A Creative Couple Give a Los Angeles Midcentury a Backyard Recording Studio

When Max Hershenow and Nick Davidson decided to buy a house, it was on a bit of a whim. They’d always rented, but when a cute little place next to some friends in Los Angeles’s Echo Park went on the market, they decided to go after it. They didn’t get it, but the process made them realize that they really wanted to own, both to have a home where they could really apply their vision without restrictions from a landlord, and to fulfill their wish for a pair of home offices that would meet their very specific individual needs for remote work.

Hershenow is a singer-songwriter and music producer known for his work as half of former pop duo MS MR (fun fact: his one-time bandmate’s "Pantone-Punk" Brooklyn apartment was featured in Dwell) as well as collaborations with pop stars like Charli XCX, who he once also called his roommate. Davidson, on the other hand, is a lighting designer who’s worked on everything from "The Making Of Harry Potter" experience on the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London to music videos (including a recent one for Hershenow shot at the pair’s house). They both bop around often for their work, but when they need to get the job done from home, the standard desk and monitor combo won’t fully do it—which is why the duo finally set their sights on a house where they could live comfortably, of course, but also set up shop.

After months of looking, the pair ended up in a midcentury California bungalow in Tujunga, a quiet L.A. neighborhood near the Crescenta Valley and Verdugo Mountains. The two-bed, one-bath house was built in 1947 and has a ton of vintage features, like large casement windows, random touches of stained glass from a previous owner, and old-school raised panel doors. When they toured the space, they knew it would need a little work (there were Ikea kitchen cabinets on the living room wall and "everything was painted different shades of yellow, with all these horrible, mismatched laminate floors," Hershenow says), but they saw what it could become. They put in an under-ask offer and, after some struggles with lenders who couldn’t wrap their heads around what it meant to be a successful freelancer with relatively stable income, closed in the summer of 2021.

It’s taken a few years and some budget compromise, but the house is mostly where they want it. (They haven’t managed to renovate the kitchen yet, which they say isn’t their style but is totally serviceable.) There’s a step-down living room, sustainable cork floors throughout, and a tiled bathroom with a skylight that the pair says gives "Japanese gym" vibe. They found a Liam Montano dining table on Facebook Marketplace and then commissioned the L.A. furniture designer to make them bedside tables as well. Davidson has sourced vintage and new lighting pieces for the entire home, too, from designers like Louis Poulsen, Flos, Isamu Noguchi, Stilux Milano, and Santa & Cole.

Davidson’s home office sits at the front of the house, where those big casement windows afford the lighting designer plenty of natural sunshine, as well as a vantage point to gaze out over the comings and goings on the street. In contrast, Hershenow’s workplace sits behind the home, at the apex of the pair’s sustainably landscaped backyard. An off-the-rack Tuff Shed that the pair turned into a recording studio, the structure is soundproof enough that Hershenow can work all day and into the night, producing work for artists like Carly Rae Jepsen, Chappell Roan, Miya Folick, and Mitch Grassi (Messer)—all of whom have visited the space.

"Because what we do is creative and I have artists coming here all the time to work with me in the studio, I think it freed us up to make bolder choices than we maybe would have," says Hershenow. The producer seems to have enjoyed the renovation experience enough to expand his career: He recently launched an architectural design and interiors firm, Onsen Studio, with fellow musician (and Dwell denizen) Drew Straus.

Below, Hershenow and Davidson dive into the details of building out their WFH spaces, including how they made them each their own, and why there’s always time for a little pruning during the work day.

Dwell: How would you describe your home’s style?

Nick Davidson: I always struggle to describe this house. I just say it’s 1940s California bungalow, which could mean a lot, but it’s all stone and brick, with these casement windows that I definitely identify with a house being "Californian." But I don’t know what our style is, because it’s so eclectic in a weird way.

Max Hershenow: We both have pretty defined aesthetic perspectives. I have a lot of interest in craft and making things with my hands, and Nick is a trained lighting designer who likes to do a lot of focused planning. I think that all blends and is part of what makes the house so magical, that it has this higher-end design perspective mixed with a more DIY aesthetic or a homey feel. All that combined with a lot of shared interests, like midcentury, Scandinavian, and Japanese design.

ND: Right, like a lot of the vintage lighting is from the ’50s, but it’s Italian or Danish. A lot of our choices were made based on the period the home was built, but the pieces don’t come from the same countries or whatever.

