Georgia tax credits strike chord with Grammy winner

ATLANTA — Mark Neill was in the middle of recording the album that would win him a Grammy when he started thinking seriously about returning home to south Georgia.

Neill, who was living near San Diego at the time, was in Alabama with The Black Keys working on the hit “Brothers” album at the famous but then-empty Muscle Shoals Sound Studios.

“They were really impressed with the slow pace, the cicadas, the rain and all that stuff,” said Neill, a music producer and engineer who grew up in Hahira, just outside of Valdosta.

“I was like, ‘Dude, this is my home, this is what I grew up with.’ They were like, ‘Why aren’t you back here?’” he said.

That was all Neill needed to hear.

“That is an indicator that I need to go back home — right there,” he said he remembered thinking at the time. “Because if you can do it in abandoned building in Muscle Shoals, you can do it in Valdosta.”

So Neill came back home and opened a recording studio, called Soil of the South. For the last four years, he said he’s been quietly testing to see if record labels would send bands to Valdosta but also how the community would react to having them in town.

Over those years, the community has embraced the idea of being a music town, he said, and during that time, Neill’s has brought around numerous bands, including JD McPherson and J. Roddy Walston and The Business.

Nearby Earthsound Recording in Valdosta, owned by Cairo native Lee Dyess, has also brought notable indie names to town, including From First to Last and Mayday Parade.

“Valdosta’s ready because nothing surprises anybody around here so if you see a bunch of trippy looking guys going down to Red Door Records downtown, nobody’s going to go, ‘Man, did you see the freaks down in Valdosta?’” he said.

But there’s something else that has recently emboldened Neill to finally hang a sign outside his recording studio: State lawmakers passed legislation earlier this year that creates tax credits for the music production companies.

Rep. Amy Carter, R-Valdosta, who sponsored the bill, said she wants to replicate the success of a tax break program that is credited with bringing the film industry to Georgia.

Music production companies will receive a 15 percent tax credit for setting up in Georgia, if they spend $100,000.

The new law, which takes effect in January, also offers a tax break to music companies that agree to kick off large tours in the state, if the performance costs $500,000 to put on.

Carter’s plan also provides a 5 percent tax credit to production companies that send work to the state’s most economically distressed counties, a provision meant to target rural communities. Lowndes County, which is home to Valdosta, is one of those counties.

Carter said earlier this year that she wanted the program to benefit rural Georgia similar to how the film industry helped towns such as Senoia, which has about 4,000 residents. There is no special tax break for filming in rural Georgia.

Also unlike the film tax credits, the tax breaks for the music industry will be capped. For the first year, no more than $5 million in credits will be awarded. That increases to $10 million the second year and then rises to $15 million for three years.

Neill said it’s unlikely the volume of work currently being done in Georgia will max out the available tax credits anyway.

But he said he sees the program as a potential watershed moment for a state that has a rich music history. Georgia, after all, is a state that brought the world Ray Charles, Johnny Mercer and, yes, REM.

Neill said he believes Georgia is on the verge of a music revival, if those in the industry — or those who aspire to break into the industry — go to work making it happen.

“We need to get people in the state of Georgia making this stuff. Not little fits and starts like we’ve had all these years. We need to really organize and get this done,” Neill said. “We just need to get busy.”

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.