Steve Wilkerson, Plug Den Recording Studio ripoff, fraud, money hungry, dishonest, took money and ran with no product in return Branson Missouri

I found Steve Wilkerson in Humboldt Tennessee at his business PlugDen Recording Studio-which he later relocated to Fruitland, Tn and Mr. Wilkerson is now in Branson Missouri with his wife and two sons. From the get-go he talked about what all we could do vocally and the costs etc and encouraged me to persue making a demo CD through him. The whole time I worked with him-which was over a year approximately total before he hi-tailed it to Branson Missouri-he told me how he was there to help me and so on. Because this was my dream(my husband supported me) and Steve made us believe that something could happen, we put all the money we had into it. We were young and stupid with two very young children at the time. We gave him hundreds of dollars to start and went in to pick out songs which ended up being from a list of 15 that HE chose, that I got to choose from... all of them older country songs and not many to my taste. But seeing that he was the one that allegedly played at the Grand Ole Opry every weekend with Ricky Skaggs family, he said that this was what the music industry in Nashville was looking to gain back and on and on, so I allowed him to persuade me into my song selection. We started out with only three songs, at $350 a song...and I have ALL of my receipts and a "job bid quote" from him as well) which took what seemed like forever to get finished because of his scheduling etc. Then over the course of a year got all ten songs-because that is what he told me I HAD to have to present a demo to any record label in Nashville-anything less was rarely considered. Steve called me once and said he needed such and such amount of money for the musicians asap because they were going to be in from Nashville only for a certain amount of time-I drove by the studio those two days and saw no difference in the cars in his parking lot. Later he unknowingly admitted that he and his eldest son(also named Steve) play the keyboard, guitar and drums and have no need to bring musicians in because they do it all-this was several months after the musicians from Nashville incident.

Besides that, the instruments sounded exactly like the ones cut from the demo so I often wonder if they really did re-record them for my demo. We knew that once we had all the songs paid for and completed vocally that we would have to get the money for the comilation CD-which we never got any real explanation to what it was besides that it was a CD of people that cut demos that chose one song to go out with, put it on this compilation CD and the CD then went to independent radio stations that charted them over a period of 4 weeks. He said he did not know where the cd's went and he did not know the list of radio stations that would play the songs-which was very strange to us, but we wanted this to go through so much that we blinded ourselves, because looking back at all the other signs, we should have seen that we were beign screwed over, and are very embarrassed to have not seen what was really going on.

Well in Feb 2002 Steve called to say that the compilation Cd HAD to go out now and needed the money by 3/9/02 if I wanted my song to be on it. So we took out a loan to pay for the rest of the deal-$3000 of which went to the compilation CD; $1500 to be added to the CD and $1500 to hire a promoter..which was news to me since he had never said anything about that before then, he just said $3000 for the comp CD. Well, shortly after we gave him the money for that, we finished up the last song or two- VERY quickly, I was told that the final would be sent to Nashville to be mastered and then I'd get my final mastered copy shortly thereafter. He had mentioned at one of our last visits that there was a lot of work in Branson Missouri and his son and daughter-in-law were moving up there and that had he and his own wife not had the business here and family here and all that they would go too because there is nothing here music-wise(thanks for telling me this AFTER I just gave you tons of money I didn't have to persue a music career!)and encouraged us to think about moving up there as well.

He had also told us that they had filed ch 13 bankruptcy sometime around Christmas 2001-which also was nice to know there at the end of everything. And I remember wondering if any of our money went towards anything other than his own debts. Well, shortly after things were on their way to a finish-he disappeared! I called and left messeges, I went by the studio-nothing... no one. I even called 411 and found his son in Branson and left several messeges for him to please get in touch with his father and have him get in contact with me-no response. After several more attempts the number was changed or disconnected. Later, we found out a man that works with my husband went to church with the Wilkersons and told us yes, that they had indeed all moved to Branson. So after thinking we weren't going to get any more out of it, we kind of let it go. We have thought about getting a lawyer and trying to do someting but really do not know how to go about doing so, especially with this kind of situation. I know that I want something done about it. I have a half finished CD with just my vocals and basic beat that I paid $6500 for. Bottom line was I was told I would have a huge song selection-the ones I liked were turned declined and got to choose from a minimum number of songs, I was told I'd have a mastered demo cd, and do not, I was told so many things that never happened and no proof of where my money went AND a loan that I am still paying on for taking money out on to do some of this.

This man led me to believe so much, especially that he was an honest hard working man that was there to help me make a reality out of my dream and the only thing he did was take off with my money and leave me with a VERY expensive demo cd that sounds like crap.

April
Milan, Tennessee
U.S.A.