AmericanaMusic.com Podcast

The Teresa Knox Interview: Renovating The Church Studio, Leon Russell's Legacy, and The Tulsa Sound Revival

• Sarah Popejoy • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Within The Church Studio walls if you listen close you can hear the stories of those who've hallowed it, including Leon Russell, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, JJ Cale, Freddie King, Tom Petty, Phoebe Snow, and Willie Nelson to name a few. The studio once owned by Leon Russell has since been not only restored, but also made a world class music studio where most recent studio recordings include Elle King, The Dropkick Murphys, Taj Mahal, Jimmy Webb, and Kristen Chenoweth. As long as no one is recording you can tour the studio in the attached museum with all kinds of memorabilia including gold records and more with a majority of the collection being those of Leon Russell. This world class studio is a gem in Oklahoma, trusted by world class artists. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, The Church Studio’s history of legends who have graced its doors would be reason enough to record there, but how it’s been updated to compete with any Nashville or New York Studio is what is most impressive. They also provide the option to record in Analog or Digital, and they have four isolation booths. Our Interview is with Teresa Knox, owner of the famous studio. 

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Sarah Popejoy (00:17):

Today we have a special guest for you. Her name is Teresa Knox. She is owner of the Church Studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma. First, let me tell you a little bit about its previous owner, Leon Russell. He was a session musician out of the wrecking crew, played for people like the Beach Boys, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, BB King, Frank Sinatra, to name a few to show you the clout that this guy had. His first out was recorded with Eric Clapton, Ringo Star, and George Harrison. Elton John lists him as one of his biggest influences. Leon Russell bought a church, turned it into the recording studio, and today Theresa Knox has renovated and restored that studio. Welcome Teresa Knox. Can you tell me where is the church is located?

Teresa Knox (00:57):

Well, the church studio is located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We're just the east of downtown on the corner of Third and Trenton in a neighborhood that was built just after the turn of the century. We became a state in 1907 and the churches construction was completed in 1915. Tell me a little bit

Sarah Popejoy (01:15):

About what that transition of Leon Russell buying the church, him turning it into a studio.

Teresa Knox (01:21):

A lot of people ask me, is the church studio a real church? Well, it definitely was a real church from 1915 to 1972, and that is when Leon Russell, a native to Oklahoman, came back to his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma and bought it pretty impulsively. He was eating across the street at a diner. It was called the Ranch House Cafe. Today it's called the Freeway Cafe, and there was a for sale sign. He was with his business partner in shelter records, Denny Cordell and his first common law wife, car Brown, and they looked over, they said, we need a building like that. The church that was here had just recently moved and put it on the market. So he bought it in the spring of 1972 and then fairly quickly he converted it from a house of worship to a recording studio and home office to shelter records.

Sarah Popejoy (02:18):

So years later you come along. Teresa, tell me a little bit about what inspired you to buy the church studio and to take on that project.

(02:26):

Project. It has buying the church studio and renovating. It was a little bit bigger project than what I ever anticipated, but really similar to Leon. It was kind of an impulse purchase. I'm a big Leon Russell fan. I started collecting Leon Russell memorabilia and other Tulsa artist memorabilia when I was a child. And so before I even bought the studio, I had about a 5,000 piece collection. Oh wow. I was renovating a property nearby for those that are from the Tulsa area. It's next to Circle Cinema, which is in a historic district called Kendall Whittier. It was another abandoned building. It had been abandoned since the 1980s. But anyway, I found myself coming by the church. My older brother, Larry, is a hugely on Russell fan. He's like, oh, be so cold. Do something with the church. And so I drove by and just really disappointed at the shape it was in.

(03:21):

The windows were boarded up. There was a lot of trash. I mean the whole area was very, very dilapidated. So I looked on the tax records and I found the owner of the building and I wrote him a letter and he called me immediately. We met, said the building wasn't for sale, but he was a big Leon Russell fan also. So we had a good time talking about Leon Russell stuff, and finally he agreed to sell it to me. He wouldn't show it to me. So I never did get to walk in the door until after I purchased property. So I literally bought it sight unseen, but you just get to a point of no return. I was so obsessed with the idea of owning it and I didn't have the exact plan of what I wanted to do with it. I did know that I wanted to clean it up and I wanted it to be more appropriate as a representation of Leon Russell's legacy.

