The LA Times has featured our good friends at The Village Studios. Housed in a former Masonic temple, and once the west coast capital of transcendentalism, The Village Studios is a creative community workspace like no other, and the model of what creative spaces can and should be.
I especially enjoy that the Times spares no ink attributing The Village’s amazing sense of community, and environment of creativity, to studio CEO Jeff Greenberg. We are big fans at Boing Boing as well, and have found the Village an amazing place to work, and a lot of fun to hang out in!
From the LA Times:
Greenberg believes the reason the Village has succeeded is simple: “Professionals like being around other professionals.”
Guitarist and songwriter John Mayer keeps a studio on the second floor, one of the most successful of a community of musicians who regularly book time at the Village. The Band’s Robbie Robertson has worked on and off at the Village since the 1970s, and Studio Ed is home to Grammy-winning producer and engineer Ed Cherney.
At their service are a few dozen engineers and gofers, many of them young musicians Greenberg has hired through a relationship with the Berklee College of Music.
On the third floor, in a former musical instrument storage space once occupied by, among others, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, pop songwriter Noel Zancanella is meeting with a few would-be collaborators. When Danny Elfman rented the space, he renamed it Muerte Surgical Instruments.Zancanella, whose homey suite feels like a secret clubhouse, started as a Village coffee boy under Greenberg. He rose to assistant engineer, struck out on his own and has since co-written or co-produced hits for Taylor Swift, OneRepublic and Maroon 5.
After his success, Zancanella debated building a home studio at his place in Venice. He opted for the Village instead.
“It’s just a whole different vibe,” he says, relaxing on his couch. “It’s so much more epic, and people really take it seriously.” The bonus: “You just know that you’re going to probably run into somebody weird.”
“I’ve had sex on the roof,” former Sex Pistol Steve Jones says matter-of-factly a few hours later in the Village kitchen, waiting for take-out soup to arrive before an audiobook session for “Lonely Boy: Tales From a Sex Pistol.”
When he was recording his album “Mercy” at the Village in the late 1980s, Jones says he ended up in a 20-minute conversation with George Harrison. Jones’ takeaway? “He was a nice dude.”
“There’s something about these Masonic places,” Jones says. “I think they leave a spirit behind.”