Student-run labels record professional musicians

When two blues legends took the stage in Wilson Library last November, students Reed Turchi and Andrew Hamlet jumped at the chance to record them.

Turchi and Hamlet, both presidents of local student record companies, recorded Alfred “Uganda” Roberts and John “Jojo” Hermann when they performed at Wilson Library on Nov. 16.

“This is the first time (Vinyl Records has) gotten to record professional musicians in our studio,” said Hamlet, president of Vinyl Records.

Vinyl Records traditionally records the music of student artists at the University. But Hamlet saw something different with Roberts and Hermann.

“This is the first opportunity for us to have an artistic product that people outside of the community might desire,” Hamlet, a senior, said.

Vinyl Records and Turchi’s Devil Down Records are releasing a limited 7-inch record with two songs.

Each copy will be hand-signed and numbered. Profits will go to the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic and Vinyl Records, Turchi said.

Turchi is the president of Devil Down Records, a label he started as a project in an arts entrepreneurship class.

But he said the label was always something he considered to be real beyond the classroom.

“Its goal is to put out music from musicians in northern Mississippi who have been passed over for one reason or another, mainly because they don’t have a big enough audience for the records to be profitable on a large scale,” Turchi said.

Turchi, a junior from Asheville, said he focuses on northern Mississippi music because “it sounds so good, you’ve got to boogie.”

“The first time Roberts and Hermann met was last year when we brought them together,” said William Ferris, an American history professor at UNC.

“It was an electrifying moment. They played together as if they had already been rehearsing or even as if they had always played together forever.”

Roberts grew up in New Orleans and has been playing music professionally since he was about 17.

New York City native Hermann learned to play New Orleans-style music a different way.

“I learned to play off those records when I was young, records that Alfred played on,” Hermann said at the concert in November.

“So to play with Alfred is like playing with those records when I was young.”

This is the first record for Vinyl Records featuring artists beyond the student population.

“We are the sound of the campus, and you can’t really define it into one genre,” Hamlet said. “We have this kind of eclectic sound.”

Turchi produced a collection of blues guitarist Fred McDowell’s music that Ferris had recorded in the 1960s.

Venturing beyond the University’s music scene is new territory for Hamlet and Vinyl Records — but it’s a direction Hamlet said he is eager to take.

“It’s an exciting moment and I hope that we will be able to continue to do things like this,” Hamlet said.

“I mean we will still be a student-run label, but it will be, like, professional.”

Contact the Arts Editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.