Pirate House was a group house located in the Mount Pleasant area of Washington DC that started in March of 1989. At that time Mount Pleasant was beginning to be the location of choice for a bunch of group houses involving musicians in the DC scene. Alot of the houses became pretty infamous like for example the Embassy (home to members of Slant 6, Nation of Ulysses and others) which hosted alot of important shows and happenings.
At a certain point, Fugazi decided to store some studio equipment in the Pirate House basement (part of which also happened to be my bedroom). We had a 16 channel board and an 8 track Tascam deck, a small collection of mics and a "snake" extension which enabled us to record bands in rooms all over the house. Alot of bands in town wanted to make recordings but couldn't really afford an expensive studio so we just started doing tapes at Pirate House. It was a very low key, unprofessional set up but we did make alot of tapes that were released including stuff by Slant 6, the Make Up, Meltdown, the Metamatics, Blonde Redhead, Cranium, All Scars, Black Light Panthers etc. After about 9 years of living at Pirate House, I moved out and basically left the studio concept in the hands of Juan Carrera. He had been living at the house for a couple of years prior to that and had invested in better recording equipment including a 16 track deck.
Gradually, he kind of assumed responsibility for the house and the studio after I left. A couple of years later, as the neighborhood became more and more gentrified and most of the group houses had been broken up by escalating rents and the sale of some of the houses, Pirate House itself went up for sale. Luckily, in the case of this house, it was purchased by a friend and remains in the fold, so to speak, though the studio no longer exists.