Phish Bassist Mike Gordon Builds His Dream Studio, Part 1

Vermont (October 2, 2025)—Glass. In the home or on a ship, it can serve as both portal and barrier. When ground to a precise thickness and curvature, it can allow an astronomer to see the moons of Saturn or a biologist to see inside a cell. Send a wave of light or sound in its direction, and it can act as both diffuser and reflector. In a recording studio, glass can even be seen as a metaphor for separation, as in “the other side of the glass,” with the artist on one side and the engineer on the other. At the same time, it can be seen as a connector, as in “line of sight” to a singer in a vocal booth.

Mike Gordon’s new studio, Megaplum, situated on the shores of Lake Champlain outside of Burlington, Vermont, is nearly 80% glass, offering a 270-degree panoramic view across the water to New York State.

For Gordon, who will forever be known as the bass player of Phish but whose artistic pursuits are extensive and varied, the floor-to-ceiling doors and windows provide a gateway to inspiration, connecting him to his love of nature, while at the same time, when closed, allowing him to isolate from the world so he can dial in and focus on his songwriting, film and music projects—and his many lists. Gordon loves lists.

For architect Brian Mac of the respected local residential architectural firm Birdseye, glass provided an opportunity to blend the indoor and the outdoor in a unique, breathtaking design that was featured in the July issue of Dwell magazine.

For renowned studio designer John Storyk and WSDG project manager Romina Larregina, the use of so much glass and wood—while at the same time using no fabric or soft surfaces— simply provided a challenge that they turned into an asset.

“The building is fully isolated, and I don’t think we necessarily invented anything unusual there,” Storyk says, “but integrating an all-in-one tracking and mixing studio—which also includes a second control room through the rear wall— into basically an all-glass cantilever building did take some creative engineering.”

THE ALL-IN-ONE CONCEPT

WSDG was brought into the project in early 2020 through Birdseye, whom they’d worked with before, and through Gordon, who had become fond of the Storyk-designed Bearsville Studio and at the same time enjoyed working at fellow Phish cohort Trey Anastasio’s Barn, an open recording space that was modeled after Bearsville. There were other influences, as well.

“We were very inspired by Daniel Lanois, and also we’re friends with Mark Howard, who worked with Daniel on this whole idea of not only are we going to be in the same room with musicians and engineers, but we’re not going to use headphones very much,” says Gordon, the “we” being a reference to Jared Slomoff, his engineer and right-hand man both musically and technically since 2001. “We’re just going to have loud sound, and we’re going to just let it all bleed and have the creative flow happen. One of the Rolling Stones, I think it was Keith Richards, said rock and roll is made to be played in one room, so we were inspired by that model. Plus, I’m just used to sitting with Jared.”

While Gordon has an innate sense of design and the use of space, and was involved in the tiniest details from the very first discussions and drawings on through every iteration, Slomoff proved to be “the secret sauce” because of his ability to translate the way that Gordon likes to work, both technically and musically.

“I see my job as a professional enabler, you know?” Slomoff explains. “I’m in the empowerment business. I want to see what someone does that’s special and ask how we can help them do that the fastest and best way possible. Basically, it’s a continuum. On one end, you have simplicity, and on the other end, you’ve got flexibility. We can make it very flexible, but it’s not going to be very simple, or we can make it super-simple but it is not going to be flexible.

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“Mike and I have talked about this for a long time,” he continues. “What thoughtful limitations can we put on this process so that we can get work done? What lines do we draw so that we can get something accomplished? I avoid things that have dual-function. I don’t want things where you push a button, or hold a button and turn a knob to get to some sub menu. I want none of that. I want Mike to be able to create music, with all the instruments and tools right there, without interruption for some technical reason. That’s one of the reasons I wanted the API console. It feels like a musical instrument to me. It feels like something you want to make records on, and again, one-button functions, no sub-menus. It feels like rock and roll to me, and that’s important.”

Slomoff and Gordon first met in Atlanta in 1998, while the latter was working on a film about the legendary Colonel Bruce Hampton, who had become a huge influence in Slomoff’s working life following graduation from Emory University. Three years later, they would meet again on the street in New York City when Gordon happened to jog by on a run. They’ve been together now for 24 years.

But Slomoff is much more than a chief tech. He’s also a collaborator, producer, psychologist, troubleshooter and musical sounding board. Trained in the Suzuki method for piano starting at age 3, later adding a trumpet at age 8, he’s one of those rare individuals who can seemingly just pick up any instrument and learn to play it during an afternoon. He doesn’t read music, per se, but he does read musicians.

“Jared wears a lot of caps, and he’s very good at figuring out how people work and how the ergonomics of a studio might change,” Gordon explains. “The way that I work is I love having other musicians come in who I admire and jam with them. These become my musical ideas, my songs. It’s always different people, but often it’s just me and Jared, and often we’re working on demos and we’re layering tracks. We set up the whole studio so that when it’s just the two of us, we’re very comfortable. Everything on the right is more for engineers, and everything on the left is more for musicians.” He laughs. “Of course, there’s a bit of crossover.”

The idea of adding a second control room to the rear of the main space was there from the beginning, in case Gordon or a client ever wanted to work in a more traditional manner, or for those situations where Slomoff might be editing or prepping tracks while Gordon continues out in the main room. It was a great concept, but it meant glass now appeared on all four walls.

The solution in that case was to add clear slat diffusors in front of the glass, lending a diffuse but still clear enough view into the main room. It works. In fact, with a taste of irony, the very first “client” turned out to be a major Hollywood talent who came in to record three days of voiceover. Turns out that it’s a pretty good vocal booth, too.

COME BACK TOMORROW FOR THE CONCLUSION!