Meet The Owners
Jeff’s lifelong passion for music and engineering started as a child more than forty years ago with a tape recorder and a toy piano. Now, with more than three decades of professional studio experiences as a client, engineer and producer, he has become a fixture in the regional music scene. In addition to being our engineer he's also a working musician who helps manage, promote, produce and record his own original bands modus and Mike Powell and The Echosound. Jeff is a graduate of Berklee College of Music, has a real bad vintage synthesizer addiction and is a record collector, a passion he inherited from his dad.
Pam is a second generation studio owner as well as a classically trained visual artist. She has a Masters degree from the Art Institute of Chicago and her credits range from national corporate identity packages and magazines to photos, merch and social media management for local bands. She also has a professional certification in Fundraising from New York University and is always happy to chat about potential grants and crowdfunding solutions like Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Patreon. Pam is our shop photographer, hospitality maven and semi-professional tea hoarder.
History of the Building
The New York Congregational Conference bought building lots at the corner of Genesee Street and Beverly Place in May 1919. Originally, a wooden church building was erected on the site in early 1920 and opened its doors onto what was known as “No Man’s Land,” a then unincorporated part of town now known as South Utica. In 1923 the congregation decided to begin fundraising for a new brick church to be designed by the architectural firm of Gouge & Ames and built on the adjacent lot for “no more than $50,000.” The original wooden church was moved to where the parking lot is now and construction on the brick building began in 1926. On October 9, 1927 the current church building opened to the public with an auditorium filled to capacity.
Shortly after the opening, South Church almost fell victim to the great depression but was saved through the “crowd funding” efforts of the community. In 1937 the South Church bought a Buhl Pipe Organ that was played for the first time at Easter Sunday mass. In 1942 the old wooden church was finally demolished. In 1959 South Church became The United Church of Christ. In 1972 it became The First Church of the Nazarene and continued as such until it was put up for sale in 1998.
The building was purchased by its current owners in 2000 and underwent two and a half years of renovation under the supervision of audio industry icon John Storyk. The pipe organ was in serious disrepair and was donated to a company that refurbishes the instruments and sells them inexpensively to struggling congregations, and the pews were donated to the former occupants. The stained-glass windows were saved if possible or replaced with original one of a kind leaded glass done on the premises over the summer of 2002 by a visiting Zen monk.
In 2003 it opened as Castle Recording Studio and continued until the owner’s retirement ten years later. The building was then taken over by his stepdaughter and son in law who added the Neve 5088 console, mic closet and the band residence. Pam and Jeff reopened the facility in 2013 as Big Blue North, the independently operated sister studio of famed Jersey City studio Big Blue Meenie which was run by their mentor and spirit animal, Tim Gilles.
