THE GATEWAY DRUG TO COUNTRY- My Interview w/Sugarland

Sugarland was born and bred on the Atlanta music scene, where Kristian Bush played in Billy Pilgrim (which released two critically-acclaimed albums on Atlantic Records in the early ‘90s) and Jennifer Nettles fronted Soul Miner’s Daughter. But the glossy, polished sheen of their sound isn’t all that far removed from any number of country acts to emerge from Nashville’s Music Row.

 

Yet the dynamic duo has found a way to incorporate influences ranging from pop and rock to urban music, attracting hordes of fans who normally wouldn’t be caught dead at a country concert. The result is a string of #1 singles (including three from 2008’s Love On The Inside alone), a slew of awards (including two Grammys, an ACM and a CMT Award in 2009), and multi-platinum record sales in an industry struggling to survive a sagging economy.

 

We recently spoke with Bush as he was promoting the band’s Christmas album, Gold & Green, to find out why Sugarland’s sound is so damn hard to resist.

 

 

It’s been a pretty crazy ride for Sugarland these past 5 years. What have been the biggest rewards of watching all your hard work finally come to fruition?

 

The first is that slow dawning realization that hard work actually pays off. There’s also the wisdom that comes with experience. For many years I was the kid that wasn’t old enough, and everyone turned and headed the other way because it mattered that you had experience. So I feel the joy of it every day because I can really appreciate what’s happening now. I'm always in my skin, soaking it up. It makes for a very rich life.

 

You’d obviously been active on the Atlanta scene long before you and Jennifer hooked up. Did you always aspire to this level of success?

 

No, I'm pretty sure this is a dream. I remember the goals as they kept getting bigger and thinking, “Man, I would just love to get paid to make records!” Then I had the crazy idea that I needed to be on a major label, because the Indigo Girls and Michelle Malone had gotten a contract and these were people on the local scene that we could reach out and touch. Then when [Billy Pilgrim] did get a deal, it became about not getting flushed down the drain because Hootie got all the attention. I realized later that we were signed to that label primarily for critic cred, but I thought we were the next big thing! (Laughs)

 

Did you know when you started playing with Jennifer that the chemistry you guys had was special?

 

There are a lot of pieces to the combination lock that you need to have in order to have a shot at succeeding. We hadn’t really put them all together yet, but they were there. It was a learning lesson because [Billy Pilgrim partner] Andrew Hyra had such a good voice, but he wasn’t very interested in success. After we stopped working together, I wasn’t willing to work with anyone unless they were willing to succeed. That’s what comes with being in your thirties.

 

I’m not much of a country fan myself, but I find your music impossible to resist. What do you think is it about Sugarland that makes the music resonate so strongly with people?

 

I think country music is creating a lifestyle that goes with it. Our music doesn’t challenge that lifestyle, but it also doesn’t acknowledge it as a requirement in order to listen to the music. We’re moving away from requiring being part of a subculture in order to be to be associated with a music genre. Whether you’re 12 or 45, you can have Metallica, Jay-Z and Sugarland on your iPod and not be considered weird. I think you’re exactly right to say that we’re playing music that will appeal to a lot of folks. Country music is supporting us and, in this kind of market, that support is appreciated. In a lot of ways we’re championed as the doorman for country music. We’ll open the gateway!

 

It’s interesting hat you’ve been embraced by the country music establishment, yet your roots clearly include a lot of rock, folk and even urban music influences. Can you talk about that?

 

Sure. We actually really enjoy footnoting everything. We’re starting to really come to terms with who is influencing us, and not shying away from that. If I had to play my iPod right now, you would have a laugh a minute! I'm a gigantic U2 fan, I’m digging the new Pearl Jam single, and I really love They Might Be Giants, the way they combine clever lyrics with primarily pop melodies. No matter what you say about them you can't get their songs out of your head, and they make me– even at the age of 37– want to dance. What can I learn from that? I think in Sugarland we’re consumers of music to such a huge degree, and this stuff matters to us. What we try to do is to translate all that into country music, because this is the only genre of music nowadays where you can be openly sentimental.

