Scott Billington - Reissuing Classic Bluegrass Albums for Craft Recordings

My guest this week is Scott Billington.

Scott is a Grammy winning record producer, an author, a record company exec and a musician. But what we're chatting about in this episode is a fascinating story about a pivotal string band album and it's journey to being reissued with extra tracks that went missing for decades.

The record in question is Boone Creek's debut album Boone Creek, from the band Jerry Douglas and Ricky Skaggs formed after they left J.D. Crowe and the New South.

Scott talks about how the album was recorded and how, at the time, Rounder felt it was too progressive, and asked the band to go back into the studio and record some additional tracks. After the album was released, the original tapes went missing and Rounder were keen not to reissue it on CD or streaming services until they'd been found. As a result, the record disappeared from circulation for years.

We talk about how the tapes were finally unearthed, what state they were in, the process used to retrieve what was on them and how Boone Creek was finally reissued by Craft Recordings.

We also chat about Scott's long career with Rounder Records and his current role with Craft Recordings, working on several key projects, including the Doc Watson A Life's Work box set. 

This was a fascinating conversation about a fascinating project, as well as Scott's long association with outstanding American roots music.

Next week's episode will feature an interview with Jerry Douglas about Boone Creek, his memories of that band and what it was like hearing the reissued tracks everyone thought had been lost for good.

You can buy Boone Creek from Craft Recordings on vinyl, CD or digital download

Follow Craft on Instagram or Facebook to keep up to date with new reissues of classic roots music.

For more info on Scott, including links to buy his book Making Tracks: A Record Producer’s Southern Roots Music Journey, check out www.scottbillington.com

Matt

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Ken Erwin, many years ago, while I was still working at Rounder, and while he was still part of Rounder Records, um was dead set on trying to find the recordings that that Rounder had discarded at the time to make a more complete reissue of what Goon Creek sounded like at the time. And he eventually found the original 16-track tapes in the garage of the engineer who had originally recorded it. They'd been soaked with water, they were moldy, no one knew what could be extracted from these tapes.

Matt 1:03

Hi, this is Matt, and you listen to Bluegrass Jamalong the podcast for anyone and everyone who loves Bluegrass. Hey everybody, welcome back to Bluegrass Jamalong. My guest on the podcast this week is Scott Billington. Scott is a musician, he's a Grammy winning record producer, he's a songwriter, he's a record company exec. Um he spent a lot of time at Rounder Records working with the founders there, has a huge history with the label going back years, and part of what we're going to talk about tonight overlaps with that. But he also works with Kraft Recordings on reissuing old material, and he was instrumental in co-producing the Doc Watson Life's Workbox set along with Ted Olson. Kraft have been doing some great work, reissuing all sorts of things, including some of Tony Rice's records on vinyl Church Street Blues, um, Backwaters, some really cool stuff. Um, and this project we're going to talk about tonight. Um, Scott has been working for several years now on a re-release of the first Boom Creek LP, which features Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas, amongst others. And there's a fascinating story behind this about how not only the band recorded a record and then were asked to go back into the studio to add some more material to it, um, but also then what happened to some of that, and how those tracks disappeared, and how this record has been reissued now, not only in a kind of remastered, updated version, um, for the first time in a long time. This record never made it to CD, never made it onto the streaming services, but also with these four extra tracks and the whole story about how that came about and the quest to find these and what happened. It's a fascinating conversation. Um, it's also part of a two-part thing. This is a standalone conversation with Scott about his career and about this project. But the next episode coming out next week is going to be an interview with Jerry Douglas, all about that record and about Boon Creek and about the place it sort of holds in his career and what it was like hearing these tracks for the first time in a long time. Um, and that's fascinating as well. So hope you enjoyed that one too when that comes out. But for now, have a listen to my interview with Scott Billington. My guest on Bluegrass Jamalong this week is Scott Billington. And Scott is a musician, he's a Grammy Award-winning producer, he's a songwriter, he's a record company exec, he's an author. But what we're going to talk about today is a particular project that he's been working on with Kraft Recordings, who he does a lot of work with. And I'm really excited to talk about this one. Uh Scott, welcome to Bluegrass Jamalong. Thank you so much, Matt. I'm really glad to be here. And it's a really fascinating project we're talking about. Um, and I'm hoping we'll get a chance to chat about some of the other stuff as well. But first and foremost, we're here to talk about a 50th anniversary reissue of the Boon Creek self-titled LP. Yes, absolutely. And it's not I'm craft recordings do a huge amount of kind of wonderful reissue work. We're big fans of craft recordings in this house. I have several of the sort of bluegrass and string band related things. My 13-year-old son is a big jazz fan, and he's got some of the Vince Garaldi stuff, and he loves that. Um But this record is not just your typical reissue, kind of tidying up the tapes and putting it back out. There's been a real big detective work on behind this one, isn't there?

