The original Philo Records was started in 1972 by Bill Schubart and his half-brother Michael Couture. Bill and Michael had a 16-track recording studio called Earth Audio Techniques in a converted barn in North Ferrisburg, VT, kind of behind Mount Philo. It was almost like a second home for a lot of us in the '70s.

If I recall correctly, Craig Morton, who sang sea shanteys, was the first Philo artist. Utah Phillips came on board very early on as did some traditional French Canadian musicians including Jean Carignan and Phillipe Bruneau.

Within a couple of years, Philo had a very impressive roster of artists including Jim Ringer, Mary McCaslin, Jim Brewer, Priscilla Herdman, Tom Mitchell, Martin Grosswendt, Jean Redpath, Lew London, Dave Van Ronk, Jay Ungar & Lyn Hardy (I remember when Lyn was pregnant with Ruthy Ungar, now of the Mammals), Rosalie Sorrels and many others.

All of this was happening about 100 miles from where I live and I spent a lot of time hanging out at Philo. I was there for a lot of great recording sessions, parties, etc. and made a lot of great friends, many that I still keep in touch with.

Things collapsed financially for Philo around 1980 and the catalogue and name was sold to Rounder.

In the early-1970s, Rounder, Flying Fish and Philo were all new folk labels and they quickly established themselves as the three leading folk labels. As I mentioned, Rounder took over Philo when they collapsed financially. They also bought out Flying Fish after the untimely death of Fish's founder Bruce Kaplan.

Bruce Kaplan was a very close friend of mine that I first met around 1974 or so when he used the Earth Audio studio to record Luke Baldwin's album on Flying Fish.

I have a lot of great memories of those days.

Mike Regenstreif