Threadhead Records (THR) has a few items we are very happy to announce:

1) As you may have heard, John Boutte has completed paying THR back for his “Good Neighbor” CD, and he also wrote a check to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic for $600 (John will donate the remaining $600 of his pledge sometime this summer). We have also started receiving $$ to start paying back investors for the Paul Sanchez book project, and for the Glen David Andrews CD “Walking Through Heaven’s Gate.”

2) The Threadhead Records Foundation is still in the process of getting its 501c3 designation….we’re hoping that we get final approval by the end of this summer. No projects to announce on the Foundation side of things today, but please know that we’ve received many great ideas for upcoming projects and we’re hoping to be able to move forward on 2-3 of those later this year when all the forms and applications are completed and in place.

4) And last but not least: today we are announcing three new Threadhead Records projects, with more to be announced in the upcoming weeks and months. The three new projects are:

– Fatien Ensemble, a wonderful (and only in New Orleans!) ensemble featuring Seguenon Kone, Dr. Michael White, Jason Marsalis, Margie Perez, Matt Perrine, Marc Stone and others, that merges African drumming background with different American jazz strains. Those of you who saw them at Jazzfest and/or the French Quarter Fest know this is a special group….to quote Steve Hochman’s review of the Jazzfest show:

“Given that roster, one might reasonably expect some sort of Afrobeat with the jazz guys helping build the snaky rhythms. And at times that was the case, though not in a Fela Kuti or King Sunny Ade kind of way. More often it was a real blending of the various styles represented in the group, interlocking rhythms with melodies reaching back through New Orleans history a century or more — Afro-NOLA-jazzbeat, or something. One particularly interesting piece was sort of juju Dixieland, with Stone’s steel and White’s clarinet at the fore. And to bring it all together, a version of the New Orleans standard ‘St. James Infirmary’ somehow wove Perez’s somber blues vocal, White’s mournful clarinet and Marsalis’ tolling vibes into a mosaic of African percussion, like a parade starting in Abidjan and ending at St. Louis Cemetery No. 2 across town here.”

– Matt Perrine’s new CD project, a follow-up to the highly-acclaimed Sunflower City!  OffBeat Magazine said about Sunflower City: “From the songs with simple instrumentation to the full-on 14 piece juggernauts, this record takes some of the traditional music of New Orleans and makes it sound reborn.”

– Mary Lasseigne and her band, The Kinky Tuscaderos. Some of you know Mary from this band; others have seen Mary sing and play bass guitar as part of the Paul Sanchez Rolling Road Show, and know what a special talent she is. Mary’s project is already fully funded by a very generous fan of hers, and her band will go into the studio on June 5.

We’ll be updating our website in the next couple of weeks with more info on these projects….for now, if you want to contribute, please use the general fund button on the THR website.