"People who own businesses realize if you're a small business owner you do everything. I fix the leak in the bathroom, I change the toilet paper, and I get to hang out with some of the coolest musicians and try the coolest gear."

The sign in the window read “Space For Lease.” Bob Richardson was a bassist for a French-Canadian rock band at the time, and he and his band mates needed a place to jam, so they called the number and arranged to check it out.

“And the fellow that owned the building, he said, ‘Well sure, why not,’ and rented us the little space in the front,” Richardson says, pointing to a pool table just around the corner from Slaughterhouse Studios‘ front entrance.

By the mid ’90s, the building – which had once housed an actual slaughterhouse in a Calgary industrial park – had been shut down for about five years, but “the place was still packed with all the slaughterhouse stuff. You could have fired it up as a killing machine,” Richardson recalls.

“We started renting it out to our friends on our off nights. Eventually, we needed more space so we asked if we could rent more.”

It didn’t take long before their entrepreneurial skills meant their own rehearsal time was paid for.

“And then it started to make us some money and we decided to take it over in a sense of, ‘How much of the building can we have?’ And the owner said, ‘As much as you want,’” Richardson elaborates. “That probably went along for about three or four years, but not in a business sense. It was more like an underground rehearsal through us, where everybody had a place to go.”

At the time, Richardson supported his musical tendencies as a journeyman cabinetmaker.

“[Slaughterhouse] was a side line. I was a silent partner in the sense of putting money into it, like buying P.A.s, building stuff, building rooms.”

When the opportunity to carry on alone arose eight years ago, the tradesman had to make a choice.

“If I’m going in and taking this over, I’m going to dive in all the way, because I can always go back to being a cabinetmaker, but you never get chances like this – whatever this is. And it was very scary in a way, because it wasn’t a money business,” he remembers.

Naming the business was the easy part.

“Even my mother says, ‘Bob, why do you call it Slaughterhouse Studios?’ ‘Because it’s in a slaughterhouse.’ ‘Oh good, now I can tell the church ladies why,’” he relates with a smile.

“Besides, it was great when we first started coming here, a friend would ask, ‘Where are going?’ ‘Oh, we’re going to rehearse at the slaughterhouse. Yeah, it’s a little spot we rent.’So the name was used from the very beginning, not knowing it was going to be anything like it is now.”

According to Richardson, approximately 60 bands rehearse at the facility each year, 20 of which are regulars. And that’s not counting the many Alberta bands on top of those numbers that take advantage of the on-site recording facilities, a more recent addition to the services offered at Slaughterhouse, and a convenience that’s fast growing in its reputation as an affordable and high-quality place to cut an album.

The room Richardson’s band used to rehearse in has since been converted into a social area, and the original seven rehearsal rooms have since become five as the facility grows and adapts to the needs of musicians. There’s also a ping pong table and pop machines, and plans are in the works for an in-house portrait studio, just in case you were wondering what more they could offer by way of amenities.

Calgary's Stab.Twist.Pull "love that you can record live off the floor" at Slaughterhouse. "It really helps with new songs," Hoogars, left, raves.

But for all the changes, one thing has remained constant: Slaughterhouse is a place for musicians to go to rehearse, and a place where they can jam whatever they want, as loud as they want, and feel comfortable doing so.

“It feels like you’re at a friend’s house, and everyone there is super nice to us,” says Mike Hoogars of Calgary band Stab.Twist.Pull, referring to Richardson and his one full-time staff member, Nate Renaud, and part-time employee Ryan Boyko.

“We have also made so many friends there that are in some really sick bands: Kilyakai, A New Face For Marley, The Duped, Knucklehead… the list goes on,” Hoogars continues, adding that Stab.Twist.Pull have been rehearsing at Slaughterhouse Studios for the last three years.

“It just feels like a home away from home,” says A New Face For Marley vocalist Nick Herzog.

Herzog and co. were first referred to Slaughterhouse eight months ago by their peers and have since recommended it to others.

“You finish your shitty job at the end of the day, go hang out, set up your gear, and play for as long as you want. It’s the best way, in my opinion, to take a load off and just do what you love.”

“They leave everything outside,” Richardson says of all the bands who drop by to rehearse or record.

“They come in and, ‘Ah, well this is great.’ The whole world could be blowing up around you and you’re in here just ripping out on your tunes and then you leave and you go, ‘Wow what a mess out here,” he chuckles, tossing a hand towards the office window, which faces the street outside.

“There’s no stress involved in here; I don’t think there’s any in the building. There’s never any fights, there’s never any weird freaked out stuff that happens. Everyone just seems to get along,” he says. “And sometimes they meet new friends, new musicians. New bands even form here: a band breaks up, and two bands form.”

And the bands he sees forming these days the most – whether meeting for the first time at Slaughterhouse or just jamming there – are metal.

“We get way more metal [then we used to]. We were getting more of an older classic rock, bluesy, country… not a lot of metal at all. Punk was also very rare. But right now, I would say 60 to 70 per cent are metal,” Richardson nods, but admits he’s not sure if the lift he sees is due to an influx of metal at Slaughterhouse, or if metal is experiencing a growth spurt in general.

Whatever the case may be, Richardson is just happy to be along for the ride, and little floored that Slaughterhouse has evolved into the business it is now, and the place it holds amongst Calgary’s music community, regardless of genre.

“Some businesses make millions. This business makes me millions, but differently: in my feelings, in my emotions, how I wake up, how I act. It’s so fun and so – I don’t feel like I’m missing out or wishing I would have done things different. I’m speechless. I’m going to cry,” he laughs with a little grin, as it becomes ever clearer that he made the right choice.