By Laura Zaborowski

Jim Miller, founder of the Philly-based Dreambox Media, never intended for the label, originally called Encounter Records, to be anything more than a way to promote his former band Reverie.

Back in 1987, Miller was drummer for the fusion-rock group, which had been saving up to buy a new tour van. After the band’s deal with a record company fell through, Miller convinced Reverie to put the money towards putting out a record on their own. This was followed by two more records, which resulted in Philly-based singer Suzanne Cloud contacting Miller, clamoring to “be on the label.”

“I wasn’t even thinking of it as a label. It was just a way to promote Reverie,” Miller says. “As soon as her record came out, she put the word out to other musicians like Mark Kramer, and then the phone calls started.” This word of mouth system defines the success of the label, which Miller says, “finally has a life of its own after being on life support for so long.”

A musician himself, 48-year-old Miller says he knew that the label would strike a chord with the audience it was targeting. “We don’t have to spend a lot of money on promotion. Jazz fans are the most knowledgeable, intellectual people on the face of the planet. If something is out there that they want, they will find it,” Miller says.

After renaming the label Dreambox Media in 1995, Miller and Cloud realized that the only way to get through to their audience was to construct a website. Putting the information out and making sure jazz fans can find it via search engine was Miller’s goal. And now, in addition to Dreambox’s regular distributors, Miller is currently in negotiations with an international distributor to sell recordings in Europe and Japan. Dreambox CDs are also available on Amazon.com, in addition to the label’s own site, www.DreamboxMedia.com.

In comparison to larger labels and indie jazz companies, Dreambox falls somewhere in between.

“On all the indie jazz labels right now, the artist puts up the money for the sessions and the mixing, except in cases where there is a pressing and distribution deal. But for artists to sell CDs themselves, they have to buy their own music back at a minimal discount. And most labels want at least 50% of publishing. Rather than doing that, we came up with a reversed process. The artist pays for the sessions, but the finished product is completely theirs. On each CD, it’s not copyright Dreambox, it’s copyrighted to the artist,” Miller says.

In the label’s early days, Miller was footing the telephone and postage bills. Such expenses, which are so minuscule for larger labels, are now “paying for themselves.”

The criterion that Miller and Cloud established for the label from the beginning is that the music be as original and real as possible. This means no drum machines and no smooth jazz.

“Even the treatment of standards has to be original,” Miller says. “As a musician, I have a big folder of rejection letters myself, so one thing we don’t do is trash anyone’s stuff. We just want to preserve the focus of the label.”

The focus remains on the biggest names in Philly jazz, musicians like saxophonist Denis DiBlasio, pianists Jim Ridl and Eddie Green, bassist Mike Boone and more, although Miller recently signed a drummer from Boston by the name of Guillermo Nojechowicz.

The label will remain Philly-based, but if musicians from other locations submit quality music, Miller isn’t one to turn them away.

The drummer is also excited about expanding the label in other directions. “We want to archive people who never got a break. There are a lot of great, older Philly jazz musicians who never put out a recording that really represented them,” Miller says. “Evelyn Simms recently passed away too soon. We had put out a cassette that won an award in 1989 for Best Jazz Recording by the Philadelphia Music Foundation, but we wanted to work with her further.” This ties in with Dreambox Media’s most important goal—to give musicians (young and old) a way to showcase their talent without jumping through all the hoops of a regular label.

“If you submit something to a smaller jazz label, usually your project is sitting around for a year, and by then you don’t even like it anymore I am all about keeping the momentum going. There is nothing worse than sitting around and waiting for other people to make decisions. That’s why we wanted to do something different.”

At the same time, Miller expects musicians on the label to be realistic. “I always tell people that their first CD is the most expensive business card they will ever make. We are a tiny independent label. They have to have realistic expectations, and most of them do because they have been around forever and they know the business.”

Miller, originally from the Midwest, began playing drums professionally in 1970 in a variety of bands. The list of talent with whom Miller has performed is long and impressive. It includes Richie Cole, Randy Brecker, Clark Terry, Bob Mintzer, Uri Caine, James Moody, Eddie Gomez, Dave Liebman and more. And now that his label has a mind of its own, Miller has been working on his own recordings, something he hasn’t thought about in years between Dreambox, playing as a sideman, teaching at Rowan University and writing for JazzTimes Magazine. His solo work will involve many of the musicians that Miller has backed himself and the groups he plays with on a regular basis. These include the Denis DiBlasio Quartet, the Jim Ridl Trio, Eddie Green, Cloud and others.

For more information about Dreambox Media, visit www.DreamboxMedia.com.

This article first appeared in the Nov-Dec 2002 issue of All About Jazz: New York.