Houston Calling

SugarHill Studios, KPFT partner for “Support=Local=Music” campaign

April 4th, 2006 · 8 Comments

This just in:

Legendary Houston music recording studio SugarHill Recording Studios has partnered with Pacfica Radio Network to announce the debut of The SugarHill Sessions music radio show on April 7th, 2006 at 1pm on Houston’s Pacifica affiliate station, 90.1FM KPFT.

The SugarHill Sessions is part of SugarHill Recording Studios’ aggressive “Support=Local=Music” campaign. The promotion was designed to focus attention on live independent music in the southeast area of Texas. SugarHill has a long tradition of providing the same level of premier recording services for both unsigned and independent acts, as well as major label artists. Houston has a diverse wealth of musical talent that has been temporarily overshadowed by the success of hiphop/screwed music. SugarHill hopes to balance the attention to our region by filling in the demand for new independent music by hungry music fans.

SugarHill Recording Studios is one of the oldest continuously running studios in the US, with 65 years of music recording history. Many artists have walked through SugarHill’s doors including The Red Krayola, The 13th Floor Elevators, Freddy Fender, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Radio Birdman, George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, and B.J. Thomas.

“Working with Pacifica is an excellent partnership for launching The SugarHill Sessions” commented award winning Houston Producer, and SugarHill President, Dan Workman. The Pacifica Radio Network is dedicated to independent control of community-base programming. Nearly 90 percent of funding comes from individual listener-members of the affiliate stations across the nation. Because of this, local Pacifica affiliate, KPFT, was an ideal host for SugarHill’s new radio program.

“The show will be a fresh alternative to the existing corporate media monopoly that dominates the airwaves with mostly major label/mainstream music. Being an avid indie music listener myself, I think Houston needs new means to bring indie/unsigned music to the masses”, added SugarHill Marketing Director Heba Kadry.

Local, regional and national unsigned or independent artists will be invited to SugarHill’s recording facilities to perform a live studio set and be interviewed by the show’s host: notorious indie band connoisseur, and KPFT 90.1FM DJ, Rhonda Garner.

The SugarHill Sessions’ first guest was Yep Roc Record’s Phillidephia band, Marah. SugarHill’s Senior Engineer Steve Christensen engineered their performance. The band played songs off of their new album, If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry, and discussed everything from their name and influences, to the current state of the music industry. The band also relayed some interesting tales about their encounters with Texas Legend, Townes Van Zandt.

So mark your calendars for The SugarHill Sessions and tune to KPFT 90.1FM on Friday April 7th at 1pm.

For more on SugarHill Recording Studios, visit: http://www.sugarhillstudios.com.

For more on Pacifica 90.1FM KPFT, visit http://www.kpft.org.

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Tags: Music

8 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Jeff // Apr 5, 2006 at 9:16 am

    I’m trying to figure out why, if this is supposed to be about southeast Texas music, the first band was from Philly. I mean, I know they performed at Sugar Hill, but that doesn’t sound very local.

  • 2 Sean // Apr 5, 2006 at 11:15 am

    Yeah, it is a bit odd – anyone know what they’re plans are for future performances/shows? I looked on their website and it doesn’t really say….

  • 3 DAC // Apr 5, 2006 at 1:46 pm

    I get the sense it worked so well with the Philly band that the idea struck then…

  • 4 Phil // Apr 5, 2006 at 3:32 pm

    DAC wrote:
    ” I get the sense it worked so well with the Philly band [Marah] that the idea struck then. . .”

    Exactly right. Our show has always tried to feature first local bands, then Texas bands, and then nationwide touring acts coming thru town(on Fridays AND available during our show). Marah just happened to start out as an interview that we recorded, cause they couldn’t do it live on Friday, and Rhonda is a huge fan. Props to Rhonda & SugarHill for running with the idea.

    You can check out a list of bands we have interviewed at myspace.com/kpftradioactive
    Sorry there are no archives . . .yet.

    We’re on every Friday from 1-2pm. Hope you can tune in!

    Phil Schawe

  • 5 Heba Kadry // Apr 5, 2006 at 4:58 pm

    Just to clear things up, this show supports both “indie” and “unsigned” acts, so whether they’re local, national or regional (independently signed or unsigned) then we will definitely want to feature them on the show. Using the notoriety of signed indie bands like Marah (who were so awesome to accept our invitation as the first guest), can help create more attention to the show and will enable us to feed more of that attention towards featuring local bands.

    Phil is absolutely right, we started with Marah just to test the waters and Rhonda was such an awesome interviewer, that it just seemed like a natural decision to go all the way with it.

    I hope anyone who’s into independent/unsigned music, will enjoy the show and tune in for more performances. So tune in this Friday, April 7th at 1pm.

    All future performances will be posted on the sugarhill website http://www.sugarhillstudios.com/

    Cheers!

    Heba Kadry

  • 6 robert duffy // Apr 5, 2006 at 7:18 pm

    sounds like a great idea.

  • 7 Jeff // Apr 5, 2006 at 8:29 pm

    I know Phil from the appearance orange is in had on their show and I know Heba pretty well, so I have no doubt they will do everything they can to make this a success on all fronts. I guess when you’ve played music in and around Houston as long as I have, you tend to be cynical about the biz. As Billy Joel once said about the music business, “It ain’t the boy scouts.” Thing is, knowing how freaking hard Heba works at this stuff, I imagine she could personally will this thing to succeeding. And Rhonda and Phil are excellent interviews. The combination of a great studio like Sugar Hill and a good show makes me believe it has a real shot of succeeding.

  • 8 DAC // Apr 6, 2006 at 11:43 am

    I agree — and look forward to hearing local bands get their due…

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