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Yes, and the uh the original album itself has been out of print now for probably 25 years. It was never released on CD. One of the founders of Rounder Records, Ken Irwin, um, had resisted putting it out because he knew that there were some other recordings that existed that were part of the original recording sessions for the Boon Creek Record. And um Jerry Douglas and Ricky Skaggs had just come out of J.D. Crow in the New South, and they had participated in the absolutely legendary record, which people refer to as Rounder 0044 by J.D. Crow in the New South, which many people believe set the course for modern bluegrass. If you talk to someone like Alison Krauss, this is just a touchstone for her in terms of inspiring her, in terms of a direction for a new sound in bluegrass. And um the band broke up. Tony Rice went to the West Coast and joined the David Grisman Quintet. And Jerry Douglas and Ricky Skaggs started this new band with Wes Golding and Terry Balcom called Boone Creek. And um they immediately signed with Rounder Records. They went into the studio, they went into Stardate Studio in Nashville and made a record and turned it into Rounder. Um I think that what the founders of Rounder Records expected to hear at the time was something of an extension of the J.D. Crow and the New South sound, Progressive Bluegrass, something that was pushing the boundaries. But I don't think they were prepared for how far Ricky and Jerry and Terry and Wes had actually pushed those boundaries because they turned in a record that had more in common with maybe Poco or um Ozark Mountain Daredevils than it did with traditional bluegrass. Um it was very far-reaching, and I I I think it just took them by surprise. And they were uncomfortable with releasing the record that Boom Creek had turned in. Um the compromise was to send them back to the studio, to Lemco Studio, to record material that was more bluegrass-oriented, um, some traditional songs and um but just something that was more in the spirit of of what the JD Crow band had sounded like. Um and that was the record that came out. There were four of the tracks that they had originally recorded as Star Day on the original Boon Creek record, and then eight of the songs that they recorded at Lamco. Um that record came out, it was very well received. Um but it it um it it was never reissued, it never was digitized, it never was on the streaming services, and it has remained unissued until this day. Um Ken Erwin, many years ago, while I was still working at Rounder and while he was still part of Rounder Records, um was dead set on trying to find the recordings that that Rounder had discarded at the time to make a more complete reissue of what Boon Creek sounded like at the time. And he eventually found the original 16-track tapes in the garage of the engineer who had originally recorded it. Um guy who calls himself Sundance, Sundance Leonard, who did a masterful job of recording the original material. Um they were in his garage, they'd been uh soaked with water, they were moldy. Um no one knew what what could be extracted from these tapes. Um there were also some legal issues to confront. Um, it turned out that we determined that the band owned this material, the unissued material, the the record that they had turned into router to begin with, was um what the label had contracted for. So um eventually we were able to make a um an arrangement with with Jerry and Ricky and um to go forward with trying to recover whatever we could from these tapes. So they went to a mold remediation house. Um they went to another specialist who um baked the tapes to make sure that the oxide stuck to the to the acetate backing, and he was able to retrieve the multi-track digital files to all of the material. Um some of it was just not issuable. The the the mold had done its damage. Um it was like listening to Darth Vader saying bluegrass. Um there's probably a market for that somewhere. Yeah, there probably is. But we recovered four of the songs, and um those are included with the craft recordings reissue of the Boon Creek Record.

