Boy from Ohio goes to Guinea to study djembe drumming, boy meets girl in Chicago who studied in Mali, couple moves to New York for boy to follow Sxip Shirey in the Bindlestiff Family Circus, and couple builds a beautiful, world-class studio in a Hasidic neighborhood next door to a shul. We’ve all been there, right? Regardless of the path that got them here, Amon Drum and Mona Kayhan have created a stunning space for recording in Brooklyn in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, and stacked up an impressive pile of credits, including The Lumineers, Cory Henry, Trippie Redd, Jason Moran, and Lake Street Dive. Amon and Mona were nice enough to let me come through on a Friday to hear their story and see the incredible spot that is The Bridge Studio.
Back in the early 2000’s, Amon was playing three to four nights a week as a gigging percussionist and linked up with The Hook Studio in Red Hook to have a place to “make noise.” After suffering a back injury in a car accident, he found himself mixing The Analog Players Society at The Hook on an angled massage table, and the studio soon closed. The silver lining: he was able to buy out his former partners and acquire The Hook’s Hammond organ and esteemed Harrison 4032C console. After an 18-month search, he and Mona found this “piece of shit” abandoned building and knew that if they did the work themselves it could be a suitable location. As Amon puts it, “We didn’t have a lot of capital, but we had ambition!”
The Bridge took two and a half years to build and had a soft launch in 2018. Coming from a family of woodworkers, Amon and master carpenter Clifton Cunningham made the studio a building within their space, using 6-inch concrete blocks full of sand. As the location was a former bean sprout factory, there was the challenge of removing a loft that contained a steel water tank that needed jackhammers and blowtorches to deconstruct. Having previously set up The Hook and Manhattan audio school Dubspot, Amon had taught himself to construct acoustic panels and put his expertise to use at The Bridge. “Acoustics is doing your best guess and hoping it works.” Further inspired by herringbone wood art, Amon drew the design of the back wall to Mona’s approval and got to work.
Once the space was complete, the vision was to get people in the door by virtue of the beautiful live room and slowly build up gear over time. Mona’s job would be to “hunt down potential clients, and bring home ‘meat’ for the family,” Amon says half-jokingly. After securing a few small loans and a third investor, Amon and Mona were able to buy him out and take full ownership, becoming an actual mom-and-pop shop. Much of the gear on display was donated by friends in the spirit of Stone Soup: An Old Tale (Marcia Brown), where The Bridge’s massive concrete floor invited the community to create a veritable "stew" of musical gifts. When it came time to pull the massive Harrison console out of storage, fellow Brooklyn studio cat Joel Hamilton [Tape Op #85] replied to Amon’s Facebook post and showed up with his crew to lend a hand. Shahzad Ismaily [#151] was so impressed with the room that he began sending overflow clients from his Figure 8 studio, even booking his own sessions at The Bridge. “There’s this community that’s been built, and Mona is the bridge between the music and the masses.”
While the live room "worked," extra time was spent in the control room to dial in the sound, including installing Amon’s custom-built (and super cool-looking) panel of 2000 wooden diffuser rods. The reflections coming off the angle of the console were also a challenge, although everything came together with the arrival of the tallest speaker tower I’ve ever witnessed: The HEDD Extended Tower Mains. Having met HEDD's Freddy Knop at one of The Bridge’s industry parties, Amon explained the vision of the studio and Freddy was so knocked out by the place that he brought over a set of the Tower Mains. Consisting of two subwoofers, two midrange sections, and the “air motion ribbon tweeter” it was Amon’s dream come true: Less ear fatigue at high volumes, headroom for days, and the wow factor for clients. And with that, he proceeded to wow me with some music played through the HEDDs. After warming them up with some bone-shaking tracks from Run the Jewels and Lil Yachty, he pulled up the recent Jason Moran plays Duke Ellington recordings, tracked at The Bridge in December. What I heard was absolutely stunning, putting me inside the piano with incredible dynamic range. Next up was M’Bemba Bangoura’s Boreya, recorded live without headphones. Hearing the seven musicians deftly glide through complex polyrhythms as M’Bemba unleashed a flurry of djembe rolls sounded massive yet intimate through the HEDD speakers. The Bridge is also an official demo space for potential HEDD buyers, so let them know if you’d like to check them out for yourself. Personally, I’m sold… now if I could only fit them in my bedroom.
