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New York indie label Sojourn Records' eclectic roster features both Neshama and Shlomo Carlebach
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Mark Ambrosino
Basking in the sonic and spiritual light of Neshama Carlebach and The Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir's new album Higher & Higher, Mark Ambrosino has even higher hopes for his new label Sojourn Records.
Based out of label president/co-founder Ambrosino’s Madhouse Studios in Queens, Sojourn released its first album, Tom Laverack’s Cave Drawings, early this year, and followed it with pioneering 1960s group Blues Project's guitarist Danny Kalb’s I’m Gonna Live The Life I Sing About.
“When I started the label, I was working with a lot of artists, so some of the first signings are people I know,” says Ambrosino, also a professional drummer who has played with the likes of Kalb, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston, and currently works with Carlebach. He also worked with Kalb, and produced Cave Drawings for Laverack, who is also Sojourn’s VP and fellow co-founder—and half of indie rockers Just Desserts with film director Larry Fessenden (Wendigo).
“Over the years I’ve played a little bit with everyone in a lot of situations,” continues Ambrosino. “In the studio the drums go down first, then six months or a year later I get a copy in the mail and I’m often disappointed in the way it turned out. I thought I’d be less disappointed if my hands were ‘on the clay’ a bit, so in the early 1990s I bought some gear and a small place and invited people in and said, ‘I’m learning, so I’ll record you for free and we’ll learn together.’ As time went on I learned how to make records—not by reading a manual and using Pro Tools but through thousands of hours of experience.”
Ambrosino’s next step was “finding an artist to pour my heart into,” he says. But his own experience in the music industry had shown that after completing a recording project, “they hand the master to the artist and walk out the door and he says, ‘Now what?’ And that bothers me, not knowing ‘what.’ It’s like releasing a lamb to the wolves: All these records—the odds were they wouldn’t see the light of day after they were released.”
He expressed this to Laverack at the end of the Cave Drawings process, along with his dream of conceiving a “modern-day Motown/Stax” label entity. They enlisted director of marketing and planning George Howard, who had run indie label Rykodisc Records when it courted a band that Ambrosino was in, and Sojourn was born. Other artists on the roster include subway busker (and Ambrosino collaborator) Theo Eastwind, rock duo Crash & Burn, Americana singer-songwriter Ken Will Morton and most notably, Neshama Carlebach’s legendary father Shlomo Carlebach.
Known as “The Singing Rabbi,” the late Shlomo Carlebach was a hugely influential Jewish songwriter and revered performer who recorded extensively—if not officially. His songs continue to be performed—particularly by Neshama Carlebach.
“It was a logical progression,” says Ambrosino of Sojourn's father-daughter Carlebach connection. “When Neshama talked about making a record with a gospel choir it perked us up, and as she worked on it she started talking about her father’s music and her frustration over all the bootlegs that were out there and how his music had never been handled the way she and her family had envisioned. One thing led to another and we made a licensing agreement for all his previously unreleased work for the next 10 years. But we’re just caretakers, since we hold his memory and what he stood for in such a very high place and want to put his music out there in a respectful way--from the packaging all the way to how it’s marketed.”
Moving ahead, Ambrosino looks to have a label of artists unified by “what we call ‘soul music’--music that’s well-crafted and comes from the right place and lifetime experience and resonates with people.”
From his standpoint of running Sojourn, he concludes, “I need to feel sucked in by the music--and the artists.”
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