Music: Eleven Years of Folking Around

Plenty of music scenes around the country have spawned record labels, but very few scenes have actually become the record label. That’s exactly what happened back in 1996 when the musical participants in the defunct Blue Jordan Coffeehouse reconfigured themselves into a label roster and naturally christened the collective as Blue Jordan Records.

“It worked out nicely,” says early booster and member David Wolfenberger. “It’s really kind of cohesive how everybody came together and filled a different part, like it’s one big body and everybody’s a different part of the body, making it work.”

Blue Jordan Records celebrates its 11th year with the “Birthday Bash,” an evening of festivities at the Rohs Street Cafe this Friday, featuring a lineup that includes some of the coffeehouse label’s original artists/contributors (Janet Pressley, David Wolfenberger, Tony Moore, Mike Helm) and a handful of its newest additions (Liz Bowater, Maurice Mattei, Lines and Spaces) as well as special guests Prudence Hunt and Greg Mahan. With an eclectic mix of older, veteran artists and new, young turk rookies, Blue Jordan represents a broad range of talent and expertise.

“It’s a mix of ages and experiences and stories,” says event organizer/promoter and newest Blue Jordan artist Sharon Udoh. “I think that’s what makes it so awesome.”

Blue Jordan had its start in 1992 when Folk singer/songwriter Janet Pressley began having sporadic coffeehouse shindigs in her Northside home. As the popularity of the events escalated, Pressley realized that a more permanent space to house the blossoming scene might be in order.

She found a storefront on Hamilton Avenue just two doors down from the present day Comet that had been vacated. A trip to a neighborhood junk shop yielded tables, chairs and a few other essentials — what’s a coffeehouse without coffeemakers? — and the space was rehabbed into an intimate Folk performance club.

The Blue Jordan Coffeehouse attracted a number of Cincinnati’s Folk regulars and ultimately became the new place in the city to experience the scene. Within four years, the Blue Jordan had run its course, but Pressley was convinced there was more to be done with the collection of talent that had been assembled. With the idea that there would be strength in numbers, the core artists that had populated the Blue Jordan Coffeehouse became the initial participants in the fledgling Blue Jordan Records.

“It actually began as a co-op, with artists, designers and recording engineers, and they put their efforts together to help each other make music,” says Udoh. “The faces of the Blue Jordan effort were the artists so it became known as a record company. If you look at the bios, they were all produced by Ric Hordinski, they all have Josh Seurkamp as drummer. It was just a great repository to facilitate the making of music.”

“I wasn’t an artist, I was more in support of the Blue Jordan artists — I was just a lowly bass player,” says musician/engineer Tony Moore. “We all shared band members originally, so the same guys played for the Marshwiggles and Mike Helm and Janet Pressley. We all played different instruments but we all supported each other in different incarnations.”

With everyone on the label in everyone else’s corner, Blue Jordan Records was not the typical label scenario.

“Certain people had different passions,” says Wolfenberger, a member of the defunct Marshwiggles, one of the original Blue Jordan bands. “Some people were good at engineering, some people were good at performing and some people were really good at booking. God have mercy, I almost said ‘synergy.’ ”

There have been fallow times when very little output was forthcoming from Blue Jordan’s artists. Like any longstanding enterprise, the introduction of new blood often energizes the old guard, which is exactly what happened with Blue Jordan upon the arrival of Udoh, a whirlwind with a passion for the Folk scene and the energy to reignite the Blue Jordan spark. Udoh joined the Blue Jordan fold when she was exposed to Wolfenberger’s music at last year’s Earth Day festivities, which she attended as a member of The Newbees.

“I fell in love instantly with David Wolfenberger, and I tried to book a show,” Udoh says. “I put one together and they noticed my efforts and asked if I wanted to join and maybe breathe new life into it. I’m in love with all those people so I said yes.”

True to the original Blue Jordan philosophy, the label continues to rely on its members to contribute beyond their musical skills, with Udoh spearheading the Web site redesign, and overall help from recent arrival Mattei, a graphic designer/photographer. With new faces and fresh viewpoints in place, Blue Jordan is again on the rise.

“Since we’re entering the second decade now, we thought we’d bring in a lot of new people and create that energy again,” says Wolfenberger. “I think Cincinnati has a really great music scene as far as from a national perspective. Cincinnati has such an inferiority complex when it comes to just about everything, and music is no exception. It’s not better anywhere you go. You can go to Austin and there will be a lot more people doing what we’re doing but they’re not going to be doing it any better.”

This article appears in May 9-15, 2007.