Today Architectural Digest is welcomed by musician Orville Peck to tour his mid-century tree house. Tucked away in the trees of Los Angeles, the nearly 7,000 square-foot property was built during Hollywood's Golden Age in 1944 and Peck couldn’t imagine a home better suited to him. Terracotta tiles pair perfectly with original aging wood features giving the indoor-outdoor feel you’d hope for when living in the trees. Second-hand treasures left behind by previous owners (including Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante) fill the space alongside treasures Peck has collected giving his home a personal touch. “To be honest, I never thought I’d be able to own a house,” says the artist, “But when I saw this place, it felt absolutely perfect…Everyone always jokes that they don’t know who else could live here because it feels like it was made for me.”
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🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Howdy, AD. I'm Orville Peck.
00:02 Welcome to my LA treehouse.
00:04 Come on, take a look.
00:05 [music]
00:15 This is the living room.
00:18 This is Queenie.
00:19 She's part German Shepherd, part coyote.
00:22 This house was built in 1944
00:25 when this was still Hollywood land.
00:26 When I first looked at the home,
00:28 the contrasting tiles with the terracotta,
00:31 it's just a really stunning home.
00:33 It's pretty specific.
00:34 People joke they don't know who else could live here.
00:36 I fell in love with it the second I saw it.
00:38 I actually didn't even have an apartment or anything
00:41 for about a six-year period at one point
00:43 because I was touring so much that whenever I was off tour,
00:45 I would just stay with my parents or friends' houses.
00:49 And so finally, this is the first time I've ever owned a house.
00:53 It's very special to me. I'm very proud of it.
00:55 And yeah, I got to fill it with all of these things
00:58 I've collected over the years.
00:59 The fireplace is something I was very drawn to, really special.
01:02 Here in LA, people like to pretend that it's cold every winter.
01:06 So we all snuggle up next to the fireplace,
01:08 and it's like 70 degrees outside.
01:10 I've been touring for 17 years,
01:12 so most of the things I own are collected
01:14 from all over the world, really.
01:16 Some of them just right here in LA,
01:18 like I thrifted this cowboy lamp, which I love.
01:21 My friend Doug gave me this.
01:22 This is a tuning fork that's tuned to the frequency of the earth.
01:27 So you hit it, and then you do this,
01:31 and then all your problems are solved.
01:33 I'm a big fan of tapestries,
01:35 so there's this really beautiful tapestry up here
01:39 that I found on tour.
01:40 I love art. This is by an artist named John Flaming.
01:43 He does all kind of cowboy prints like this,
01:45 and so someone very dear to me got this for me as a gift.
01:48 [acoustic guitar plays softly]
01:53 So this is one of my favorite areas of the house,
01:56 the kitchen and dining area.
01:58 I love to cook.
01:59 One of the most amazing things that was in this home
02:01 is this old O'Keeffe & Merritt stove and oven,
02:03 which is like a dream to cook with for anybody.
02:06 The copper counters I fell in love with.
02:09 Just so many beautiful details in this house.
02:11 I have like a wooden refrigerator.
02:13 It's like in the Flintstones when they have like fridges
02:16 and garbage disposals that are made of stone,
02:18 like that's like, but mine are all wood.
02:20 I love mugs. These are all places I've been, you know.
02:24 Graceland, Park City, New Mexico.
02:26 This is from when I did Brittany Brodsky's Royal Court.
02:28 There's so many interesting touches all throughout the house,
02:30 like this chicken wire.
02:31 This door is like usually open and covers this,
02:35 and so I finally shut this for something,
02:37 and then there's this like really frightening...
02:40 [laughs]
02:41 ghost painting, and now I'm scared to touch it.
02:44 And I never knew it was here until like sort of like
02:47 six months ago, but I feel like it's safer to just leave it,
02:51 'cause maybe I don't want to like, you know,
02:52 mess with it or something.
02:53 I so badly wanted this to be hooked up to like the gate,
02:57 but sadly it's not hooked up to anything, but...
