By Jason M. Rubin

“There needs to be a bigger sense of community in the music world. Artists and labels and venues need to help each other out. There’s a void out there and I think Rock Garden Records is a positive new development.”

In the face of behemoth national record labels that historically have been slow to adapt to changing tastes and formats, yet quick to yank artists who don’t produce hits from the start, New England has always been a hotbed of independent music labels. Whether Rounder in Cambridge, Ryko in Salem, or Ace of Hearts in Boston, the region has a long history of agile, innovative, and artist-forward labels supporting talented musicians who fly under the radar of Top 40 radio and refuse to sell out in pursuit of selling out large venues.

One of the latest and most interesting independent music labels is Rock Garden Records, currently based in South Portland, Maine, but looking for office and studio space on the North Shore in Massachusetts. The leadership team, aka Master Gardeners, are husband and wife Todd and Lisa Erickson, Smitt E. Smitty (Michael Smith), and Mike Newman.

Lisa, who describes herself as “a music fan, not a musician,” has a background in graphic design and education. She founded this “passion project” with Todd, a songwriter and musician with a knack for producing and engineering. “Music was always the center of our lives,” he says. “Eventually we started to think about what we’re doing here, what we’re spending our time on. We wanted to be involved in music — in helping musicians.”

In 1993, the couple wrote a business plan to start a record label. Says Todd, “We worked with a couple of bands, started on this road, but then the industry started to get questionable. We ended up having kids and the idea got shelved — but never went away. Then in 2019, a friend encouraged us to have another go at it, and then COVID hit.”

“The seed was germinating but the harvest was delayed,” says Lisa.

Todd Erickson and Smitt E. Smitty.

Finally, in February 2023, they formed Rock Garden Records, initially to get their friends’ music cataloged, digitized, and uploaded to streaming platforms. At the same time, Todd’s recording studio, LaunchPad Studios, had been hosting musicians needing help with arranging, recording, and producing. Rock Garden’s first release was Todd’s band, Holy Smoke, with their rendition of the Cars classic “Bye Bye Love”, followed soon after by Aaron Bear’s “Good Company.”

Completing the Master Gardener quartet, Smitty is a musician who was born and raised in Detroit, and moved to Boston in 1985. His bands have included Figures on a Beach, which was signed to Sire/Warner Records, Little Billy Lost, and Smitt E. Smitty & The Fezztones. Mike is a longtime local DJ and podcaster whose show Mike on the Mic is heard Saturday mornings on Tufts’ WMFO. “I met the Ericksons when they were guests on my show and we realized we had a lot in common,” he says.

The label currently boasts more than a dozen artists, from established names like Adam Sherman, Robin Lane, and Jennifer Tefft & The Strange, to diverse artists such as Hummingbird Syndicate, Little Billy Lost, Crow Follow, Smitt E. Smitty & The Fezztones, Holy Smoke, Bentmen, MAS (Mutual Admiration Society), Tom Satch Kerans, Captain Easychord, Detroit punk legend Ricky Rat, and Maine’s own pop-punk-girl quartet, Tiger Bomb.

The label’s signing of Sherman is significant because for many years he’s been charting his career and recording and distributing his music largely on his own. “Adam is very good at recording himself,” says Newman, “and he knows what he wants. The value we can bring to him is providing a suite of services that address his needs.”

Says Sherman, “I was looking primarily for managerial kinds of things: helping me decide what material is strongest, who my audience is, where I should be playing, making sure my music sounds good and is widely distributed and effectively promoted. The Rock Garden crew can do all that, which is very attractive to me.

Lisa Erickson and Mike Newman

“I had this new song, ‘If You Think,’ that I’d already recorded, mixed, and mastered,” he says. “I gave it to Todd to remaster and he did a fabulous job. It sounds much better, much crisper. He just remastered another song of mine, ‘Massachusetts Nights,’ which we’re going to release as a single. Being with Rock Garden is like having friends in the music industry. And when business things come up, I’ll have them as a sounding board, helping me to define my direction. They’re big thinkers and I’m behind them.

“There needs to be a bigger sense of community in the music world,” he continues. “Artists and labels and venues need to help each other out. There’s a void out there and I think Rock Garden Records is a positive new development.”

Lisa agrees. “For a lot of our artists, being on a label is less about prestige than it is about having a home and being part of a community.” Adds Todd, “We have the blessing of some great people who are helping us in a joint venture kind of way. Right now, we’re running on faith, fumes, and favors.”

Upcoming gigs featuring Rock Garden artists include:

• April 5: Jennifer Tefft & The Strange with Adam Sherman at Fireseed Arts, Framingham https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/6257856
• April 14: Adam Sherman residency at The Plough & Stars, Cambridge
• April 20: Robin Lane & Nervous Eaters at The Narrows, Fall River https://narrowscenter.showare.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=489
• April 27: Hummingbird Syndicate at The Square Root, Roslindale
• April 26-27: Little Billy Lost at The Town & City Festival, Lowell
• May 3: Crow Follow at The Midway Cafe, Jamaica Plain
• May 4: Little Billy Lost at the Square Root, Roslindale
• June 14: Jennifer Tefft & The Strange album release party at Koto, Lowell
• June 20: Rock Garden Records show at Middle East Upstairs (lineup TBA)
• July 26 & 27: Rock Garden Showcase, featuring 10 artists over two nights at Warehouse XI, Somerville

For more information, check out the Rock Garden Records website.

Jason M. Rubin has been a professional writer for nearly 40 years, more than half of those as senior creative lead at Libretto Inc., a Boston-based strategic communications agency, where he has won awards for his copywriting. He has written for Arts Fuse since 2012. Jason’s first novel, The Grave & The Gay, based on a 17th-century English folk ballad, was published in September 2012. Ancient Tales Newly Told, released in March 2019, includes an updated version of his first novel along with a new work of historical fiction, King of Kings, about King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. His latest book, Villainy Ever After (2022), is a collection of classic fairy tales told from the point of view of the villains. Jason is a member of the New England Indie Authors Collective and holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. jasonmrubin.com.