INTERVIEW: Basin Street Records celebrates 20 years of NOLA music
Mark Samuels is ready to have a party.
As president of Basin Street Records in New Orleans, Samuels is at the epicenter of Crescent City sounds, helping to release original music from some of the most noteworthy musicians in the industry. On his independent label are Kermit Ruffins, Dr. Michael White, Davell Crawford, Irvin Mayfield and Henry Butler, among others. He’s also released albums from Jon Cleary, Jeremy Davenport, Rebirth Brass Band, Jason Marsalis, Los Hombres Calientes, Headhunters and Theresa Andersson.
What began as a small idea back in 1997 has blossomed into a NOLA success story that continues to pump out CDs, concerts and new fans. Recently, Samuels could be seen sitting on the Jackson Square Stage at French Quarter Fest taking in the trumpet playing of arguably his most well-known artist, Ruffins, who was delivering a high-powered set with the Barbecue Swingers.
There have been numerous ups and downs. Artists have gone on to win Grammy Awards, while others have broadened their touring schedules to bring their sounds to other parts of the world. Ruffins is a mainstay at French Quarter Fest, Jazz Fest, the Blue Nile, Little Gem Saloon and other locations around town, but when he travels to New York City, he’s also able to sell out the legendary Blue Note Jazz Club.
Many of the artists on the label have high aspirations and long-term projects. Crawford is working on a Piano in the Vaults series of recordings, while White has enjoyed a couple Adventures in New Orleans Jazz. Davenport continues to hold court over his own music space in the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street in New Orleans. Rebirth Brass Band won the Grammy for Rebirth of New Orleans and followed up that effort with Move Your Body. Butler is playing almost every night of this year’s Jazz Fest, including two gigs Sunday, May 7 at Snug Harbor.
Streaming, however, has created an unpredictable business model. As the listening public has shifted to other modes of receiving music, Basin Street has had to change their CD-and-cassette mentality. Another challenge, which has been documented in the local press, involves Mayfield and an ongoing controversy. On all these fronts, Basin Street seems to be focusing on the future, recently releasing Irvin Mayfield & The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Live at Newport and planning out a year of festivities.
There’s certainly a lot of news and entertainment coming from this label. To celebrate their 20th anniversary, Basin Street Records will hold a year of special events and recordings. The kickoff is a multilayered concert at NOLA’s Little Gem Saloon in the CBD. That event takes place Friday, May 5 during Jazz Fest, and fans who are not in town can check out the concerts through a Facebook stream.
Recently, Hollywood Soapbox talked with Samuels about the milestone. Here’s what he had to say:
On a special 20th anniversary album …
“We have been working on a record with the help of the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau that is a 20th anniversary celebration centered on Kermit Ruffins, produced and engineered by Irvin Mayfield at Esplanade Studios. I think we’ve probably paid 40 or more musicians so far. There are greats that are involved or will be involved in the record. It’s probably about 80 percent complete, and it’s scheduled for release at the end of September, which coincides with our actual formation of our company anniversary, which was September of 1997 anticipating the recording of Kermit’s first record with us that later occurred in November. So that’s one of the very special highlights of our 20th anniversary year celebration.”
On the kickoff party at the Little Gem Saloon …
“We’re kicking it off at the Little Gem Saloon on May 5 during Jazz Fest this year with a celebration. We’ll have music upstairs and downstairs in the Little Gem. We’re going to start the night with Jason Marsalis Vibes Quartet followed by the battle between Kermit Ruffins and Irvin Mayfield, followed by a set upstairs by Henry Butler and friends. Back downstairs again with Dr. Michael White and back upstairs again with Davell Crawford and One Foot in the Blues. We’ll be celebrating that night with those five sets of music, each about 40 minutes long. We’re planning on streaming it live on our Facebook page at Facebook.com/BasinStreetRecords, and we will also be capturing that night on video and with great audio to put it together for a variety of purposes, imncluding the promotion of our artists throughout our 20th anniversary. And perhaps if it all works out great perhaps we’ll release those sets commercially both video and audio.”
On other 20th anniversary events …
“In addition, this year we are planning on releasing a number of records. One that I know is in the can is Jason Marsalis’ next album. I also expect to release at least one, if not two more, of Davell Crawford’s Piano in the Vaults, and a couple of artists, three of our artists, have green lights to work on their own records and have us release them this year. So we should have a very, very busy year. The other thing that we plan on doing is releasing compilations of our artists that have recorded a lot with us, namely Kermit Ruffins and Irvin Mayfield and Los Hombres Calientes, Jason Marsalis and Dr. Michael White. We’re going to be curating ‘best of’ collections for those artists and also releasing digital collections of their complete catalogs, so that people will have an option of buying everything they’ve got on digital platforms for really sweet prices.”
On what can fans expect this year …
“We want to make a splash. We want to look back at what we have been able to do [throughout] 20 tumultuous years in the music business and in New Orleans life, and we also want to make a statement that we have the ability to be here for the future and that we have a strong feeling about the value of music, the value that our artists bring to life through their love and passion and soul. Without music, life is not nearly as interesting.”