03:00 Hello?
03:01 Let's figure it.
03:05 [upbeat music]
03:09 This is one of the bathrooms.
03:11 More like, you know, Flintstones-esque,
03:14 but wood features, like this bizarre sink in the stone.
03:18 And then I have this little shrine going on here.
03:21 Just some more things I've collected over the years,
03:24 some watches and some postcards and hunting knives,
03:27 and some candles to some of my idols,
03:29 like Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson.
03:31 There's these beautiful sort of stained glass windows over here,
03:35 just more kind of interesting touches.
03:38 [upbeat music]
03:42 This is my favorite room in the house.
03:44 It's the guest bedroom.
03:45 It has beautiful lighting at all times of the day,
03:48 morning, afternoon, evening.
03:50 It has a lovely view of beautiful Hollywood.
03:53 This is one of my favorite pieces.
03:54 My friend Dylan Roworth actually painted this.
03:57 It's a self-portrait of him.
03:58 These are two blankets I collected from
04:01 when I lived in South Africa,
04:02 baskets from South Africa, so I like to have touches of
04:05 things from all the different places I've lived.
04:07 One of my music videos with Norman Reedus was set in a tiki bar,
04:11 and this is one of the cursed tiki pieces from that music video.
04:15 Just such beautiful wooden details everywhere,
04:18 like the kind of slatting and then beautiful old light fixtures.
04:22 There's a weird little peekaboo hatch.
04:25 You can like peek out into the living room if you need to,
04:28 just check what's going on.
04:29 I feel like a magician built this house. It's so odd.
04:33 [upbeat music]
04:36 This is my closet.
04:37 I'm a man of many, many, many, many outfits,
04:40 and so I have all of my kind of regular clothing
04:45 over here on these ones,
04:47 and then in these ones is all show stuff,
04:50 performance outfits and things like that.
04:52 These are all of my special custom hats that I keep up here,
04:55 just a small collection.
04:56 I have in total probably like 150 cowboy hats,
04:59 but these are just a small, special amount of my collection.
05:03 Lots of custom detailing ones that I've worn for tours.
05:07 I wore this on RuPaul's Drag Race.
05:09 Then also some very special ones like my custom Dior cowboy hats
05:14 that they made for me when I was working with Dior,
05:17 and we used to call them Diorville.
05:19 Just the room of many, many hats.
05:21 I have some pretty interesting outfits in here,
05:23 like Dior made me this when I went to the Grammys in 2020.
05:27 It's pretty special.
05:28 Some of my special kind of outfits
05:31 that I don't necessarily wear anymore,
05:32 but I've had for a long time.
05:34 Lots of rhinestones, lots of rhinestones.
05:39 Small amount of my boots as well over here.
05:42 These are just my everyday ones that I rotate in my normal life,
05:46 and also a couple special ones.
05:48 This is one of my oldest pairs of cowboy boots.
05:50 I've had these probably like, I don't know, almost 20 years.
05:53 These are custom oblique beaded Dior
05:57 when I did their fashion show in 2019, I believe.
06:00 If you have cowboy boots, you cannot live without a boot jack.
06:04 It's so that you can save your boot,
06:06 and you pop them off just like that.
06:08 Get a boot jack.
06:09 [music]
06:13 This is my bedroom.
06:15 I love light and windows.
06:18 I love that there's skylights in here, a lot of light.
06:21 I have to have big plants everywhere.
06:23 This bed frame, actually,
06:25 it was one of the things that came with the house.
06:27 It's something I would never have picked,
06:28 this kind of blush rose velvet bed frame,
06:30 but it's actually really beautiful,
06:31 and I think it goes really well in here.
06:33 These are a few of my favorite little pieces.
06:36 This is my poster from when I played
06:38 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
06:40 We sold it out, and they do these kind of legendary posters,
06:44 so that's very special to me.
06:45 My brother got me this little frog playing a banjo, which I love.
