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.