 

Do you ever find yourself having to reign in your more experimental inclinations to maintain a distinctive Sugarland sound?

 

There’s a certain amount of politics that I don't like to go into because it seems to be a flash bed of controversy in country music.

 

So it’s more about the lyrical content than the musical direction?

 

With our musical direction we’re in a very interesting place. No matter what we do, Jennifer sings it with a country flavor, so I can throw a very wide palette of influences in front of you. I also think that the songs that we write are very emotional. You have to be honest.

 

The band’s sound seems to be getting bigger and more expansive as your fan base grows. Have there ever been any discussions about doing a more stripped-down album that returns to your folksy roots?

 

I think we can do both, because we get a lot of creative leeway from our fans. There was a song called “Stay” that we did and that was literally just me on guitar and Jennifer singing. It became a big radio hit (not to mention their first platinum single), which was really improbable based on the fact that country music requires a 5-minute acoustic ballad to be within their comfort range. We’ve been invited to play at the Grand Ol’ Opry, and that's something we'd really like to do. So we’ve basically been given permission to go in any direction we want, and that's almost like a fairytale for an artist. But if you had to pick a couple of people with the highest respect for that kind of privilege, it would be the two of us.

 

2009’s Live On The Inside was one of the better live CD/DVDs I’ve heard or seen. What was the intent behind releasing that?

 

Thank you! We really liked our show and knew that we weren't gonna get to all the cities we wanted to play, so we thought this would be a great idea to spread the word. The label didn't help us out with it and we only had enough money to record one show, so we recorded it from as many camera angles as we could. We approached the major TV networks to see if they were interested and ABC said yes. We were shocked and excited, so then the label decided to put it out as a CD and it became a part of the release cycle. We added the DVD because we’re very conscientious of our fans spending their hard-earned money, and we want to give them some value-added content.

 

Now you’re releasing a holiday album just two months later. Are there any concerns at this point of becoming overexposed?

 

Well, we’ve had that planned all year. We’ve found that our art leads our commerce, rather than the other way around. The DVD thing kind of appeared as a result of us creating the art, which generated some challenges for our record company. (Laughs) But Christmas records have been a passion of mine for many years. During my early years in Atlanta, I’d record Christmas records for my friends as gifts, doing different versions of the holiday songs and hymns I knew. When we got approached with this idea I wanted to challenge ourselves to write some Christmas classics. We’re really good songwriters, so we wrote five of the 10 songs ourselves. I’m fascinated to hear what people think of it.

 

What’s coming up next for the band?

 

Our tour ended in October and then we just came back to Atlanta and crawled in a hole. The next thing on the horizon will likely be recording a new album, and then we’ll go on tour next year, maybe in April or May, and then go back to Europe.

 

(originally appeared in Georgia Music Magazine)

 

HOME GROWN- Zac Brown's Slow, Steady Steps To Stardom

I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand / Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand / Life is good today / Life is good today”

 

The north Georgia mountain town of Dahlonega, which is set at the foothills of the Appalachian range, is primarily known for three things: Gold, as it was the site of the very first gold rush in the United States (which began in 1829 and lasted until the California gold rush began in 1848); wine, with five popular vineyards and wineries in Lumpkin County alone; and bluegrass, the sound of which fills the city’s charming town square every year during the Bear On The Square and Gold Rush Days festivals.

 

It’s a peaceful, pastoral place to raise a family, but it’s also proven surprisingly fertile ground for nurturing musical fruit (particularly when you consider it had less than 4,000 residents as of the last census). Indigo Girl Amy Ray lived here for a while, as did Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles and Widespread Panic frontman John Bell. But perhaps none of Dahlonega’s famous former residents embodies the Southern spirit of this small town as much as Zac Brown, whose bluegrass-influenced brand of booze-soaked country-rock recently garnered him his first certified Gold album, The Foundation.

