About us:

Past, present & future:

New West Records is a eight year old, wholly independent record label distributed in North America by RED Distribution. With offices in Los Angeles and Austin TX, the company is staffed by a unique blend of music and business specialists. In addition to our excellent roster of artists, New West Records also exclusively represents PBS Television program Austin City Limits and is releasing both archival and current performances on DVD and CD. There is plenty to look forward to from New West.

Click on a link below to find out what currently floats our boat:

Jay Woods | Peter Jesperson | Steve Rosenblatt
Traci Thomas | Mary Jurey | Brenda Hall | Jeff Cook | Clare Surgeson
George Fontaine | Chris Fagot

Jay Woods

Listening:

• Mooney Suzuki - Alive & Amplified
• Nick Drake - Made to Love Magic
• Pleasant Grove - The Art of Leaving
• Charlie Sexton - rough mixes
• The Pretty Please - The Demonstration EP
• David Holt - Perpetual Motion
• Endochine - Day Two
• Muddy Waters - Hard Again
• Moonlight Towers - self titled
• Moonlight Towers demos

Reading:

• Bushworld by Maureen Dowd

Watching:

Peter Jesperson

Listening:

• Vic Chesnutt
  • Ghetto Bells (new album – out March ’05)
• 4 CD set of live & unreleased (63 songs!)
• Nic Armstrong
  • The Greatest White Liar,
  • 7 original demos + bonus tracks & other assorted recordings

• Rilo Kiley
  • Live at Fingerprints (internet only E.P.)
  • U.K. single of Execution Of All Things w/2 bonus tracks including a real cool version of “After Hours” by The Velvet Underground
  • Take Offs And Landings
  • The Execution Of All Things
  • More Adventurous
• The Postal Service – Give Up
  (basically, anything that Jenny Lewis sings on!)
  

• The Velvet Underground – Live At Max’ Kansas City (expanded version)
• Robert Wyatt – His Greatest Misses (a fabulous new Japanese ‘best of’)
• Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion – Exploration, new album due out March ’05
• Sarah Lee Guthrie – self titled album
• Johnny Irion – Unity Lodge
• The Sadies
  • Favourite Colors
  • Stories Often Told
• Rufus Wainwright – Want Two
• Leonard Cohen – Dear Heather
• John Lennon
  • Acoustic
  • Rock and Roll remaster
• The Beatles – At The Beeb – Discovered Tracks
• Townes Van Zandt – comp a friend made
• Bob Dylan
  • Oh Mercy
  • Broken Days (Oh Mercy outtakes)
• Tom Waits – Real Gone
• Tim O’Reagan – 5 new demos
• Brent Best – 8 new demos
• Tim Easton – 18 new demos
• Ben Lee – 2 new bonus tracks for Australian single
• Mix Tape from Ben Lee – Ben songs recorded by his friends include. Luke Steele (Sleepy Jackson), E (Eeels), Ian Ball (Gomez), Zoey Deschannel etc.
  Jack Logan – Nature’s Assembly Line (comp of Monday Night Recorders stuff)
• Centro-matic – Love You Just The Same
• South San Gabriel – Welcome Convalescence

Live Shows:

• The Bridge Benefit (both days!) - Mountain View, CA - McCartney, Tegan and Sara, Sonic Youth etc.
• Karl Mueller Benefit - Minneapolis - Golden Smog, Soul Asylum, Paul Westerberg etc.
• Supergrass - The Avalon
• Eleni Mandell - Spaceland
• Old 97's & Chuck Prophet - 2 nights - Irving Plaza - New York City
• Drive-By Truckers - Troubadour
• Old 97's - Wilshire Theater
• Ben Lee - parking lot outside of The Roxy!
• Tim Easton - Spaceland

Watching:

• Polar Express
• Pee Wee Herman's Christmas Special
• Ray
• Bob Dylan - Unplugged

Reading:

• Bob Dylan - Chronicles (if it was 3,000 pages instead of 300, it still wouldn't be long enough!)
• Bob Dylan Performing Artist 1986 - 1990 and Beyond - by Paul Williams

Steve Rosenblatt

Listening:

Lately I've been mostly listening to the classics:

• Beatles
• Stones
• Talking Heads
• Radiohead
• Bob Marley
• Ramones, etc...
• and Drive-By Truckers

Live Shows:

None lately.

Reading:

• The John Adams biography - David McCullough
• Founding Brothers - Joseph J. Ellis
• Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them - Al Franken

Watching:

SportsCenter is the only show I watch on a regular basis.

Websites:

• The Onion
• and my sports fantasy team web sites.

Traci Thomas

Listening:

• Allison Moorer - The Duel
• Gingersol - Eastern
• Centro-matic - Love You Just The Same
• The Darkness - Permission To Land
• Jon Dee Graham - The Great Battle
• Garrison Starr - Airstreams & Satellites
• Old Crow Medicine Show - OCMS
• Pernice Brothers - Yours, Mine & Ours
• I just ordered Goodbye Babylon, I can't wait to hear it.

