Praxis International
Management firm, production company, and record label and company based in Nashville, Tennessee, run by Jack Emerson, Andy McLenon, and Kay Clary.
Originally founded as Praxis Records by Emerson in 1983, and expanded into Praxis International in the mid-1980s.
Obit for Laurie George:Punk rock fashion plate, tastemaker
Laurie George, whose work at Praxis International in the 1980s helped launch the careers of Jason and the Scorchers and The Georgia Satellites, passed away May 23 at age 59 after long living with COPD. A native of Waynesville, Mo., George was a prominent figure on the Nashville punk scene while still attending high school.
“Laurie was really into punk rock, and she had her finger on the pulse of the fashion side of all that,” says former Scorchers guitarist Warner Hodges. “But she also knew a lot about music, and that’s how she ended up at Praxis.” She joined the label as office manager shortly after graduating from Hillsboro High.
“She had more Nashville indie-rock cred than any of us,” says Kay Clary, one of the owners of Praxis along with Andy McLenon and the late Jack Emerson. “She looked like a jet-setting Parisian model but spoke with a honey-sweet Southern accent. She was intense and gave zero fucks but also had the most kind, empathetic heart you could imagine. Everyone loved Laurie George.” George left Praxis in the late ’80s after she began dating Satellites frontman Dan Baird. They married in 1995. —Daryl Sanders
Obit for Jack Emerson:
Jack Emerson, 1960-2003
An affable pioneer in the city’s rock and alountry undergrounds who led with integrity
NOV 27, 2003
Jack Emerson contradicted every stereotype of an artist manager or a record label executive. A leader in the rock and alountry music scenes in Nashville for more than 20 years, he set an example of how to build careers and grassroots musical movements while maintaining his personal integrity and friendly demeanor.
Emerson died Nov. 22 of a heart attack. He had been battling a respiratory ailment for several months. He was 43.
“I’ve always said that Jack was Nashville’s George Bailey, the Jimmy Stewart character in It’s a Wonderful Life,” says Jason Ringenberg of Jason & The Scorchers, a band that Emerson co-founded and managed. “I’ve never met a better person in the music industry than Jack Emerson. I never knew Jack to lie. I never knew him to cheat. He was completely unselfish.”
A graduate of Vanderbilt University, Emerson was 22 when he co-founded Praxis International Records in 1982 to put out Reckless Country Soul, the first release by Jason & The Nashville Scorchers, a pioneering band in the city’s country-punk underground. When EMI Records signed the Scorchers, Praxis evolved into a management company run out of Emerson’s basement with partners Andy McLenon and Kay Clary. Praxis played an integral role in setting up record deals and managing acts like The Georgia Satellites, Tim Krekel & The Sluggers, Webb Wilder, Tom Littlefield & The Questionnaires, Steve Forbert, John Hiatt, Billy Joe Shaver and Sonny Landreth.
“It isn’t often that you can have 100 percent trust in a partner, but Jack and I always had that,” says McLenon, who met Emerson in a Florida record store in the ’70s. “He was a kind, gentle person, and he was shy by nature, but he had this great intelligence and insight. He was great at taking ideas and figuring out how to make them work.”
As a record label, Praxis later partnered with A&M Records and Zoo/BMG to put out landmark recordings like Hiatt’s Bring the Family and Shaver’s Tramp on Your Street. “Jack was very proactive,” Ringenberg says. “He had really good instincts on how to work with these big entertainment executives. He always understood that what they were saying was not always what they were intending to do. So he was excellent at getting the record companies and agents to follow through. That would have intimidated most people his age, but Jack didn’t see the music business as this big mystical thing. He knew how it worked.”
In 1994, Steve Earle recruited Emerson to start a new label, E-Squared Records. The company released five of Earle’s recordings as well as albums by The V-Roys, Cheri Knight, Bap Kennedy, 6 String Drag and Marah. Initially, E-Squared was distributed by Warner Bros. Records; later, Emerson negotiated a partnership between E-Squared and Artemis Records. He also was executive producer of the soundtrack to the film You Can Count on Me, which won Best Picture honors at the Sundance Film Festival.
“The first night I met Jack, he talked about how Nashville would become an internationally known music center for rock and all kinds of music,” Ringenberg says. “He had that vision from the start, back when everyone else would laugh at him and say that a backwater town like Nashville would never be known for anything other than country music. Jack knew it could be, and I don’t know if he’s ever received the proper recognition for everything that he did to help make that happen. But he wouldn’t have cared about that anyway.”
A memorial service for Emerson was held Tuesday evening at the Belcourt Theatre. —Michael McCall