(04:13):

And I think you went above and beyond that from time I've spent at the church studio. We love having you as a client. But yeah, we've been open for a couple of years now. It took some time just because, well, the renovation took six and a half years. There have been five owners between Leon Russell and myself and everyone that owned it prior to me. They were working on building some type of business in the property, and so I took kind of the opposite approach. I wanted to secure the building and then really the building just kind of spoke to me about what it wanted to be. I know that sounds kind of weird, but that's really what happened every day, took on a new challenge, just knew I didn't want it to be like a music museum. After I bought it, I went to go visit Motown in Detroit and RCA Studio B in Nashville, and I love those places, but it was kind of sad. I wanted some that's relevant to today's artist. I knew it. I needed to bring it back to be in a recording studio.

(05:14):

Tell us a little about anyone who hasn't visited the church studio or hasn't spent time there. They may not know. Not only did you update it, you also gave a nod to the past too as well with being able to record both analog and digital. You've really brought it to be a world-class studio that can compete with anyone in Nashville for sure. Talk a little bit about some of those renovations and things you did.

Teresa Knox (05:40):

Yeah, sure. The first structural engineering firm that came in here, they pretty much said that the building couldn't be saved. It was so dilapidated. The building was really cannibalizing itself structurally, it was in really bad shape, but we found a firm that said definitely it can be saved. And then we aligned ourselves with a fantastic architect, Chris Lilly. During that renovation process, I started interviewing people. So I've interviewed over 400 people to get to the history and the truth about the church, not only during Leon Russell's time, but also of the original church. And so during Leon's time, it was very exclusive. You had to know someone to get in the door. So unless you were a beautiful woman or an amazing musician, you were not getting in the door. And when you look at the front door, Leon put in these vintage Chris craft boat portholes.

(06:36):

So they were basically huge peepholes. And so there would be women and musicians and like Phoebe Snow who cut a beautiful hit back in 72 here at the studios, she hitch hiked all the way from New York to Tulsa to have the opportunity to record here. And I interviewed the engineers that greeted her and they looked through those big boat portholes to see who's at the door. But I've heard lots of stories like that. But the church was a Methodist church. It was Grace Methodist Episcopal, and it was open to everyone. It was an integrated church. It was for the working class people. This was a working class neighborhood. So during the renovation and when we opened, I thought, how can we pay tribute to the original church that was for the people, by the people, but also protect the integrity of the recording process and make it exclusive for the musicians.

(07:34):

And I think we did a really great job doing that because artists can be on the main level recording, but we can have tourism and programming and museum type things happening on the lower level. So I really love how that's turned out. And today it's worked out beautifully. We get thousands and thousands of visitors from not only across the state and the nation, but international, but same with the musicians. We have clients from almost all of the major labels, Warner Brothers, universals, Sony. We also work with all of our local artists. And so that process was more than what, I mean, I did not have the skillset to create and start a recording studio. So I hired a consultant out of Nashville. His name is Chad Haley, and he was the engineer and one of the producers for the tractors. And when he was a teenager, he met JJ Kell, who's another amazing Tulsa that recorded here, and that was on the sheltered label.

(08:33):

So he was trained audio engineering by JJ Kell. So I really liked that because his ears were really in tune to the history and heritage of Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Tulsa sound. It was great. And then in addition to him helping with the studio, we hired a fantastic acoustician, and his name is Steve Dur. He is also out of Nashville, and he was involved with the Ryman Theater, grand Old Opry. One of his latest projects was the new Austin City Limits acoustic. He's done tons of artists from Kid Rock to Bruno Mars, you name it. He does the acoustics. So he would fly in regularly during the renovation, but also after the renovation because the recording studios and the original sanctuary of the church, and it's a big space, so you don't want to overtreat it acoustically speaking because you can deaden the space and you don't want to do that.

(09:27):

So the acoustics were really important. So the first time you recorded the acoustics weren't quite, Steve was still coming in and tweaking the space. Today we absolutely love it, but it took a period of time because you add a panel here, a baffle here, an acoustic cloud here, but you have to do it. That took a long time to do that. And then the room cures after such a renovation with the wood. There are 11 wood species in the church. Most of that driven by the people that built the church, the early citizens of Tulsa. And then Leon Russell brought in the 11th Woods Species, which is Oklahoma Cedar. And cedar was very common in 1970s. Circa studios, because it's just the wood sounds so beautiful from an acoustic perspective. So a lot of cedar in addition to pine and oak and maple and fur and mahogany and all the other wood species we have.