Matt 9:42

And it's I mean, uh that's just fascinating. It's just the the I don't think the phrase mould remediation house will ever appear on this podcast again. I love that for starters. Um but just the idea that you don't even know what's on the teeth, it could have taped over it with anything else. It could have, who knows what would have been on that tape, and you know. Um and it's it is a fascinating time, that period around the mid-70s, because as you say, kind of there was the J.D. Crow thing, and then only a couple of years after that, you sort of get the Grisman quintet stuff coming out, and there's this time of huge change in the string band world, the bluegrass world, and and just and I hadn't heard this record until this reissued version of it, because I didn't have a vile copy of it, or you know, and it's not on the streaming services, and just hearing the range of material that is on there, like you say, it's like almost polco in places, there's elements of it that are almost loving spoonful, there's bits of it that are like just you know, bluegrass gospel music and all these little textures and things in there that take it to different places, and it's an astonishing thing. Um like did anybody know what was on these sort of missing takes? Could anybody remember what was there?

SPEAKER_02 10:55

Not exactly. Um Wes Golding had some rough mixes of a few of them. Um but I think when when I got back the rough mixes from the digital transfers, I was kind of shocked at how radically different this was than from what I expected and what had been on the original Boom Creek record. Um it's pop music in a way, but not exactly because you have these beautiful bluegrass harmonies. And um as it turned out that some of the harmonies on these unissued cuts weren't even the members of the band. Um Vince Gill sings on one track. He later went on to play bass with Boon Creek for a little while. And um Cheryl White and Sharon White singing. You it was obvious that there were women singing in this ensemble too. But um if you think of bands even like Crosby Stills and Nash, the harmonies were so they certainly had something in common with the traditional trio bluegrass singing style, but here were these just impeccable harmonies um coming out of the bluegrass world in a pop context. Um what I wasn't prepared for was to hear the synthesized horns and the um oh the the production touches that were just something completely in a different world than than what one might have expected to hear from Boone Creek.

Matt 12:28

Yeah, and just the things that people were doing around that point and where people were you you get these wonderful kind of um things like I was talking to Missy Rains the other day about one of the seldom seen records, the podcast, and they come at everything from a much more kind of singer-songwriter kind of mellow kind of vibe, and yet there's these bluegrass harmonies and and with this record particularly like that the vocals are unmistakably out of the string band tradition, whatever else is going on.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Yes, absolutely.

Matt 14:09

And it's just a joy to hear hear all of that. It is it's it's an extraordinary listen. Um and so kind of the process of getting the tapes and then getting something off the tapes into a digital format and doing something with it, like how uh how involved were the band with that process?

SPEAKER_02 14:31

The band really um weren't involved at that point. Um the mix was done by a longtime associate of mine, Steve Reynolds. Um, we've worked on many records together over the years. Um he mixed them in his studio, and um at that point I sent them to Jerry and Ricky and say, What do you think? And they were like, Wow, it sounds great. Um we've kind of forgotten this. And um so you know, they were certainly involved with approving everything, but um once the mixes were done, they were they were satisfied that okay, we can go forward with uh with putting this out into the world now. Um and of course, and of course, this really begs the question of what would have happened if Rounder had gone forward with the release of this material um 50 years ago. Um I I think there was a discomfort on Rounder's end of feeling that they could do anything to promote this this kind of music. Um Rounder still hadn't had their hit with George Thoroughgood, which was sort of their the first time the label uh entered the mainstream in terms of radio airplay and so forth. Um but you know, I think the the Rounder founders were probably correct in that Rounder would not have been able to promote to promote this effectively as a pop record at the time. But um, you know, it it's a it's a really great great what-if story. Um wondering what would have happened if this music went out into the world um in in the original form that the band had presented it to the label.

Matt 16:19

I mean it's funny, isn't it? Because now looking back, you sort of have the context of where those musicians were before that and what they went on to afterwards, and like but at the time, you know, if that record had gone out as intended and been a big seller, that could have changed the course of everybody's career.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Sure, absolutely. And and their careers might have been different at that point. You you you'd you really don't know. Um and of course there is no way to know. Uh it's uh but that's that to me is one of the most fascinating aspects of this reissue is thinking about what would have happened um if this material had gone out into the world back then. Maybe the maybe they would have been um shunned by the bluegrass world and not have had any success in the pop world. Um you just can't tell.

Matt 17:09

Yeah, yeah. And and this is this was a fairly early on in the kind of RANDA story, wasn't it? And you joined around this sort of time, didn't you? Were you already part of Rounder at this point?

