Tom Riggs Pinecastle Records

At 72 Tom Riggs is not ready to quit. He has "retired" with his company Pinecastle Records to North Carolina and still works a leisurely schedule of 10am – 4pm daily at Pinecastle Records, an independent record label.

How long have you been in Columbus ?
I moved the company up here in February of 2004 and we officially opened in June 2004.

What bought you to Polk County?
I have owned a vacation home on White Oak since the 80's and planned on retiring here. After hurricanes in Florida shut down the store there I moved the company up here and moved most of the staff here. I hired the remaining staff from the area.

How long has Pinecastle been in business?
This is our 18 th year.

How has the industry changed?
The recording industry has suffered, but the loyal listeners of the genre are buying the artist's work and purchasing the albums. Still, many listeners now are buying downloads of songs rather than an album. With the introduction of the CD you no longer have demand for singles, but the ability to download songs individually from the internet has replaced that.

While some might be scared of the internet, I'm not. Our income from internet grows every quarter. It's an important part of the business now, where four to five years ago it wasn't. We don't manage that portion ourselves, but contract with companies to handle the internet work for us.

How has this business fit into the local community?
For the Columbus 4th of July we have sponsored bands for the evening bringing in some of our artists like Grasstowne and Larry Stephenson. Larry Stephenson is a more traditional player and I admire him both as a musician and a businessman. Like most Indie labels, the recording artists themselves are the best sellers of their albums at their shows.

Large retailers have hurt the music business and fans of music with their pricing practices and marketing. Our albums have sold well at places like Wal-mart, but their ability to sell at the lowest price has driven the small music stores out of business. Now Wal-mart is cutting back on the selection of music in favor of games and electronics so the smaller genres of bluegrass, jazz, gospel, and world music just won't be in their stores. Our sister company Music Shed used to be simply a mail order company and internet retailer. Now that we're here we have people who love bluegrass walking into our warehouse looking for music. So we have opened the retail side with a display area for sales. We've found that it's made a difference in how many people coming in for a single CD end up buying more. We sell not just our own records, but other Indie labels such as Rounder and Sugar Hill as long as the music is bluegrass, gospel bluegrass, or older country.

How has the business changed?
Fifteen to sixteen years ago we had a half dozen distributors and over the years that has consolidated. Twenty percent of the distributors are now selling eighty percent of the music. We still use more than one distributor, but our main distributor wouldn't even sell to Music Shed because we don't buy enough. The alternate for small stores is someone like One Stop who buys from the large distributors and then marks up the price before reselling to smaller companies.

Stores looking for our music have called and because of interest Music Shed has started acting as a distributor as well to other small stores.

The industry changes more than the music itself. We're now down to only about four major recording companies which leave room for many successful independent labels focused on specific regional styles. At the Independent "American" Convention the general term covers a mix of music from bluegrass to rock that is mostly played on college stations. It's amazing the number of little niche businesses that are out there. There are labels that create albums specifically for the souvenir market, like compiling albums of San Francisco songs for tourist stores in San Francisco. There is a label for the Department of Defense that produces recordings of the Marine and Army bands. Independent labels collectively produce a significant amount of music in this country.

Most importantly, they have affection for the music. There's no "how to book" for starting a label, but you get out there and make some mistakes and the love of the music is what makes it work.

So, are your employees all fans of bluegrass?
It's not a requirement, but they all are interested in music and have an appreciation for the genre. The members of our Marketing Department have Business Degrees that specifically focused on the music industry. One of them was from right here in North Carolina at Appalachian State.

Where do you sell the music?
San Francisco, California actually has the largest Bluegrass Fan Association. Most of the promotion is to local papers for the artists in support of their tours. We want bands for our label that are currently playing in four to five states and are open to travelling more. It's difficult to get the albums in stores unless the band has toured there. Most of our bands are national in scope playing twenty or more states on a regular basis.

What are you currently producing?
We produce seven to eight new albums each year. Each artist is recording an album about every eighteen months. We also are producing compilations like the "Tribute to Country" and "Ultimate Picking" volumes one to three. We haven't made any videos recently, but have gradually been converting old VHS to DVD. We often work in partnership with groups like Public TV in Chicago to develop the DVDs.
We're always looking for new ideas. Asking, "How do we package and market the talent and recordings we have to generate income?"

C&H Records are especially known for recycling and repackaging and redistributing. Flatt & Scruggs recorded "Live TV" spots sponsored by Martha White Flour. For years it was thought these were lost or recorded over. Noble Dury was the ad agency for Martha White during that time. Years later after the owner of Noble Dury passed, his son was cleaning out the garage and found the tapes and donated them to the Country Music Association. Now as a joint partnership between the CMA and Shanachaie fifteen shows are available on two DVDs and they are working on a third volume. The Osborne Brothers toured Germany in 1988 and we only recently discovered that there were not only audio recordings, but also a single one shot camera video. These were then repackaged as a two CD and one DVD recording of the concert they toured. Bear Records out of Germany has focused on creating high quality box sets of the Country and Bluegrass classics.

As we enter the Music Shed I feel like I'm walking through a Bluegrass "hall of fame" with all the faces of the musicians smiling out at us from their DVDs and box sets, and, of course, CDs.