You are driving through one of Stamford’s most bucolic neighborhoods.
You turn right up a narrow dirt road.
Fifty yards in front of you, across a lazy green yard, is a gorgeous gingerbread house.
Immediately to your left, at the end of a worn stone path, is a picture-perfect white cottage, well over a century old.
Why, you could be in the Finger Lakes, or even Southwest England.
You push open the old door of the cottage…
And one of the most respected rock guitarists in the world is cranking out heavy metal riffs at maximum volume, trying to find just the right sound.
Welcome to Carriage House Studios. For 45 years, this unassuming spot hidden in the hushed, leafy and privileged precincts of Westover, has been one of the East Coast’s most respected recording studios. How many people have driven down this quiet street without realizing that so many rock’n’roll dreams have come true just yards off the road?
Johnny Montagnese has been running the Carriage House since the day it opened in 1980. He greets you with a boyish grin and an enthusiasm for his life’s work which totally defies his
age (Johnny is 74 years young). There’s no trace of weariness or cynicism in this man, regardless of the fact that he’s spent most of his life deep in a business that breaks dreams far more often than it makes them.
Johnny Montagnese isn’t just running a successful recording studio in Stamford; he was also born and raised here and is both a true character of the city and a fantastic example of the city’s
character, at its best.
“I grew up at the bottom of Richmond Hill and Greenwich Avenue, right across from the old Civil War cemetery,” Johnny says, reclining on a well-worn studio couch. For many years, Johnny’s father ran Pip’s Auto Center, a well-respected auto repair business. Dad was also a lover of music, something he passed on to his son at an early age, taking Johnny to see many of the great jazz artists of the era. Before long, Johnny had caught the bug, and while still in high school was drumming with local bands and playing in bars in Connecticut and Westchester. He then became involved in Stamford Sings, a popular local group affiliated with the nationally known dance and music act, Up with People (readers of a certain age may remember the ubiquity of Up with People on TV variety shows, patriotic occasions, and major sports events in the 1960s and ‘70s). Before long, Johnny graduated to the major leagues, touring the world with the Up
with People troupe, acting as both a drummer and a road manager. Along the way, Johnny not only learned the nuts and bolts of the music business but earned a degree in child psychology.
After his father passed away suddenly in 1978 at age 52, Johnny returned to Stamford.
“I had been in Denver,” Johnny recalls, “but I came back to run the automotive business; I'm the eldest of 3 children, I had to take care of my mom. Mostly the business ran itself because it had been around so long. I was also managing my then wife, who was doing well working in
Broadway shows. Managing her career made me realize I needed to get back in the music business. So a good friend of mine said, ‘Why don't you build a studio?’ I had worked in studios all over the country. I knew what it took to make a good studio.”
Realizing he belonged in the music business and not underneath a car, Johnny sold Pip’s Auto. With the money he made from the sale, he brought the Westover property and converted the old
carriage house into a recording studio.
Relatively quickly, Johnny built a loyal clientele of A-list jazz musicians, and then major rock and pop stars began discovering the house in the woods. Before long, the Carriage House, a
place of extraordinary charm that instantly makes a stranger feel like a friend, had become one of the premiere recording studios in the New York metropolitan area: a great place both for anyone who wanted to get away from the city (but not too far away), or who were living nearby and were excited to discover a world-class facility in their backyard.
The list of artists who have made their way to the little Carriage House in Westover is a who’s who of the music business, across all spectrums: From Paul Simon to the Pixies, Beyonce to Blue Öyster Cult, Spyro Gyra to Donna Summer. One of Johnny’s favorite clients is Greenwich’s own Miss Diana Ross, who has long treated the Carriage House as her home away from home for over thirty years. “Every time I see her, she says, ‘Please call me Diana,’ and I say, ‘Of course, Miss Ross.’“
But back to an earlier question: What does it take to make a good studio?
“You know what makes a good studio? A clean toilet and plenty of parking.”
Oh, there has to be more to it than that, right, Johnny?
“Service. I always try to work the service end of it, so I have good relationships with all my clients. I think the reason why we survived where so many others have failed is our attention to servicing the client, and I teach that to all my engineers. I have them understand that it's not your record -- It's the artists’ record, you know. If the guitarist wants his guitar to sound like a bunch
of bees in a jar, if that’s the sound he has coming out of his amplifier and he likes it, then that’s what you bring into the control room and put on tape. And if you're not bringing that into the control room, then we're failing. I always tell my guys. It's not what we make, it's that we make.”
You know what makes a good studio? A clean toilet and plenty of parking.
I think the reason we survived where so many others have failed is our attention to servicing the client. I teach all my engineers to understand that it's not your record -- It's the artists’ record.