DC: Definitely, definitely. Trying to capture the raw sounds and work with the artists to pull from what’s inside them. To capture it and keep it real, and keep it raw. We’ve worked together great in that way with being able to capture the sound and the music. Then being able to capture the visuals and also produce the marketing for the individual all at one stop place.
RAH: Last question, like, what do you guys have coming up? Do you have anything coming up that you’re excited about? With the studio that you can mention?
AK: So we have a few artists that we’re about to release that we’ve recorded. One named Andrew Rohlk, and he is a singer songwriter.
RAH: When you say “put out,” you mean like the media package, then also the music, every everything is contained.
AK: So everything from video to photo, website, optimization, Google resources, recording, mastering, you know, everything. Everything is being done in house. Because we found that that was the barrier of entry that a lot of people like were having. They didn’t know how to go find all these different people. If I can bring it into one space and then create a package for them, that they can swallow, that’s the best thing to do.
RAH: Yeah, they make music. I mean, they’re, they’re not experts and all this other stuff,
AK: I don’t want them to have to think about that. When they come in, I want them to be taken aback by the imagery and go, “I never thought I could look like this. I never thought I could feel like this. And I never thought I could sound like this.” Right. And that’s the whole thing is we’re taking that LA quality to Richmond. That’s where I learned pretty much everything. Then also with Martin, right? Dan, born and bred in California knows that real big studio kind of feeling, but where you don’t have to have $25,000 to come in and do this kind of stuff.
RAH: It feels like a good time to be in Richmond for that kind of stuff, especially as the city is growing. Danny could probably attest to the level of musicianship that’s going on right now.
DC: Yeah, there’s a wealth of musicianship going on right now. And creativity. It’s pretty amazing. And I think being able to be a part of it is just, you know, been a true blessing.
RAH: You know, and having the experience that you guys both have, it’s, it’s something that, especially for artists that are coming out – there are other options in town, but you know, who’s going to do the best job? Always a question, right?
DC: Exactly. You know, the amount of attention to detail that we put into each artist is, I think, above and beyond what you’ll get anywhere else.
AK: It probably leads to me being completely single and not having anything else in my life except for this. I pay maybe too much attention to absolutely everything. He’ll get annoyed when I walk in and ask something like “what if that level was just down like one negative dB?”
RAH: Well, yeah, maybe there’s a good dynamic here where you both have specialties. But you also, as studio partners, you have to kind of know each other’s personalities.
DC: Yeah, and it works well. Alex has actually produced some music in the background while I’m focused on engineering and ensuring everything runs smoothly. One of my main goals for this place is to create an environment where someone feels they can achieve something they never thought possible. Whether it’s a business, a music client, or a startup—whatever it is—I love that moment when someone comes in and says, “You did this?” That feeling is priceless to me, no matter what the project is.
Learn more about Truxton HERE
