On the west side of North Mississippi Avenue between Failing and Shaver, Jim Brunberg is hard at work converting a former church into his musical dreamland.
When it opens this fall, Mississippi Studios will be a multifaceted music studio furnished with mobile recording equipment, classrooms for instrument lessons and recording workshops, a CD replication and duplication service and a small performance space.
After more than a decade of touring with his folk-rock band, Box Set, Brunberg still wants to live a life full of music -- but not a rootless existence. "I’m thinking that if I make my own stationary tour bus, it will attract the type of people I like being around: intensely curious, experimental and open-minded about music," he says.
Brunberg’s peripatetic lifestyle started as a kid. His family moved a lot, and he spent his childhood in various locales -- including Florida, Iowa and California -- before heading off to the University of Michigan. He graduated with degrees in English literature and music and moved to San Francisco to teach high school English and biology. Three years later his job became a casualty of school-funding cutbacks, and he and another musician he met at an open-mic night, Jeff Pehrson, launched Box Set. For the next 11 years, the duo -- which grew to a five-piece band -- produced six albums and embarked on numerous concert tours. Brunberg sang, played guitar and wrote songs for the band. In 1995, Box Set was named Group of the Year by the National Academy of Songwriters.
Brunberg, now 35, says he never enjoyed the travel aspect of his music-making. Although he and Pehrson play a show most weekends, usually in the Bay Area, and will be the opening act for folk singer Greg Brown on the Northwest leg of his upcoming tour, Brunberg is now settled in Portland. In 2000, he began law school at Lewis & Clark for the mental challenge (he’ll begin his final year this fall) and kept his eyes peeled for a suitable studio space, which he found on Mississippi Avenue last summer. The street appealed to him because "it seemed like it was going to have interesting people doing interesting things on it." Nine months after his purchase, Brunberg is even more convinced that the street might develop into "a hub for Portland’s creative people."
With the help of friends, Brunberg has already done a lot of work on the property, which consists of a house built in 1890 and attached storefront, which last served as Rev. Cannon’s church. Brunberg salvaged the house by jacking it up and building a new foundation, and has since installed a second-floor dormer to accomodate a bathroom.
The storefront, however, was "completely rotted out," Brunberg says, and was slated for demolition the last week of April. In its place will be a handsome, two-story storefront with a large room on each floor. The defining exterior design element will be a small clock tower on the southeast corner, which will extend beyond the roof and afford views of downtown.
Brunberg hopes to open Mississippi Studios this fall and grow the business slowly. Eventually he envisions the space playing host to music-education groups, like local nonprofit Ethos, and being used by bands who might not otherwise afford the recording fees at other facilities. He’d also like to regularly hold events open to the public. "I want to enable artists to do things," he says.
Mississippi Studios also seems likely to feed Brunberg’s musical spirit. "I want it to be a place where there’s music happening all the time," he says.