NORTH SHORE – Local music legends Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton Lev,y and Bill Nowlin, who founded world-renowned, Boston-based roots music label Rounder Records in 1970, have launched a new record company that is already catching the music world’s attention.
Their new entity, called Down the Road Records, recently released Arcadia, Alison Krauss and Union Station’s first new album in 14 years. Rounder originally signed the Grammy-winning Krauss when she was in her early teens. Krauss and the band are currently on a 75-city tour in support of that album.
“For more than 50 years, these Rounders have introduced the Obscure, the Ancient and the long almost gone,” said Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin, who recorded for the label with Krauss, and with his Band of Joy. “And now they continue to court and support the Next Wave reaching high into the New World of meld and mix.”
Irwin and Nowlin, who were college roommates, and Levy (whom they met shortly thereafter), were on a mission to promote music that was not being heard in the early 1970s, Levy said last week during an interview at Irwin’s Newburyport home. They lived cheap in a Somerville apartment and traveled around the country in an old VW bus to Bluegrass and folk concerts and festivals. They cultivated relationships with artists, and their shared passions and dedication fueled the label’s success over the next 40 years.
During those decades, Rounder built an impressive catalog of more than 3,000 albums that earned the trio a place in the International Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2016. They sold the label in 2010 to Concord Music, an independent music company in Nashville, TN.
The other early coup for the new label is Earl Jam, an album that features 15 songs by veteran banjoist Tony Trischka, who transcribed songs played by Earl Scruggs and John Hartford in a series of jam sessions that took place between 1989 and 1998.
During the darkest days of the Covid epidemic, Trischka, widely regarded as one of the most important banjoists of the modern era, having played on close to 100 albums, received a thumb drive containing recordings of these jam sessions.
Trischka, a regular at the Belleville Roots Concert Series in Newburyport, keenly understood the significance of the material on these recordings, and immediately set out to transcribe, perform and record these tunes.
The band introduced the new music to great acclaim in a concert at Joe’s Pub in New York City.
In 2023, Down the Road released Earl Jam, a collection of 15 songs featuring guest performances by luminaries from the roots music world including Billy Strings, Vince Gill, Sierra Ferrell and Molly Tuttle.
“Everybody wanted to be involved in that album,” Irwin said.
The album earned Trischka a Grammy nomination. A second collection of 15 songs is expected to be released next early next year.
Down the Road is already building a new catalog that includes albums by the SteelDrivers, Blue Highway, The Seldom Scene, Gibson Brothers, the Lonely Heartstring Band, Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, and Dervish, who plan to release a follow-up to their acclaimed 2019 album The Great Irish Songbook early next year.
Irwin, a member of the Belleville Roots Committee, which produces concerts at the Belleville Congregational Church on High Street, helped create the church’s roots series in 2011. Thanks to Irwin’s robust community of artists and booking agents, the group has been able to create an acclaimed and successful concert series, the proceeds of which support the building that houses the church and building community through music.
Asked where the name Rounder came from, Levy and Irwin cited a few sources of inspiration: the Holy Modal Rounders, a quirky band of the time; and the use of the word to describe people living on the edge and “making the rounds” to ensure their daily survival, which was reflected in the music the trio loved.
When it came to naming the new label, Levy said that was easy. “We have been down the road.”
For more information on Down the Road Records and its music, visit its website, www.downtheroad.com. ♦
