Not many people, let alone college students, can say they are the owner of a record label. Reed Turchi, a senior Southern Studies major, not only founded blues label Devil Down Records, but also is a member of the band Skinny Women, president of student-run record label Vinyl Records and the founder of the Sounds of the South Award. Reed’s schedule revolves around recording sessions, tour dates, countless meetings, scholarship events, oh and that thing college students call class. Needless to say, Reed is a busy guy, often traveling to and from Mississippi and Chapel Hill.
Devil Down Records specializes in North Mississippi Hill Country music which aims to be more than a label that just “sells records.” And it is so much more than that; it’s a business designed to bring attention and awareness to the Hill Country music scene by creating a community of friends, listeners and supporters who love the blues. Many talented artists, including Little Joe Ayers, Kenny Brown, Fred McDowell and the North Mississippi Allstars Duo are all clients of Devil Down. For some authentic, soul-wrenching blues check out the free download here.
HC: What inspired you to start your own record label?
Reed: Myself and a graduate student, Vincent Joos, decided to work together on a project to release Mississippi Fred McDowell’s music. I did the recording and Vincent promoted the album in France, which jump-started our international fans. I found his music in Professor William Ferris’s archives in the Southern Folklife Collection one day in the Wilson Library. I liked the music and thought it would be a cool idea to release it. The idea with that album is that it would never come out through anyone else or another label because there isn’t enough interest or enough money to invest heavily. To release the album, there needed to be a label. So, Devil Down was created out of that project.
HC: Why blues music? Why in North Mississippi?
Reed: In drawing up the business plan, I wanted the focus to be on North Mississippi music because there is a gap between these artists and their fans. I discovered the SURF grant from an email and applied for it. It funds projects for research so I proposed a project of documenting a younger generation of Mississippi music. So I spent the summer of 2010 working on this project in Mississippi, where I meet Kenny Brown and learned about the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic.
HC: How did you find these blues artists? How did you find Kenny Brown?
Reed: I spent a lot of time trying to contact people, places or things involved with Mississippi blues that were not burned down. In the early 2000s many of North Mississippi’s most legendary musicians (Otha Turner, RL Burnside, JR Kimbrough) all passed away and within a few years their juke joints (Junior’s Place, Burnside Blues Cafe) burned down.
HC: What is it like working with these musicians?
Reed: It’s fun because it’s a pretty small community. They are fun people to be around, salty but fun. It’s great to be around them because they have all been such great folks.
HC: How do you balance school, a job, being in a band and being the president of Devil Down?
Reed: I try to take care of a lot when I’m awake but not try to be awake 24 hours a day. It can be pretty exhausting at times.
HC: What is your current project?
Reed: There are three to four albums in the works. Hopefully, the most important being North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic Volume III, will be released around New Years.
HC: Where do you see yourself after graduation?
Reed: I don’t know. There are a lot of aspects right now. Whether it be running the label, doing studio work or I/the band suddenly becomes successful. I’ll just be mainly pursuing one of the many threads open now.
HC: How did you get involved with Sounds of the South Award?
RD: There are a lot of reasons. First of all, there aren’t a lot of undergraduate awards through the Center for the Study of the American South. Second reason, it pulls together the Southern Studies program, Southern Folk Life Collection and the Entrepreneurship program. Third reason, it guarantees that part of the award goes to the musician who is recorded. This is the biggest aspect in that universities usually have a bad reputation of recording “folk music” that is one day commercialized but the artist never sees any money from it. But this scholarship protects the artist legally and makes sure they receive money. Not many universities do this so it’s a big step forward.
HC: It says on your website the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic is the best music festival in the world. Why is that?
Reed: It’s basically a big picnic with family and friends. It’s a big homecoming for people who are apart of this extended family of North Mississippi. A lot of these musicians are good friends but are rarely in the same place at the same time. So, this is an event where they all come together at least once a year. And it’s just Mississippi in the summer.
HC: What are your future aspects for Devil Down?
Reed: I’m going to try to make a break out push within the next 10 months or so. As of now, it is distributed around the world literally but it would be nice to have one album to really make it. It would help out a lot with gaining attention about the area and the picnic.
HC: What would you say is your most rewarding experience with Devil Down?
Reed: It has a pretty serious international following which is creating a lot of support and fans for Kenny Brown and the picnic. It’s great to use Devil Down as a way to get attention on guys who deserve it.
HC: Why music? What inspired you to become so involved in the music community?
Reed: I think music because that’s always been what interests me most–North Mississippi music because, as the saying goes, “it sounds so good, you gotta boogie.”
Sources:
Reed Turchi (photo): Turchi, http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=577395878
Little Joe Ayers Album Cover (photo): Turchi, http://devildownrecords.com/
Reed Turchi- right Kenny Brown- left (photo): Sara Brown, http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=577395878
Reed Turchi (photo): Pete Turchi, http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=577395878
Devil Down Records (photo): Turchi, http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=577395878