The CD we just released, Mike Walbridge's Chicago Footwarmers Crazy Rhythm disc, was made up of two recordings. I had bought the Blackbird label back in 1966 and we released an LP of theirs. So this year we brought them back into the studio and recorded the version of the band that's around today and combined the two recordings for one CD. So that disc was a 50/50 split between the old and the new - and I say right now we are doing about 75% new recordings and the rest are reissues.

We're lucky we have our own studio.  We don't have to rent studio time when we want to record stuff, and, in fact, we can rent the space out for a little extra money, because it costs money to do a recording and the sales in jazz and blues are so low you're going to be damn lucky to make it back. You know what percentage of record sales blues accounts for in Amercia? 1.5%. Jazz is double that at 3%. We're lucky to sell 1000 copies of a disc in the first year of its release and after that sales only slow down.

We're lucky because we own a record store where we can sell our recordings, and we've got distribution deals with some online places and some stores. But you know there aren't any cross country chains anymore that will keep stock on the shelves for any length of time. Some place like Borders will only keep something on the shelf for ninety days and then its gone. I haven't got the figures for last year yet, but if we're lucky we might have broken even because the Buddy Guy disc did really well - but the year before that we lost 25,000, and before that 40 something and the year before that 65 thousand.

You know what was killing us - illegal downloads - it fucking almost drove us out of business, I'm not kidding. Or people burning discs for somebody else - same thing. I had two guys in the store the other day and one said to the other - burn me a copy of that and I'll burn you a copy of this - and bang there are my sales cut in half. And it's theft - because no matter what you're taking money out of the artist's pocket if it's a new record - or his family's if he's dead. Sure the publisher who owns the rights to a song gets the money, but they have to pay the songwriter every time that song is used.

It used to be we were paying three cents a song - that's three cents per song per record. Now its nine and a half cents and they're talking about raising it to twelve. When you start adding that up with all the other costs involved with making a record; packaging, distribution, hiring the sidemen, and paying the artist you're going to be lucky to break even to begin with, but if people are stealing the music it really screws you. It's better now that they've stopped most of the illegal downloads and we're getting some money from places like iTunes, but we still lose money to it.