(Part 2) International Anthem's genre-fluid jazz. Weekend links.

André 3000, Phoebe Bridgers and Thom Yorke have worked with artists on this extraordinary Chicago label. Here's why. Plus: the soft launch of our first sub-Substack.

This bonus Sunday edition includes Part 2 of my Q & A with Scottie McNiece of International Anthem Records (click here for Part 1). It’s also the soft launch of Weekend Links, a weekly roundup of music journalism. Let me know what you think in comments! And as always, if you dig this newsletter, please recommend / share on Substack, your socials, and IRL, and consider a paid subscription. It helps a lot! Thanks for the support - Will

WILL HERMES: I want to talk about regional music communities, because International Anthem been bringing out records from all over — London, Los Angeles, South Africa. Some of the hottest jazz and jazz-adjacent scenes are coming out of those places. How did these pipelines grow ? And you’ve moved to LA, yeah?

SCOTTIE MCNIECE: Well, my move was pretty unrelated to any of that — I got married to someone I met in Chicago, and she's from here. We needed her family's help; we now have an 18 month year old. Granted, it wasn't the most random place for me to move to, since I already worked with a few artists based here.

It was quickly obvious to us that just beating Chicago to death, telling everyone in Chicago about how great our artists were, was not going to do that much for us. So we started going to New York regularly, putting on showcases and spreading the good word there. We started getting attention and press there. And when we’d come back home to do shows, all of a sudden there's more people showing up. We did a couple of gigs in LA similarly. I mean, we're trying to support the artists we work with.

And people may be based in a place, but these are musicians, man. They're the most nomadic people on earth. They get around. That's what they all do, and what they've done since the dawn of time. So it's never been just about one scene. These are people who move around, and they create relationships and collaborations everywhere they go. That's how music has always evolved.