06:49 And then this is my dear friend, Andrea Lukic,
06:51 an amazing artist based out of Canada,
06:53 also one of my favorite pieces.
06:55 Now, through here is the bathroom.
06:59 It's like a super cool little space.
07:01 The window from the shower is really special,
07:04 so you can be taking a shower
07:05 and looking out over at Hollywood.
07:06 Unique little touches on the windows everywhere.
07:09 Always so important for me to have light and also see nature,
07:12 and that's kind of what this bathroom is about.
07:15 [music]
07:17 I absolutely love this staircase,
07:20 and especially this sort of column.
07:22 John Frusciante from Red Hot Chili Peppers
07:24 was one of the owners of the house,
07:25 and as I've seen a lot of his art,
07:27 I think he carved these, which is really cool.
07:29 I did actually already carve a little OP,
07:31 but I think I need to work on it.
07:33 I got to get like a chisel or something.
07:36 [music]
07:42 So this is the studio.
07:44 It's kind of like a multi-purpose space.
07:46 I grew up sewing. I used to sew my own masks,
07:48 and so this is sort of my sewing area,
07:50 and I do art over there sometimes.
07:52 This is my book collection.
07:54 During the pandemic, it was the first time
07:56 that a lot of artists started making home studios
07:59 so we could keep working on music.
08:01 Now I love having a home studio.
08:03 I can make demos here.
08:05 I've got all my instruments, everything's set up.
08:07 [metal clinking]
08:12 So this is the kind of thing we do up here.
08:14 [metal clinking]
08:17 Maybe a little of this sometimes too.
08:20 [metal clinking]
08:23 Pretty interesting stuff going on up here.
08:25 Sometimes Queenie likes to jump on the drums,
08:27 and I'll play guitar, and we have a little duo.
08:30 [music]
08:35 ♪ Hello, A.D., you're in my home ♪
08:40 ♪ Let's find Queenie and give her a bone ♪
08:46 You guys can have that. That's free. It's licensable.
08:49 I just wrote it, if you can believe it.
08:52 I feel very lucky to have as many guitars as I have.
08:55 I had one guitar pretty much my whole life.
08:57 It was this one, this Fender Squire,
08:59 and then I had to beg, borrow, and steal
09:03 to get this Gretsch Tennessee Rose at one point,
09:06 and now I actually get free guitars from Gretsch,
09:08 which is insane.
09:10 This is my little shrine over here
09:13 of special masks and hats.
09:15 I have probably over 100 masks now for sure.
09:19 This one is actually very special in particular.
09:22 This is a one-of-one custom Dior that they made me.
09:26 It's hand-beaded obliques. They made me this.
09:28 I got to sit at the fashion show next to the Kardashians,
09:31 all this craziness, and then they were like,
09:33 "So how did you transport that mask home?"
09:36 And I was like, "Oh, it's still with me.
09:38 It's just in my bag with the other masks."
09:40 And they were like, "Oh, you're taking care of it, though, right?"
09:42 And I was like, "Yeah, you know, sure."
09:44 I didn't know that it was like $80,000 beading,
09:47 and because it's a one-of-one Dior piece,
09:49 it's essentially priceless, and I was just like throwing it around
09:51 with all my other masks.
09:53 But now I keep it safe over here in the little weird shrine.
09:56 This hat was part of a Dior look that I wore to the Grammys,
09:59 and the milliner's name is Stephen Jones,
10:01 really iconic hat maker,
10:03 and so it's sort of like a dove-wing cowboy hat,
10:05 which is really special.
10:07 This is what we call the Sky Toilet.
10:09 My niece Daisy named it that.
10:11 It's fairly bizarre, 'cause there's no door, obviously,
10:14 but it is the best view in the house.
10:17 I mean, it's pretty gorgeous and special here,
10:19 and so also it's nice if we're working on music
10:22 and we're in the studio, someone can run over here
10:24 and just, you know, have a little pee
10:26 and look out at beautiful Hollywood.
