Kaj Falch-Nielsen
Kaj Falch-Nielsen — Transcript
Conversation between Eric Chan & Kaj Falch-Nielsen.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, spelling, and readability. Music excerpts are noted where they appear in the episode.
Cold open
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: One of these people that just has the magic when she sings and is so talented. And when we were recording the vocals, it was like, she did two takes and everybody in the room was pretty much in tears both takes. It was just insane. And it was like, “Oh, what are we going to do? We have two amazing takes!”
[Music excerpt plays.]
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: My name is Kaj Falch-Nielsen. I own Blue Light Studio in Vancouver, BC, and I’ve been playing music since I was super young. It’s always been a huge passion of mine. It sort of naturally turned into recording music at a certain point when I realized that was a career path I could take. I started doing classical flute in grade five. Because of that, I learned the theory that would allow me to play piano, and then when I was 13 I started guitar and, you know, Kurt Cobain taught me how to play guitar. Well, sort of. And I learned all the Pearl Jam songs and Smashing Pumpkins I loved and just played non-stop.
Eric Chan: I’m Eric Chan and you’re listening to Inlet Wire, your direct line to BC artists. That “two takes” moment you just heard is the kind of thing a great studio can catch. Kaj runs Blue Light Studio in East Vancouver and over the years it’s become more than a studio. It’s a hub around artists.
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: I was playing in a rock band. We went to Alberta and BC a few times and went down the coast to California. It was super fun. And then we wanted to record, so we found some students that could record us at a school. And I just never considered that I could do that. So I went into the school and I was just blown away, and that’s what kind of inspired me to do the whole thing. I was always the one in the band that would kind of be like, “You do this and you do this, and what if we get quiet here and then loud over here?” So I was kind of producing without knowing it when I was playing in bands. And then I paired that with going to school and this whole world opened up where I was like, this has a career path. I don’t have to rely on struggling as a musician and maybe one day making it. It was kind of like, you go to school, then you can either start your own thing, build it, get a studio, or you can get a job and build up in your career. It’s so much different than being a musician where you’re kind of just trying to make it, and there’s not a lot of steps in between.
Eric Chan: Kaj’s story starts with music first and then naturally shifts into recording and building something bigger around it.
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: When we started in 2010, we just realized that we’d throw some parties and things like that, and it was a good place for musicians to connect and naturally build a community. So then when we moved here into this building, we started doing shows here called the Blue Light Sessions in 2016, and that really solidified the community aspect because we have an audience coming in, there are two bands that play, we create a video and a YouTube channel with it, and I think most musicians in the city would say they know about this, they’ve seen the videos or they’ve done one. And then from there we also started a boutique indie record label, and then recently we opened up a rehearsal space called Pocket Music. So now we have two buildings there with 13 rooms in one building and 18 rooms in the other building. So it’s pretty cool because now it’s like all these bands rehearse, we have the shows, we have the studio, we have this little record label that does its thing, and so it really has become this hub.
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: I think it was kind of like the first show. We did the first show and it was such a blast. We were like, we should do this all the time, you know? And we did start with once a month in the first couple of years and then sort of expanded it. And then there was a break during COVID where we couldn’t have shows, so we ended up doing live streams and we actually did one live stream show a week for almost a year. There were a lot of them. We had a robocam where we’d be in the other room and control it by moving it around, so you have the one camera that was moving and then tripods, and people were all masked. It was the whole thing.
[Music excerpt plays.]
Eric Chan: Once that community was there, the studio didn’t just stay as book a day and leave. It turned into an ecosystem, with different parts feeding the same centre and keeping artists connected beyond one session.
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: I think it’s partially that it’s fun to do that, but also all of the different things are kind of like feeders for the studio, if that makes sense. So it’s all around the central idea of the studio being the centre of it all. And the rehearsal space is actually a really good business, so financially that was a really good choice. Also being able to help artists beyond the studio, like for the record label now, mostly what we do is release the live shows that we do. So it’ll be like, we put a song on YouTube and then if the band wants, we’ll release it on streaming platforms as well. So it’s kind of just a way to continue working with the artists and helping them after they leave the studio.