Sarah Popejoy (10:20):

Wow. That's one of my favorite things is how much detail taking in other specialists to really create this amazing studio. We are really, really lucky here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Teresa Knox (10:32):

Thank you.

Sarah Popejoy (10:32):

Can you talk a little bit about the museum?

Teresa Knox (10:34):

Yeah. So I tell people over and over, our primary function is recording a lot of recording, historic recording studios that do tours. It's kind of to me compromised what's happening in the recording process because let's face it, recording studios aren't as needed as they used to be because you can like us, look, we're recording on your laptop, and so you don't need a professional recording studio, but those who want it love it. It's kind of a niche boutique market now, but our primary function is recording. We realized early on that so many people want to visit and see what's happening, not only currently, but they like to walk in and the saying if these walls could talk. And so people come in and just get chills and want to see things. So we wanted, again, we wanted to just like the early church, the purpose of this building was to be open for everyone.

(11:29):

So when you walk in, you first walk into the gallery. But let me back up a minute. One of our first goals in the studio was to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And we wanted to do that not because of the importance in 1915 as a church, but what Leon Russell did, it was this creative workshop. It was very entrepreneurial. What they did with shelter records was amazing. This is the space that Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were discovered and got their start. But really anyone who was around Leon in the seventies and came to Tulsa, the church was really at the epicenter of that. So Ari Clapton moved to town. Bonnie Ray moved to Tulsa. Bob Marley's First American Single was here. So we really wanted to capture all of that in the museum, but have an inspirational space for the musicians as well.

(12:22):

But what he did was so significant. So we were recognized by the state of Oklahoma as being significant and historic, but we also applied with National Park Service. So federally speaking, we are recognized and we're only one of six historic recording studios in America on the register. So we're really proud of that fact. So when you add onto a historic property, you can't match it. So we have a new entrance. It's not the historic entrance, but when you walk in, you're greeted by our receptionist and the gallery. And part of our exhibit is there, it's a little bit about Leon Russell Shelter records, but it also talks about their early history of the church. We also have a rotating exhibit wall right now. We have the Heartbreakers because it's 50 years that the Heartbreakers signed to shelter records and recorded with us. And we had Mike Campbell, who's the co-founder and the guitarist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and he also has his own band called The Dirty Knobs.

(13:17):

He was with us. That's why that wall's there. We are working on our next exhibit, which will be the tractors, and that's to honor Steve Ripley who owned the church studio after Leon Russell and all of those amazing Tulsa musicians that were in that band. And so we'll have that up for a few months before the Heartbreakers, we had a really fun Beatles exhibit. We want to keep things really fresh for people that come in to tour the museum. And then you walk through that space and you can get to the room that I'm in now, which is our archive. So we have these beautiful cabinets that are the same cabinets. You'll see at the Smithsonian. This room is climate controlled, humidity controlled, so that's really important. We measure that. We have archivists that put in all of our artifacts and memorabilia in a database, so we rotate this space as well.

(14:08):

We have about 40 docents, and these are trained music historians that know all about the history of not only Leon Russell and Shelter records, but about architecture and really about rock and roll and American music in general. And so it's really nice when someone walks in, they can browse themselves, but most people want a docent to be with them. And to go to the second level where the recording is happening, you have to be accompanied by one of our tour guides. And some artists, it's completely blocked where you cannot see who's recording or what's happening. But a lot of our artists are fine with it. You can't go into the recording space, but we have a viewing room on the third floor where you can peek down and see what's happening. And tourism now is the third biggest industry in the state of Oklahoma. Oil and gas is number one, aviation is number two, and now tourism is number three, which blows my mind as a native person and as an okay, I was like, tourism, why are these people coming into town?

(15:09):

But people love our musical history. When you look at what we're doing, the Bob Dylan Center, wake Gut three Center, hopefully the okay pop will be opening sooner than later. And then you look at Kane's Ballroom, you look at all the shows like Tulsa has music seven nights a week. There's always something to do. And then we have the big arena shows. Look at BOK Center, one of the top performing arenas in the United States. So there's a lot of music here, but I think tourism is also being fueled by Route 66. So we're approaching the 100th anniversary of Route 66. So we get a lot of people, especially from the UK that stop in Tulsa, and it's mind blowing to me. We have a map where people can put in a little stick pin of where they're from. And I love looking at it. I was like, wow, all these people are coming to Tulsa.