SPEAKER_02 17:22

I had just started working for Rounder in 1976. Um I came on actually initially as a um a salesperson for the label. Um around that time, um, five years into the history of Rounda Records, um Ken Irwin, Marion Levy, and and Bill Nallen felt that okay, maybe we should have a little bit more of a business structure behind the label in order to do right by the artists that they they were signing, um distribution and promotion and so forth. Um so you know, I I was part of that transition, but it was also a wide open time at Rounder where if anybody who worked there saw something that they felt needed to be done, they could do it. Um so over the years, I I my job just evolved. Um at one point I was vice president of AR later on. Um and I was also a staff producer, so I produced hundreds of records for Rounder over the years, but not generally anything to do with Bluegrass. I was more involved with um New Orleans Rhythm and Blues and Zydeco and some jazz and so forth. And um it was an aspect of Rounder that grew along with the rest of the label, uh, although bluegrass always remained at the core of what Rounder Records did.

Matt 18:47

And was it one of those sort of records in that vein that won the first Grammy for Rounder? Or am I misremembering that?

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Actually, the first Grammy for Rounder was a record by Clarence Gatemouth Brown, who was a blues guitar player, fiddle player from um Texas and Louisiana, um, that I produced. Um so that was a big deal for me in 1981 to win a Grammy with Gatemouth Brown. That was Rounder's first first Grammy win back then. Um it certainly got my career after a start, and it pointed to a different direction for Rounder too.

Matt 19:22

And it's funny just going back, just I've been listening to um quite a bit of 70s and 80s, like early 80s, string round music the past few weeks, and I keep pulling out Rounder records, and there's your name on the back for sleeve design. You know, I pulled out a copy of uh my Marshall's Gator Strut the other day, and I was listening to um Russ Barrenberg's moving pictures, and I just keep seeing your name on all these records.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

It's fascinating. I guess I I was also the art director for a while, too. So, you know, like I said, if you saw a job that needed to get done and and you could do it, you probably you got a green light to do it. It was a wonderful environment to me, and really I I can't imagine uh um a career unfolding in the way that mine did today. It just it just wouldn't happen.

Matt 20:11

Yeah, it's the joy of it. I've I've sort of read a couple of books about the rounder story, and I've spoken to Bill Nowlin, and just kind of it's it's extraordinary that some of those things happened and that were allowed to happen and grow in the way they did, you know, just some of those records that that came out that probably wouldn't have found a home anywhere else.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

No, and it was a very organic process. There was certainly a rounder aesthetic um tied to music that had cultural and community roots, I would say. So when Rounder signed George Thurigood, that was a very uncomfortable moment because was this really a roots enough record for Rounder to release? Um ultimately the decision was made to yes, it is. I mean, George is is clearly rooted in the rock and roll and rhythm and blues of the 1950s and 1960s. Um when George's first two records started getting airplay, Rounder had to hire the right promotional people to get it to radio the second record, move it on over, eventually went gold. So here was this tiny label founded by three friends who were enamored of traditional American music, bluegrass and old-time music in particular. And that had been their mission in the first place was to um produce authentic recordings of true American music, um very community and roots-oriented. Um and the label eventually made this transition into this fairly large independent label um that released everything from San Ra to George Thoroughgood to later uh uh roots influenced pop records by people like Madeline Peiru or the Allison Krause and Robert Plant record, which which were a huge record. I mean, it won three Grammys that year, one record of the year, and who could have ever imagined that the label started by these three folk music aficionados with this kind of anarchic view of business um would would eventually evolve into into this kind of powerhouse of of American Roots music.

