By LEGION TAYLOR
Reporter
Steven Brown, a U.S. Navy veteran, actor, and musician, has recently opened Black Shoe Squid Studio, a recording studio for musicians and voice actors alike.
Brown has been acting and playing music all his life, having grown up with both parents as musicians. His professional career in music began in 1993, right after he got out of active duty in the Navy, and his career in acting started in 2007 with stage shows in Branson, Missouri, where he lived at the time.
Brown also does voice acting and voiceover work, which he began in 2015.
He moved to Wakulla in February 2022, and has been doing live music gigs at venues around the area, while putting his studio together.
“It’s in my blood,” he says. “Both sides of my family, almost everyone played an instrument or sang. I had no choice but to have an appreciation for music.”
Over the course of his career, Brown has written more than 50 songs, and recorded 66 songs across six albums. He’s also performed in more than 50 acting roles in film, television, live theater, and commercials.
The studio is in a barn-workshop behind his house. “I built it all myself,” he says, “with no construction experience… Hanging the doors, that was the hard part.”
It’s designed to create as quiet an environment as possible, to ensure that recordings aren’t full of background noise.
The name of the studio, Black Shoe Squid, is derived from his 16 years in the Navy, both active duty and the reserves.
“In the Navy, we had nicknames for all the different jobs and groups. Sailors were called ‘Black Shoes.’ From other branches of the military, their nickname for all Navy people was ‘Squids.’. Therefore I was a ‘Black Shoe Squid.’”
His studio is mostly for recording music as well as lines for voiceover roles, but it also includes a green screen for video auditions for acting roles.
Brown offers acting and voice acting lessons at his studio, and students can use the equipment there to do auditions, practice being on camera, or to record their voice to better train for voice acting roles.
He can be contacted at 850-888-0411, at his email manager@stevenbrown.org, and on his website, stevenbrown.org.
