David Menconi at Letters Bookshop | Wednesday, Jan. 10, 6:30 p.m. | Durham
David Menconi has been writing about North Carolina music since 1991, when he joined the News & Observer staff. He retired from the newspaper in 2019, but that doesn’t mean he’s slowed down: His first UNC Press book, Step It Up and Go, a comprehensive reader on the state’s musical history, was published in 2020, and he launched a podcast, Carolina Calling, on the same subject in 2022.
Of course, there’s always more to write about music. Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music, Menconi’s new book on the history of the storied music label, is both an intimate look at founders Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton Levy, and Bill Nowlin and an expansive look at American roots music, such as we’ve come to know it. Much of the research for the book is drawn from the Southern Folklore Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill but Menconi’s vivid storytelling shakes the dust off from the archives, making it near and clear.
Rounder—known for artists like Sun Ra, Alison Krauss, and Billy Strings—grew out of the movement politics of the 1960s, and the stories of its early days are particularly colorful (see: an anecdote about when Nowlin came down to Sampson County to record a hollerin’ contest winner and recorded the session with the plucky powering aid of an electric fence). Ahead of an upcoming event at Letters Bookshop, the INDY caught up with David Menconi to learn more about the book—and inquire (nervously) about the future of roots music and the record industry.
For folks who aren’t familiar, what is so compelling about the Rounder Records story?
These train-hopping young people would encounter these old-timers on the folk circuit playing folk and bluegrass that was not being recorded. There was a void—the major labels had lost interest in folk music, by then, after Beatlemania. There weren’t that many record companies putting out the likes of George Pegram, who was this old-time medicine show legend in Union Grove, who played banjo and brayed like a donkey. That was the first act they signed. George Pegram was Rounder 001.
They started out as this kind of chaotic adventure, like, “Hey, let’s put some records out,” without really anything like a long-term plan. Nobody stopped them and enough came in for them to keep going, and three or four thousand albums later, they’ve amassed just an incredible catalog. I feel like they’re the most important label for the evolution of Americana music, simply because they put out so much of it. I wrote at one point that Rounder was kind of where the work was done to determine what was Americana music in the 21st century, just because so much of it had their imprint.
I’m curious about the process—obviously, you’ve been writing about music for a long time, but when did you start to write about Rounder?
Record companies have always been something that fascinated me. In fact, years and years ago in the early 2000s, I published a novel called Off the Record that was steeped in record industry chicanery, which has always kind of fascinated me. This was obviously a much gentler story—also true rather than fictional. But yes, the Rounder founders are from Boston and their archive wound up at the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC, and therefore UNC Press was looking for a book to be done about it. I took it on. The first thing I did was just get up with the three founders, Ken Irwin, Bill Nowlin, and Marian Leighton Levy, and talk with them at great length. Throughout the process, I was talking to them a lot and they were who I started with, with interviews. And I ultimately talked to 70 or 80 people—artists, observers, competing label heads, fans, critics.
How did the archives end up at the Folklife Collection in the first place?
They’re one of the foremost collections of vernacular and roots music and stuff on the planet, especially since Steve Weiss came in—oh, I don’t know, 10 or 20 years ago, maybe even longer than that [Ed. note: 1999]. He’s the main curator there and he’s done a bang-up job of going out and finding stuff. A lot of people are getting to an age where they start thinking about legacy and where they put their stuff. Institutions like the Southern Folklife Collection turn out to be a repository for that.
Beyond UNC, some North Carolina names pop up in the book: Alice Gerrard, even Mipso toward the end. What are some of the connections between North Carolina and Rounder Records?
Union Grove is a big one and also Galax, right across the line in Virginia. This was a hotbed for this kind of music, going back to Charlie Poole. When they first came down here, the founders made a pilgrimage to Eden, which used to be Charlie Poole’s hometown, and they went looking for his gravesite and where he lived. They are all three supreme music geeks—you name a place, and they’re likely to start rattling off landmarks in that vicinity or go look for them, if they’ve never been. So yeah, North Carolina has always loomed large—the overall body of music, beyond the acts like George Pegram.
Were there any moments that stick out to you, from reporting the book, as particularly surprising or memorable?
They are really obsessed about what they do and music and its place in the culture. I will say that one of the most surprising parts was one that didn’t really cast them in the best light, and that was the business about the labor union. I told them when I took this on that I was gonna go do some due diligence, you know, and ask around and go looking for the stuff that was of a darker nature—you know, if there was some scandal or something out there, I needed to know about it before the book came out.
The big black eye was the union. When money started coming in in the late ’70s, early ’80s, from signing George Thorogood, the employees started thinking that maybe they should be making more money than they were. The founders weren’t into this. So [employees] voted to unionize. And the fact that the founders fought it and hired the same law firm that had represented Nixon during Watergate was just kind of jaw dropping.
Yeah, that’s pretty shocking.
To their credit, they are sheepish and embarrassed about the way that went down and admit that they didn’t handle it well and weren’t the greatest bosses. It doesn’t excuse it, but it casts it in a somewhat better light. And they didn’t duck it, either, when I brought it up. They weren’t thrilled it was in there, but I felt like it had to be—that was the sort of weird contradiction.
They started out as an antiprofit collective and were putting out records like Come All You Coal Miners, and Ken Irwin’s girlfriend for many years was Hazel Dickens, so for them to go full-on naked capitalist when it came to a labor union was pretty revealing of, you know, what happens when you’re trying to function in a capitalist society.
Well, on that note, the sands are shifting with American roots music and its relationship to North Carolina—IBMA is playing its last year in Raleigh this year. There are things to be pessimistic about, but what makes you excited about roots music right now?
Oh, it’s just, you know, it’s exploding. Female artists in particular are really blowing up. I mentioned Sierra Ferrell [earlier]. There’s Rhiannon Giddens, of course—our homegirl is just one of the most important acts in the world. It’s broadening, it’s taking other styles into account, it’s turning into this just incredible melting pot, and it’ll be great to watch and listen to. We’ve got so many great acts around here, too. It’s always been an Americana hotbed here, but with Hiss Golden Messenger and American Aquarium and Mipso—the music is in great shape. The business, not so much.
I mean, the big labels are making more than they ever have. They have finally achieved their dream with streaming, which is not to have to mess with the physical product and pressing plants and trucks and you know, storing CDs and shipping them, and returns and everything now—this is this is like a dream for them. You just put it out there and people listen to it on their devices and the little fractions of pennies add up to billions they’ve made. They’re making more than they ever have, but the little labels, further down the food chain, they’re struggling. There’s no middle class for the artists anymore. It’s just not clear how this is going to work out.
I was interviewing somebody recently who made the statement, and it’s seems sadly true, that the only people who are able to make it as full time musicians come from families with money, with inherited wealth.
One last thing—the introduction by Robert Plant is so cool. How did that come about?
That started out as a jacket blurb—the founders are still close to him, so they approached him on my behalf, which I really appreciated. And he wrote that lovely little tone poem and Mark Simpson-Vos, my editor at UNC Press, said, ‘How about we turn this in forward?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my god, make it so.’ My inner fourteen-year-old was turning cartwheels. I was shocked when he said yes, and was crossing my fingers and holding my breath that some bean-counter with Robert Plant didn’t put the kibosh on it. But they finally dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s and I shouted it from the rooftops.
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