The sunny and roomy studio of the Ghostly Records and Planet Mu recording artist known simply as Dykehouse is remarkably spare — a laptop, three keyboards, a Fender Jazzmaster guitar, a bed, an easel, some paints, a TV and toys for his 2-year-old daughter E.V. when she visits is pretty much it. There’s not much else around to interfere with the self-proclaimed Dutch lovemaster’s creative and libidinal juices.
The building itself exudes old Ann Arbor charm. His landlords downstairs are the Brown family, who have run College Shoe Repair since the 1950s. Next door is the walled and haunted-looking former DKE fraternity, once the stomping grounds of Gerald Ford.
Enthuses Dykehouse about his Treetown digs: “I enjoy the space I currently occupy because it fulfills my fantasy of living in a downtown artist-musician’s loft space (the kind of place Jasper Johns might have lived in during his careers’ infancy). It’s beat to hell (the ceiling just collapsed on my head!), but the walls sweat charm and the place reeks of accelerated alpha male bachelor pad ambition. Hot dog!”