Although his genre-defying sound has been compared to everyone from Jimmy Buffett to Dave Matthews, Brown grew up steeped in Appalachian culture, living the sort of traditional country life that he would eventually write about with such warmth and affection in songs like “Toes” and “Chicken Fried.” Speaking via telephone during a recent tour stop in Hawaii, the singer-songwriter remembered his childhood growing up in Dahlonega and the even smaller town of Cumming.

 

“Most of my brothers and sisters are older– the oldest is 21 years older than me– so a lot of them were in college or had families of their own by the time I was growing up. My dad had been through so many kids that I was able to throw knives at 4 years old.  When I was 10,” he admits with an incredulous laugh, “there’s a picture of me dragging a shotgun though the dirt. My dad taught me how to fish and hunt and do things outdoors. After school we’d always go fishing or swimming, going out on the lake or playing in the Chestatee River and just spending time outside, which was great.”

 

Influenced in part by his father (who played guitar) and mother (who sang in the church choir), Brown began his musical education very early in life. He started studying classical guitar at the age of seven and, by his own admission, played his guitar everywhere he went. He got his first CD player shortly thereafter, getting CDs from Garth Brooks, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles before expanding his collection to include classic ‘60s and ‘70s singer-songwriters such as James Taylor, Jim Croce, Dan Fogelberg, Gordon Lightfoot, America and Bread.

 

But one of his biggest musical influences came in the form of his older brother, Wen. “He played guitar and banjo, so he’s the one that got me into bluegrass music. He had a really cool beach house in Destin,” Brown recalls warmly, “so every year I’d go down to visit and learn how to pick. At the time I was learning how to do classical stuff, so I had very good finger coordination and was able to play some pretty intricate stuff on the guitar. But I’d never used a pick before and didn’t know what chords were, so I was running around summer camp asking people how to play them. So I went from classical to learning about bluegrass. Music was always a big part of my life; I was either listening to it or trying to make it.”

 

By the age of 14, as a student at South Forsyth High School, Brown had begun writing bits and pieces of so many songs that his parents were often being called about their son’s constant daydreaming. By his own admission, “I have a lot of nervous energy and my brain kinda drifts off.” In his spare time he sang in the choir and in a barbershop quartet, but he got his first clue that music might eventually become his career the day when, at the age of 15, he got to open for Atlanta-based singer-songwriters Shawn Mullins and Matthew Kahler at a Dahlonega coffee shop.

 

“As everything got a little further along I was starting to play the folk stuff,” he recalls of his early artistic evolution, “and when I heard them sing I was like, ok, this is what I want to do. [In your teen years] you experience love and relationships and you have that first real heartache where you think you’re gonna die.  You just think your life is over.  So that was what I was writing about then, just to get through it. Even now when I listen back to those songs, I realize music has an amazing way of getting you through your trials and tribulations.”

But troubled romance wasn’t the only struggle Brown had to endure on the long and winding road to success in the music business. True to his blue-collar roots, the singer recalls working a series of odd jobs that he insists gave him a better foundation for writing songs that speak straight to the heart of anyone raised in the South.

 

“I’ve worked everywhere,” he says with a laugh. “I worked at McDonalds. I worked at this place called the Wagon Wheel, which was a catfish restaurant where I’d work in the back frying up fish. I worked as an apprentice jeweler for a year when I was 15. I owned my own restaurant near Lake Oconee (called Zac’s Place) and had all my own recipes. I built the place out and my dad helped me with all the start-up paperwork, helped me get the funding together and everything I needed to get it started. It was running good for a year and a half, but land developers came in and bought everything around it and shut everything down. They’re in foreclosure now, so it’s funny how everything works out. So I know how to get my hands dirty, and I think knowing what that means absolutely can help you [as a songwriter], because if you never know anything else but music then you expect to be taken care of. I’ve been the person I write about in my music since day one.”