(15:59):

They're spending money here, they're supporting our music. They want to learn more about our history, and we all know we can't live in the past, but to honor that is very inspiring to artists that are making music today. I don't know, I think it's just something that Oklahomans are always proud of our heritage, and we are a legit music city. We're not a made up city. I mean all the way back to Bob Wills to KVOO, I mean, so there's so many arts and other districts across the country that they kind of make up this heritage, but we have an authentic history that we can all be proud of. Forest really

Sarah Popejoy (16:37):

Love. I actually on the Americana Music website, which this podcast is a part of, just wrote an article about the Tulsa music scene, talked about everything from Church Studio to the Keynes Ballroom and everything in between. Because the cool thing too about Tulsa right now is that not only does it have a great significant past that's being honored, it's also there's a lot of stuff happening right now,

Teresa Knox (17:00):

And we're about to have a vinyl record pressing plant, and that's a really no. Yes. I'm hoping that they're going to open in Studio Row, which is the district around the church studio. But this will be great because they plan on offering small batch production to our artists. And that's really great because it's so expensive and takes so long to do vinyl record pressing. Many of our local artists are even going overseas to get pressing done. This is just going to be an additional asset to our already, as you say, budding musical ecosystem happening.

Sarah Popejoy (17:38):

Oh, that is great. Yeah. Hopefully they move in soon.

Teresa Knox (17:42):

Yes, I think have a great, I had a chance to visit with them and look at their business model. It's very, very, very exciting. And again, if we want to continue growing and be a legitimate music city like Nashville and Austin and others, then again, we don't want to emulate them or because we have one history, but a lot of people spend a lot of money in those towns. So the economic impact on us growing our music city status is good for business. It's good for a city, it's good for our parks, it's good for our hotel industry, our restaurants. I mean, it's really, really exciting. And I agree with you, Tulsa's experiencing a renaissance right now. And at the church we like to call it a revival. It's very exciting for our city what's happening.

Sarah Popejoy (18:28):

Yeah, I love it. I love it. My dad grew up in Tulsa. He would always tell me stories about Leon Russell. He was a huge Leon Russell fan and seeing George Harrison about all that that was going on. I think maybe even Bonnie Ray came over here for a little while. I don't

Teresa Knox (18:43):

Know if she was dating at the time, Walt Richmond, who is a client of the studio back then, but he was also a member of the tractors. He's the pianist for the tractors, and to this day, he's Eric Clapton's keyboardist when Eric has side projects. And so yeah, Bonnie Wright lived here. Yeah, Dylan Stevie Wonder was here at the church. We just got a photo. We had always heard about Stevie being here with the Gap Band, and that's another one. I mean, the Gap Band started backing up Leon Russell, and they did stop all that jazz, but they recorded their first album here, magician's Holiday, and they went onto their own superstardom, and that was 50 years ago too. They finished that album in 1974, the things that were happening here. And a lot of musicians just hung out here, Kansas, their first album, they recorded a song here, but they were mostly just hanging out jamming here at the church studio. And none of that was documented, that history, people had heard those legends. But to go in and interview people and find photos and artifacts that support those stories, it's pretty exciting because it changes it from an urban legend to facts.

Sarah Popejoy (19:56):

Exactly. Exactly. That's one thing that you've done an amazing job of doing is collecting all these memorabilia and telling the story and history of church Dedo because, and I am a big proponent of not living in the past when it comes to continue to move forward. However, the past also gives us meaning. You brought a lot of meaning

Teresa Knox (20:16):

Back to Tulsa. Yeah, we have a beautiful magical history. As someone from Oklahoma, I'm just so proud of that. I've always been proud of that, which is why I started collecting. We've a lot to be proud of in this state, and we haven't always been perfect, but the good, so outweighs anything that happened in the past.

Sarah Popejoy (20:36):

Can you tell me a little bit about Kearney Fest and what that's about?

Teresa Knox (20:40):

Yeah, so we have several programs here at the church studio, again, just to kind of supplement the recording and to engage the public. So we developed a festival. It was inspired by the group called the Leon Lifers, and they are Leon Russell super fans. And when Leon was alive, they had an annual birthday bash, and they followed Leon all across the country. Some of them met, some of them got married, meaning from that group. But what brought 'em all together was the love of Leon Russell and Leon Russell music. Well, when he passed away, the church studio, Leon passed about two months after I bought the building, and I hadn't even started the renovation yet. I was working on identifying what we needed to do. Well, they kind of adopted me and the church and we became their surrogate Leon, and they are some of my best friends.

