—David Menconi, Down on Copperline
Sylvan Esso’s most recent studio album “No Rules Sandy” includes a half-dozen brief instrumental interludes, including one with the cryptic title “(Betty’s, May 4, 2022).” If you know you know: That’s a reference to the Orange County recording studio owned by the Grammy-nominated electronic-music duo of Nick Sanborn and Amelia Meath. Named after Sanborn’s grandmother, Betty’s is billed as “the central hub for collaboration, offering an accessible and inclusive space to create work that may not have otherwise been able to take shape.”
“We designed this place for us and our friends, inherently centered around the artist experience as opposed to the ‘commercial experience’ or the ‘engineer experience,’” says Sanborn. “It’s very bright, centered around the vibe. Right out of the gate, Amelia pointed out how the feel of it should be our top priority.”
Betty’s is outfitted with the latest recording gear, of course. But equipment is less important than ambience, something Sylvan Esso has always made the most of. The group started out in the world of do-it-yourself recording, making records at home and then in a small single-bedroom house in the woods outside Durham. Betty’s represents a definite upgrade, designed with careful thought given to making a space for others as well as themselves to work.
“It’s a place for people to live while they’re creating,” says Meath. “There’s a five-bedroom house, so they can bring their family. Or touring bands can crash there. Plus it has the biggest couch in the world.”
“The place is meant to feel communal, with a lot of things happening at the same time,” Sanborn adds. “You know, we never really wanted to be in the studio business, which is troublingly uncommercial.”
Nevertheless, Betty’s is another undertaking where Sylvan Esso appears to be doing enough business for the bottom line to work out. The studio’s list of recording clients includes Flock of Dimes, Superchunk, Mountain Goats, Watchhouse and Indigo De Souza.
Sylvan Esso has always been able to thread the needle of commercial appeal despite making highly personal, idiosyncratic art. The group’s first two albums both made the top-40 of the Billboard charts, and they’ve earned Grammy nominations for 2017’s “What Now” and 2020’s “Free Love” (both for best electronic music album).
Since they almost always have a continuous stream of in-progress projects going, Meath and Sanborn tend to be in Betty’s working on something with various friends every day they’re not on the road touring. Alli Rogers, who works as Betty’s house engineer, entered their orbit the way most people do, through mutual friends. She has experience working at traditional studios like Mitch Easter’s Fidelitorium over in Kernersville, as well as in more makeshift situations.
“I started out doing a lot of recording in places like basements, bedrooms, storage units,” says Rogers. “The Betty’s ethos comes from figuring out how to do things with what you have. Beyond being able to monitor yourself and capturing the sound in an artful way, you really don’t need that much in the studio. It’s more about how to get into the mindset where you can access a certain truth. A lot of that comes from Nick and Amelia’s beginnings. They only had what they had and made a record, and now look what happened.”
The closest thing Meath and Sanborn had for an inspirational model for Betty’s was the late artist Donald Judd’s residence and studio in the artist-colony town of Marfa, Texas. Seeing the spare artwork and furnishings of Judd’s space, Sanborn was moved to learn woodworking so he could make furniture with a similar feel for the studio.
“It’s an ongoing practice,” says Sanborn. “I dream about someday replacing everything in the studio with something that somebody here has made. Donald Judd makes it look easy, what he made is deceptively basic. The minimalism of it spoke to me in a beautiful way and I thought, ‘I could do that.’ It’s more complicated than that.”
“But it turns out Nick can do that,” Meath says with a laugh. “In fact, he is annoyingly good at it.”
With Betty’s, Sylvan Esso has become something like a vertically integrated business controlling its means of production – band and studio to go with the group’s Psychic Hotline record label. They’ve also entered the festival business by organizing and headlining a recurrent series of curated events like the two-day Good Moon Festival that happened at Durham Bulls Athletic Park this past summer. As for what’s next?
“I would like to have a hit song,” Meath says without missing a beat.
“As we like to say, Now would be a great time for a hit song!” Sanborn says with a laugh. “We’re thinking about spaces. We don’t want to do events at the studio, which feels less intimate than what we want here. But how could we take the feeling of this place somewhere else? What would that look like, what would it be? And does it need to exist? Everything we do, we ask ourselves that.”
Where Betty’s is concerned, that answer is a definite yes.
“I’m so grateful Betty’s exists and feel like it fills a place in the community,” says Rogers. “It’s amazing to witness how Nick and Amelia live their lives and interact with people. It’s always bustling when they’re around the studio, the energy definitely shifts when they’re here. It’s been an honor to see this thing grow into what it’s becoming. It changes every day and impacts each new person who walks in. It’s a special thing.”
