Rollins Starts Label: District Line

"Hello. I am happy to announce the start of a new CD label: District Line. The District Line label will focus on rare and unreleased music from the Washington DC area. It is a small label that resides under the umbrella of my company 2-13-61 Publications." The first two releases are already available here. You can click below for the full story.

A couple of years ago, it hit me that there was some really cool music from my hometown of Washington DC that was either out-of-print or unreleased and I should do something about that.

Time to start a new label. I thought of NWCD as I am from the Northwest section of DC. I asked fellow NW DC resident and long time friend Ian MacKaye what he thought of the label name and he suggested District Line. I thought that sounded cool and the idea of it being Ian’s idea made it even better.

We have two releases at once, here’s some information about them.

Trouble Funk: Live & early Singles: It was with Ian, many years ago, that I first heard Trouble Funk. We were in Ian’s old Duster on Wisconsin Avenue, listening to WOL AM radio. A song by Trouble Funk called Pump Me Up was on and it was so great that we pulled over and just listened. It was like we had been waiting our whole lives to hear that beat. The dj back announced the band’s name and that was it, we were fans and the search was for their records was on.

Several years ago, Rick Rubin and I had a label on Warner Bros. called Infinite Zero and we released the two Trouble Funk CDs in this set separately. The label went away and these great CDs went away as well. Music this good was made to be heard so here we are.

Trouble can be considered one of DC’s foremost Go-Go funk bands. The Go-Go beat stands on its own. Nothing sounds like it and it belongs to Washington DC. Arguably, Go-Go’s elder statesman and acknowledged mainman is Chuck Brown who is still playing and still great.

The singles and the live album in this set date back to the late 70’s and early 80’s. The live album is absolutely unimpeachable. If you can’t get to it, check yourself in. I bought the plain white sleeve double LP well over twenty years ago and it’s lost no speed whatsoever. "Trouble Funk Live. Straight Up Funk Go Go Style" is what is says on the label and that’s what you get here. One of the best bands in the country on a great night all the way live. The early singles are incredible, all of them collector’s items at this point, show the band going from strength to strength. They’re great but it’s the live show where Trouble Funk proves themselves to be undisputed heavyweight champions.

:30 Over DC: :30 Over DC is a compilation record of DC area bands from the late 70’s that was released by Skip Groff who owned and operated the now legendary Yesterday & Today record store in Rockville Maryland. Skip had a label called Limp and he released a lot of cool local area bands and helped a lot of local musicians get their first records together. Look at the producer credits for the fist few Dischord releases and you’ll see Skip’s name. Anyway, this record was one of those cool LPs we all grew up with. One day I was talking to Skip about that record and what the deal was with it and a few weeks later, he sent me the masters and told me to do something with them. Sounded like a release to me. It features DC luminaries such as Half Japanese, The Slickee Boys and The Nurses. It’s a great slice of music and history.

I sat on the tapes for about a year and at one point, I was at a wedding in DC and was talking to some Dischord types and told them about the tapes and my plans to perhaps some day release the record. They looked at me like I was nuts, "That record is so cool, you gotta put it out!" That was the shove I needed.

Anyway, last year I worked back and forth with Skip on new liner notes and we got it together. I had it mastered by the great Phil Klum in NYC who specializes in old tape and it today, it came in. I just finished listening to it and it sounds great. We are lucky that the tapes held up, I was expecting some problems because of their age but we lucked out. I can’t wait to play a track off it tonight on the first broadcast of my radio show less than four hours from now.

We are selling the District Line stuff at ten bucks. The Trouble CD is a double so that’s a pretty cool deal. My hope is that we break even and make enough to put out the next two projects we have lined up. If you feel adventurous and want to hear some cool stuff, please check these CDs out. We are really excited about this label.

Like many CDs on 2-13-61, one dollar from each District Line release will be donated to a good organization. District Line being area-specific, the monies will be donated to DC area locations. I have not decided on the destinations of the contributions but I will when I have researched it and it shall be done.

Like I said, this is a small label with an extremely limited scope. The primary interest is the only thing that counts: the music.

As I told you in the other letter, I will be heading out for Kuwait and Iraq in a few days. I will get back at you and tell you what that was like when I am back in this damn office.

Thanks for reading this. -- Henry