Mona was initially concerned with whether their emerging community would actually show up and book sessions. But people soon discovered they not only loved the sound of the room, but also the staff of Amon and engineers Urosh Jovanovich and Greg Tock. Having both worked with Amon for nine years, the team can deftly handle a 4-hour block with a five-piece band and turn around to set up a whole new session. “It’s not the old days of ‘we’re going to be here for a month’ and record an album,” Mona says. Rather it’s a rapid series of 3- to 5-hour blocks, and the engineers at The Bridge have become “ninjas.” It’s a long way from Urosh’s first session at the studio, which involved breaking concrete to run cables along the floor.
During Covid, the wow factor of the space, “Saved our asses,” as Amon puts it. When CBS closed their studios, Brian Applegate sent over five artists to shoot videos, and The Bridge shifted focus. Documentary segments for the BBC followed, and soon Mona’s vision for Live From The Bridge came to be. Bringing in a live audience, the studio began hosting performances billed as “live recording sessions” with purchased seats. For Jon Lampley’s upcoming live album, he brought along a portion of The Late Show's band and encouraged audience participation. The Bridge even offers VIP tickets for those who want to sit in the control room and watch Amon work his magic, although it can occasionally result in accidental compressor knob tweaking when guests get overwhelmed with excitement by the outboard rack.
A bit more on the Harrison 4032C, the beating heart of the studio: Built in Nashville in 1978 and heard on Michael Jackson’s Thriller engineered by Bruce Swedien [Tape Op #91], the 4032 is coveted for its 40 inputs and natural-sounding EQs. Amon learned to engineer on the board at The Hook and has been maintaining it over the years with help from techs Carl Figueroa and Ricki Begin. Having taught himself to read schematics, and with most Harrison components still readily available, it’s been smooth sailing, other than the time he caused the board to “smoke.” (“I was ready to throw in the towel,” says Mona.) Amon still has to go a bit out of his way to replace the board’s vintage ICs (integrated circuits), but feels it’s worth it for the board’s famously creamy EQs.
Along with Ann Mincieli [Tape Op #89] at Jungle City Studios and Roberta Findlay at Sear Sound, Mona represents a rarity in the recording industry: The female studio owner. She hopes to lead by example as a fierce advocate for engineers, and she seeks to bring more female interns on board. “The more women you get in there, the stronger it’ll be.” Mona is passionate about the recording arts, feeling that listeners care about quality, even as it gets degraded in an AirPods world. Coming from a family of educators, Amon sees the importance of training interns and bringing women into the field. The challenge remains to stay proficient in Pro Tools, with quick sessions involving multiple takes. And while there’s been a push at The Bridge to incorporate tape, costs remain high with a reel running up to $380. For the recent solo piano album by Jason Moran, the late decision to track to tape required a quick trip to Brooklyn's Reel to Reel Haven. Amon set up four mics for Moran’s Steinway: two Schoeps in ORTF formation for room mics, and a pair of Neumann U 67s inside the piano. Skipping the first and last of the 24 tracks, Amon was able to squeeze multiple songs per reel, fitting the 60-minute album on just three rolls of tape. Other tape-based recordings at The Bridge include Parquet Courts’ Sympathy for Life. Amon says he hopes tape makes a comeback, “because I think it’s how we combat AI, straight up. Let the flaws out and let that be the human expression.”
Due to the nature of New York real estate, nothing lasts forever. The lease on The Bridge is set to expire in four years. Amon pledges to strip every last piece of wood out before they move on, even peeling the paint off the walls if possible. “All I need is a box, and I can build it again.” Mona feels that with their finite time at The Bridge, the mission is to capture and archive important art at the high level of recording it deserves. “That’s the essence of what we’re trying to do.” Going beyond that, Mona has worked with the City of New York and the Mayor’s office to plead the case for the importance of recording studios, seeing The Bridge as part of a community of facilities with different strengths, rather than competitors. Mona says, “It’s a crazy thing that we did, but we have no regrets. We recently recorded a project for Angélique Kidjo which got nominated for a Grammy this year in “Best Global Performance" – our first one!” Amon sums it up, “New York City is not kind to the recording industry. I look at Nashville with envy, partly because of the community they have. People come to New York for the arts, media, and theater, and it’s not affordable. Everything we do at the studio goes back into it, and Mona runs live events in order for our child to eat. The studio is our second child!”