 

“Adios and vaya con dios / A long way from GA / Someone do me a favor and pour me some Jaeger / And I’ll grab my guitar and play”

By 2004 the singer-songwriter had decided to eschew the solo route in favor of forming the Zac Brown Band. Bassist John Hopkins and fiddler extraordinaire Jimmy de Martini were the first to join, with Coy Bowles (guitar, organ) and drummer Chris Fryar coming into the fold later. Their self-released debut album, Far From Einstyne, came out that year, with Home Grown released a year later. But it was largely through intense, extended stretches of touring that the band initially began making a name for themselves.

 

“We took off and were playing six hours a night for five nights a week when we got our first tour going,” Brown recalls proudly. “We had negotiated with a club in Panama City to pay us $150 a night, but it was a guarantee if we did 10 nights in a row for six hours a night for $1500, and we toted our own gear. That was just the way we traveled. This is my 13^th year of touring and we’ve done over 3000 shows, and our shows are typically four hours long.”

 

It’s an old school, grassroots approach to building up a fan base that goes in direct contradiction to the current wisdom of using MySpace marketing, or a hot iTunes single, or the perfect placement of a song in a hit TV show or film to create an overnight success story. But if Brown is to be believed, he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

 

“I think it’s so valuable that you should have to go through the trenches and really learn how to entertain people,” he insists passionately. “Whether it’s five people at a bar or 15,000 people at an arena, it’s invaluable that the hard work gets done. There are a lot of ways now for people to try to get exposure so that they can become famous before they become accomplished. It’s kinda backwards, but people who really love music and dedicate their life to music can see through that. Whereas the general public might only listen to that one song or two hit songs, and assume that that artist can come up with more.  I’m proud to be of the school that dedicates their lives to music, like Willie Nelson. Guys like him, they go out and work hard. Even if you think you can become famous through a reality show or TV and think you can have this huge career, it can only last so long. You have to work hard.”

 

If Brown seems to take pride in this blue-collar work ethic, he’s even more proud of the fact that, as a result of all this dedication to their craft, the Zac Brown Band has become a family off the road as well as on. He’s had the same band, the same engineer, even the same photographer for the last five years, gradually working their way up to performing in 2,000-seat venues (including a high-profile 2006 set at the Bonnaroo Music Festival) even before country radio made them into stars.

 

According to Brown, the addition of multi-instrumentalist Clay Cook to the band’s lineup was the final piece that perfected the puzzle. “He’s the icing on the cake for me,” he says of the former John Mayer, Shawn Mullins and Sugarland sideman. “I think he’s one of the best musicians for his age– an incredible singer, incredible instrumentalist, incredible songwriter. He’s real out there with harmony, letting his voice lead on certain songs. I’m a big fan of his as well. I know it’s my name on the band, but we’re always making the best music that we possibly can, so I’m proud to have him in the band and I’m proud to sing backup as he sings. I think that, as we sing more songs that he’s written, we will become a force to be reckoned with, because it just keeps getting better and better.”

 

But as much as he may want to credit Cook for the band’s recent string of successes (which include two hit singles and an award from the Academy of Country Music for Top New Vocal Duo or Group), it’s a song Brown wrote before the band was even formed that made them an overnight success story four years in the making. “Chicken Fried,” his homage to country-living staples such as cold beer and chicken-fried steak, was written in 2003 and recorded for the Home Grown album, then recorded by Atlanta’s Lost Trailers before Brown decided to re-record it and release it as a single last November. The song shot to #1 on the Billboard country charts, making the Zac Brown Band the first “new” act to reach the top spot with their debut single since Heartland’s “I Loved Her First” in 2006.

 

Even Brown seems surprised by the single’s continued success, which includes over a million copies sold to date. “It’s unbelievable how many singles sell in a week after it’s been a year. I did not know that it was going to have the wheels that it has,” he confesses. Asked what makes the song so durable, he muses that,  “It’s us talking about things that we feel genuinely matter. It’s not about how big our farm is or how big our car’s wheels. It’s real, and I think [its success] is a sign of the times. You watch the news these days and you just wanna kill yourself, so it’s important that people be reminded of what’s really important.”

