a little history
The company opened its doors in late 1987. Bruce was looking to expand a home studio, and with family money, started “Vancouver Studios”, which would later become greenhouse studios. The operation was an ambitious undertaking. A simple mission statement was “ a creative space for creative people”
The first clients through the door were an unknown original Vancouver 4 piece Rock band that had a ‘day’ job playing as the “Dawn Patrol” at Vancouver nightclub hot spot the ROXY. This band became ODDS, and a long term relationship was started. The ODDS ended up recording 3/4ths of their entire output at the facilities.
The second project recorded at greenhouse studios went on to become the first gold record the company would record from songwriter Paul Janz. Perhaps you remember “Every Little Kiss”
The third production through the doors was an up and coming new country artist who would hit the top of the US charts, and win a grammy, enter kd lang. kd would go on to record 3 records at greenhouse studios.
Before the end of its second year in business, the company had recorded what would become its biggest record to date, with US chart topping progressive rock band and a song called ‘Silent Lucidity’ by Queensryche.
“The Queensryche record really opened so many opportunities for us” states Bruce Levens, “not the least of which was a five year recording relationship with Bob Rock.“ Bob went on to record Skid Row, London Choir Boys and Cher at greenhouse.
This relationship was a pivotal reason that enabled Levens to eventually acquire its major competitor in Vancouver, that being Little Mountain Sound Studios. During the early to late nineties, Vancouver became THE epicenter for ROCK music. Motley Crue, Metallica, ACDC and Bon Jovi recorded at Levens’ 2 studios.
Then came the biggest production yet. When Aerosmith came back for its third in a trrilogy of chart topping albums, one of the biggest selling albums of all time was recorded in Vancouver. GET A GRIP sales were estimated at more than twenty million units worldwide.
But hard rock was not the only music coming from this Vancouver. Industrial music heavy weights skinny puppy recorded multiple albums at the facilites, as did frontline assembly, revolting cocks and Trent Reznor.
In 2000, Matthew Good Band receive a juno award for its Beautiful Midnight record made at greenhouse studios. This was Matts third time back at the studio.
By 2001, Local hard rock outfit Nickelback, had come back to record their second of three albums at greenhouse. A monster radio hit “how you remind me” went on to guiness book of world record recognition. Then the band came back to record their follow up. They could have gone anywhere.
By 2003, the music recording industry had made some incredible leaps forward in computer based recording technology. What used to take a group of highly skilled technicians to accomplish, could now be done with a souped up MAC. For this reason, Bruce and Roger decided to take the company in a new direction by welcoming this technology and resizing the operation. A new facility was built to position the company again where it started, by being a “creative space for creative people”.
The new facilities are housed in Song City, consisting of 14 studios and even more producers.
