Every great music community needs both a quality instrument-repair shop and a good recording studio.
Fortunately, the Coachella Valley has Jayce Levi. The owner of Sunny Sounds Recording Studio and Repairland is moving his businesses from Palm Springs to Indio, with a scheduled April 5 reopening. He offers studio sessions with top-notch gear and a comfy recording environment under the Sunny Sounds name, and is a wizard instrument tech under the Repairland moniker. Since he closed his Palm Springs location in January, Levi has been doing pickups, deliveries and pop-ups for Repairland.
During a recent phone interview, the New York native talked about his music history.
“I started playing drums and percussion when I was in elementary school, and I was in the all-state jazz band when I lived in New York,” Levi said. “When I was about a junior in high school, I had a really bad accident—I fell and shattered my hand, and I couldn’t play the drums anymore, which was kind of terrible. I was basing my whole life off my ability to play the drums, so I had to really rethink.”
As he endured several reconstructive surgeries, he started playing other instruments—and recording music.
“I still have a metal plate in my knuckle,” he said. “Now I’m all healed up, but back then, I was like, ‘Oh, my life’s over; I’ve got to do something.’ I started recording myself, and started getting into MySpace and promoting myself on MySpace—and that led me to get a record deal with Drive-Thru Records.”
That was with a band called Secret Secret Dino Club, whose first release on Drive-Thru Records was a split EP with Allstar Weekend. After a few tours and the 2009 album Look Cat Meow, Levi moved on to other endeavors, founding the band Astro Safari USA, and writing much of Allstar Weekend’s album All the Way on Hollywood Records (owned by Disney). He even was in a kids’ band, Poop Emoji.
“I started writing for other people and started writing music for TV shows—and I was kind of all over the place,” Levi said. “It was really fast-paced, and I wasn’t into it after a little while; I got pretty burnt out. I wanted to do something that was a little different that didn’t necessarily depend on getting involved in the industry. … I did about 700 kids’ gigs, and that got me pretty burnt out, too, so I had to really re-evaluate what I wanted to do.”
In search for a career move, Levi focused on a longtime love of fixing guitars.
“I’d always fix all my bands’ instruments on the road and other bands’ instruments, so I really focused on that and started honing my skills and getting certified from different vendors and stuff to do repairs for them,” said Levi. “I was working out of my garage, and then I started doing the mobile service, and then as the mobile service grew, I had too many guitars in my house, so I opened my shop.”
Repairland was born—and Sunny Sounds was close behind, as Levi began offering recording and production services. Considering he’s responsible for more than 55 million streams across music platforms, and more than a decade of musical output, Levi felt he “had a lot to offer.”
“As I opened my shop, and people were like, ‘We want to record,’ I wanted to bring my skills back,” Levi said. “… So I kind of focused my efforts on that. I was in Palm Springs for about a year. I saw the writing on the wall that everyone who was coming to my shop and my studio was coming from the east side of the valley … so when my lease was up, and I didn’t really want to be in Palm Springs anymore, I started to make the move to Indio, and started to talk to the city about renting a spot out there.”
Levi said he really enjoys doing repairs.
“A lot of crazy stuff has walked in the door of my shop,” Levi said. “… It’s really a blessing, and it’s kind of crazy how many instruments are really out in this valley, and how many special instruments are out here from old rock stars. I’ve worked on a guitar played by Jerry Garcia, and one played by Jimi Hendrix—so I’ve seen pretty much everything I could imagine, and more, out here in the desert.”
“I really feel the energy is shifting to Indio, especially with the kind of people who I want to work with and be involved with—people who are hungry to get better and take their careers further, or they want to work really hard.”
Jayce Levi
Levi said he allows owners to watch what he’s doing with each instrument.
“I think I’m the only repair guy I’ve ever met who fixes stuff in front of people, or does pop-ups, and will fix guitars live in person,” Levi said. “I’ve never seen anyone else do that, and that always kind of boggled my mind. Why can’t people watch? Why can’t people be involved in their repairs on their instruments? Being out here, I hear all kinds of horror stories (about) other repair men and people who’ve had really bad experiences getting their guitars fixed, or they pay $100, and they have no idea what the person did. I hear that pretty much every day, so I’ve been trying to really change how the business is done, and trying to get more honesty and integrity into it. It’s like getting your car fixed: If you don’t know a lot about cars, you bring it in, and you put yourself in a place to be taken advantage of. I was seeing a lot of people out here being taken advantage of, and I thought that was wrong, and I wanted to kind of reinvent the model of how guitars are being fixed.”
Levi’s move to Indio is coming at a time of revitalization for the city’s downtown.
“I really feel the energy is shifting to Indio, especially with the kind of people who I want to work with and be involved with—people who are hungry to get better and take their careers further, or they want to work really hard,” Levi said. “… There’s a young scene here that’s growing really fast.”
On the recording side, Levi said he’s working to make sure customers get timely, cost-effective and worthwhile recording sessions.
“I know that people are tired of paying to have to set up their stuff, so my plan is to have everything already set up—you just plug it in, and everything’s ready to record,” Levi said. “It keeps prices down. … I’ve tried to use technology to automate the process a lot more so you can get a lot more done in a lot shorter time than you can with other people. That might not be something everybody’s interested in, but there are a lot of people who just want to come in and record a song.
Sunny Sounds in Palm Springs featured open-mic nights where Levi would record people’s performances—and give the recordings to them.
“I think that’s really important for people, when they do performances, to be able to hear what they sound like—and not just on an iPhone recording, but what it would sound like if someone really took time and recorded you and made you sound their best,” he said. … “That was something that was important to me when I was in my last space, and I’m hoping to continue that energy into Indio.”
Sunny Sounds Recording Studio and Repairland is slated to open April 5 at 45250 Smurr St., in Indio. For more information, visit www.instagram.com/sunny__sounds.
What a marvelous addition to the east valley. You sound wonderful and had not been aware of your presence in Palm Springw. I will spread the word where possible and appropriate.