(21:32):

They're an amazing group of people. And so they wanted to continue the tradition of them getting together each year. So we had a couple of events that I produced at World Rogers High School, which is where Leon Russell and other people graduated from David Gates and Elvin Bishop and so many other celebrity artists came from that high school, which is amazing, and that was really successful. But I thought, you know what? We want to take it to a new level. So Leon bought the church in 1972, but that's when E put out his fourth studio album, Carney. And so we just came up with the name, what have we called the festival? Carney Fest. So it's not like Leon Russell birthday Bash because we don't want to exploit Leon to death. We need to have our own identity. But Carney was such a fun album and we wanted something family friendly and had kind of an old school vibe.

(22:28):

We had our first festival and we had the Reverend Horton Heat as the headliner, but throughout the day we had other artists that had recorded with us that performed, but we had a creepy clown and we had jugglers, we had stilt walkers, we had local artists that put up their tables. They were selling their jewelry and their art. We had food trucks and beer, and it was just really successful. The only thing is the weather was really cool. We always have it in April. So the next year I thought, okay, we had full weather the first time, so we'll have a perfect day. Well, the second year, that's when we brought in Mike Campbell in the Dirty Knobs. We had 26 tornadoes in Oklahoma that night. And I don't panic or stress, but I gave myself an ulcer. I was so worried about the weather, it missed us and came after all of this, but it was so stressful.

(23:20):

So this will be our third year to do it, and we are going to block the street in Tulsa. We're on Trenton, but we're going to block from third street to fourth place. We're going to have music in the church and on the street kind of acoustic things like we would love to have you, we're going to shut down at a certain time. And then we are going to have our bigger performances at Kane's Ballroom, not deal with the stress of the weather, but this year it will be the first Saturday, I believe that's May 3rd. And it's just a fun, we've had thousands of people show up. Again, it's family friendly. It's kind of old school, I think Tulsa State Fair, 1970s. But again, what we all have in common is we all love music. Music is a universal language that brings us all together.

(24:06):

You add food, you add wine and beer to that or other beverages and people getting together, and it is just really, really fun. So that's our biggest program we have now, but we also have other programming. We have a legacy concert series, and then we have a new program called In Session, and that's where a small audience is fully immersed into a recording session is a new program that we're doing. We did our first one with local artists, Chris Combs, so it's for a small audience of 50. They all have headphones, most people you mentioned analog and digital earlier. Most people have not heard music from an analog perspective because we're used to listening on our phones and it's very compressed and digital. Well, Chris was doing a recording session and the audience had their headphones, so you can hear the music coming through our beautiful microphones through the Neve analog console back to the headphones. So it's the purest thing that you're going to get even more so than a master tape you would be listening to.

Sarah Popejoy (25:17):

That is really, really cool. What an amazing idea. Wow.

Teresa Knox (25:21):

Yeah, thank you. We have our second one booked, and her name is Maria Kim. She's the top jazz artist in Korea, so she's coming to the stage. She's a singer and a pianist, and she's bringing in several other musicians. We are excited about this because again, you can isolate the instruments and just to be able to see them recording because hopefully they're going to be taking this to their streaming channels and the vinyl. But the audience, again, it's a very immersive experience for the audience. They're not attending a show. They're sitting in a recording session and even having those warm bodies changes the acoustics, the way the bodies absorb the sound. It's kind of a neat program. And again, we're just trying to drive more people to the studio. Our operations are nonprofit. We are a 5 0 1 C3 called the Church Studio Music Foundation, and that's so that we can keep recording affordable, have artist grants, but also kids and high school students come in here and we have kind of a curriculum for them talking about careers and workforce development in the entertainment and music industry. I just didn't realize how much would be called upon by the community, by educational institutions and by artists. A big demand for what we do and we want to give away and as much as possible.

Sarah Popejoy (26:44):

That's really

Teresa Knox (26:45):

Cool.

Sarah Popejoy (26:45):

Really neat. Teresa, I just want to thank you so much for joining us today. This interview has really been amazing, and I think it'll people know a little bit more about the extent what you guys do so much more than what you just see on the surface. You guys do a lot of really great things for the city of Tulsa for recording artists and logging and keeping history and bringing meaning to our city as well, and to the church studios and to the music industry. I just want to say thank you.

Teresa Knox (27:18):

Thanks, Sarah. Thank you. And thanks for all that you do. You've been such a big supporter from the beginning and being one of our very first recording clients, and I'll forever be grateful for that. And I just appreciate you keeping music alive and this podcast and everything else that you do. So thank you.