For a certain generation of musicians, Motown wasn’t just a label. It was the destination. For Columbus producer and saxophonist Chris Powell, signing with Motown had been the dream since childhood. By the time that dream became reality in 1984, he’d already traveled a path that most musicians would have considered a successful career in itself: his earlier band Nytro had signed with legendary songwriter/producer Norman Whitfield in the late 1970s, he had toured with Rick James and Teena...

There are certain Columbus musicians who don’t draw attention to themselves so much as quietly build something substantial—an indelible legacy you only start to notice once you’ve been paying attention for a while. I wasn’t thinking about that on the February night my wife and I spent in Manhattan's West Village, sitting in Arthur’s Tavern, but I probably should have been. We were there to see Terry Waldo. Waldo's Gutbucket Syncopators Hot Jazz Vol. One G.H.B. - GHB-55 1971 That night, we saw...

Going through my mom’s things after her passing in 2023, I came across a Columbus Dispatch article she’d saved from January 20, 1993. I was in my third year at Ohio State then—about as dialed in to the campus music scene as I’d ever get—and seeing that piece again snapped a whole era back into focus. The article covered ripe!, a Columbus compilation assembled by Abbe Turner, and it reminded me just how much was happening here at the time. Ripe! Thornapple Records – TS 107 1993 Released with a...