Album Review: Various Artists – The Rounder Records Story

Until recently, Rounder Records was the oldest active independent label in America—and arguably the most successful not just in terms of sales but in cultural impact. Founded in 1970 by three Tufts students, the fledgling company originally focused on bluegrass, especially the new strains that were coming out of New England. However, it wasn’t long until Rounder expanded its mission to includes zydeco from deepest Louisiana, folk from Appalachia, and blues rock from Mid-Atlantic dive bars, along with blues, polka, klezmer, reggae, jazz, and country. Perhaps the label’s crowning accomplishment is blurring the distinctions between regional music and expanding our definition of what constitutes folk music.

Earlier this year, however, Rounder was bought by the Concord Music Group, which also owns Fantasy, Telarc, Stax, and Hear Music, among other labels. At the time, the deal seemed like the inevitable, but no less disappointing final chapter to this story, as if the current tumult that is the music industry had claimed yet another casualty. It’s still too soon to tell how much will change beyond Rounder’s designation as an independent, but The Rounder Records Story sounds promising. What could have easily been a eulogy for the label’s vast diversity is instead a lively celebration of its influence and relevance. This four-disc, four-decade compilation is not a funeral, but a renewing of vows.

The primary vow, of course, is eclecticism—an inclusive rather than exclusive approach to folk music. That means The Rounder Records Story doesn’t have much in the way of an overarching story; there’s not much in the way of evolution here, which speaks to the durability of these modest sounds that they could survive in such a pure, unburnished form for so many years. Nevertheless, the wild range of music on these four discs makes for an intriguing and rewarding listening experience full of unexpected transitions and revelatory juxtapositions. The sequencing of Ted Hawkins’ “Watch Your Step” into Jonathan Richman’s “New Kind of Neighborhood” into Keith Whitley’s “I Never Go Around Mirrors” is especially galvanizing—a parade of divergent artists with more in common than you might think.

By the fourth disc, Rounder’s roster has grown surprisingly conservative, overrun with established acts that have small audiences and heydays long in the past. It’s not that the Cowboy Junkies, They Might Be Giants, Rush, or even Willie Nelson are unworthy of the Rounder imprimatur, but rather that they’re all so settled in their own sounds that they’ll never surprise us again. Some, like Son Volt, will continue to bore us. For a label that was once so insistent that folk lived strongly in the present, the 2000s showed Rounder looking backwards—and not to distant history, but to the recent past. On the other hand, acts like the Delta Spirit, Robert Plant, and especially Kathleen Edwards (whose frank, fun “Back to Me” ends the compilation on a very high note) prove that folk still has limitless possibilities and that Rounder still has a bright future.