Harmony Ridge Music

Music being one of my passions I started an on-line music business in about 1995 at the very beginning of the World Wide Web (WWW) called Harmony Ridge Music (HRM) Harmony Ridge Music Archive. I was discovering some wonderful music back then and enjoyed sharing it with family, friends and acquaintances. In particular I was intrigued by women artists especially female singer songwriters. At that time before a lot of exposure on the internet I noticed many of these talented artist were virtually unknown or had a small cult following. In starting HRM I intended to gather as much information on artist and present a complete expose on their music and life. In the early days I did a complete discography and biography on each artist including many longish sound clips. I dedicated the site to female artist and and was a pioneer in promoting independent artists thru the internet.

Danielle Dax

Danielle Dax from the UK was in particularly fascinating to me and she had a large cult following world wide, but still was virtually unknown. I was able to contact Danielle's manager in England and worked out an agreement to sell her music and other items thru HRM. Soon I had an extensive layout on Danielle including all her music for sale thru the site. At that time and for many years HRM was the Danielle Dax site and the orders started to roll in. Following after Danielle was Tanita Tikaram also from England, Joan Armatrading, Sheila Chandra, Happy Rhodes, Ani Difranco, Iris Dement, Nancy Griffith, Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams and Dar Williams. In the end I had over 500 artist listed including an extensive World Artists array from Ofra Haza and Chava Alberstein (Israel), Haris Alexiou (Greece), Kari Bremnes (Norway), Lila Downs (Mexico) and  Aziza Mustafa Zadeh(Azerbaijan) to name a few of the many. Harmony Ridge Music was a pioneer and set the bench mark for how independent artists were presented on the WWW.

Iris Dement 1994
Fat Fry Santa Cruz, CA

The business thrived fairly well in the early days on a very low budget and grew modestly for about 5 years. In the early 2000's the first crack in the armor started to become apparent and that was the emergence of Amazon and downloaded music. Frankly this blindsided me as my love was for the music and not technology. I had no interest in bogging myself deeper into web programming and I did not have the resources to hire my way out of it. As these new technologies changed the music industry many of my business partners bit the dust and Harmony Ridge Music faded into history.
When I look back on this time, I realize I probably let a golden opportunity slip thru my fingers, the mistake I made was not asking for or seeking help. Although I do have some regrets, I'm so thankful I did this because the benefits were wonderful, fantastic music, attended many performances and met great people and artist. Although it was not the success I expected, I cant imagine the regret I would have if I had not tried it!    

  Here are some personal photos of a few artists I was able to photograph in concert:

Alison Krauss 2001 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass	Ani Difranco 1995 High Sierra Music Festival
Hazel Dickens 2001 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass	Michelle Shocked 1997 Bear Valley
Victoria Williams 1997 Bear Valley	Gillian Welsh 1995 Strawberry Festival