Sound System

The kind of quiet, friendly congregation that had been ushered into the Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church of Cardiff since 1825 again casually conversed in the house of God’s entryway on April 11, numbering a humble 50. But for the first time in the building’s near 200-year history, the purpose for the get-together was not to worship Christ, but rather to hail rock’n’roll, an art form that John Lennon described in a 1966 interview as more popular than the 2,000-year-old sage who some might argue was the first hippie.

That paradigm shift of culture in the tiny hamlet came from Tim Oleston and David Peters, two traveling troubadours who since September 2008 have converted the space, redubbed the Belfry Recording Studio, from a place for praying into a place for playing. On the recent occasion, the pair had unceremoniously forgone religious services and instead organized a private concert to release one of their first musical creations, the independently spawned album dubbed Free World Citizen by Salt City strummer Charley Orlando.

Men at work: Tim Oleston and David Peters, singer-songwriters and recording engineers, have teamed up for a new, local recording studio. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTOS

Only the peaceful, pleasant smells and sounds of burgeoning spring and lighthearted music were to be found at the site of Oleston and Peters’ coup, rather than the religious outrage that followed Lennon’s interview with the press. Orlando’s friends and family members, as well as a few of the curious community members who had witnessed the church’s silent evolution for about a year since it closed in 2008, gathered in its nave to watch Orlando’s newly formed band unleash solid rock from the place that was once a preacher’s lectern. At the same time Oleston and Peters recorded the live concert from a newly constructed sound booth in the area where the church’s choir and organ resided.

The notably simple, farm-family church rests like a nestled, comfortable cub in the crux of the Cherry Valley of Cardiff, a nearly forgotten Central New York hamlet located about two miles west of LaFayette’s Route 11 and Route 20 intersection. As such, those neighbors who were unsure of what was going on inside sat on their porches that warm evening to listen to the band; the scene called to mind the small-town peace described by Harper Lee and painted by Norman Rockwell.

Other than serving as bystanders to an 1869 scandal-slash-fable in which George Hull, an atheist who hoped to dupe a Cardiff minister into believing that a “giant in the Earth” (a line from Genesis) had in fact been unearthed in a neighboring farm by commissioning a fake stone sculpture to be buried in his friend’s field, the town’s population has rarely seen much rock while living typical, agrarian lifestyles and attending regular services at its main public building.

Yet the convolution of two tales—that of a rural Methodist congregation’s struggle to stay afloat and the unwavering gumption of a pair of musicians who continually struggle to pursue their own artistic spirituality—has led to a near-perfect solution for both parties. For those who would entertain the supernatural thought, the star-crossed combination suggests that somehow it was meant to be.

Oleston and Peters will host an open house for the Belfry on Sunday, June 14, from 5 to 8 p.m.; admission is free. Private tours may be scheduled by visiting www.belfrystudio.com.

A Simple Twist of Fate

The very fact that Peters, 33, and Oleston, 29, ever met in the first place eerily suggests the design of fate. Peters, who is now regarded as Belfry Studio’s lead producer and engineer, grew up in Edinboro, Penn., a college town in which he first discovered rock music. “It’s a little town, and you get real bored, so you make music with your friends to pass time,” Peters explains.

“I picked up the guitar in seventh grade, just because I thought {guitars} were cool. I learned to play a couple of chords, and we did the middle school talent show, and that was the end of that. Even in eighth grade I was writing little songs and recording, and that continued through high school. By the end I was trying to record myself more and more. I ended up doing it for other people for money so I could record myself, and that’s kind of the way it is today.”

After spending some time attending his hometown university, Peters transferred to SUNY Fredonia in 1996 and completed a degree in sound recording technology. Due to his immediate skill in the trade, which has led him to work on a variety of modern recording projects that blur the lines between folk, rock, electronic and so-called “lo-fi” genres (think of the airy, reverberated sounds of artists like Sufjan Stephens or The Doves), Peters shortly after embarked on a career as a producer for albums recorded in Los Angeles, London and other locations.

Anyone who has picked up an acoustic guitar and played a few pretty, little chords on a summer’s day might understand the love Peters developed for songwriting at the same time, leading to a successful parallel career as a songwriter that has continued since his teen years.

At the same time, Oleston had very little inclination that he’d become a songwriter while jumping out of the post-high-school nest of Delavan, Wis. Oleston came from a family of real estate agents, and followed in the family’s trade by acquiring his license at age 18. Oleston’s early experience with the family biz led him to open a retail computer store in 1998, which fed upon his interest in technology, as well as his do-it-yourself drive.

In the end, due to overwhelming competition from companies like Dell, Oleston’s computer shop didn’t survive. So he took classes at the University of Wisconsin toward a degree in business management, which he completed in 2003. Oleston’s post-college life included a stint with norcaltv.com as a video producer, which led him to embark on a project to shoot films of concert performances throughout California.

