Manor Time Recording Co. was founded and is operated by Collin Peterson. While the company has gone through changes in spaces and faces, the vision of returning to analog roots in both community building and recording has never changed.
After returning back to DC from a tour, the first version of Manor Time was born in the fall of 2017. Collin, Nathan, and Will moved into a house together in Arlington, VA, and dubbed it “The Manor”, as a reference to it’s vastness, yet jesting at it’s wear and tear. The upstairs was fashioned into a recording space, while the basement was an occasional spot to hear local music and gather. The term “Manor Time” and studio name was coined by Will, who would greet folks at the door by saying,
“Relax, you’re on Manor Time now”.
The space went on hiatus in the summer 2018, due to Collin’s health issues which ultimately led to a long term hospitalization. Manor Time was now without a home, and worked as a mobile rig between improvised spaces, and focusing more deeper into building gear and gathering a deeper knowledge of the inner workings of all the knobs and lights we all use but rarely understand . By the summer of 2019, Manor Time found itself in the heart of DC on U Street. After a year of rebuilding and reworking, expanding partnerships with local institutions, and working professionally as a technician, it wasn’t The Manor, but it a beautiful beginning all over again.
Manor Time got to call U Street it’s home for 10 wonderful months, but as we all know, in the spring of 2020 the pandemic came. By the start of the summer, there was no more work, and there was no way to keep the space, so Manor Time would again be forced into hiatus. In June 2020 the space was vacated, the rig went mobil again in the back of Collin’s 73’ Dodge Van ‘Sally', and he took off west to ride out the rest of the pandemic.
Collin spent the vast majority of the pandemic traveling through The United States, living in his van, working for a short stint on a farm in Northern Washington, and waiting for the world to come back to life. It was during this time, that a new vision of what Manor Time would be began to form; bringing back the community that was lost, and creating a creative, beautiful and welcoming space.
After a long wait, in the Summer of 2021, Manor Time found a home once again at it’s third and current location in Silver Spring, Maryland. In addition it also became a partnership between Collin and Daniel Mears. After spending roughly 4 months building out the studio, the first versions of the tracking and recording rooms were up and running in the late Fall of 2021.
While the studio and the beginning of a community around it began to take shape, this Partnership unfortunately did not last, and in January 2023 the studio once again became a one man shop. Collin had torn all the ligaments in his right hand back in August of 2022, and because of that context paired with the buying out of company, the plan was to finish the out a full 2 years of the space, sell off, regroup, rebuild, and find a new home for Manor Time.
But something unexpected happened, that community around the space, the community that Collin had been dreaming about for the last 5 years, it happened. From the start of the Manor Time Party Jams series of no more than 40-50 people in the Spring of 2022, to the explosion of having over 80-100 people coming month after month, with an invite list of over local 250 folks by the Summer of 2023. In the wake of this, it was decided rather than close the space down, to sign another 2 years on the lease.
Over the past 3 and a half years, the space has hosted 23 jams, worked with over 100 different arists and organizations from providing live sound at festivals, mixing, mastering, recording, studio consultations, as well as building custom audio gear and repairs.
“When I started building the third version of Manor Time with my former business partner, I never imagined where I would be today over 3 years later. There were a lot of times that I would pitch myself thinking it was all a dream. This has been a labor of love, a dream earned and taken, and has been held together by the most unexpected of things, the things that only people can give. I’m looking forward to the future, and seeing where the next space will be, seeing how far and where this project will go. But most of all, I’m eternally grateful to my Family, my Mentor Greg Lukens, and my close friends, who knew me when there wasn’t much hope for any of this, and still believed in me. While I may have built and run Manor Time, it held together by a lot of incredible people. This space is a reflection of that belief, that it’s not about what we do, but what we do together. I hope that above all else shines through, and what I tried to do here will have a lasting positive impact”. - Collin