Matt 22:40

I just I'm thinking about some of these records that are now being reissued and you know some things have just remained in print forever and we've always known them and some things are kind of coming back now thanks to you know companies like Kraft. And you know, back in the day, presumably some of these records there weren't that many pressed, or they pressed just enough, and then if it sold they'd press a few more and you know, things things sort of drop off and things disappear. And I'd love to talk a little bit about um kind of the process for you with something like Kraft of choosing how to reissue something, like what the reasons for that are and kind of what the process is. Because the the Boon Creek process is obviously a slightly unique one in terms of um those extra tracks and the little bit of history and all of that. But what what's the sort of general how do you approach selecting things for because there's so much music you could pull. Back out and to just focus on something and do such a quality job of it.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Yeah, it's a it's an interesting process because um Concord Music, which is the parent company of craft recordings, bought Rounder. Um it's probably 12, 15 years ago now. Um Concord also um owns Stacks, uh Prestige, VJ, uh Sugar Hill, just this wealth of of um I mean it's it's probably the greatest uh treasure store of American Roots music that I can think of that any anybody owns at this point. So when Rounder was bought by Concord, I I actually was retained as a consultant um initially just to try to manage the Rounder catalog. Um I've done a number of projects with with some of their other labels now, too. Um it's it there are several criteria that go into whether something can be reissued or not. First of all, is it something of lasting artistic value, something that's going to go out there into the world and that people need to hear? Um if you think of something like the uh oh the prestige catalog of John Coltrane or Miles Davis, there are just so many treasures there. Um when you think of Stax Um Staple Singers, um and there is there's just so much wonderful music on Rounder. Uh to put it out on craft, we we want to manufacture a very high-quality product. So we want to make sure we have access to the original analog tapes, um, something that can, if it's not going to deliver an audiophile experience, something that's absolutely true to what was heard in the studio when this music was made. And um having the extra tracks is just wonderful. Um, just three weeks ago, we released a new version of the Alan Toussaint songbook record. And the producer had actually recorded an interview with Alan about the time of these live recordings that were made in Joe's pub in New York that were on the original songbook record. So we were able to put out a new edition of the record with 20 new songs. Um, that was a very compelling thing to do. Um and with Boone Creek, we have two of the major figures in Bluegrass today, Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas, just incredible careers and innovative, uh true to Bluegrass, pushing the boundaries. Um Jerry, of course, is a member of Alice and Krause and Union Station, who were out on the road this summer again with their new record. Um, so everything seemed to be there. This was a kind of an obvious decision to make. Um I'd known about Ken's passion for trying to get this back out again. And um and you know, getting these new tracks, it was just sort of the icing on the cake. Now we now we can go forward with something that bluegrass fans and and people beyond that will want to hear. And um it sounds great too. It it the the remastering of the whole record, it it it it all worked.

Matt 27:01

It really does. I mean, I've I've been listening to it this week, and obviously I don't have a an original copy to compare it to, but it I mean it does sound fantastic. It's you know, it's crisp and clear and just you know, it's an extraordinary sound. And and with some of the other records in Albain, so there's been a there's been a really interesting variety of um projects. One of them was the Dot Watson Life's Work uh compilation, um which you know that in itself, it's a very different project to do something like that compared to, for example, remastering Tony Rice's Backwaters to put that back out. It's it's such a that that must have been a pretty huge undertaking.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Yeah, I I co-produced that with Ted Olson. Um and uh we really did try to make the definitive statement on Doc Watson with that project. And working with Mitch Greenhill, who had been Doc's manager. Um Ted did most of the selection of the uh the songs that were included on that box set. Um there it it wasn't even all recordings that were um owned by Concord or or within the the craft universe, we had to go outside of uh craft and license a number of those tracks. So that that can take a while too. And um getting to the master tapes, that that can be a challenge sometimes, especially when you're licensing things. Um and it's interesting that in the digital world now, and this didn't apply so much to the Doc Watson set, but um digital recordings that were made, say, 20 years ago, are in a sense more fragile than the analog recordings that might have been made in the 70s or 80s, where you've got a piece of tape, and um but tape can be a bit fragile sometimes. There's this whole baking process of the the oxide starts to flake off the backing of the tape, and you have to bake it and make a transfer right away, and do it at really high res digital, and um get the best out of those tapes that you can. So there's an element of uh preservation here as well in recovering music that uh exists on a a physic physical media that that may be deteriorating as the years ago. It's the same thing in the film industry with old film. It's it's um it's a big job sometimes to recover what was there and bring it forward so that it's it's preserved in a sense in in time for for a long time now.

Matt 29:44

And there's there's a difference, there's a really interesting um kind of point as well. Like with something, for example, like Tony Rice's Church Street Blues, which he put out recently, that that had been transferred to CD. But my understanding of it is that a lot of those things were kind of transferred in a fairly quick fashion, tapes were shipped off, and you know I think it was Chris Eldridge mentioned to me that he thought that Tony wasn't massively happy with how some of those things had been transferred to CD because it was a new process, people hadn't necessarily been through it that much before.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Sure. And that's a really good point because the the original analog to digital converters, especially in the very early days of the manufacture of CDs, really weren't all that great. Um and the transfers were always made at CD resolution, which is a relatively um low resolution in terms of digital recording now. And um being able to get a hold of the original analog tapes, using up-to-date analog to digital technology to transfer the analog into the into the digital world, and then doing it in extremely high resolution, higher than anybody will ever hear, uh you're able to make something that sometimes I think they sound better than the LPs that came out in the first place. Um of the things that we've done and a number of records. Um we work in conjunction with analog productions in Kansas City, who sometimes do the mastering and the and the pressing of the LPs as well. Um but there's a high level of consciousness of trying to get the best sound that we can from the old older tapes, and um, as I say, sometimes deliver them in a way that that probably sounds better than anything that's ever come out before.

