Presenting Great Music: Adam Hopkins and Scott Clark of Out of Your Head Records

It is difficult to make a living as a musician, especially as a jazz musician, and even more so as an avant-garde/free jazz musician. Venues are hard to come by, especially outside of major cities. The COVID pandemic made things worse, closing many of the few places that were available for live jazz. Even putting out recordings is a difficult task. Often, a musician will submit their work to various labels, hoping for a bite. And with so many of the major labels merging—and having little interest in jazz—one tends to focus on smaller labels. Bassist/composer Adam Hopkins took a different approach: he started his own label, Out Of Your Head Records (OOYH) and brought in fellow musician, drummer/composer Scott Clark to help run it. OOYH's releases over the past seven years have focused on cutting edge improvisational music, including such noted musicians/composers as saxophonist Anna Webber, bassist Nick Dunston, drummer Tomas Fujiwara and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, not to mention emerging artists such as Laura Ann Singh and Mali Obomsawin—not surprising, as it is the type of music that Hopkins and Clark are drawn to in their own work.

Beginnings

Although the label did not start until 2018, it had its beginnings earlier. Hopkins was studying bass at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, working with noted bassist Michael Formanek in the early 2000s. "When I was studying with Mike, like 2008," said Hopkins, "I started booking shows in Baltimore, and he was like, 'You should write music for a band and have them perform it.' And that's when we started the Out of Your Head Collective." In 2011, he moved to Brooklyn, staying eight years, before moving to Richmond, Virginia, where Clark was already living and setting up shows. "Putting out music in the 2010s, early 2020s, there were so many less outlets," Hopkins noted. "There are amazing labels who do stuff for artists, but they just don't have that much capacity to put out that much music." Having his first record ready for release, Crickets, Hopkins decided to put it out himself. "I just decided I'll put this out, but maybe I'll start a record label. We have this friend [TJ Huff] who's a great artist, and he wanted to do the art. So instead of just releasing an album, I'll start a label and see what happens." Soon, musician friends from Brooklyn who had heard about the label contacted him about getting their recordings on it, starting with Dustin Carlson, Michael Attias, and Dunston. "It just kind of snowballed from that," Hopkins said. "We were lucky that other people wanted to be involved pretty quickly."

Clark joined a couple of months later. "I did the same thing with my first record," Clark said. "I just put it out myself, and I forget what the label was that I called it, just to say that there was a label. So that was one of the things Adam and I were talking about—we're doing the same thing and have this desire to keep doing this kind of work, so it's silly for us not to team up and do it together."

Difficulties

Running a label has its difficulties though. "The financials of putting out an album are always difficult in the free jazz world," Hopkins said. "If an album breaks even, that's like a pretty good success." A greater difficulty, especially for working musicians, may be the time commitment, given that the two are the only employees of the label. "It's time-consuming," Hopkins said. "Probably we would rather have a little bit more time on our instruments and little bit less time emailing people." Clark agreed. "I think it's really hard to find the balance to stay on top of it. We want to work on our own music, but we're trying to give all the artists we're working with that same commitment we would want for ourselves."

Another difficulty is fewer outlets for promoting the material on their label. "Every year, there's less magazines and less ways for people to hear about the music," Hopkins said. "And all signs point to that only getting worse in the near future. When we first started, there seemed to be more outlets. The New York Times doesn't even have a regular jazz writer anymore. On the flipside, there are other ways, like Bandcamp, to get the music out. But the official outlets are definitely less and less, which does make it a little bit harder."

But Hopkins and Clark see the label as a way to further the music they love. "Our decision-making process for putting out an album, the starting point is: Do we like this music, and will we listen to this music?" Hopkins continued. "If we do feel strongly about it, then I think other people will be into this as well. That's sort of how we've curated the label." Clark noted that a section of his record collection is made of OOYH releases, and said, "I can't believe some of the records we've put out. It's all people that I have respected for a long time, music that I love."

"That side of it is inspiring, and it really does make all the challenges seem worth it," Hopkins added. "It means a lot that these people trust us with their music, to get it out in the world."

OOYH releases do have a specific style: complex and compelling improvised music, leaning toward free jazz but still accessible. "We're both in the world of improvised music, but Scott is really in touch with the Chicago music scene; he had gone and played there," Hopkins said. "I was living in New York City and have a lot of connections to the New York scene. So we're unified in the stuff we like, but we do have slightly different contexts. I think that's why the relationship works for us to co-curate the label."