 

But of course Platinum sales success rarely builds based on talent and touring alone. Last year saw the band inking a couple of high-profile deals that quickly put their name on the national music map, starting with being chosen as the first group signed to Live Nation’s fledgling record label. Unfortunately when Chairman Michael Cole resigned from the company to serve as an independent consultant, Live Nation shelved its label plans and went back to its previous business model as the world’s largest concert promotion company. But fortunately, it took mere months for Brown to ink a new contract with Atlantic Records.

 

“Live Nation paid us to leave, so we were able to strike a partnership with Atlantic.” Better still, Brown’s years spent on the road building up a fervent following gave him an enormous amount of bargaining power when it came time to hammer out his first major label deal. “I was able to sign a pure split with Atlantic, so we were at the best possible leveraging point that we could be in with the negotiations. Southern Grounds is my record label, and now we’re working with helping some people out of Atlanta (including singer-songwriters Sonia Leigh, Nic Cowan and Levi Lowrey), having them come out on the road and open up for us and helping them to get their CD’s distributed. I’ll be producing their new records in August while I’m home.”

 

While helping lesser-known artists get a foothold in the music biz is certainly a priority on Brown’s increasingly busy to-do list, he’s also far from content to let the Zac Brown Band rest on its laurels. Although country radio has certainly welcomed the band with open arms, the man himself has bigger aspirations, using the global grassroots success of his idol Dave Matthews as a career blueprint and fusing the traditional sounds of country with the more eclectic approach indigenous to the jam band circuit.

 

“I don’t think anyone’s ever done what Dave Matthews has done as far as building a grassroots fan base,” Brown insists. “I really look up to Dave for the band that he put together, for building a fan base, and for his creativity and longevity. I’m Southern, but we’re diverse as a band and country is essentially pop music now. We definitely have a place in country music, because that’s where honest songs about life are most at home. But with the new record that we’re working on right now, we’re doing some serious jamming, and there’s a little bit of everything, from country to island reggae. I think we can achieve that kind of following as far as what Dave’s done, making it a total experience for the fans and giving a really good 3-hour show where everyone gets into it.”

 

It should be noted that, when complimented on his cover of Ray LaMontagne’s “Jolene” and asked about what other contemporary singer-songwriters he admires, the first batch of names Brown lists doesn’t have a single country artist among them. Damien Rice, Ryan Adams, David Gray and the Wood Brothers are among his favorites, with Brad Paisley, Eric Church and Jimmy Johnson getting plugs in the country world.

 

 

“Adios and vaya con dios / Going home now to stay / Just gonna prop up by the lake / Put my ass in a lawn chair / Toes in the clay / Not a worry in the world, a PBR on the way / Life is good today / Life is good today / Life is good today”

 

 

While his current musical influences may originate far away from Georgia’s red clay, Brown seems to keep much of his focus on the home front, even when he’s thousands of miles away. He has a wife and two young daughters back in Mableton (with a third on the way in September), with most of his friends and family still located nearby. And his old stomping grounds in Dahlonega? Well, that’s the planned site for his Homegrown Camp, a non-profit camp designed to teach kids about diversity, teamwork, nutritional awareness and life skills as well as music and art.

”It’s actually in the start-up stages,” Brown says of the non-profit venture. “We’ve got the land and we’re working on doing some clearing and breaking ground on it. We’ll have around 150 kids at a time, and it’ll be a mixture of kids whose parents send them for a week and scholarship kids who are underprivileged or mentally challenged.  We’ve got a holistic platform based on nutrition, and our partners have had huge success treating kids that have autism via brain stimulation and nutrition. We’re building their first treatment center for kids that require extended stay, and building a whole camp to teach kids about things they don’t learn at home or in the school system.”