MH: It’s really important that every item has a story. A lot of these things are our family heirlooms and things that were hanging in my house growing up, or that we found in Japan. Even the items we found at flea markets feel like they have a story; they give the home a sense of place and make it feel like us.

Nick, what do you love about your home office?

ND: The windows really make you feel like you could step out from my office onto this really beautiful gravel pathway we have along the side of our house, which I think is one of the best parts of the house. At sunset, the sun goes down just over the trees so the light that comes through my windows is the warmest, most beautiful amber light. It only lasts for about 15 minutes, but it’s totally magical. As a lighting designer, I appreciate that.

Max, you have to go through your garden to get to your studio. Talk to me about that space.

MH: We redid both gardens completely with the help of a landscape architect. They were totally overgrown before. I wasn’t a gardener before this project, either, but I’ve turned into one since. I really love gardening, and it’s been a great pleasure to be out here all the time, constantly perfecting it and watching things grow. Making music and gardening is an incredible combination. I’ll make a song and export it and listen to it while I’m weeding, then I’ll go back in and make changes, come out again and keep gardening. It’s pretty idyllic.

Having a lovely garden and patio also makes extra working space for artists. You can hang out, have some coffee—you don’t have to be in the actual studio.

MH: We spend a lot of time writing outside, too. I’ve even had people ask me to run a microphone to some chairs outside the studio and they’ll record all their vocals out there. 

How did you design the recording studio?

MH: You can customize a Tuff Shed to the nth degree. We bought the largest size you can get, both square feet and height, without getting a permit. It’s 10 feet by 12 feet. The company brought the shell and built it up in a day and then we finished the inside, did the soundproofing, and some of the drywall.

ND: It was quick.

MH: The only arduous part was doing the soundproofing ourselves, which involves these massive sheets of mass-loaded vinyl, which are like inch-thick sheets of rubber. You have to get up and staple them to the wall and the ceiling. I thought it was maybe a two-day project. Two weeks later, and with our relationship in tatters, we finally finished. It was really hard, but we got it together and it’s nice to feel like I built this myself.

ND: It was important that we did the soundproofing well, too, because we’re pretty close to our neighbors on one side. Proximity-wise, the studio is right next to their bedroom.

MH: I was really nervous. As a music producer, moving into any new space is rough because you don’t know what your neighbors are going to do and it can really ruin your whole thing. But honestly, the neighbors here have been lovely. They’ve actually asked me to keep the door open more often, and to turn the music up.

Did you know how you wanted to lay it out beforehand? Has anything changed?

MH: I had imagined my desk was going to be in one place and the piano another, but we ended up swapping them. I’m a songwriter, and so when artists and other songwriters are here, the flow of the room is really important. My ability to move back and forth between the piano and interacting with people and listening to what’s happening in the room is really important, so this setup kind of made more sense.

How often do you have artists working back there?

MH: Two times a week, maybe. A lot depends on the week, of course, and the projects I’m working on. Like, if I’m scoring, composing, producing… it’s a wide range.

Nick, how often are you working from home?

ND: Every day when I’m in the States. Generally, I’ll work from home on a project until it gets to a point where it requires me to be there, and then I’ll go live [where the project is based] for a few months off and on. A lot of my work I can do anywhere I can get AutoCAD.

MH: There’s enough of a work/life divide with us having our own spaces that we can both be working from home all day. If I go inside to pee, we say hi and check in, but it’s not like we’re on top of each other.

What do you love about your house? 

ND: My joy always comes from changing the lighting of the house. I’m always moving lighting around because it can be kind of a testing ground for me since I’m working with light all the time. For a sconce in the dining room, I actually had to run the cord through a wall to a power source in my office closet. You find ways. You have to let the house dictate what you can do, and you get really good at coming up with clever solutions.

MH: But that adds to the richness of the house in a way. A lot of the time I feel like the [musical] work that I’m doing here is really influenced by the space, and the space really influences the work. There’s a flow between two creative pursuits, between the music and the design and the interiors.

So much about music is having that kind of space...having another creative pursuit like gardening or interior design, something that feels like a necessary distraction of your mind, that allows you to imagine things in a new way or context, or to think about things differently. So often, that lyric or melody or whatever will come to me when I’m pruning.

Top photo courtesy Max Hershenow and Nick Davidson

Project Credits:

Builder/General Contractor: Paul Vera, Ramzco Construction

Landscape Design: Rich Tobin

Lighting Design: NWD Design

Sound Engineering: No Better Pleasure, Inc.

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