SEATTLE — A lot of Seattle music history is hiding in plain sight.

One undersung byproduct of having a music community that’s made its share of dents in popular culture over the years is that the city is peppered with recording studios where quintessential albums were made. Without signage or landmark placards hanging in the windows (if they even have windows), chances are you’ve unknowingly walked by these nondescript temples of local music lore, which in contemporary Seattle are getting harder to maintain.

At least one of the city’s most famous studios, where Nirvana recorded their debut album, has charted a new path forward out of uncertain times. After its longtime steward Chris Walla, formerly of Death Cab for Cutie, was looking to pass the torch, a new ownership group led by house engineer Mike V. Davis has taken control of Hall of Justice — a Frelard studio that has operated for nearly 50 years under several names.

“I saw how people were in that space and how magical it was,” Davis said. “It’s a safe and welcoming environment to get into (creative mode). I knew that the business model was not super profitable and that anybody who would get that space would likely turn it into a home studio or a private space, because it’s such a cool building. It’s just expensive.”

Suffice to say that Davis and his partners — fellow local music vets Sam Rosson (another HOJ engineer), Mikey Ferrario and James Kasinger — aren’t exactly driven by profit margin potential in their new endeavor. Rather, the group is motivated to preserve the studio that gave birth to breakthrough records from bands that have defined Pacific Northwest rock for decades, while ensuring it remains accessible to the artists who will write the next chapters.

That accessibility and affordability is a large part of why the studio that first opened as Triangle Recording in 1976 etched its place into Seattle music history to begin with. After recording a number of post-punk and new wave bands in the late ’70s and early ’80s, foundational releases from the nascent grunge scene were recorded inside the triangular Leary Way building, which turned into Reciprocal Recording under C/Z Records founders Chris Hanzsek and Tina Casale in the mid-’80s.

Nirvana famously recorded “Bleach” there with producer Jack Endino for a relative pittance. ($606.17 to be exact — talk about a return on investment.) Soundgarden and Mudhoney also cut their earliest releases at Reciprocal.

Known as John & Stu’s — named for producers/engineers John Goodmanson and Stu Hallerman — for most of the ’90s, seminal albums from Northwest indie rockers Built to Spill (“There’s Nothing Wrong with Love”) and Modest Mouse (“The Lonesome Crowded West”), and riot grrrl greats Sleater-Kinney (“Dig Me Out”) were recorded there.

Until Davis and crew formally took over the lease last October, Walla had been the studio’s primary caretaker for the bulk of the last 25 years, changing the name to Hall of Justice when he moved in. It’s where Death Cab and Walla, the band’s guitarist and producer, made pivotal records like “The Photo Album” and parts of “Transatlanticism,” their full-fledged breakout.

Death Cab used the studio as their practice space during the band’s transformative middle 2000s, and fellow Seattle indie rock stars Fleet Foxes held the space for a spell during their late 2000s ascent, working on their sophomore album “Helplessness Blues” there.

“When I think of Seattle itself, the city, it’s the first place that I think of,” said Walla, who now lives in Norway. “It’s often the only place that I think of. It’s really the center of my universe. It’s such a huge part of my identity.”

Geography is part of the reason Walla had been looking for someone else to take the studio reins. Shortly after leaving Death Cab in 2014, Walla moved overseas while his partner pursued a master’s degree, though the acclaimed producer and musician would regularly return to Seattle to record bands in his hometown studio he describes as a “pressure cooker.”

Partly due to the building’s triangular shape, there’s no lounge area outside of the control room where musicians can escape to when not recording their parts.

“It really steers people into a kind of collaboration and decision-making that is a little different,” Walla said. “When you get to a point of negotiation or conflict or some sort of creative fork in the road, there’s not really an easy option to just check out. … So, I have found over the years that it’s a really clarifying place in terms of group dynamics. If there are problems, those come to the front. If there’s untapped potential inside the band, that stuff tends to come to the front.”

Even with Davis and Rosson looking after the space, owning a studio while living on another continent isn’t the most practical arrangement and eventually it stopped making sense, geographically and financially, for Walla.

Walla first approached Davis about taking over the Hall four or five years ago, though Davis — then a 25-year-old who’d largely been living “paycheck to paycheck” — didn’t think it was feasible.

As time passed and another buyer failed to emerge, Walla envisioned the studio that became “my home” and a uniquely enduring creative space suffering a grim, modern Seattle fate.

“A worst-case scenario for the building was starting to feel more and more plausible,” Walla said, “which was (I) liquidate everything, give up the lease and it gets taken over by somebody who gets a loan for a million-dollar build-out on a gelato shop that goes out of business in six months.”

Hoping to stave off the gelato nightmare, Walla revisited the idea with Davis, who again declined before his friend, Ferrario, urged him to reconsider and jumped on board. “Luckily, (Walla) held the torch for just long enough to where me and a couple of friends put our heads together to see if we could make something happen and we came up with a plan super last minute,” Davis said.

A crucial part of that plan is a new series of community classes, essentially Recording Studio 101, that Davis and Rosson are teaching out of the Hall. While helping the next generation of Seattle artists and would-be engineers and producers learn studio basics, they’re also bringing in some much-needed revenue to help keep their rates down, cover the overhead and purchase all the equipment — including the main console once used at the Hollywood Bowl — from Walla over time.

After the first few months, Davis reports those classes have been a hit.

“Mike is really the right person. Full stop,” Walla said. “He understands what that space is and his philosophy of creative work and community and record-making, and how all those things fit together — his spirit and approach to creative work is just so in line with mine.”

“It’s a privilege to be able to run a studio like this, to be able to make it work,” Davis said. “But as long as we can get it to be self-sustainable, we’re all super happy. That’s really the goal.”

©2025 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.