Chuck Ebert and Axon Entertainment were recently featured in the Azle News On-line edition.

Grammy Winner at Home in Azle

Written By Bob Buckel
As posted in the Azle News On-Line, Thursday, July 09, 2009:
http://www.azle-news.com/news/get-news.asp?id=9979&catid=1&cpg=get-news.asp

Chuck Ebert looks like the boy next door – and if you live in Azle, that’s what he is. But that was a Grammy award that he placed on the table in front of him when he spoke to the Azle Rotary Club last week. He invited club members to pick it up and feel how heavy it is. Several immediately launched into their own speeches, along the lines of, “I’d like to thank the Academy, my mom, all the little people out there...”

Ebert earned the Grammy not as a singer, but as an engineer and producer for a gospel album he recorded with the Lightcrust Doughboys, the Jordanaires, the Blackwoods and others.

He didn’t get to make his speech.

“I was told that if I went to the Grammys to get this award I could be dead in seven minutes,” he said. “I had a herniated disc in my neck. My doctor said even a bump on the airplane ride could have ruptured it.”

So, Ebert’s Grammy moment was a call from his mom.

“Chuck! I think you won a Grammy!” she said.

Ebert and his wife, Katy, live on 4-1/2 acres near Azle where he has built a state-of-the-art recording studio in an old log cabin that once sat on Highway 199 as Feghali’s Steak House.

“We moved here because we were looking for a little land to build a studio on – someplace where it was quiet and there wasn’t a lot of rigmarole to go through to put it up,” he said. “And it is quiet, except for the F-16s that go over at times.”

The story behind the log cabin is actually even more interesting than most people in Azle are aware of. It once belonged to Willie Nelson – it was one of many possessions he sold when he got in deep trouble with the IRS several years ago – and it has also been through a fire.

“I have those charred logs in my house,” Ebert said.

He said his wife had always wanted a log cabin house. [ So purchasing the existing cabin and modifying it for audio and video production was a natural fit. ] When they found some acreage in the Azle area, they had to gut the cabin to put the studio in it, including 2,400 square feet of recording space.

“But we have our log cabin now,” Ebert said. And he has already resumed his work as one of the top sound engineers and producers in the music business.

Ebert is president and CEO of Axon Entertainment Inc. Known as “the sound doctor,” he has over 20 years of professional audio/video experience. He is a seven-time Grammy nominee and a three-time nominee for a Dove award – the highest honor in Christian music. In addition to James Blackwood, the Light Crust Doughboys and the Jordanaires (Elvis Presley’s backup group) he has recorded the Dixie Chicks, Sting, Don Henley, Kris Kristofferson and many others. He has also done work for ESPN, the Travel Channel and HBO.

But Ebert is more excited about his latest CD than anything he has ever done. It springs from a story that is not only close to home, but close to his heart.

“Some time ago I read the book Same Kind of Different As Me,” he told the Rotary Club last Thursday. “It’s an amazing book, and it changed my life. It’s a very impactful book on everyone I know who has read it.”

The true story, which takes place in Fort Worth, involves a homeless man named Denver Moore who meets a woman, Deborah Hall, who prays with him and listens to his story. When she learns that she has cancer, she charges her husband Ron, an international arts dealer, to rescue Denver.

Same Kind of Different As Me is an emotional story about how God uses people to work in the lives of others. Its movie rights have been purchased and Samuel L. Jackson is set to play the role of Denver. Much of the filming will be in Fort Worth.

Ebert said the film will be produced by the same folks who did the Will Smith movie, The Puruit of Happyness and Forrest Gump.

“I got involved when they made a DVD documentary about the book, which has aired on Channel 8,” he said. “I produced the DVD for them and read the book and was very inspired by it.”

One day, Ebert said, he came home to find Katy (the most talented musician I have ever known) “just tooling around on the piano.”

“She told me I ought to write a song for that movie. At 2 a.m. that morning I just sat up, wide awake, and in five minutes I had this song.”

The next morning, Ebert showed it to her and they played it and recorded it that day.

A few weeks later, Ron Hall and Denver Moore came to their church – Lighthouse Fellowship, on the other side of the Eagle Mountain Lake spillway from Azle. Ebert, who helps out with the sound for the church, played the song, titled “Makin’ a Difference” for them and for the congregation.

“It got a standing ovation,” he said. “If everything goes right, they’re going to use the song for the title cut of the movie.

“I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life, but having my song up there on the big screen would have to rank right up there.”

Ebert said since reading the book, he has started getting more involved with people, helping neighbors and others God puts into his life. When he’s not in the studio, he enjoys traveling the country and speaking at various conventions, conferences and discussion panels.

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