Matt 31:49

Well, and people's opportunity to own things like that on you know, sort of reasonably clean copy of the vinyl, something like Church Street Blues, for example, would probably have cost you like a hundred dollars to find a decent copy on the vinyl before that. So even if you could get one, loads of people wouldn't have been able to afford that.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Yes, absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Matt 32:11

And kind of what's the how is is there a sort of a cadence you aim to do a certain amount of reissues per year, or is it just very much project by project and it takes as long as it takes kind of basis?

SPEAKER_02 32:26

It's project by project. I mean, I worked on this Boon Creek reissue for probably three and a half years to bring it to fruition um with all the different legal things that needed to be worked out, and obviously recovering the sound from the tapes. And um at Kraft we've actually started a a new imprint um called High Tone Records. It's based on the high-tone label, but under that umbrella is going to be um the Americana bluegrass folk aspect of what we're doing. Uh, we did the same thing with the Bluesville label a couple of years ago, which was an imprint that Prestige had um was very active in the 1960s, especially with Bluesville, but that's now the umbrella, whether it's an Albert King record on Stacks or you know, maybe one of the original Bluesville records by somebody like Scrapper Blackwell, it's coming out all under the Bluesville umbrella. Um, and we've we've just started this new high-tone project for the Americana and Blue Ass and Folk and so forth. So the Boone Creek record falls under that umbrella. And um really that enables enables us to do just a bit more of a focused marketing job, um, especially the the online and social media promotion that goes into everything these days. Um so we're, you know, with Bluesville, we're we're doing, I think, eight a year now, and something like that with high tone too. So it's um I, you know, sometimes I wish we could just do everything. I I'd I'd love to get into the Savoy catalog, for instance, and and get more of that out there. But you know, you're sort of limited by time and resources to uh to do everything.

Matt 34:13

And what's the kind of appetite for these? I mean, you know, maybe maybe it varies by genre or by kind of type of music, but is it are you finding as much as you can tell that it's people buying these things who listen to them when they first come out and just want a a kind of a new better copy, or is it very much sort of a bunch of young music enthusiasts who just want something physical for a change, an actual connection with the music they listen to?

SPEAKER_02 34:42

I think it's a mix. Um uh the bluegrass world came a little bit late to streaming and so forth. It's um but now it's it's it's become a major part of bluegrass sales as it as it has for everything. But I think to a large degree, um people that weren't around when these records came out in the first place are able to discover them for the first time. Um Tony Rice, for example, um the LPs that we've we've released on Tony have been hugely successful. Um and an artist like Billy Strings, for instance, will proselytize about Tony Rice. I mean, this is the touchstone for him, Alison Krauss. For her, Tony Rice was was just such a pivotal musician and such a crucial influence in what she was doing. So um some younger artists in the bluegrass world um are helping to get the word out there just because that this music means so much to them. So I think we're seeing a new generation of people becoming involved with this music through some of the reissues that we're doing.

Matt 35:55

And it is surprising, kind of just it is, you know, maybe to the the larger world, the bluegrass and string band world is a bit of a niche market compared to a lot of music. But some of the the absolute sort of cornerstone records in that history, things like the first Grisman Quintet record or I don't know, Jerry, Russ, and Edgar Skip Hop and Wobble, you know, they're they're huge records that just aren't available, you know. Sure, sure. And it's it's great to see some of those things coming back out again.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Oh, it it is, and it's um I don't know, it it's very exciting to bring something forward that maybe hasn't been almost totally forgotten. I mean, with Bluesville, we just put out a record by the bluesman Eddie Crickland, who was uh an associate of John Lee Hooker's in Detroit, um recorded one album for this label called True Sound, which was a subsidiary of Prestige in the 1960s with King Curtis and his band recorded in New York. And um it's getting a good reception. I mean, it's it's you know, bringing something from out of nowhere, really, and and putting it back out again. It's it feels like a heavy response responsibility sometimes to uh make these decisions. I mean, I work closely with Mason Williams, who's the head of AR at Craft, and um it's uh we have so much to work with, and and yet we will we we want the records that we select to represent the absolute best of what we have and and to have the the as I say the source materials that we can put on something that's really spectacular when it comes to sound.

