Ben Goldberg
Production Records
Bag Production
Hi Everyone,
I am happy to announce the creation of my new record label!
[If you have reached this page by directly typing in bagproductionrecords.com, I should mention that this page is part of bengoldberg.net.]
Of course how could I resist calling the label BAG Production -- named after my initials as well as the lyric from Come Together. Also, amazingly, Molly Barker, a selection of whose work you see throughout this website, drew the image at the top of this page when she was six, as a way of memorializing her first recorder lesson. You can see the proper emboucher and how to play something like Hot Cross Buns.
Well, it's life and death in the music business, where the same shifting technology that threatens the industry paradoxically makes it easier to sell and distribute music on a small scale -- what better time to jump in with a new label.
Our first two releases are now available. The first is the new record by Go Home, and I couldn't be happier about it. (You can read about Go Home, and all BAG Production records, in the Discography, and buy copies in theStore.)
I'm also very excited about the new Tin Hat disc Foreign Legion, recorded live in concert in Mallorca and at Berkeley's own Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse, released by BAG Production in March of 2010. For a glance at the Freight show where we recorded half the record, you can look at these videos:
After Foreign Legion comes Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues, some of my new compositions for quintet (and of course a Bob Dylan song) featuring Joshua Redman and Ron Miles that we recorded in February of 2008.
Of course first-rate music is only half the story in the record business -- we also have to get the word out and make the music commercially available. In this regard I am happy to report that we are now allied with a couple of first-rate outfits. In the new important world of digital distribution, BAG releases are handled by A-Train Entertainment, a company headed by the irrepressibly resourceful Al Evers, longtime Bay Area music industry heavyweight and exactly the guy you want on your team.
For distribution of our physical cd's we are represented by the following companies.
North America: Distribution13
France: Orkhestra
Russia: Novoe Iskusstvo
Belgium: Instant Jazz
Of course, we are also hoping to rely on good old fashioned word-of-mouth. To that end, we are working on a method for helping intelligent, curious listeners keep their friends informed about interesting music they might otherwise have missed - stay tuned!