Oleston and Peters then met by chance during a gig in Los Angeles, hosted by Central New York musician Joel Ackerson (formerly of Eclipse, a band that won the 1996 Syracuse Area Music Awards’ Brian Bourke Award for Best New Artist), who had split the Salt City to pursue the dream. Oleston had offered Ackerson his services as a manager prior to the gig, and was selling merchandise for him when he and Peters happened to bump into each other at Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco in late 2003. At the same time Oleston was traveling the country in search of a life outside of Delavan, so he picked up the guitar.

“I played like three songs or something then, because I only had three songs,” Oleston explains. “When I first met {Peters} I had never played a gig. I was literally just a dude who did film, and I was toying with the idea of managing Joel as a way to travel the country, really. It was like ‘What do I need to do for {Joel} in order to make it worth it for him to let me go with him?’”

At that gig Peters pulled Oleston aside in order to quell a case of self-consciousness that Oleston had displayed on stage. “As I saw Tim play I knew that he was helping out with Joel, and I knew that this was kind of like his first thing. Tim’s banter or whatever he said to me suggested that he didn’t think he was really that great, and I thought very differently, so I took him in the back and told him that wasn’t true,” Peters explains.

The result of the chance encounter was an enduring musical collaboration and friendship, even despite Peters’ forays into London and parts of the United States to gather clients as a producer.

House of blues: Once known as the Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church of Cardiff, this place of worship has been reinvented as a recording studio.

Welcome to Syracuse

In the meantime Oleston embarked upon a solo tour in 2004 with bassist Brett Hobin, son of local 1970s rocker Todd Hobin, whom Oleston had met during Brett Hobin’s tenure with Ackerson. Oleston had been impressed by Ackerson’s music, which, for him, had an immediate connection to fellow Syracusan Martin Sexton. Oleston was simultaneously impressed by Hobin’s heady, introspective rock style.

Oleston changed his stage name to Timothy Daniel in order to avoid any misunderstanding about a potential interpretation of its spelling (if spelled incorrectly, it could be read as Ti-molest-on). “The only thing I knew about Syracuse was that Martin Sexton was from here, and that’s actually why Joel and I got along,” Oleston explains. “I was like ‘Hey! You’re from Syracuse, and you’re great, man!’ And Brett, obviously: Everybody likes Brett, and gets along so well with him.”

Oleston, banking on his real estate experience, followed Hobin back to Central New York and purchased a double-wide Housing and Urban Development home with him in Granby after their tour ended in 2005.

Simultaneously, he hooked up with the Redhouse, 201 S. West St., serving as the organization’s music coordinator from spring 2006 until spring 2007. Oleston did well for the arthouse in terms of presenting musical acts until management fell on hard times and eliminated his position. “{The New York State Music Fund} was giving out money to organizations {in 2007} that had creative ideas like us,” Oleston says. “That’s a great space for a series where we could have three cameras, and we could get Subcat {Studios, of Skaneateles} at times to come out to do the audio recordings funded by the state.

“It would have been a great way to help local artists to go and get their names out, and they would have some professional marketing materials to go out and get gigs, to play at the {New York State} Fair: stuff like that. It got rejected, and I think that took a lot of wind out of my sails for a while, but the idea didn’t go away.”

Peters at the same time was unhappy with the way his career as a producer was going in London. “There are no free-standing houses in London, so there’s just you and a couple of bricks between the neighbor. You have to record so the kids can go to bed at 8 p.m. I was doing a lot of more folky stuff in London, not any bands,” Peters says.

Oleston began looking into new real estate projects, and happened to read an article in The Post-Standard about a small series of churches in LaFayette that were on the market. “I knew I didn’t want to do a house. I was looking at gas stations, old schools—I knew you could get a lot more for less, and I could customize it,” he says.

Rev. Janet Gleason was serving as the rotating pastor for the financially struggling Methodist congregations of Cardiff, Navarino and South Onondaga. After the churches incorporated around 2002, they decided that it would be better for them financially to pool the assets of their church buildings, sell them and then attempt to build a single, new church to serve the entire area. 

“There was a large Florida exodus, and as a result there was a gradual process of doing more and more and more together,” Gleason explains about the area’s retirement-age population. “It was one step at a time, and it got to a point where a decision was made to center our worship in one place. The dream was that we would use all of those buildings as resources and assets that we sell and use that as seed money for a new building.”

After looking into the church’s situation and assessing the value of the Cardiff building, Oleston ultimately decided that his next project would be to purchase the property and convert it into a studio and a home, hence continuing his artistic dream. Knowing Peters’ lifelong passion was to record music, Oleston thought he would be a perfect partner in the endeavor. 

Gleason believes the sale was a positive thing for the community; at the same time it was an emotional and sometimes frustrating process for the congregation. “We really believed that was the best case scenario—to imagine this music, this dream these two young men had. They were excited to have members of the congregation come back and see it, and it seemed like the best case scenario that someone young and energetic would have a dream for the future so the church would go on with a new form and a new life.”

(Of the three churches, the Cardiff building is the only one which has been sold so far, according to Gleason, so the second half of the Methodists’ plan is yet to materialize. In the meantime, the congregation now meets at Apple Valley United Methodist Church, 4424 S. Onondaga Road, Nedrow.)