On the foundation of Basin Street Records …
“It started out with Tom Thompson, who was Kermit’s manager and booking agent for a very long time, I believe. He’s no longer doing that, but he was for about 23 years. I was approached by Tom to invest in a Kermit Ruffins live record, and that was a result of me just simply being a music fan, being a fan of Kermit and participating in the production of a couple of jazz showcases just for the fun of it for the Cutting Edge Music Business Conference back, I think, in 1996 and ’95. …
“I was in the energy business at the time, and I was fighting with business partners. And I knew that I … was ultimately going to do something else, but just for the fun of it, I did some music stuff. … Those conversations with Tom led not to just simply investing in a lot of recordings but in starting a record label together, and it was really just geared as a night and weekend hobby.”
On that first recording with Kermit Ruffins …
“We decided … that we would start the label, that we record a Kermit Ruffins live album and that we would release it, and that was really the extent of the thought process at that moment in September of ’97 when we formed the LLC. I was still in the energy business, and I got out on nights and weekends and put flyers on car windows, posters on telephone polls. And we packed Tipitina’s for a sold out show where we recorded it live, and then a few months later, when we released his album, The Barbecue Swingers Live, we did the same thing. We put flyers on telephone polls, posters out and packed the place again and released an album, and then we sold CDs and actually cassettes as well at the French Quarter Fest that year and at Jazz Fest. That record was one of the very top sellers.”
On finding Los Hombres Calientes …
“After we released Kermit’s record in February, I ran into Irvin Mayfield at the Funky Butt jazz club now defunct on Rampart Street. He was sitting in with a friend of mine who plays drums … and that was on March 7, 1998, and I had read two stories about a band he had put together called Los Hombres Calientes with Bill Summers and Jason Marsalis. And I just said something.
“I knew Irvin a little bit, and I knew Jason a lot because I had been in high school band with both Wynton Marsalis and Delfeayo Marsalis and used to go to their house periodically and check music out with Delfeayo. So I’ve known Jason since he was about 3, but in any case, that band led by Bill Summers, Jason Marsalis and Irvin Mayfield had done two shows, one at Snug Harbor and one at the Funky Butt. And there was an article in Gambit and, I think, also one in Offbeat about how great they were.
“I had not heard them, but Irvin and I started talking about it at the set break. And I said, ‘I read that you all want to have a record out this year.’ He said, ‘You’re doing pretty good with Kermit so far.’ It had only been out for maybe a month, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Are you interested in putting it out?’ I said, ‘Yeah, but if you want to have it out for Jazz Fest, like your story talks about, we need to sign a deal this week.’ So we did, and we signed a three-record deal. …
“It was a top selling record at the French Quarter Fest and at the Jazz Fest, and a year later it won the Billboard Latin Music Award for Latin Jazz Album of the Year. But it was after that year’s French Quarter Fest and Jazz Fest that I realized that I needed to devote full time to the record label, and I quit the energy business full time and dedicated it to the label. And a few months after that I bought Tom out, and he concentrated once again on being an artist manager and booking agent.”
On how the music industry has changed since 1997 …
“We started out manufacturing CDs and even cassettes. … Obviously the ease of sharing a CD with a friend or burning a copy, those kinds of things I never felt like they had necessarily an impact on our fans, our artists’ fans. I don’t feel like our artists’ fans were necessarily stealing music, but it certainly had an impact on those record stores who were selling a lot of pop music such as all the major stores who 90 percent of their sales are coming from the top 50 or 100 titles. And then that impacts their ability to carry the catalog, which impacted us. And then you get to the downloads, which certainly had an impact on the CD sales, and now streaming, which has cannibalized downloads.”
“And the streaming is a real black box. We don’t know when we’re going to paid or how much we’re going to get paid when we release a record. There’s no modeling it. … There’s nothing we could do to anticipate what kind of dollars we’re going to have, and there’s very few businesses where you sell a product not knowing what you’re going to get or when you’re going to get it. It made it very difficult, very complicated.”
On Basin Street Records after Hurricane Katrina …
“That moment when the levees broke gave us an ability to reformulate our company in a lean and mean way, so we don’t waste any money on unnecessary overhead. And we’ve been able to roll with the flow in anticipation of the fact that streaming may be the way people consume music. We have made sure that our YouTube page and our SoundCloud page and our website give people the ability to easily find our artists’ music, and we also have made sure that our artists’ music is available in as many platforms as we can get it out there on.
“So we have a digital aggregator that gets our music out onto platforms like Spotify and Apple Music and Apple iTunes and Amazon mp3 and whoever else out there streams music … and we make sure that it’s on Pandora and get them to consume music however they can. I’ve also always said that when people ask us what about our competition, we don’t have any competition. There is only one Kermit Ruffins, and there is only one Dr. Michael White. There’s only one Jason Marsalis, and if they are working with us, and you want their best recorded music, then we’re the place to get it.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Basin Street Records will kick off its 20th anniversary celebration with a special night of concerts at Little Gem Saloon in New Orleans. Click here for more information and tickets.
