MANKATO — Bobby Drengler was shooting video on his phone as he worked his way up the half flight of stairs to the sanctuary of the Vision Studios building at the corner of South Second and Grove streets. It was a homecoming for him, but also a bit like visiting somewhere you’ve never been before.
Drengler was the man behind converting the basement of the former First Congregational Church into a recording studio in the 1980s, where the jingles heard by Mankato-area radio listeners were brought to life. But this new incarnation — like the analog equipment he used compared to today’s digital — had a whole different vibe.
“Oh, I couldn’t be more happier,” Drengler said when introduced by Colin Scharf, creative director of the facility that includes Electric Prairie Recordings in the basement and The Ivy space in the former sanctuary.
The meeting was set up by Melinda Kjarum as a way for Drengler to pass on his firsthand historical knowledge to the new residents. Much of it, Scharf said, he was learning for the first time. As the new studio has evolved, connections have been forming a web that says, “This was all meant to be.”
Within an hour of the legacy session being complete, Drengler shared with participants in a text: “I’m still smiling.”
Drengler’s story, too, weaves in and out of Mankato’s long music history. He and Billy Steiner started City Mouse in 1971, he said, but even before that, he was playing and sometimes recording with buddies he grew up with, such as guitarist Jim McGuire and bassist Tom “Zeeth” Klugherz, a member of The Gestures. Drengler turned to Klugherz when carving out the basement studio in the former kitchen and fellowship areas. They grew up next door to each other, now looking to each other for support as they once did bedroom window to bedroom window.
In addition to performing and recording, Drengler was working the business side of things four decades ago, partnering with Caledonia owner Don Fields for the longtime Caledonia Radio Show broadcast live from the bar. Fields handled the advertising, and Drengler made the show happen.
When he was in Okinawa in the 1960s, Drengler said his dad called and asked if he could pick up a tape recorder. Sony was just starting to make a name for itself, and he wanted a multi-track recorder.
“I got searching around Japan and Okinawa, and I found some recording systems, you know. And I ended up buying one and bringing it home. And that was 1965,” he said.
“Then I came back with it and that really kind of gave me the inspiration of recording, because I started to learn about it then,” Drengler said. “When I got back in ’67, I made a record with Jimmy McGuire, and we made an album at 33 and a third. And, boy, I tell you, I really got to know … the engineering business.”
Scharf grew up in upstate New York and through music made some connections that came to light as he found his place in the Mankato music scene just as Drengler had. For example, he attended a Toronto performance of the Pixies that Two Fish Studios owner Wes Schuck recorded. Schuck took over Drengler’s studios and ran it until his death in 2015.
After working in a few other studios in Mankato-North Mankato, Drengler said he got a call from Dan Robinson telling him about a dance studio available — that’s what was in the sanctuary of the church. He was asked if he would be interested in something like that.
“And I said, ‘Boy, would I ever,’ and when I came and I saw the basement, yup, that’s when I decided that was absolutely for sure. And then, just by circumstance … my sister, Diane, called me from Singapore and she was with two engineers that were building a recording studio for Warner Brothers in Singapore. And they said, ‘Is there anything you need?’”
Their best advice, which he took and Scharf recognizes, was to build everything at 5-degree angles. Scharf said that’s so the sound doesn’t “puddle up. Sound can reflect and bounce around in a more diffusive way, and that makes for better sound in general.”
“It was an easy process for me because it felt good,” Drengler said. “The vibes down here are fantastic.”
Scharf concurred: “To this day they remain very cool. I mean, I feel it right now.”
Another person who feels it, but in a different way, is Kjarum. She said she became acquainted with Drengler when she and her husband, Jon Peterson, moved back to Mankato in June 1990 after two years at Iowa State University where he earned his master’s degree.
“We landed on South Second Street across from Bethlehem Lutheran Church, right next door to Bobby Drengler and his ‘Church of Bob,’” she said. “We would be there only two-plus years, but it was a move that gave us our wonderful friendship with the creative, fun, gentle and talented Bobby.”
She also noted she and her mother spent many happy afternoons in the sanctuary looking through church rummage sale items. One of them was an old chair, which she returned to the renovated church and studio building.
And just as Drengler had Klugherz, Scharf has Tyler Vaughan, whose current project is constructing and installing 4-by-4-foot acoustical tiles on the 34-foot ceilings of the sanctuary. Softening the sound will make it a viable secondary recording space, and various community events are in the works, Scharf said. It can seat 100.
During an event last December, Scharf said he spoke with another Mankato musical legend, Dan Duffy, who remembered going there to record jingles with Drengler.
“This building has been around, you know, for 150, 156 years,” Scharf said. “And there’s just been this movement through it for the last … 40 years. It’s been a kind of home for music in this community.”
Drengler added: “That’s what the Lord said, make a joyful noise, I suppose. And that’s what we did.”