Jazzfest: Behind Threadhead Records
Threadhead sounded like an odd name for a record company when I mentioned Glen David Andrews’s gospel album, “Walking Through Heaven’s Gate.” And there’s a story behind it. Threadheads are members of an online social community born out of message threads on the forum at nojazzfest.com; after Hurricane Katrina they started donating money and time to charitable projects. Naturally, musicians played at fund-raising parties, and two of them, the guitarist/songwriter Paul Sanchez and the singer John Boutté performed at one in 2007. “Afterwards one Threadhead,(Chris Joseph), came up to me and said, ‘That was great, you guys should make a record.’ And I said, ‘Well, we would need money,’” says Sanchez. “He asked how much? I gave him a figure and he said great.”
A Threadhead named Chris Joseph, now president of Threadhead Records, asked what the album budget might be: $10,000. Then he raised the money and loaned it to Mr. Boutté to make the album, on the condition that the loan be paid back within a year, plus a 10 percent donation to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic. Threadhead doesn’t own the master recordings; the musician does. The loan has been repaid, and Threadhead used the same model for Mr. Andrews’s album and albums by Mr. Sanchez, the songwriter Alex McMurray, the trumpeter Shamarr Allen and the New Orleans Nightcrawlers brass band, along with projects in the works for Susan Cowsill, Marc Stone and Rick Trolsen. Music fans as non-exploiting patrons — what a concept.