Matt 37:45

It's interesting. My um being over here in the UK, my first exposure to some of the the kind of random recordings was I worked in the early 90s, I worked for a chain of record stores called Andy's Records, which was an independently owned chain of records stores in the UK. It was run by a guy called Andy Gray, and he ran that, but he also ran a label called Beat Goes On. Oh, yeah. Which would which would reissue things like um Kentucky Colonels or some of the George Thurgood stuff, I think, came out on Beat Goes On over here in the UK. And so I'd hear these bits of American kind of not like history almost. Some of these records were 10-15 years old at that point, but just every time a new box of stuff came out, I'd be like, okay, so what's this? And that was that was my first exposure to a lot of this stuff. That first big boom of reissuing that happened when CDs hit. And Rounder were pretty quick to that, weren't they? The CD market was something Rounder got into very quickly.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Yes, and I think that was really due to the foresight of Bill Nallon, um, one of the three Rounder founders, who recognized that this was a technology that was going to um prevail. And and indeed it did become the the medium for a period of almost 30 years. It's not so much anymore, um, but it's still there. And it was really quite a uh, those were boom years at Rounder Records um when we started reissuing a lot of this music on CD because there were no other bluegrass CDs. Um there was the Ryko Disc label. Um they were friends of ours also in Massachusetts at the time, and they licensed a couple of compilations of bluegrass and blues and so forth and put them out on Ryko Disc, and they they were very successful as well. But um yeah, there just there weren't any other CDs in the market of a lot of this music at the time, and in a sense, we were ahead of the major labels on that. So it was it was definitely a a good time at Rounder. Um, and it again contributed to the growth of the label that uh enabled the success of somebody like Allison Krauss. Because with George Thorgood having his huge success on Rounder, at one point it became more than we could handle. George needed a bigger record company, somebody with the muscle to get the records out into the world at large, not just the U.S. And um to do the proper kind of promotion and distribution that would do justice to where George's career was going. So Rounder actually participated in signing George Surge to EMI Records after his third record with Rounder. Um by the time of Allison Kraus, we had a uh a general manager, we had a great director of marketing, um, we had a promotion person, Brad Paul, who had been on staff for a long time, but he he really grew with the job, and Rounder was actually able to do right by Allison Krauss and not have to sign her to a major label. Um and then, of course, in the later years after the success of the Robert Plant and Allison Krauss record, everybody wanted to be on Rounder. Um it was um it was akin to what happened with George Thorogood, um, where after his success, every blues and blues rock-oriented band that you can think of wanted to sign with Rounder because Rounder must have had this magic touch to do this with George Thorogood. Um and um yeah, it's it's endlessly fascinating to me to see how how the label continued to evolve and continue to grow to a point where we were releasing a hundred records a year and had over a hundred people on staff. In the early 2000s, it was um something that nobody could ever have predicted. The the three founders of Rounda Records didn't get into the record business to make money. Um they didn't ever think of themselves as having an AR department or a marketing director. Those would have been heresy to them if they'd heard those words in the in the first years of the label. Yet that's what happened.

Matt 42:05

Well, and all that, you know, that thing about people wanting to be on round, I can just imagine sort of a generation of younger pickers that coming through and sort of looking through their record collections at all the artists that inspired them, and like so much of that must have been records that come out on Roundup. And then you you sort of aspire to be on the label that your heroes were on, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Yes, absolutely.

Matt 42:28

It's part of the the ongoing kind of the the ongoing kind of genealogy of music, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 42:35

Yes, it absolutely is. And there were so many um musicians from the bluegrass world, the guitarist David Greer, for instance, or um or from country music, James King, who was just such a soulful um coming coming right out of Hank Williams. I mean, bearing his soul when he sang. I mean, there were records that people just believed in. I mean, how how could how could we not want to put out this record, listen to this guy sing? Um and um there are so many treasures like that in the Rounder catalog. Well over 3,000 records over the years came out on Rounder.

