Home / Kiowa Trail Home Studio

Kiowa Trail Home Studio

Having only previously rented, Prince’s first property purchase was a two-storey ranch at 9401 Kiowa Trail, Chanhassen, Minnesota, during late 1980. He was aged just 22 at the time. Such was Prince’s appetite to record round the clock, the property offered larger space for his home recording studio to the premises he was previously renting at 680 North Arm Drive in Orono, where he lived at until early 1981 until the conclusion of the Dirty Mind Tour and awaiting the installation of his studio at Kiowa Trail. That his basement studio at North Arm Drive proved too tiny even to keep a piano, and, sat on a hilltop with vistas opening out to the western shore of Lake Riley in the far outskirts of Minneapolis, the Kiowa Trail ranch afforded greater seclusion. To improve privacy even further, Prince bought the adjacent lot #9411. The property even boasted its own windmill that Prince shipped over from the Netherlands. So much did Prince admire the area, the future site of Paisley Park Studios is a mere 4-miles distance to the north, within the same district of Carver County. Kiowa Trail was his idyll and safe space to spend countless hours in what was his first professional home studio setup.

If people wish I would sound like I used to sound, then it says more about them than it does me.

The ranch’s original bland beige exterior was duly repainted purple and the place became known locally as the Purple House. Prince had the ground floor family room converted into a luxurious studio and fitted out with the 16-track console transferred from North Arm Drive. By January 1981, its installation was complete and the studio’s facilities comprised a live room, two small recording booths, plus control room complete with a purple shag-pile carpet, and chiffon was draped everywhere.

Prince’s growing success meant he was also able to add a full-time studio engineer on the payroll. The upgrading of the recording equipment in May 1982 to a 24-track Soundcraft 3B console was the first task of his newly enlisted sound technician Susan Rogers, hired in replacement of Prince’s first full time employed technician Don Batts. The studio also housed a Ampex 1200 24-track sound recorder, Prince buying the same model he used at Sunset Sound. Rogers would remain in Prince’s employ until 1987 working on all his LPs from 1999 to The Black Album. Prince’s bedroom was likewise located on the ground floor so that the studio was close at hand. The living room was relocated upstairs where visiting band members were given bedrooms. Owing to his professional home studio setup and a full time sound engineer, Prince’s rate of output increased immensely.

The first album Prince laid down at Kiowa Trail was the debut project for The Time, during April 1981. Later that year, he recorded Controversy as well as albums for Vanity 6 and Apollonia 6. Prince lived at Kiowa Trail during the height of his Purple Rain fame, and after having recorded many of his iconic albums here either in full or part – 1999, Purple Rain. Needing more space, much of the studio’s equipment was transferred to a newly acquired warehouse in 1983 to rehearse with his new band The Revolution and undergo acting classes in preparation for the movie. Early sessions of Sign O’ The Times (when known as Dream Factory – The Revolution’s abandoned fourth album) also took place at Kiowa Trail, then in November 1985 Prince purchased larger premises at 7141 Galpin Blvd to accommodate a still larger home recording studio.

Prince kept the Kiowa Trail property even while living at Galpin Blvd, passing it to his father John L Nelson where he remained until his death in 2001. Unoccupied, Prince had Kiowa Trail razed to the ground in 2003 but continued to own the land up until his own death in 2016, when his estate sold it to a local couple in 2017 for $700,000 who since redeveloped the site. All that remains of the original property is the perimeter fence and main gates – embellished with the heart and anti-nuclear symbols, artefacts frozen in time for the final album Prince recorded at the Purple House, the legendary Sign O’ The Times.