 

And in the meantime, Brown will continue to focus on his band’s five-year plan. “Five years from now we’re gonna be better as musicians, playing and writing songs all the time. We’re gonna have our own stage production out on the road with us so that we can accompany our music with video screens and other background images. We’ve been kicking around a cartoon idea that we’ve been working on, and we’ve been working on a 10-minute 3-D music video that we can play during the show so that we can actually change the set. I wanna be on the level of Union Station, where the musicianship is second to none. I just want us to grow as a band. And every show of ours that someone comes to see, I want them to see us as that much better…”

 

(originally appeared in Georgia Music Magazine)

 

THE PIXAR OF MUSIC- Atlanta's Dust-To-Digital

DUST TO DIGITAL

MOVING MUSIC FORWARD BY PLUMBING ITS PAST

 

To say that college radio DJ-turned-record label entrepreneur Lance Ledbetter is a throwback to a simpler time in music history would be a massive understatement. Though he may not venture out into the field and make his own recordings á la Alan Lomax, Ledbetter’s affinity for little known gospel, blues, bluegrass, country and folk music of the early 1900s has made him into the 21st century’s answer to Harry Smith. And his critically acclaimed, Atlanta-based boutique label, Dust To Digital, is now introducing old-time music to a whole new generation of fans.

 

Ledbetter traces his intense connection to music back to his teen years, long before exposure to Smith’s extremely influential American Anthology of Folk Music sent him digging into dusty record collectors’ vast archives in search of undiscovered treasures.

 

“I guess it goes back to 8th or 9th grade,” he recalls warmly, “when I started to realize that this great indie rock my peer group was into was largely coming from certain record labels. Each label had its own sound and recruited certain artists that shared that aesthetic, and there were certain labels I started to trust so much that I’d buy everything they put out.”

 

Ledbetter, who grew up in a small Georgia town about 20 minutes outside Chattanooga, name-checks seminal indies such as SST, Dischord, Touch & Go, Homestead, Matador and Merge, remembering long pre-Internet afternoons spent at local record stores, scouring the bins and talking to knowledgeable clerks in an attempt to stay on top of the latest releases. But his first experience in the music industry came years later when he moved to Atlanta, where he ended up working as a DJ at Georgia State University’s student-run radio station, WRAS (a.k.a. Album 88), and interning at an indie label called Table The Elements.

 

“At that point I’d become exposed to music magazines and heard the buzz about the Smithsonian Folkways reissue of Harry Smith’s American Anthology of Folk Music on CD. It sounded very intriguing, and I got a copy through a friend of mine at WREK who got a bunch of them at the DJ rate. I took it back to my apartment, read the accompanying book and listened to it all night. It was one of those life-changing moments,” he admits, “because I never knew much about that era of music. That anthology just opened this huge door for me.”

 

Ledbetter’s newfound passion for this raw, rootsy sound made him fast friends with fellow DJ Brian Montero, host of WRAS’ Sunday morning show, 20th Century Archives. Initially united by their mutual love of John Fahey, Montero eventually invited Ledbetter to sit in on his show, which exposed him to a whole new world of old time music and convinced him to start expanding his library of music.

 

“[Brian] eventually decided to leave the station and was looking for somebody to take over the show, so I asked him if I could take a crack at it. I started going to record stores and trying to expand the show, basically learning about music in front of everyone. I had an easy time finding country, blues and jazz reissues from that area, but had a hard time tracking down gospel,” which he says sparked the initial fire of inspiration that eventually led to the creation of Dust To Digital.

 

“I was listening to all of this gospel music for my radio show,” he continues, “and I realized it was something that not a lot of people had access to. I wanted to share this music with people, and I spent four and a half years trying to figure out how to go about doing that. I found so much great material that the idea ended up going from a single CD to a 6-CD boxed set, but I had the idea for this gospel release long before I had the idea for a record label.”

 

His research for the project that would eventually come to be known as Goodbye, Babylon soon led Ledbetter to a Maryland-based record collector named Joe Bussard, who began sending him cassette recordings of his remarkably expansive 78rpm record library. It took Ledbetter 18 months to make his way through the massive gospel music collection, listening to two cassettes per week and intently scrutinizing the music and lyrics of each song with a well-honed critical ear. If the Harry Smith anthology had captured his curiosity, it was Bussard’s collection that quickly converted him into a true believer.