Matt 43:13

Yeah, and is there is there still sort of the chance that there's stuff in the archives that there are extra tracks of some of these records that never came out originally that sat around on tapes and we'll see the light of day one day.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The um at one point um at the rounder offices, we actually had our archive in the building with us. So it was uh climate-controlled humidity and air conditioning and so forth area, just this huge room full of tapes. And I just used to love to go in there and sometimes just look at the tapes. Um there were old bluegrass tapes from some of the reissues that Rounder had done. Um, Rounder did this whole early days of bluegrass series, and they're the these little seven-inch reels of tape, just mono or stereo that had been recorded in the in the 60s or even the 50s. Um there was a point when Rounder purchased the Rick and Ron record labels, which were two New Orleans labels from the early 1960s. Um, Irma Thomas made her first record on Rick and Ron, Johnny Adams, and so forth. And um just to go into the archive and and hold these tapes, there was a very uh well-regarded engineer in New Orleans named Cosmo Matassa, and there's his handwriting on the on the back of these little tape boxes. Um a few years ago, um, with that label in particular, I was able to go through and uh there was an engineer that I'd worked with named Adam Taylor, and he he was just so excited to see these Rick and Ron tapes, and um he ended up making high-resolution digital transfers of every one of them. So we discovered a number of unissued tracks there. We actually put out a box set of 1045 RPM records of stuff that had never been out on Rick and Ron before, just extending the series that were already there. And then we put it all up on the streaming services as um there were 140 songs at all. So there are there are seven records with 20 songs each up on up on the streaming services now, so you can hear the entire Rick and Ron catalog. Um, I think as we continue to delve into the uh bluegrass legacy at Rounder, there's no doubt that we're going to find more of those things.

Matt 45:38

And there must be that idea of just holding the tape in your hands and knowing that the engineer on that day kind of wound that tape onto the spool and that that physical thing was was there in the room capturing those those sounds. Is that's a magical thought, isn't it, is to hold that bit of history in your hands.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

It sure is. And it's very um it's fascinating too that um back in the days of multi-track analog recording, it was the responsibility of the assistant engineer to make track sheets. So each song had its own eight and a half by eleven page, little boxes for each of the 24 tracks on the tape. And in box one would be guitar, in box two would be mandolin, whatever. And the record keeping was fastidious. That was what was expected of the assistant engineer in a studio to provide that kind of documentation. So getting back to Boone Creek, we had those track sheets for this. It was a 16-track two-inch recording, which is actually probably the highest resolution of digital recording that anybody ever did. They had more real estate on a 16-track two-inch tape than you did on a 24-track two-inch tape for each of those tracks. So um Steve Reynolds, the mixing engineer, actually had those track sheets to look at. Um now, when people make a record, it the record keeping isn't often there in the digital world. I mean, you can label things on your files in in the actual program in which you're recording. So it's um it's a real gift when you open up a tape box tape box and you find these old track sheets showing you exactly what's on the tape. And um, you know, uh a credit to the to the prevailing system at the time that this kind of documentation was important.

Matt 47:38

I love the thought that somebody opened up a box and it's a track sheet for the very call that says like track 17 synth horns or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 47:45

Exactly, yes. Whoever did those synth horns was really good. I mean, the first time I I listened to it, I I said, well, horns, man. And they, you know, even the sack solo, it sounds sounds pretty credible, like somebody actually played it. But if you listen really closely, you'll hear that somebody's playing them on a keyboard.

Matt 48:04

It's amazing. I'm very much looking forward to talking to Jerry about what was going through their heads at that time.

SPEAKER_02 48:09

Yes. Oh, uh that'll be a fascinating conversation. Absolutely.

Matt 48:13

It's a fascinating document that's come out of a fascinating time in music. Um, and the the whole 50th anniversary thing is a lovely bit of serendipity because it's you know the 50th anniversary of that record and of you starting at RANDA and what lovely thing to celebrate. Um thanks for taking the time to talk to me about this. I've really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Oh Matt, you're very welcome. I really enjoyed sleeping with you as well. Yeah. And um good luck. I can't wait to hear the whole podcast, and I can't wait to hear what Jerry has to say.