About this episode

My guest this week is Bill Nowlin, co-founder of Rounder Records.

Bill joins me to talk about Rounder’s extraordinary 50 year legacy as one of the most important, influential and best loved independent labels in American roots music.

Topics Covered

• The origins of Rounder Records in the early 1970s
• How Bill Nowlin, Ken Irwin and Marian Leighton-Levy built the label
• The role of Rounder in shaping modern bluegrass
• Stories behind key recordings and artists
• The evolution of the music industry over 50 years
• How Rounder signed Alison Krauss as a teenager, with her eventually becoming the most awarded female artist in the history of the Grammys

About Bill Nowlin

Bill Nowlin is best known as co-founder of Rounder Records, one of the most influential independent labels in American roots music.

Founded in 1970, Rounder began as a small project between Nowlin, Ken Irwin and Marian Leighton-Levy, driven by a passion for bluegrass, folk and traditional music. Over the following decades, the label grew into a major force in the industry, releasing thousands of recordings and helping bring artists like Alison Krauss, Béla Fleck and Tony Rice to wider audiences.

Rounder played a key role in preserving traditional music while also supporting new generations of bluegrass musicians.

In More detail

We chat about how Rounder started, after Bill was randomly assigned  Ken Irwin as his college roommate, and how, along with Marian Leighton Levy, they grew Rounder from a small enterprise releasing a couple of records a year into a successful label, responsible for the career of one of the most awarded artists in the history of the Grammys.

Bill shares how they discovered Alison Krauss, via a demo tape she wasn’t even the lead vocalist on, and subsequently signed her when she was just a teenager. We talk about how Alison’s success, along with that of other artists like George Thorogood, helped Rounder establish themselves and how Rounder managed to position themselves at the forefront of industry developments, including releasing the first ever bluegrass CD.

We also chat about some of the iconic records Rounder put out over the years, from artists like JD Crowe, Norman Blake, Tony Rice, Tony Trischka and Alison Krauss, and how the founders eventually decided to sell Rounder. That led to a new label, Down the Road Records which, in a lovely full circle moment, put out Alison Krauss and Union Station’s return to bluegrass ‘Arcadia’ in 2025.

Resources

If you want to hear more about Rounder’s history, I can highly recommend Bill’s book Vinyl Ventures: My Fifty Years at Rounder Records and David Menconi’s Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music

Related to This Episode

You might also like these interviews about classic Rounder albums and artists.

•  Alison Krauss Remembers Tony Rice

• Celebrating ‘JD Crowe & The New South’ at 50 with Tim Stafford (Rounder 0044)

• Celebrating Norman Blake’s ‘Whiskey Before Breakfast’ with Bob Minner

• Celebrating Bela Fleck’s ‘Drive’ With Chris Eldridge

More on Bluegrass Jam Along

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Thanks to Bryan Sutton for his wonderful theme tune to Bluegrass Jam Along (and to Justin Moses for playing the fiddle!)

Bluegrass Jam Along is proud to be sponsored by Collings Guitars and Mandolins