ABOUT SOUTHERN SUMMER RECORDS…
Back in early 2011, a young singer/songwriter at an Open Mic gave me a three track CD of some recordings that he had made professionally. The songs themselves were excellent but the presentation was dire; a Tesco’s CD with his name scribbled on with a magic marker. For the past five years prior to that I had been making up my own CDs as a hobby and realised that for just a few pence it was easily possible to produce attractive covers and labels for any artist’s CDs.
Shortly thereafter, Southern Summer Records was born. It’s mission to produce short runs of CDs for mainly local artists at a competitive price. As a singer/songwriter I’ve released several CDs of my own music, and so we treat our artists as we would like to be treated. Apart from producing value-for-money quality releases, our other values are musical diversity and friendship.
Although, Southern Summer owes much to independent labels like Immediate, Stiff and Ace Records, our musical policy is closer to that of a major label like Pye or Decca in the 1960s, in that we will release pretty much anything and absolutely love spoken word, avant-garde jazz and all sorts of experimental records as well as more mainstream genres. By the way, our releases feature a couple of more well-known musicians: Duck Baker (the legendary American folk and jazz fingerstyle guitarist) and Dave Nachmanoff (the unique Californian singer/songwriter who has collaborated with me in a studio band called the Tyme Passengers).
Our other main value is friendship. I have made so many wonderful friends through music in the last few years and I’d like to think all our artists and customers are friends of mine.
So, my dear musical chums, happy browsing through our releases and do let us know your thoughts on the label, music and life in general.
Graham Paul Kendrick
January 1, 2019
