Red House Records is an independent folk and Americana

record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...

St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 311,527, making it Minnesota's second-most populous city a ...

. The label was founded in 1983 by Bob Feldman after seeing a performance by Iowa folk singer Greg Brown.

Origin

The label is named for a farmhouse in

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

where Brown lived when he started it. After Brown's albums '' 44 & 66'' and '' The Iowa Waltz'' were released in 1981 and 1982, it briefly went dormant until he met Bob Feldman in 1983. Feldman took over the operation of the record label, while Brown focused on his musical endeavors, as he had just signed on to perform on the

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

program ''

A Prairie Home Companion ''A Prairie Home Companion'' was a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed ''Live from He ...

regularly''. Feldman was known for his business philosophy of wanting "to provide a home and environment in which creative artists can make albums in total freedom—without interference from mogul types just looking for the next hit single." The first album released on the newly restarted label was Brown's '' In the Dark with You''. Over the next few years, the label focused on publishing work by musicians in the

upper Midwest The Upper Midwest is a northern subregion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwestern United States. Although the exact boundaries are not uniformly agreed upon, the region is usually defined to include the states of Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wi ...

, including

Spider John Koerner "Spider" John Koerner (August 31, 1938 – May 18, 2024) was an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He was best known as a guitarist and vocalist in the blues trio Koerner, Ray & Glover, with Dave "Snaker" Ray, Dave Ray and Tony Glover ...

, Prudence Johnson, Peter Ostroushko, Rio Nido,

Jorma Kaukonen Jorma Ludwik Kaukonen Jr. (; ; born December 23, 1940) is an American blues, folk, and rock guitarist. Kaukonen performed with Jefferson Airplane, and still performs regularly on tour with Hot Tuna, which started as a side project with bassist ...

and

John Gorka John Gorka (born July 27, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter. In 1991, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine called him "the preeminent male singer-songwriter of what has been dubbed the New Folk Movement." Personal life Gorka was raised in the Colon ...

. The label weathered difficult conditions as the music industry transitioned from

vinyl Vinyl may refer to: Chemistry * Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a particular vinyl polymer * Vinyl cation, a type of carbocation * Vinyl group, a broad class of organic molecules in chemistry * Vinyl polymer, a group of polymers derived from vinyl ...

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

s and started signing established artists from across the U.S.

Utah Phillips Bruce Duncan "Utah" Phillips (May 15, 1935 – May 23, 2008)
, KVMR, Nevada City, California, May 24, 2008. Retrieved 24 May 2008 ...

Tom Paxton Thomas Richard Paxton (born October 31, 1937) is an American folk singer-songwriter whose career spans more than sixty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

, Norman Blake,

Eliza Gilkyson Eliza Gilkyson (born August 24, 1950, Hollywood, California) is an American folk musician based in Taos, New Mexico.Gilkyson moved her base from Austin, Texas, to Taos in 2020. Gilkyson is a two-time Grammy Award nominee, receiving a nomination ...

Loudon Wainwright III Loudon Snowden Wainwright III (born September 5, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actor. He has released twenty-six studio albums, four live albums, and six compilations. Some of his best-known songs include "The Swimmin ...

, Robin and Linda Williams, Cliff Eberhardt, and

Ramblin' Jack Elliott Ramblin' Jack Elliott (born Elliott Charles Adnopoz; August 1, 1931) is an American folk singer, songwriter and story teller. Life and career Elliott was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Florence (Rieger) and Abraham Adno ...

are among the dozens of performers who have released music through Red House. Elliot's '' South Coast'' won a

Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album The Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album was awarded from 1987 to 2011. Until 1993 the award was known as the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Recording. An award for Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, Best Contemporar ...

in 1996. Eberhardt's album, ''The High Above and the Down Below'', released by Red House in 2007, was named one of the TOP 5 of 2007 by USA Today. Other recordings from the label have won about a dozen Indie Awards from the Association for Independent Music (A2IM). The label has released several compilation albums, including '' A Nod to Bob'', which Red House describes as a tribute from a Minnesota label to a favorite native son. Feldman continued to head the company until his health deteriorated in late 2005. A few weeks after leaving work, he died on January 11, 2006, at the age of 56. In November 2017, the Label was purchased by The Compass Records Group in Nashville, and its operations in St. Paul were shuttered.

References

External links

Official site

FolkLib Index - Red House Records Discography
{{Authority control American independent record labels Independent record labels based in Minnesota Folk record labels Companies based in Saint Paul, Minnesota Record labels established in 1981

Origin

See also

References

External links