Photo by Larry Ferguson
Michael Woods, whose love of the Manitou Springs music scene dates back five decades when he worked at the Dulcimer Shop, plans to enhance the town’s growing reputation for good tunes and talented songwriters.
“It’s going to get really exciting, real fast,” he said, talking about the future of his Outta The Blues Records label. “It’s the first studio in Colorado Springs, let alone Manitou, to have an international distribution agreement.”
Woods teamed with Sony Corp. on the international agreement after he acquired the record label through a longtime acquaintance, Vicky Hamilton, a record executive, promoter and author who managed Guns N’ Roses, Poison and Mötley Crüe.
Woods said he and Hamilton were friends as teenagers in Fort Wayne, Ind., and later worked at the same radio station.
“She went to California in the 1980s and won three Grammys for her work with musical groups. We later reconnected when I sent her some music from here, songs by Joe Johnson, Grant Sabin and the Barefoot Family Caravan.
“She then told me, ‘Congratulations … Outta The Blues Records became available, I bought the label and it’s yours. You’ve now got a record label!’”
Woods said Hamilton arranged for Sony executives to set up an international distribution agreement.
Among the first projects for the new enterprise, he said, will be recording 16 to 20 songs by the Barefoot Family Caravan, a popular Manitou band consisting of Eli Blackshear, Micah Dettling and Skip Carlson. They’ve recently performed at Mother Muff’s, The Garden and the Axe and the Oak clubs, all in the Pikes Peak region.
Meg Ludwig, who’s been named co-producer and sound engineer, will help with the recording production at Woods’ Manitou studio. Her background includes writing and producing for television.
“We’ll decide which songs to keep and which to archive, take them to Denver where they’ll be pressed onto discs and then distributed all over the world,” Woods said.
In January, he plans to have an official launch for his new company at the Armadillo Ranch in downtown Manitou, and then begin recording musicians who perform there, putting their songs on CDs for sale at the restaurant/music venue.
Promoting the work of Manitou musicians remains first and foremost on Woods’ agenda. He’s known many of them since his days at the Dulcimer Shop.
“The roots of the current Manitou music scene can be traced back to the Grateful Dead and to Bud and Donna Ford, who owned and operated the Dulcimer Shop,” Woods said. “When you’ve got a mayor who looks like Jerry Garcia, it’s easy to understand how it happened.
“The Dead have a bluegrass background; however, some of our local musicians kind of strayed and went into the blues.”
Woods said that in addition to blues music, Manitou also has an extraordinary independent music scene. To benefit those groups, he plans to eventually create a second label.
“We’re still batting possible names around, but it probably will have ‘rock’ in it.”
Other plans include building an outside music venue near the back side of Pikes Peak and an analog studio, tentatively scheduled to open in 2023. Woods also plans to get into the publishing aspects of the music industry, focusing on protecting artists’ rights.
“No musician should give up their rights, and with me they don’t have to,” he said. “By getting into publishing, we’re pretty much going to be covering the entire field of music.”
But for now, Woods plans to concentrate on Outta The Blues Records at his Manitou studio and its 32-track recording system.
“The studio started out small, about seven or eight years ago,” he said, “but then doubled in size and then doubled again.”
Woods, a cancer survivor, also operates Healing Flower medical cannabis consulting. He plans to sell that to fund and expand his music enterprise.
As far as the future is concerned, he jokingly said he plans to buy stock in sunglasses.
“It’s so bright we’re going to need them.”