In 2010 Reed Black started working as an in-house engineer at Justin King’s Vinegar Hill Sound (VHS) studio in Brooklyn, New York. At the time, the studio was fairly modest with an isolation booth, a live room, and a control room with an upstairs lounge area. When King decided to return to Oregon, Black went from being an engineer to owner of VHS in 2015, and within a decade, expanded the space into a 1,200-square-foot hybrid (analog-digital) studio and introduced a new label in 2024.
Inside the 32-channel studio, a former 19th-century warehouse named after its neighborhood in Brooklyn set between Dumbo and the Navy Yard, exposed brick stands alongside the Fortuna-cloth style walls within the 16-ft. ceiling space. In-house is a curated collection of vintage gear, including a 1923 Steinway L grand piano a 1950s Hammond A-100 organ, mics, guitars, drums, and other instruments, along with a Studer A800 2-inch 24-track tape machine for analog recording and easy digital conversion via an upgraded Burl system.
Space-wise, VHS can accommodate full bands, but performs equally well with string quartets, choirs, and brass sections. It has also become a prime location for film, interviews, and broadcasts. The two-floor complex includes an additional mix room, a kitchenette upstairs, along with a spacious sunlit front lounge.
“It’s not like Electric Lady [Studios], where they can just be prepared for everything that comes,” says Black, who cites other studios like Studio G which can transition between several different rooms. “For me, it’s like, much leaner and meaner.”
Any lack of space isn’t a limitation but room for more versatility, including some recent film soundtrack work Black did with Shudder to Think guitarist and composer Nathan Larson.
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“That’s not a world I expected to be a part of, so it was all interesting to me and surprising, and a learning experience,” shares Black. “Films can be complicated, and it’s not just the audio. A lot of decisions are made visually, and you have to be ready to accommodate that.”
Shortly after Black took on VHS, it received some unexpected attention when Solange Knowles came in to record a line of tracks for her 2016 album A Seat at the Table and invited Questlove. At the time, the air conditioning inside the studio wasn’t sorted out. “He [Questlove] tweeted at the time to his 1.4 million followers,” remembers Black, “and wrote ‘I am literally in the hottest studio in all of New York City.’ I was like ‘I think this is cool. Questlove just talked s–t about us.”
While renovating the airflow throughout the studio and further soundproofing, Black also wanted cleaner isolation between the ISO booth and the main room. Though Black had purchased some equipment from King, including a console, it didn’t match the bigger sound Black wanted to procure at VHS, something better executed with more versatile preamps and other equipment.
Within two years of taking over VHS, the pieces started to fall into place. “Then it became clear,” says Black, “It was just like, ‘Okay, here we are. And now it’s rolling, and it’s happening, and it’s a thing. Then it was on to the next stages of thinking through things.”
Under Black, the studio has worked with Depeche Mode, Bruce Hornsby, Ed Sheeran, Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Pussy Riot, Ethan Hawke, Nina Persson (The Cardigans), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith), Wet, Spike Lee, The Strokes’ Fab Moretti, Imagine Dragons, Vampire Weekend, Del Water Gap, Black Angels, Foy Vance, Leslie Odom Jr. (Hamilton), Paul Q. Kolderie (Pixies, Radiohead, Portugal. The Man), Paul Muldoon, and the Julian Lage Quartet, and dozens of other artists.
For Black, who worked as an English professor before segueing into the role of producer, mixer, engineer, and ultimately studio proprietor, VHS is a one-man show. Having no investors gives Black the freedom to run the studio as he pleases and manage the VHS label, which he launched in 2024.
Adding another dimension to VHS, the label has gradually expanded to three indie artists: People I Love, Fish Hunt, and Dan English. “I came into this all as a recovering songwriter and musician myself,” says Black. “I got excited about all of this like being in my friend’s basement, clearing out the floor, folding out the Monopoly board, getting down on our hands and knees, and saying ‘Let’s do this thing.’”
As a musician, it was all about working with what was around and building something from scratch. This DIY mindset, backed by a dynamic analog and digital base, is something that has framed VHS.
