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In the dining room of his North Pomfret home, Will Wright thumbed through a bin of records he recorded, some more than 40 years ago.
The handful of LPs, alongside some cassettes and catalogs, are practically all that remains of Rooster Records, an independent label Wright ran from a previous home in Barnard in the 1980s. The music — folk, old-time, bluegrass, fusion and more — reveals a slice of Vermont’s music scene at the time and the back-to-the-landers who fueled it. For almost a decade, Wright made a living recording his friends and peers, distributing the music nationwide.
But a house fire burned the operation to the ground in 1987.
Said Wright, “I was immersed in music, and that’s what I love.”
Wright’s musical journey brought him shoulder to shoulder with some of the Sixties’ greats before he settled in Vermont.
In Denver, as a budding folk guitarist, he met blues guitarists Son House and Stefan Grossman. Living in the Bay Area, he caught shows at the Fillmore and the Avalon, listening to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin at the peak of psychedelia. And in San Rafael, he studied Indian drumming at the Ali Akbar College of Music, where he spent time with a young Zakir Hussein.
But in 1972, Wright left the West Coast for good, settling first in Bethel and then in Barnard. He found work as a carpenter, making $2.35 an hour — an exciting amount at the time, he said. Befriending some prominent fiddlers in the county, Wright honed his own fiddle skills. Soon, he formed an old-time string band with him on guitar, fiddler George Ainley and banjo player Ahmet Baycu. They called themselves The Corn Dodgers. The next logical step was to make a record.
“We figured getting a record label to record us was out of the question,” Wright remembered. “We decided to do it ourselves.”
Borrowing a couple thousand dollars, he bought a two-track recorder, and soon upgraded to an eight-track. He found a record distributor in Waterbury that worked with small labels. He asked a local T-shirt business to mock up some graphics. With that, Rooster Records was born.
The Corn Dodgers’ “Cotton Eyed Joe” was Rooster 101. In its less than a decade in existence, Rooster pressed about 30 records, which spanned folk, old-time, bluegrass, blues and children’s music.
Mostly, though, Wright recorded his friends.
“I had a great time,” he said. “Just starting my own company was satisfying.”
Though small, the business provided enough money that Wright stopped working in carpentry.
One of the first musicians Wright met in Vermont was Dick McCormack.
McCormack, now a Democratic state senator from Windsor County, was making his living at the time as a folk singer.
“Dick and I hit it off,” Wright recalled. The two gigged around Vermont, with Wright often playing fiddle and McCormack singing.
McCormack recorded the album “Who Ever Said It Would Be Easy?” for Rooster, released in 1981.
Said Wright of McCormack, “I don’t want to call him a genius, but he’s a genius.
“Some of his stuff sounds like it comes from the Middle Ages. Some is doo-wop and rock and roll.”
A shared love of traditional American folk music bonded the two musicians, McCormack recalled.
“These were kind of the hippie days in Vermont. A lot of wonderful music parties,” McCormack said. Raucous gigs at venues like the Bethel Inn and the Bridgewater Tavern brought old-timers and freaks side by side, dancing long into the night. “I had great, great fun with Will recording.”
Rooster Records had an office, McCormack remembered, and was no mere dining room table operation. Much of that was thanks to Wright.
“Will was a really good small record company owner,” he said. “I must’ve been not easy to work with, when I think about it.”
One of the other artists Wright worked with was Michael Hurley, a cult favorite who’s continued recording his distinctive brand of folk music since his 1964 debut with Folkways. Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, Hurley roamed Vermont, playing ski resorts and snowmobile bars. His 1976 record “Have Moicy!” attracted accolades from Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, but Hurley stayed in the Green Mountain State, mostly gigging around his home base in Franklin County.
“It’s almost like he just showed up at our door one day in Barnard,” Wright recalled of Hurley. “I can tell you the recording session was very” — he paused — “interesting. Let’s just say it was very relaxed.”
In 1984, Rooster released “Blue Navigator,” Hurley’s seventh album. Later, Hurley designed the cover for Wright’s album of kids music, “Childhood’s Greatest Hits.”
After 15 years living on Route 12, Wright bought a plot of land in North Pomfret. He’d always dreamed of building his own home. He sold his Barnard house to fund the change and moved his family and Rooster-related belongings into a rental house at Twin Farms, a property once owned by writers Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson.
On a cold, windy November night in 1987, Wright’s housemate had run out of firewood and switched to using a gas cook stove to heat the home. The entire house went up in flames.
“There was just a chimney standing,” Wright recalled. “In the process, I lost Rooster Records. I lost all of our inventory.”
With the insurance money from the fire, Wright had two options. He could either use the cash to finish his house in Pomfret or to revive Rooster. With two young kids, the decision seemed clear.
“We decided to go with the house.”
Wright allowed all Rooster’s artists to retain the rights to their music, and he left the record business behind, later starting the strings program at the Waldorf School in Quechee.
Today, he organizes weekly music at South Woodstock’s Kedron Valley Inn. And he still plays, too: guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, Middle Eastern music. Go listen.
