New SLO County music studio offers unique space for recording and performing
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- Three musicians renovated a historic Cambria studio into Sonic Milk Recording.
- The studio offers high-quality recording, live events and artist collaboration.
- Community support aided the refurbishing and launch of Sonic Milk in 2025.
It’s a surprising place for a high-tech North Coast recording studio to have been for more than a decade: a rather industrial-looking, circa 1931 building at 715 Main St. in Cambria.
Musicians and partners Graham Ginsberg, Ryan House and Michael Jercich are continuing the decade-long, music-production tradition in their classy revamp of Steve Crimmel’s former, legendary Painted Sky Studio (which was briefly owned by Brad Stock, starting in 2021).
The trio leased the historic building last July, Ginsberg said.
They gave their studio a whimsical new name: Sonic Milk Recording.
When asked where the unusual moniker came from, Ginsberg said it just suddenly came to him.
“When I like something, I say, ‘that’s buttery or creamy.’ And it fits the studio, too,” he said. “The name kind of flows. Milk like the Milky Way and good music.”
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Trio revitalized the historic San Luis Obispo County space
In past decades, the building was an auto shop and then an antique store, run respectively by Thurman and Mildred “Millie” Fairey.
While the tall, roll-up door of the previous auto shop is still there, it’s not being used.
After the partners singed a lease with landlord Michell Lipari, the multi-talented trio rolled up their construction shirt sleeves and dug into cleaning, updating and readying the building for business.
Tasks included structural chores such as replacing the studio’s flooring themselves, Ginsburg said.
The partners have gradually renovated the space into their own production/concert/event venue, although they and their landlord still have other improvements in progress, such as a back patio/garden area for public enjoyment.
Sonic Milk offers high-quality music and audio production, along with advice and experience to share. Pre-amps, microphones, keyboards and other instruments are available to use.
In addition to the recording studio, the building has a performance space that can seat an audience of up to 120 people.
The trio sort of opened the studio in September, Ginsberg said, but at that point, there were still lots of tweaks and testing left to do before they went public, as in for shows and concerts.
Since then, they’ve deemed Sonic Milk to be fully decked out for whatever musical requirements come up.
They hosted several small-scale performances earlier this year, such as their Valentine’s Day show with Jon Millsap, Cassi Nicholls & Emily Franklin, Cate Armstrong and Slurp God. Another show later that month featured Pink Depression and Inner Space Visitors.
They also hosted a show May 10 with singer/songwriter Ynanna Rose.
As yet, there aren’t any more events on the studio’s 2025 calendar, House said, but that’s sure to change soon. During the busy summer concert-management season, the gap actually may be helpful.
“It couldn’t have happened if not for the community supporting us with their enthusiasm, cables, furniture and equipment donated to help us piece together a fully functional space,” Ginsberg said of the creation of Sonic Milk Studio.
“This place is cool. I like the Cambria vibe,” he said. “I’ve found joy in working with the artists.”
“Our dream for the studio is to be a beacon of the Cambria and wider San Luis Obispo community,” Jercich said. They’ll host “musical events and offer high-quality recording at affordable rates … so that local artists can create something they can truly be proud of.”
What each of the partners brings to Sonic Milk
The three partners have worked together off and on for years, even living together in Morro Bay at one point after they signed the Sonic Milk lease in Cambria.
Ginsburg and House now share quarters in the apartment upstairs over the studio, while Jercich continues to live in Morro Bay.
Each of the three were aware of the others in the county’s music scene, but they didn’t intersect professionally until Ginsburg and House worked on a show together at Sensorio in Paso Robles.
Each partner brings their specialties to the mix, some of which overlap to strengthen the studio’s breadth.
Three diverse backgrounds blend into a musical brotherhood
Ginsberg is a drummer who also specializes in engineering, mixing and mastering, along with event management.
Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, he moved to the Central Coast to work for Ernie Ball, the instrument and guitar-accessory company in San Luis Obispo. The firm manufactures and sells guitars through Ernie Ball Music Man.
Ginsberg’s experience elsewhere included audio-visual stints at Robert Mondavi’s Copia nonprofit and working at a Petaluma studio.
He earned a communications/visual arts degree in 2005 from UC San Diego and, later, a master’s in business from Full Sail University in Florida.
He went from doing musical gigs, a podcast, recording bands at his San Luis Obispo house and doing sound at Sensorio to becoming a partner in Sonic Milk.
Ginsberg’s often off managing concerts and shows these days, such as Shabang in San Luis Obispoc and Lightning in a Bottle in Bakersfield and the Electric Forest festival in Rothberry’s Sherwood Forest in Michigan.
He said each partner is ready and more than able to cover for each other, handling on their own the studio’s bookings, recording sessions, concerts and more.
House grew up in Minnesota, he said, “doing anything musical I could do, including marching band.”
Later, he earned a performance degree from the now-defunct McNally Smith College of Music in St. Paul, Minnesota.
House toured and moved to San Luis Obispo in 2012. He has been with the Moonshiner Collective band for more than a dozen years, as he will be on Friday, June 19, at the SLO Concerts in the Plaza gig and during the July 4th Independence Day event at Barney Schwartz Park in Paso Robles.
He also does sit-in gigs for other groups.
Then House added tour and production management to his resume.
“I’ve been learning how to work with musicians,” he said.
“It takes a special skill set to work with performers,” he added with a wry grin.
Ginsberg calls House “a drummer guru” whose specialties listed on the website are drum performance, production and engineering.
“I’ve been planning for a while to do a Nashville singer/songwriter kind of showcase evening with three or four artists, like the Bluebird Café in Nashville does,” House said.
The Sonic Milk space will be perfect for that and many other events, he said.
“I love our space. It’s a whole different feeling with the tall ceiling and lots of natural light. It’s a rarity to have natural light (in a studio),” he said.
Jercich agreed.
“I recorded at Painted Sky and noticed the obvious natural music energy that the room emanated,” he said. “When the previous tenant left town, we jumped at the chance to operate a studio of our own there.”
The bass player is from the Sacramento area, he said, and “I’ve been playing guitar since I was 5 years old.”
He moved to San Luis Obispo in the early 2010s and attended Cal Poly and Cuesta College, receiving a degree in mathematics.
House called Jercich “my favorite bass player to play with. He’s one of the best humans I know.”
Likewise, Ginsberg described Jercich as a collaborative partner and “one of the best musicians I’ve ever worked with, a brilliant arranger, composer and good presence in the studio.”
On the Sonic Milk website, Jercich’s specialties are listed as writing, arranging, guitar performance, bass performance, production and engineering.
One of his fast-fingered guitar-solo performances can be heard on Youtube.
How’d did the Sonic Milk partners meet?
As is the case with other specialized industries, the music biz can be a very small world.
The Sonic Milk partners’ paths crossed in such groups as William H. Klink’s and with Central Coast rock ‘n’ roller Max MacLaury. Those musical acquaintanceships then bloomed from mutual respect and friendship into partnership and a plan for their shared futures.
“I met Graham in the middle of the pandemic, but we’d seen each other on Instagram and social media,” House said. “I was doing a show in 2021 and he was doing sound, both at Sensorio.”
Then House met Jercich through Ginsberg, “but I’d heard of Mike before.”
“We all became friends with our similar backgrounds,” House said. “It’s a great brotherhood and bond” at Sonic Milk Studio.
To find out more about Sonic Milk Recording, visit sonicmilkrecording.com.
