Nova Scotia’s Eileen Richardson has taken a front seat to dozens of legendary recording sessions. As CEO of DiaDan Holdings Ltd., Eileen owned and operated the iconic Evergreen Stage in Los Angeles. The Evergreen Stage is part of a 15,000 sq ft facility using state-of-the-art equipment and has hosted legends like Frank Sinatra, Beyoncé, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, Justin Timberlake, and Paul McCartney. The Evergreen Stage has also hosted recordings for major television and motion picture productions including Back to the Future, When Harry Met Sally, The Blues Brothers, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Simpsons and more. 

With years of experience working with some of the music industry’s most legendary players, Richardson and DiaDan have been in the game long enough to have learned how to keep up with the times—which sometimes requires looking to the past for inspiration. 

The Evergreen Stage in Los Angeles was originally built as a movie theatre when it first opened its doors in the 1940’s. Its classic aura was further enhanced when Richardson and DiaDan seized an opportunity to purchase a treasure trove of vintage microphones from the esteemed Southern Tracks studio in Atlanta when it shut down in 2010. 

Many musicians prefer vintage microphones for their hand-crafted quality. Some believe a mic, like a fine wine, only gets better with age. The collection of hard-to-find mics made the studio an attractive choice for artists searching for that timeless sound - a sound that often can’t be captured by modern equipment. 

Most vintage mics are either valve capacitor mics or ribbon mics. Capacitor mics offer a sensitivity to sound and a wide frequency response, bringing a clearer mid-range and a warmer low end to a recording session. Ribbon mics are bidirectional, recording sound from either side. They are the square mics you often see in photos of old recording sessions or radio broadcasts. They have a natural top-end sound that remains highly appealing. 

These mics can be extremely expensive and hard to come by. When a studio like Evergreen is able to offer them as options for their artists, the word gets out quickly and demand for sessions can be very high. This was certainly the case for Evergreen and DiaDan Studios. 

CEO Eileen Richardson learned an important lesson from her experience with purchasing vintage mics for The Evergreen Stage and DiaDan Studios - sometimes you can’t improve on the past. That lesson brought tremendous success to the Evergreen Stage, whose modern innovations in recording techniques only complemented their ability to offer a classic sound to their artists.