Homegrown Music: In Praise of Small Record Labels

By Marc Bristol
Published on November 1, 1978
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PHOTO: TOM ALLEN
Marc Bristol and other Washington State grassroots musicians making the kind of homegrown jug band music (the axe is a gag) a small record label is most likely to carry.

Even homesteaders need to relax and enjoy themselves from time to time, right? And almost everybody these days wants to cut his or her cost of living. So how about a little do-it-yourself entertainment?

That’s what this column is about. Homegrown music… and sometimes homemade musical instruments to play it on.

The television and radio pickings are awfully slim for down-home music aficionados these days. Both mediums have become so dominated by a mad search for high ratings in the major population centers that even the “country music” currently being broadcast is aimed at country people who now mostly lead citified lives.

Thank heavens, then, for record players and record albums. And a special thanks to the Great Spirit for the handful of small record labels which still release recorded collections of songs that any homegrown musician can enjoy getting his or her ears into! This column is devoted to a few of those small companies, starting with:

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