Live Shows:

• Old 97’s at the Troubadour
• Neil Young at the Shrine
• Gingersol at Spaceland
• Terry and Jo Harvey Allen discussing art at LACMA

Reading:

• The Thomas Guide to LA
• All the New West artists’ press kits

Watching:

• Anything on TLC, I’m a sucker
• Alias
• Friends
• Gilmore Girls
• ER
• Law & Order
• Newlyweds

Websites:

• Friendster
• Rock the Vote

Mary Jurey

Listening:

• Eric Clapton - Me and Mr. Johnson
• Wilco advance - A Ghost is Born
• Mary Chapin Carpenter - Between Here and Gone
• Old Crow Medicine Show
• The re-mastered copies of Fleetwood Mac - Rumours and the first record
• Jerry Garcia Box Set - unbelievable
• Hackensaw Boys - Keep It Simple
• Norah Jones - Feels Like Home - love the song with Dolly

Live Shows:

• David Lindley at McCabe’s
• JJ Cale at McCabe’s

Reading:

• The Great Gatsby - re-reading actually
• The Bitch In The House - not as bad as it sounds
• The Johnny Cash autobiography
• Benjamin Franklin biography

Watching:

• The Lakers

Websites:

• ESPN

Brenda Hall

Listening:

• Bobby Bare Jr.-from the end of your leash
• Drive-By Truckers- The Dirty South
• M. Ward- Transfiguration of Vincent
• Ramsay Midwood- Shoot Out At The Ok Chinese Restaurant
• Rhett Miller- The Instigator
• Buddy Miller- Universal United House of Prayer (especially on Sunday mornings)
• Wilco- Being There & Summer Teeth (not so much the new one)
• Gillian Welch (all of it I love her)
• Marah (a nice compilation brower made me :)
• Urban: I gotta give mad props to Dj Danger Mouse's GREY ALBUM (Jay Z's Black ablum + The Beatles White album )

Live Shows:

• Flatlanders (saw Meg Ryan there heehee)
• Old 97's In store

Reading:

• Here On Earth (Oprah Book Club Crap)
• American Tabloid- Elroy
• Kavalier & Clay- Chabon (will finish it one day)
• LA Times (Sunday Ed. for the coupons)

Watching:

• The Ali G show (best thing out there)
• The Office (season 1 on dvd pretty darn great)
• Amazing Race (reality TV stole my soul)

Websites:

• Bag, Borrow or Steal
• Crappy children’s artwork
• Ask Snoop
(when all else fails...)
• Pitchfork

Jeff Cook

Listening:

• Hell’s 1/2 Acre - Great band from LOUISVILLE!!
• Grey DeLisle, Percy Mayfield (Rhino Handmade)
• Garcia and Grissman
• Randall Bramblett over and over and over
• Sonia Dada (new and unreleased)

Live Shows:

SXSW Escovedo Tribute (powerful and moving performances)

Reading:

• Red Dust - Ma Jin (the Chinese “On the Road”... Kerouac would be proud)
• Life is Good

Watching:

• Hidalgo (beautiful)
• Ladykillers (great soundtrack)

Websites:

• Rhino Handmade

Clare Surgeson

Listening:

• The Bigger Lovers - Honey in the Hive & How I Learned to Stop Worrying
• The Long Winters - When I pretend to Fall

Reading:

• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
• Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
• Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson
• and soon to be reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (thanks Wendy!!)

Watching:

• The Last Waltz on DVD

Websites:

• Austin Home Search

George Fontaine

Listening:

Recent music to the ears includes new Chuck Prophet demos (mama and papa don't know what's goin' on), Ween live at Stubbs, Pancho Sanchez, Mickey and the Soul Generation, Todd Snider live, Those Peabodys, Crabby Appleton, Texas Funk compilation, Lackloves (great indie pop), Legendary Grape (ex Moby Grapers minus Skip Spence), Hamell on Trial's Yap! (ain't nobody got a yap like Ed Hamell), Sid Selvidge, Soledad Brothers, Steve Wynn, Howard Tate, Temptations Psychadelic Soul (the Temps and the Funk Brothers had it goin' on), Traffic (live with Patterson Hood's dad on bass), Lou Reed, Guadalcanal Diary (I had forgotten what a great Athens band they were), and the Windbreakers.

Live Shows:

Reading:

• The Middle Mind - Curtis White

Watching:

Movies in the dvd player recently viewed have included Sweet Sixteen and Nil by Mouth (nothing like a little dysfunction from the British Isles to cheer me up), They Drive by Night (George Raft and Bogart - the original truckers), the Weight of Water, Northfork, and Whale Rider (alright, so I might have sniveled a bit).

Chris Fagot

Listening:

The Unicorns, AC Newman, From New West Vic Chesnutt, Chuck Prophet, Old 97s, DBT, Athens Love I Am The World Trade Center, Masters Of The Hemisphere, Dances With Wolves, Elf Power, Servotron, The Glands, Je Suis France, The Trap, The Noisettes, Nipples For Days, Dead Ewok, classics Devo, Kraftwerk, Crowded House, Wham!

and of course Treewave, anything on micromusic.net,

Live Shows:

AC Newman destroyed me. Local band (LA) shout out to The Transmissions, Dollyrots, Bang Sugar Bang!, Casey Black

Reading:

Nerdy webmaster books.

Watching:

Mail Call with R. Lee Ermey