Eric Chan: Keeping a creative space alive in Vancouver comes with constant trade-offs, of course, with rents and still trying to make it workable for artists.
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: For me, I love doing this and I have a hard time imagining doing anything else, as long as it’s something music-related. I like the control of the studio. I like to be able to set it all up. I like the challenge of figuring out what we can do to make more money and keep it running. But Vancouver is also a challenging city. Commercial is in a different boat than residential. People are like, “Oh, rents are going down in residential.” It’s like, yeah, they are, but commercial landlords don’t do that. They don’t lower rent. They just raise it. I think we’ve been doing it long enough that we’ve had ups and downs, and where the economy is right now is kind of not a great place. It’s a little bit down. People are feeling the struggle, but our expenses have gone up. So it’s like, we really actually need to charge more, but also keep it reasonable. The challenge is juggling all that, staying busy enough while still figuring out ways to be inventive. Things like the school help with that. But I think that’s the challenge, just making sure we’re keeping up with inflation and all the rest of that stuff so that it’s not just like, all of a sudden we’re just making less money because everything else is so expensive.
[Music excerpt plays.]
Eric Chan: Beyond the hub side, Kaj is a producer. A lot of what he does is taking a song and building it into a fuller version of itself.
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: My favourite stuff to produce, and what I do the most of, is singer-songwriters that want to turn it into a full song, whether that’s a pop song or a folk song or country or whatever it ends up being. So for me, I want to understand the song, which means I’ll end up playing a bunch of the stuff on it. I want to play the song with them and really understand it, and then see what their vision is for where they’re trying to aim for as far as genre and what they like. And then it’s kind of just one thing at a time, having a vision of, okay, this is what we’re aiming for, but are we doing real drums? Are we not? Is it acoustic-driven? Is it electric-driven? And then just start adding stuff. Very often that ends up being a drummer that we bring in, and then it’s picking a drummer that I think is going to vibe with their sound and their music. Once we have the drums, then it’s just adding stuff from there.
[Music excerpt plays.]
Eric Chan: There are always stories that remind you why people still make records in studios like this, when an idea turns into something real, fast.
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: One was with this artist named Aza Nabuko. So I did an EP with her, another single that wasn’t on an album, and then a full album with her. She’s just one of these people that has the magic when she sings and is so talented. But we did a cover with her and Tom Van Derksen from Small Town Artillery. It was a 1975 cover, I think, or something. It was a real chill, stripped-down, just guitar and two vocals. And we shot a video for it. It’s on YouTube. We did this cool thing with the lighting and they’re back to back, and it’s all black except for them, each lit from the side. And when we were recording the vocals, she was actually just in the little room there. And she did two takes, and everybody in the room was pretty much in tears both takes. It was just insane. And it was like, “Oh, what are we going to do? We have two amazing takes?”
[Music excerpt plays.]
Kaj Falch-Nielsen: I’ve just been working with an artist named Megan Martin. I don’t know if it’s just that we jive really well together or what, but it just feels like everything we do flows so well in the studio. She’s really talented, her ideas are great, and then I’ll play something and it’s just the right thing. It doesn’t always happen, right? I’m not necessarily doing anything that different, but for some reason it’s like even, I mean, we did a song where I added this electric guitar with the BigSky pedal and all these crazy effects on it, and I was kind of just doing a take to feel out the song. I’m playing all kinds of random things, and I’m like, I don’t even know if this is going to work. And just 95 percent of it was what we used, because it was just so fresh and so random. But that’s what the song needed. Sometimes you’ll try that and one percent of it works. So who knows why, but yeah, she’s really good.
Eric Chan: And that’s Kaj from Blue Light Studio. I’m Eric Chan, and you’ve been listening to Inlet Wire, your direct line to BC artists.
[Music fades out]
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability. Any transcription errors are ours.