The Artists: A Whole Crew in the Dog House

Beginning at the end

In addition to crediting his wife Liz for much of their collective success, Kenny Vasko often talked about musicians as human beings. Adaptability and accommodation are key components to the success of their record studio, Dog House Music Studio. One could argue that’s why Dog House has solidified itself as a mainstay in Lafayette, with the performance space “The End” serving as a musical nest for about seventy patrons to enjoy live shows. The Vaskos love to give back. From open mics to “Women’s Jam,” The End allows Lafayette to celebrate the art of music and the people who make it. This love comes from a genuine place that carried them through a very tough time in their lives.

The ordinary world

The first stage of the hero’s journey is meant to set up a point of contrast. The “known” or “ordinary world” is a simple and traditional life grounded in real world expectations such as in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” where Frodo loves hanging around, reading, and eating under hills and trees while playing pranks. These ideals are comparable to a small town or suburb where life is meant to be seen as quaint, easy, and expected. Then, within a way too short of time, he’s called to meet elves, dwarves, and men to fight orcs, trolls, and balrogs — things he’d only ever heard of in stories.

Kenny Vasko’s story started on this same spoke of the hero’s journey cycle:

“Let’s go down memory lane here. Like everyone else that went to college, I was in a band. I was the frontman. I was the high energy low talent guy that would get the crowd going. It was awesome. It was friendships I still have. Then I graduated and I got my first paycheck from a tax software company and was like, ‘Oh great! I can let these dreams die.’”

Becoming a Certified Public Accountant was a surprising fit as Vasko is an extroverted person in an introverted industry. But Vasko was a facilitator. “I’d start to make a name for myself in that way. I wasn’t the person working on a spreadsheet until three in the morning. But, I would be on the phone making sure the client was happy with what we were doing. It was good for me career wise, but I did feel like a square peg in a round hole from an emotional standpoint.”

The call

In the cycle of storytelling, there is something that pulls the protagonist away from the known world. Sadly, for Vasko, the call came with an unexpected tragedy:

“My wife and I got married in 2016, and about a week after we got back from our honeymoon, my mother found out that she had cancer. We didn’t know how long she had to live… like a month after I got married, my wife agreed to move to a small town as opposed to the Denver-Boulder-metropolitan area. And, that experience really changed us both professionally. My wife was an urban planner. She has a master’s degree. It’s something that she’s always wanted to do and after the experience of loss when my mother did pass away just a few months later, it really did drive home the point that tomorrow is not promised today.”

When they went back to work they both decided that it didn’t feel right, so they quit their jobs at the same time. Vasko took on the tax books of friends and family to keep afloat financially. He unexpectedly found himself with over one hundred clients and in desperate need of an office. “We were looking through different websites of real estate for lease or whatever then we saw this building for sale, it comes with a music studio.” Vasko likened this discovery to accepting the invitation to peruse the dessert menu. “Yeah, we’ll take a look at the menu.”

What the Vasko family discovered when digging into the details was this was a space rented by about 70 or so musicians. However, once they started to get a vision of what the place could be, they were informed that it was set to be demolished. Initially, they had accepted defeat. But, “Then we took a good long look in the mirror and thought, ‘let’s try and save it. What did we have to lose?’”

With a little finagling, they convinced the initial buyer, who had the rights site unseen, to come and look at the space so he would have a clear understanding of what he would be taking away from the community. “He flew in from Hawaii and within a couple weeks was like, ‘Oh man. I made a mistake. Do you want it?’” From there it was off to the banks in a mad dash search of a loan. That chapter of the story ended on 525 Courtney Way, Lafayette, and they’ve been adding pages to this day.

Crossing the threshold, assembling a crew 

Along with the studio came an inheritance of a mad scientist’s lab. “When we bought it, it looked like a guitar center threw up in it. It was the old owner’s old projects. A lot of stuff that might have worked in the seventies or eighties that no longer worked.” Since then they have renovated a whole wing, got a liquor license, put a music venue in the back, and now serve about six hundred musicians a year.

