Rubber Tracks

Converse ran a recording studio for a few years. They called it Rubber Tracks, and it started in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a legitimate recording space with engineers and equipment, and they let you use it for free. If you were a young musician and had the time to book a session, you could walk in and make something real.

Over time they packed it up and moved it around. Toronto, Austin, Los Angeles, Amsterdam. In the summer of 2014, it landed in Berlin, set up in the Trixx Studios in Kreuzberg. Trixx itself had history—people like Rammstein and Wu-Tang Clan had recorded there. The place carried weight.

Recording properly still mattered then. Home recording was getting better, but it wasn’t there yet. You could make something decent in your bedroom, but a real studio, real equipment, an engineer who knew how to treat a room and get a vocal right—that was different. It changed what you could hear in your own work.

The Converse initiative was strange in the way brand philanthropy in music was strange. A shoe company funding recording sessions. But it was genuinely free, no strings, no branding in the actual space as far as I know. Just: show up, book a day, make your record. Over five hundred musicians had used the Brooklyn location by the time they took it on the road.

Berlin being on that list mattered. The city had become a place where young people made music, played in tiny clubs, self-released records. Not everyone had money for proper sessions. Not everyone had connections to people who did. So the studio came to you.

I never booked a session myself, and I don’t know anyone who did, but I remember thinking about it. The idea that you could just have that access if you wanted it badly enough. It probably mattered more to someone younger, someone still figuring out their sound, than it did to the people who already had the resources. That was the whole point.

Converse stopped doing it eventually. Everything ends. But that summer in Berlin, there was a professional space with your name on the application form, if you wanted to show up and try.