The Process of Putting Out the Music

An example of the time commitment and the effort that Hopkins and Clark put into the label would be the upcoming Nate Wooley release, which started in May 2025 when Wooley contacted Clark about a possible release. "We've both been big fans of Nate Wooley's music for a long time, and he saw the stuff we have been releasing and reached out to us about this record he had that has Susan Alcorn on it," Clark said. "It's the last record, essentially, that she made, and [Wooley] trusted us as a home for that music, knowing that Adam had a connection to her [through his time in Baltimore]."

"It's also his tribute to Ron Miles, who was his mentor in Colorado as a trumpet player," added Hopkins. "And the minute you hear Susan playing on this thing, we knew what a special record this would be." Then they begin the process by having discussions with Wooley about what format he wants it in (CD, LP, digital) and how to get the master recordings for release, as well as the artwork for the album. "We start figuring out the timeline," Hopkins said, "and now we probably check in once a month just to stay on track" for a May 2026 release. "We try and start doing press three months before the record to give people time to hear it."

The production time for vinyl or CD is about three months to six weeks, respectively, which is an improvement from when they started. "When we first started putting out actual vinyl, which I think was during COVID, vinyl turnaround at that point was a year." And that task has to be included in the timeline for getting the music out.

The cover and booklet design are also a careful consideration by Hopkins and Clark for creating an identity for the label. Artist/graphic designer Huff does the design for all the releases, working with the musicians to create a look that complements their album's music but is still consistent with the label's aesthetics. "I like that we are able to work so closely with someone like him, to have him create his own look that separates the label from others, give it an identity," said Clark. "Like International Anthem, they all look great and have an aesthetic. Or ECM. Sometimes [design] could be a very overlooked component of having an identity to the label."

With musicians learning about the label and sending material to be considered, becoming better known comes with its own problems. "It's got to the point where someone will send us a record, and we'll say we like this music but it can't come out until Fall 2026. I think we both feel strongly that if we take on a record, we owe it to the artist to put as much into it as we can and make sure we have the time to do the press for it and get the art ready in time and do release shows and all of that. I think we can probably put out half of what we really want to from the stuff we are sent."

"We've found ways to be able to put out more than maybe we should be able to be doing," Clark added. OOYH has a couple of series that they produced that are digital-only, to bypass the production time and costs associated with CDs or LPs. "We were doing the Untamed series for a while," Clark continued, "reaching out to people for live sets to put out as digital-only releases. Then we had some people send us free jazz recordings that we liked, but they wouldn't necessarily be a full vinyl release (they didn't want them to be), so we came up with this digital-only series that we called Beacons. One of the good things about the way that people consume music is that they don't necessarily always have to have a physical thing. That allows us a little bit more opportunity to do other types of releases that we would not have been able to do in the past." A couple of the Beacons releases in 2025 included saxophonist Caroline Davis playing with guitarist Dustin Carlson in Brooklyn (Sprites) and guitarist Anthony Pirog, trumpeter Dave Ballou and percussionist Devin Gray live in concert in Frederick, Maryland (Live at FEMA).

Hopkins and Clark understand what the musicians are looking for from a label and hope that at some point in the future they might be able to produce albums through the label. "I would love if we got to a place where we could reach out to an artist and say, 'We like what you do. Do you want to make a record for Out of Your Head?' where we could pay for the studio time and pay for the mixing and masters," said Hopkins. "That seems like an insurmountable goal at this point, but maybe someday we will be able to curate the label that way."

Working with the Community

Being a homegrown label has its advantages in being tied to its local community, especially when the heads of the label are musicians. In 2023, OOYH launched a music series called Second Mondays at Artspace, a gallery in Richmond. "We're trying to make it a breeding ground for people where the music might not be ready yet, but let's just perform it for people," Hopkins said. "We have a pretty good following. Those shows are getting 30 to 50 people on a Monday night. It's built up a little bit of a cool scene here."

Additionally, OOYH plans to put on their first music festival in the city over three nights in March 2026, entitled Ossicles and featuring Marc Ribot, Nicole Mitchell, Singh and Mary Halvorson. "Scott has had this idea for years of trying to catch artists on the way to the Big Ears Festival [in Knoxville, Tennessee] and present them," Hopkins said. "Ultimately, maybe it will be more of a multi-venue thing, but we're trying to start small."

In the meantime, they continue pressing ahead with their label and with their own music. "At the heart of it," Hopkins said, "we want to keep making great music and presenting great music."

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