It wasn’t done by the Vaskos alone. Much like the Fellowship from “Lord of the Rings” or the Straw Hat Pirates from “One Piece,” they knew they’d need a crew. “My wife and I were the first employees. And, after about a month of working seven days a week, we were like ‘this is not sustainable.’” Which set them out on a quest to find a crew. Vasko made sure to shout out his lead engineer and part owner, John Remington, first. “He has an amazing bedside manner with musicians. He understands their motivations and their challenges. He runs the recording studio.” Krista, the studio manager, showed the Vaskos that music fans can make the best employees despite any blank spaces on a resume. “We found that music supporters can be better catered to be employees at spaces like this as opposed to musicians. Krista has a customer service background. All the soft skills she possesses cannot be taught. She manages the studio on a day-to-day basis. Then also does sound checks and audio engineering.”

Kenny Vasko lamented that for a time he had leaned on unpaid internships to help with the workload, but has since found a way to make the internship a paid position. “They were all unpaid for college credit. And, we started feeling really guilty about it, to be honest. Now we just got a seed donation to do paid internships which is somewhat unheard of in the music industry. We established a non-profit called “Rock for the People.” The non-profit’s mission is to create those paid opportunities or marketing tools that people need to succeed in the music industry from historically underrepresented communities. For instance, less than five percent of audio engineers are women — and even less than that are women of color — so my wife and I feel like we have a mission to make sure that the future of music isn’t all old white straight dudes.”

The ordeal

The Lafayette Music Festival has grown in notoriety over the years; however, getting support for the event was earned through perseverance and hard work. And, one can’t have a hero’s story without a trial. For the Vaskos, it started with the COVID outbreak in 2020. “We never really hosted a show. We’ve never hosted a ticketed show before. We were only a year and some change into owning the building. It sold out! It was an amazing evening…We were like we can do this.” Then COVID hit.

Not to be deterred, the Vaskos pivoted to live-streaming, something Kenny likened to the portals created by Doctor Strange from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They knew they had to do whatever was in their power to keep the doors open. “You’re doing the long game when doing anything based on partnerships. Most partnerships are a long game, it takes a long time to build trust. We called a lot of people when we wanted to do the festival and they were like ‘That all sounds great. Call us when you’re in year two?”

Then Vaskos followed suit. They called in year two and got more people on board. Then they had people call them for year three. “Now this is the first year that we have gained enough sponsors and partner venues that even if not another ticket is sold, we’ll be able to pay all the artists. But, that took three years of doing a lot of volunteer work.”

Sharing of boons

Dog House Music Studios is one of the largest in the area with a twenty-three studio complex. The space is accommodating enough that when the artist Babyface came through for the former mayor’s inauguration, Doghouse accommodated his multi-faceted needs.

Further, as a studio, the Vaskos make sure that the mission of aiding and helping musicians is at the center of everything they do:

“We’re very hands-on about everything. Musicians are human beings. On one hand, we have younger musicians who are very talented but are trying to find their way to booking shows or getting music recorded we consult with them. We help them do marketing. Get their stuff on Spotify. We also host open mics and songwriters circles… One of our major tenets is that every musician has a different definition of success. Some musicians want to play Red Rocks and that’s a different path [than] some musicians who want to play Tom Petty covers to [their] friends four times a year at [their] favorite bar.”

So much of Kenny Vasko’s message was about stewardship, service, and giving back to the community. “I am nothing without other people. I just want to get that across that like any small business or any independent organization, it truly is the bond that you have with those folks.  That really makes everything shine.”

When I asked Kenny about his final thoughts, he brought up his wife, Liz. He mentioned again how she was with him through the toughest time in his life. She co-captained the ship that would become Doghouse Music and is the star of fostering care for the musical arts. The way he spoke of her was reminiscent of a Buddhist sutra on solitude and companionship, “If you gain a companion, one who is worthy of intertwining their soul with your own then you shall overcome all dangers. Let your heart rejoice and go with them.”