“Back then, it was crappy equipment in a crappy room,” adds Black. “But the spirit of that was this beautiful thing of ‘Let’s create something that has never existed before in his moment,’ and ‘What’s it going to take?’”
Black remembers picking up on this framework while working, earlier in his career, with producer Rob Schnapf, who produced Beck’s breakout 1994 album Mellow Yellow and hit “Loser,” and also worked with Elliot Smith early on in his career, along with Guided by Voices, X, Kurt Vile, and more.
“When I saw him [Schnapf] in action, that’s precisely what he was doing,” recalls Black. “That’s what he did with Elliot [Smith] back in the day, too. It was like ‘Let’s move in together and make your record happen. Who cares how it happens?’ It’s this idea of ‘Let’s just make it come together and become this living creature.’”
When the pandemic hit, and Black was left to work through everything on his own without the help of assistants, the more homegrown approach, and collaboration with artists who returned once things started opening up again, also helped lead to the launch of the VHS label.
Though on-hand to offer advice to artists, Black says he’s not as “grabby” as he once was and learned to stand aside and support an artist’s vision. “I don’t have any need to jump in and try to co-write this song—that’s not my thing,” says Black. “It’s not what I need to do. What I really want to do is elevate this thing that has never existed before. And I believe in all these different people’s visions, and I want to be able to jump from one to the next.”
Moving ahead, Black has been working with more film and television, including an Apple TV series Swiped, along with expanding the label in quality not quantity of artists. Keeping a small roster of five to six artists and releases per year is within Black’s bandwidth for now.
“In the beginning, I was like ‘Maybe I’ll just put out anything that I think sounds awesome,’” says Black. “Then I realized that first of all, that’s not what I’m good at. I’m much better at being really in the weeds with people, and the world doesn’t need another record label like that.”
He continues, “I want to contribute a real old-school, Stax Records-style situation where we’re delivering these hand-crafted gifts made with love for you to unwrap. And I want it to be that focused and exciting.”
Being the sole proprietor at VHS also allows Black to think of the bigger picture and longer-term projects. “I don’t have to look at the label financially at all,” says Black. “There’s what we can afford to do and there’s what we can’t, but I have zero financial hopes riding on it. At no point is it about trying to monetize X, Y, Z. It’s like a cheat code because I’ve got this closely adjacent business that feeds from the same river. It takes all the pressure off.”
In between readying the release of Dan English’s next album, a follow-up to his 2018 debut Fruit Boy, and 2024 single “Across My Jaw” and “Serenity” from 2025, Black is also working on the third album from Fish Hunt, the solo project by singer-songwriter Lucy Mondello.
“Reed has been a massive blessing in our life,” says Mondello, who is working on a follow-up to the band’s 2024 album Self-Taught, which is being tracked to tape.“Every few months we reflect on how dope he [Black] is,” she adds. “His studio has become a haven for us, a multipurpose room that can serve you in many ways. Reed has given us a space where we can talk and share ideas about life, connect with other musicians we look up to or spend a wonderful afternoon recording some fine tunes. I couldn’t thank him enough for his generosity.”
At VHS, the addition of a multi-purpose space has also offered an expanded service to artists, including People I Love’s Dan Poppa, who released a self-titled album in 2024 along with two new singles “Trader’s Log” and “Flooded Hive.” At VHS, Poppa utilizes the B-room for writing and finished an entire album there.
Aside from writing, the space is also used for housing and distributing vinyl orders and other storage or studio needs. “It’s become this small piece of real estate that’s useful for a number of things,” says Black. “For Dan, this is like his sanctuary, and so it’s another part of the label offering. It’s like this safe haven to go to.”
Building a close relationship with each artist is also vital, says Black, whether it’s texting, geeking out on, or sharing, music, instrumentation and musician suggestions, or the right colors and palette for a song.
“I want to be engaged on that level where we’re all riveted,” says Black. “It should be electric. If it’s not. If it becomes phoning it in mentality, that’s not what I had in mind and that’s not what got me psyched about this in the first place.”
Photo: Vinegar Hill Sound owner Reed Black (Courtesy of Vinegar Hill Sound)
The story also appears on Americansongwriter.com.
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