For about seven years, Kirsten Agresta-Copely and Marc Copely resided in a one-bedroom co-op in Midtown West, well-located near the Theater District. They became frustrated with their 700 square feet — though for reasons not typically common to hear.
“It’s not big when you have three harps,” Kirsten said.
Her husband — a singer-songwriter-producer who hit the big time with “Midnight Run,” sung by Willie Nelson for the 2012 film “Lawless” — traveled back and forth to Nashville.
So, they relocated to a two-story house in the Nashville suburb of Franklin, Tennessee, where “we could get a backyard and a dog, and build a life,” Marc said.
But then they found themselves traveling back and forth to New York. They missed the city and their friends. After seven years in Tennessee, they decided to return. That was two years ago.
Their key criterion for a house: a proper recording studio, since the two record their own projects. Kirsten has just released an album of her compositions, “Aquamarine,” and is preparing for her position as principal harpist for the Radio City Christmas Spectacular starring the Rockettes, whose season is just two months away.
Marc currently plays the banjo, guitar and mandolin in the orchestra of the pun-filled musical “Shucked” on Broadway. “The whole thing starts with funk banjo,” he said. “The musical is hilarious.”
After checking out a dozen houses in and around Bushwick, Brooklyn, they bought the only one that was right. Their house is a nondescript two-family rowhouse from the early 1900s, with 1,200 square feet on each floor. It was renovated and ready for move-in. What drew them most was its big basement, ripe for a recording studio.
A little over two years ago, they paid $1.37 million and set to work. They call their home “Casa Copely.”
The main task was soundproofing.
“We went construction crazy,” Marc said. With the help of a friend who designs recording studios, they tore out the drywall in the basement and started from scratch.
“We started with a layer of this stuff that is built from recycled jeans — I think it is 4 inches thick,” Marc said. (Denim is known for its sound-absorbing qualities.)
“We used a thing called QuietRock,” a kind of drywall, “and a product called Peacemaker, which is this rubber-type stuff.”
The walls are more than a foot thick, to be as recording-friendly as possible (and to contain sound, so as not to bother the neighbors).
“My music is a delicate mix of new age and ambient,” Kirsten said. “You must have dead quiet to record that. If there is any sound coming from neighbors or sirens or anything else, it comes out on the recording.”
They added acoustic panels, too, to reduce echo. The door to the basement is also heavy, with a door sweep tight to the floor.
The basement came with a separate small room, just right for a control room. The couple also has a mix of vintage and modern outboard gear.
Back in Tennessee, they had a home studio — but now they have a professional studio. They work there nearly every day. Friends sometimes use it, too. “The only thing I can’t do is a full orchestra or a big string session,” Marc said.
One downside is the wooden floor on the ground level, which creaks. The creaks, even if faint, can be picked up by a sensitive microphone. So if one of them is recording, the other avoids walking on the floor or goes to the top floor.
As for the living quarters, the main level includes a small extra room set up as a harp studio. That’s now where those three harps live.
The couple also has two pianos: A Steinway upright in the parlor room and a Steinway grand in the recording studio. That’s the one Kirsten grew up playing as a child in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan — a suburb of Detroit. Her musical mother had a small harp, and little Kirsten took to it.
Marc, originally from Worcester, Massachusetts, has a collection of vintage string instruments in the studio and scattered around different rooms. His Gretsch drum kit dates from the 1950s.
In the top-floor unit, currently configured as a four-bedroom apartment, the pair has one bedroom set up as a gym and another as a library/art/TV room. At some point, they might combine two.
Their Bushwick neighborhood is near the Myrtle-Wyckoff stop on the L train. “The neighborhood is still pretty old school,” Marc said. “There are a lot of families who have been here for 50 or 60 years and it’s super multicultural, which is a big plus.”
They take their rescue dog, Argos — a mountain cur and lab mix — to Irving Square Park, a few blocks away.
“The same people go there every day with the same dogs,” Kirsten said. “We have a group chat where we can exchange information and ask questions about who has what vet. We hang out in the morning there. We have friends we wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
During morning off-leash hours, dogs take over much of the park, though plans are in the works for a proper dog run. “It’s funny,” Marc said, “how this dog hang in the morning has become the center of our universe.”
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