10:29 [upbeat music]
10:32 When there's guests over, this is inevitably
10:34 where we always end up hanging out by the fire.
10:36 Gorgeous view of Hollywood.
10:38 The Hollywood sign's like right over there.
10:40 This is the tree house.
10:41 I love how much greenery there is,
10:43 all the vines and, you know, the olive trees.
10:46 At night, it is so stunning with the fire going
10:49 and, like, the lights in the houses on the hills.
10:52 Very, very beautiful.
10:54 Queenie loves to check on the perimeter,
10:56 like a little meerkat, making sure everything's safe.
10:58 Huh, Queenie, what do you see today?
11:00 The beautiful thing is that this wraps around the entire house,
11:03 this kind of patio, so we like to have
11:06 fun little dinners out here, get candles out here.
11:09 This is the fireplace cactus.
11:12 [laughs]
11:14 This is the barbecue, or as in South Africa,
11:18 I would call it the braai.
11:20 We oftentimes will have big barbecues here,
11:23 eat out here, end up at the fire pit.
11:25 Y'all should come. It's a fun time.
11:27 It's a nice time to hang out here.
11:28 So this is one of my favorite aspects of the house.
11:31 What really sold it for me was this amazing winding sort of--
11:34 I mean, it almost feels tropical back here.
11:36 There's so much lush greenery and plant life back here.
11:39 I was just obsessed with it the second I saw it.
11:41 So this is the first little platform up here.
11:43 When we've had big parties and big functions,
11:45 inevitably everyone starts wandering through the garden,
11:47 end up sitting around here, hanging out.
11:49 There's this very old-timey stove here,
11:51 so if you want to, like, I don't know,
11:53 cook beans in a can, you can do that over here if you want.
11:57 I have a little hammock right here.
11:59 For those that don't know what a hammock is,
12:01 it's the thing you sit in like this.
12:05 So you can just relax in here,
12:10 look up at the giant Strelitzia,
12:13 and if you really want to, like, you know, disappear,
12:18 I'm sort of known for covering my face, so, you know, whatever.
12:21 This is sort of the little adventure over here.
12:23 These trails go all the way around.
12:25 So we got jade over here.
12:27 This is a guava tree, which has yet to fruit, but I'm hoping.
12:32 And it takes you all the way back around to the other side of the house.
12:35 And then obviously it's kind of cute 'cause you can, like,
12:38 see into the studio, wave to people.
12:40 I live alone, so if I was waving to someone, I'd probably be worried.
12:43 I spend quite a lot of time out here.
12:45 On a nice day, if it's cool enough,
12:47 I'll throw on some Birkenstocks and come back here
12:49 and do, like, a lot of gardening, and I like to prune and trim.
12:52 I mean, I have gardeners as well, but I like to do a lot of it myself
12:55 'cause obviously it's just a hobby of mine.
12:57 We've had a lot of unexpected rain in California this year,
13:00 so a lot of my fruit and vegetable is not really used to that.
13:03 But potatoes, those had a good yield 'cause potatoes like water.
13:06 I like a purple potato, a little fingerling,
13:09 but I was growing some Yukon gold. They're easy.
13:12 [playful music]
13:18 I love vintage aesthetics and old architecture.
13:22 I mean, a treehouse like this that's all entirely wood,
13:25 and, you know, the history of it is so cool.
13:27 I think it's really important to keep that vibe.
13:30 I think oftentimes in, especially Los Angeles,
13:33 you have these, like, $30 million homes
13:35 that look like the lobby of a bank or something,
13:37 and there's just no vibe and no taste, you know?
13:39 And so I think, for me, it's really important for it to feel like a home
13:43 and feel like it feels like me,
13:44 and I think I've managed that with this place.
13:46 It makes me happy to come home from tour and, you know, be here.
13:49 [playful music]
13:54 All right, thank you so much. It's been really fun,
13:56 but it's time for you all to get out of here.
13:58 Bye.
14:00 [playful music]
14:02 [door slams]
14:03 (upbeat music)