Summer days are spent almost entirely outside at the home of Sean W. Spellman and My Larsdotter in Westerly, Rhode Island, a seasonal coastal town near the Connecticut border. The musician couple head down to the beach with their two children, who are five and two, early enough to beat the crowds, then come home for lunch, which is often a local catch grilled over an outdoor fireplace. As Sean and My stoke the fire, the kids pick blueberries from bushes on their property or play with hens scratching around. If the waves are still good in the afternoon, Sean heads back out to surf while My and the kids build sandcastles on the shore. After the kids have gone to sleep, the couple retreat to their downstairs studio to paint or make music.

Sean and My didn’t imagine putting down roots in Westerly. They’d been leading mostly nomadic lives touring with their respective bands, Quiet Life and My Bubba, and lucking into sublets between stints on the road. But a short stay here (“We were using the town as a hideout to live affordably and quietly,” says Sean, who grew up nearby and still has family in the area) turned into something long-term when he and My bought an almost-too-good-to-be-true property that had a 1930s cottage and a detached three-car garage with a rental unit above it. The couple flipped the script, renovating the cottage to rent it on Airbnb and turning the rental into their home.

That was almost six years ago. More recently, Sean and My renovated their two-bedroom apartment and, to create the studio, used one of the garage’s three bays. They designed the spaces themselves, blending influences from Japan; Scandinavia, where My is from; and California, where they both have lived. Contractor and carpenter friends helped out, covering the walls of their kitchen and studio in unfinished pine shiplap (“Like a Swedish sauna,” says Sean), and making cutouts in them to use the exposed studs as shelving. Most of the couple’s furniture is secondhand, and Sean’s artwork hangs on the walls.

The studio gives Sean and My a way to keep busy with their musical projects during the colder months, when spending so much time outside isn’t possible. With a drum kit in the corner, keyboard in the back, guitars and harps artfully displayed, and recording equipment ready to “roll tape,” the stage is always set to capture the moment. Sean paints here, too, at a desk by floor-to-ceiling windows. “I call it my living gallery,” he says. “There’s no way we could live like this less than a mile from the beach anywhere else.”

“We feel very lucky to have this. I’ve always wanted a space at home, a little studio. It’s pretty awesome to make music here.”
—Sean W. Spellman, resident

The home, nicknamed the South County House, represents one of Sean’s grander ambitions: to turn Westerly, which gets visitors only in the summer, into a vibrant creative hub year-round. “It’s like, if you build it, they will come,” says Sean, who founded the music and arts festival Westerly Sound and is looking to open a gallery and boutique hotel in town. Already, he and My have made new friends among the guests who stay in their Airbnb, often creative types, and hope the studio will start to attract musician friends to the area no matter the season. The permanent community Sean and My dream of hasn’t coalesced yet, but right now they have everything they need. “We’re together every day,” My says. “It’s like being on vacation.”

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My House: A Creative Renovation Inspires Two Musicians to Put Down Roots on the Rhode Island Coast