Because dealing with the real estate title of such an old building is tricky business, Oleston retained lawyer Robert De More in order to handle the details of the purchase, which was finally closed in May 2008. Yet while one might imagine there could be some opposition by a town composed mostly of elderly citizens to the mutation of church into haven for musicians, De More says the process went rather smoothly.

“They had to get a court approval, but that was done by the {Methodist congregation},” De More says. “Those titles in the old churches are a little tricky because they go so far back—they usually haven’t been surveyed—so I guess that was the only part that was complicated.” 

Oleston also made sure the studio was officially zoned residential, not as a public building or a business, to simplify the technicalities that would have otherwise ensued. In their arrangement, Peters works from the Church as an independent contractor, while both decided that they would also live there permanently.

No Place Like Home

Details of the sale aside, Oleston and Peters embarked upon a remodeling project that has since inspired a home and studio space that would make MTV’s Cribs proud. Both Oleston and Peters thought the best way to use the church’s expansive space was to construct extra bedrooms, two living rooms and a massive kitchen, as well as all of the necessary rooms for a studio, which would exist in the church’s main meeting room. 

Oleston and Peters’ dream for the building was to construct enough additional rooms so that musicians who hoped to record there would be able to stay for the weekend, bed-and-breakfast style, and get the work done. “So much of what draws people into music is they want to live out some dream they have. They see the videos on TV and they’ve read about the lifestyles,” Peters says. “They want to live that out. So like working in your own bedroom every Thursday with your buddy {on a recording project} doesn’t seem like the dream. But going to a studio retreat and spending a month on a record: that seems like a dream.”

Explains Oleston: “We’re constantly doing stuff to the building and the grounds. I’m building a big observation deck near a creek that runs behind the building. Anything that can kind of make it feel more resort-ish, anything that can make it feel like a step above camping.” 

Oleston has used his handiness to complete most of the work himself, including the installation of hardwood flooring, a wood-burning stove and a custom bar-top made from one of the stained-glass windows that more energy-efficient versions replaced. The church also included a cafeteria-sized kitchen, so it is decked-out with unusual items: a double stove, a grill, a restaurant-style skillet and an industrial-sized dishwashing machine.

Peters also acquired as much signature, high-level recording equipment as he could in an effort to entice musicians to explore the organic-sounding techniques he has developed as a producer. Some of the gems in Peters’ gear collection include a Neumann U47 microphone, a favorite of Beatles producer George Martin and classic crooner Frank Sinatra, an Ampex tape recorder which he rigs into a digital recording system and a variety of high-quality recording preamps. Also included in the pair’s gear collection are a handful of pianos and organs inherited from the church (one of which has been transformed into a so-called tack piano, a specialized instrument that sounds like old Western player pianos), and some electric versions, like a Fender Rhodes and a Clavinet.

“Everyone’s got a home studio now, but there’s always a difference between great records and the radio and stuff like that,” Peters says. “We’re just trying bridge that gap, and to figure out which gear is really used on all those records. Sometimes it’s so rare you can’t find it, and sometimes it’s so expensive it doesn’t make sense, but in those cases I buy pre-existing things that are relatively affordable that I had modified to be like the old stuff.”

Overall, the studio’s biggest advantage is that its huge space is optimal for recording drums and vocals, a fact that Oleston and Peters know will help them compete with other local recording spaces, such as Subcat.

The work that Peters does as a producer at the studio comes both from local traffic as well as from contacts he makes during regular visits to Los Angeles, where he developed a network of recording career friends. More work has come through a word-of-mouth buzz that has already attracted artists like Adam Levy, a guitarist and singer-songwriter who played with Norah Jones on her 2002, Grammy-winning debut, Come Away With Me (Blue Note); Bishi, a sort of electronica-meets-classical Indian artist from the United Kingdom; Idina Menzel, the vocalist who was the star of Broadway’s Wicked; and a variety of other local musicians. 

That influx of musicians in turn inspires Oleston and Peters, both of whom claim that a huge part of their desire to produce other artists is to support their own artist habit. “I want to be able to have the place always filled with somebody doing something,” Oleston explains. “I need the creative inertia of other people. I have cycles, you know, where I’ll be super-productive and I can’t be stopped until the day when I’m stopped. Then when I am stopped I need to use some energy from somewhere. If you’re by yourself, it’s hard to do. But I’ve found when I’m around other creative people it’s great because anytime you’re about to be slowed down you can be inspired by them.”

In the future, Oleston and Peters hope to host more private get-togethers so that musicians can perform at the space, as well as to pursue a wide variety of creative projects in the studio to satisfy their appetite for art. But in the meantime, as Oleston explains, he and Peters simply plan to live in their dream home, content with the fact that they’ve achieved a project that few others ever could.

“Very few people actually live the dream the way they want. Some of them are famous, and it has a price, but very few people get to live the life they want and get to do all that stuff,” Peters says. “I think one thing I always appreciated about Tim was that Tim looked at it as a goal to achieve and manifest. And he did.”         

Double take: David Peters and Tim Oleston work in the console room of the Belfry Recording Studio.