 

“One thing that jumped out for me was the passion that people sang with back then,” Ledbetter says, his laid-back Southern drawl suddenly rising with intensity. “They were singing for their souls, singing about sin and the rudiments of Christian religion, and I think the results were a lot more compelling and engaging than the music you hear on gospel radio stations today. The music people were making 80 years ago was much more salt-of-the-earth, dealing with everyday problems with a lot more feeling. And of course historically there was a lot more going on back then in America, such the Great Depression. Nowadays it’s very easy to have a convenient lifestyle, so people don’t seem to sing about the problems of their daily lives as much anymore.”

 

It took Ledbetter more than four years to assemble the Goodbye, Babylon collection, whittling down a batch of over 300 songs to 160 spread over six CDs. He also single-handedly oversaw virtually every step of the production process, from sequencing the tracks to hand-packing the Georgia cotton that came in each boxed set.

 

“I had to figure out everything from how to set up a business, to how to license the material, to learning how to do graphic design for the boxed set and lay out a 200-page book, to getting the records mastered,” he recalls with an air of amazement, almost as if realizing the sheer scope of the project for the first time. “It was a huge ordeal and took so much time, but I just kept at it. I had a day job working on computers for the first three years before I got laid off, then I worked 80 hours a week doing Goodbye, Babylon for the last year and a half.”

 

Clearly the results paid off exponentially, as Goodbye, Babylon earned universal critical acclaim, rave reviews from music legends like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and Grammy nominations for Best Historical Album and Best Boxed Set. Ledbetter admits that his pet project’s ultimate success was beyond his wildest dreams.

 

“I could not have been more surprised! Nobody knew who we were,” he admits, ‘so I was thinking we’d make 1000 of them, sit on ‘em for two to three years, and maybe somewhere down the road it might get someone’s attention. I figured I’d have to get another day job and we’d get back to our daily lives. But we were extremely fortunate that a lot of people fell in love with it, got the message we were trying to convey and really enjoyed the music.”

 

In a rapidly evolving marketplace hungry for authentic roots music, Goodbye, Babylon came down like manna from heaven, selling thousands of units at over $100 a pop. Subsequent critically acclaimed releases such as a Fonotone Records boxed set, I Belong to This Band (the soundtrack to Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp) and two 4-CD volumes of The Art of Field Recording have proven equally impressive, establishing Dust To Digital as the sort of prestigious record label Ledbetter might have sworn allegiance to in his youth. With the gospel collection Take Me To The Water recently earning the label yet another Grammy nomination for Best Historical album, I ask Ledbetter if there might be a Goodbye, Babylon sequel on the horizon.

 

“Oh yeah, I think about it a lot,” he says emphatically. “We’re really fortunate because Goodbye, Babylon came out five years ago, and in that time we’ve had people like Art Rosenbaum and Dick Spotteswood come into our lives. These guys are highly intelligent and have great taste in music, and they’ve been bringing some great projects to us. Dust To Digital has now become a sort of collaborative effort, and in a year of time we can accomplish a great deal. Next year we’re doing a boxed set of Georgia music, and that’ll be more like Goodbye, Babylon is the sense that it’ll be more the product of my personal effort. I look forward to that, and then maybe down the road we’ll revisit gospel music.”

 

In the meantime, Ledbetter believes that his homegrown company is on the right path business-wise, and seems content to maintain Dust To Digital’s impressive legacy via slow, steady growth. “Really the goal is just to keep creating these cultural artifacts and maintaining our aesthetic of bridging the gap between the modern day of 2010 with the old days of 1928 with releases that marry the two. There really isn’t a grand scheme for what we need to accomplish,” he insists, “because I think we’re already doing it. I think we just need to keep at it and keep moving forward.” –BRET LOVE

(originally appeared in Georgia Music Magazine)