Staff writer
Gregg Walker envisions creating a coffee house setting where different artists can display their talents — one could sing, another could dance, and another could show paintings.
If he ever gets his way, it could all happen in his dairy barn.
“Everybody has a creative outlet,” he says. “Some people’s is going to be music, others’ will be other things. I would try to make a place for kids who are creative in the arts.”
A part-time Postal Service employee, Walker currently runs his Dunamis music studio from an outer room he had built as an addition to his home, just west of Hillsboro. In addition, he uses one of his two barns to record different instruments.
Through the studio, he offers music lessons, instrument repair, and studio recording time.
A jazz enthusiast, Walker graduated from North Texas State University with a master’s degree in music education. He majored in woodwind performance, playing lead alto saxophone in the jazz band. At the time, he was able to pay his way through school performing at nightclubs.
“I wanted to be the studio player for a studio where I could come in and do bassoon, or oboe, or flute, or clarinet, or whatever they needed,” he said.
Eventually Walker did accomplish that, but inconsistency in the amount of work and unpredictable hours pushed him to a large Texas high school assisting the marching band. A rather uninteresting venture to him at first, he ended up teaching for decades at various schools in Texas and Kansas, finishing at Hillsboro High School.
After working in Hillsboro for 10 years, Walker decided it was now or never to continue recording and writing music.
“When I was a band director, there was no time,” he said. “I enjoyed music, I loved working with the kids, but it wasn’t quite what I felt I should be doing.”
Since opening the Dunamis studio in 2010, Walker said he has had the opportunity to work with various artists in the area — from a R&B Grammy Award winning truck driver, to a cowboy singer, to a rapper attending Tabor College.
“I always am into learning,” Walker said. “Every person I work with, I learn something new.”
Walker even had an opportunity to make music for a television show. The show failed because of financial reasons, after he had written the music for the pilot.
“I was very excited about the TV show and all that went into making the music for it, but when it fell through it was very discouraging,” he said. “I had learned a lot about my studio in the process. It seems unending the possibilities that can be accomplished in a recording studio.”
Walker will continue trying to expand on the possibilities, maybe helping artists outside of just the music realm, if his studio grows.
“There is a need for people who are artistic to meet together and share what they can do,” he said. “That’s why I was into jazz, because you could improvise and express what you wanted to say because you had the format to do it.”
Walker can be contacted through the studio website at http://Dunamismusicstudio.com.