Barlow juniors Drew Sennett and Andrew Schur recently opened Rock Cottage Studios, a small recording studio on Route 7 in Ridgefield where young musicians can afford to record their music. — Christopher Burns photo
Profits don’t drive the creative pursuits of Barlow juniors Drew Sennett and Andrew Schur. As long as their latest venture doesn’t lose money, they’ll be happy.
And to be honest, even if they lose a couple of bucks, they aren’t sweating it.
“The largest thing limiting musicians from the next level is recording, because of how expensive it is,” Schur said at the duo’s Rock Cottage recording studio on Route 7 in Ridgefield. “We’re incredibly lucky to have this studio, so we’re trying to get it out to anyone who can use it.”
Instead of focusing on hourly rates and equipment costs, Rock Cottage is founded on an intentionally flexible price structure and dedicated to community service.
“Recording in a studio can be a very stressful process for bands,” Schur said, because artists must be constantly aware of the clock.
“‘If we do a half-hour here, then we can’t do this other thing’ is how bands are thinking about it,” Sennett added. “If bands are running overtime, it’s not that big of a deal. We hardly charge much for overtime because that just kills it. The band ends up spending more time concerned with the money and not the sound — which is antithetical to what we’re trying to do.”
Members themselves of a local band, Pampalibros, both understand this fundamental barrier to entry of recording.
One way they plan to spread word about the studio is to open its use to community centers in areas throughout Fairfield County. So far, they’ve given presentations in South Norwalk and Bridgeport.
“It can cost $4,000 to record seven songs in a professional studio,” Schur said. “We thought, why don’t we make this more feasible?
“This is my dad’s property, this is where his nursery is, and he wasn’t using the cottage. It used to be a storage room, and it was actually pretty disgusting. We had to refurnish it, get everything out, clean it and stuff. We ending up making a good place to record music, so other bands our age can afford it a lot easier.”
The studio
Rock Cottage, located on the same location as Walpole Outdoors in Ridgefield, is cozy but boasts powerful recording equipment and a solid sound design, its owners said.
“Our job is basically tailoring the room to the band. Sometimes we have to move all the stuff around to make the musicians comfortable, because at the end of the day we value performance over sound quality. We want to get the best playing out of the band, because the best performance leads into the best sound quality,” Sennett said.
“You can put in your opinion, but you have to accept the fact they might want to do something different,” added Schur.
The two spent the entire summer last year researching microphone setups and recording equipment, they said, and draw some experience from years as a band playing shows across Connecticut.
“We’ve been through so many different setups — playing all over Connecticut,” Sennett said. “I’d notice something like, ‘This person puts the amps on chairs, and it makes it sound like that.’ If we weren’t gigging musicians we wouldn’t know nearly as much about mic science.”
To learn more about Rock Cottage Studio, visit the business’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/rockcottagestudio/.
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