Rhodes' Rocking Record Label - Memphis Magazine

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Scott Hale lives and breathes music; the Nashville native and drummer has played in multiple bands throughout his life and is a performer at heart. When he first arrived at Rhodes College, he started thinking about ways he could turn his passion into a business.

“I never really wanted to be a professional musician,” says Hale. “I enjoyed playing, but I wanted to work in other aspects of the industry. I really wanted to support smaller musicians that were coming up.”

His interest in the industry side of music led to the creation of New Arboretum, a music label run out of the Mike Curb Institute for Music. Before Hale, the institute had been a program that any student could use to record, produce, and master music. Though it provided technical support for song creation, artists had to figure out how to navigate signing contracts and getting their music onto streaming services. The Institute had also lacked support for those who were interested in the more business side of the music industry.

“Not everyone who is interested in the music industry wants to make music,” says Hale. “I wanted to create something so that no matter what part of the music industry you were interested in, someone could take part in the process.”

He spent the summer of his junior year researching how traditional record labels and college-run labels operated, hoping to find good qualities from both. While traditional labels usually keep song rights, college programs let artists retain the masters and royalties from their songs.

The ownership aspect was important to Hale. “I knew a lot of musicians at Rhodes,” he says, “and I thought that they deserved the opportunity to learn about signing a contract and the process of acquiring their masters.”

Hale put together contracts for musicians and built the groundwork of the label with the help of Mike Curb Institute for Music director John Bass. As his work moved forward and more artists began to sign on to the project, Hale brainstormed ways that they could properly promote students’ work. He decided that releasing projects via a compilation album would be the best way to highlight New Arboretum artists.

“There were a lot of different sounds that were all representative of people’s interpretations and time spent in Memphis,” explains Hale. “It would have felt wrong to release them separately.”

Since its inception, Compilation Vol. 1 and The Grahamwood Collective. Compilation Vol. 1 is a mix of songs created by Rhodes students that The Grahamwood Collective is a two-song collaboration project between Rhodes College, Grahamwood Elementary, and local musicians that was recorded at the famous Royal Studios.

Though Hale was able to accomplish a lot before he graduated, he feels that there is a lot that still needs to be done.

“I had time to set up contracts that future musicians can use and got to go through the learning process, but I wanted to put songs on streaming services and have them generating royalties for the artists before I left,” says Hale. “That’s one thing I wish I could have done for future artists at New Arboretum. I just hope that students keep advocating and pushing the label forward.”

Though Hale has moved on from Rhodes, New Arboretum is set to continue through the Mike Curb Institute for Music with the label as an established part of the program. Hale is currently teaching with plans to pursue law school in the future so that he can continue to work with new musicians.

You can listen to New Arboretum’s debut albums Compilation Vol. 1 and The Grahamwood Collective on their Bandcamp page.