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Homegrown Music

Last Updated (Monday, 26 May 2008 22:30) Written by The Ithaca Times Wednesday, 14 September 2005 00:00

Homegrown Music By: bryan vancampen This week, I have been drowning - no, luxuriating - in beautiful music. The reason is that our own I-Town Records, founded by John Brown's Body frontman Kevin Kinsella in 1996, has decided to release five new albums by some of Ithaca's favorite musicians simultaneously.

Follks can watch out for the wispy and ethereal Glen the Owl (a first-time collaboration between the Sim Redmond Band and FiveTwo's Uniit Carruyo and Billy Cote); Trevor MacDonald's plaintive, countryish solo effort Porch Light; self-titled releases from reggae powerhouses Jsan and the Analogue Sons and Thousands of One - Jsan's samples and mad-scientist dub style could scarcely be more different than Thousands of One's more streamlined, classic songcraft; and a flat-out masterpiece from Crow Greenspun, a confident mix of everything from hip-hop to back porch finger-picking called Blood and Decision.

I-Town has been growing by leaps and bounds in the past nine years. They now have a catalog of more than 50 albums and an artist roster of 26 songwriters and bands. I-Town sales rep and local musician Sean Kobuk admits that the label has never launched this much music all at once before, but then nothing about I-Town is typical of the way record labels are run. Talk to any of the artists who record for them, and the word that comes up most often is "community."

"There's a huge community and a pool [of musicians]," says MacDonald, "and it's always mixing together. It's hard to gauge sometimes; it's not like we only play shows together, but the community of I-Town and Ithaca has a lot of support and it comes through in a million ways. This town is totally unique in that way, where the music scene is very original. And as a result, all the other people who are doing that are influenced and helped to get that done ... I-Town definitely facilitates that." He adds, "The mission originally was never to make a record label in the traditional sense. It was to break those guidelines and come up with something that was supported by the community and the artists."

Greenspun, who heard about I-Town through his pal Sim Redmond, says, "People get together and brainstorm about marketing and tactics. The money to do things comes from the bands, and that's why I think it can be open in that way. It's a collective."

Uniit Carruyo met her husband, I-Town's Kevin Kinsella, when she was releasing her first solo album back in 2001. She says, "The unique quality about I-Town isn't just a lot of talent and a lot of productive musicians. It is that sense of community. The thing that keeps me coming back to I-Town is that spirit of working together. Whenever you have a lot of people doing something similar, there's always the opportunity to compete and to compare; I-Town is a real support system."

There is no one way of working at I-Town. Greenspun works at REP Studios, and so he recorded his album whenever there was studio downtime. He paid for mastering at Pyramid Sound. Likewise, MacDonald recorded some of Porch Light at home and at Electric Wilburland Studios. Billy Coté recorded Glen the Owl at home, along with Mary Lorsen - who played on one track (Coté was the main songwriter and guitarist for Madder Rose from 1992 through 1999, and currently plays with Lorsen in Saint Low and with Jennie Stearns). Of I-Town, Coté - who isn't signed on to the record label (he and Lorsen are aligned with a London label called Cooking Vinyl) - says, "I don't think I-Town gets in the way of an artist's vision, they're artist friendly."

Thousands of One - Jhakeem Haltom on vocals, conga and flute; saxophone player Regan Carver; bassist Brent Eva; guitarist Tom Sayers; and drummer Joel Blizzard - were putting the finishing touches on their self-titled debut album last May and were invited to release it on I-Town Records.

"It was a bit of a rush to make it all happen by our release party in July, but we are very grateful to have been given that flexibility," says Blizzard. "Thousands of One would not be what it is without the support of the I-Town community and the wider Ithaca community as well. As we considered our options and looked into offers from out-of-town labels and such, we considered the adage 'grow where you are planted.'"

Jsan agrees. "The basic model [for I-Town] is unique and daring as well. The model the major labels use is on built on the dollar bill and therefore is a short-term plan, [and] impossible to nurture new talent into lasting, evolving artists." His band - which includes Mike Stark, Matt Saccucci-Morano, Lee Hamilton and Alejandro

Bernard - is already recording their next album for release early next year and will tour Europe in December.

With so much wonderful stuff out and in the pipeline, I-Town now looks to the future of music and marketing. With ipods, file-sharing and Web sites siphoning off much of the majors' dominance, Kobuk points out that they still rule the marketplace, and so I-Town is searching for other means of distributions and promotion.

"Just in the last few weeks, we've gotten e-mail from download.com for a new music section," Kobuk says. "We're also going to try to have direct contact with Napster and itunes. I downloaded Napster just to check it out and saw a couple of Sim's records and Patti Witten's records, a good five or six I-Town records. It would be great to have as many artists [there] as possible."