The independent record company founded by Paul Hodes, at piano, and his wife Peggo records and produces albums of their own group Peggosus as well as other artists around the country. (Photo by Cindy Kibbe)

Big Round Records of Concord may have struck a chord in the children’s music genre. The albums produced by the company, however, are anything but child’s play.

Founded in 1986 by Paul and Peggo Hodes, the independent music company records and produces albums out of the Hodeses’ home for their kid-friendly rock band, Peggosus, and other artists in New Hampshire and elsewhere around the country.

Big Round Records started as a vehicle for the Hodeses’ own music. Paul Hodes said his love of both music and the technical side of recording had a lot to do with the company’s creation.

“I was always interested in recording,” said Hodes, who also is an entertainment lawyer with the Concord-based law firm of Shaheen & Gordon.

Peggo, a vocal teacher and classically-trained soprano at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music, provided her immense vocal and stylistic range to Paul’s “froggy bottom” voice and guitar licks for Peggosus’ first album, “Jubilee,” a work that Peggo described as “flat-out” rock ‘n’ roll. It wasn’t for adults, however. It was for children.

One of the first such albums to employ the genre in that market, it received accolades from families and critics alike and won a Parent’s Choice Award from the Parent’s Choice Foundation, whose mission is to “provide parents with information to participate wisely in their children’s learning.”

What made “Jubilee” and Peggosus’ other critically acclaimed albums even more remarkable was that they were self-produced. While smaller independent labels often expand the boundaries of musical styles, it is rare that they gain such notice.

Bringing it all back home

The ‘90s brought changes to the music recording industry as well as the Hodeses’ music. Analog technology was replaced by digital, and the Hodeses’ shifted to a more mature audience. In 1996 they began recording and performing as a duo, Peggo and Paul. Their new sound was not quite folk, not quite smooth jazz, but a blend of styles.

By now the Hodeses were not only producing albums, but recording them as well.

They had their home specially designed to be a recording studio. Budgetary constraints prevented them from building a dedicated studio room, so they use their cathedral-ceilinged atrium, bathroom and basement to full acoustical advantage.

“Since the engineering equipment is located in the basement, we had the architect install a trap door in the basement ceiling to the living room floor, and we pull the cables up through there,” Peggo said.

Paul added to his arsenal of mixing equipment over the years, swapping out most of his old analog recorders for 24-channel digital consoles. He could now burn his own master CDs and control the blend of instruments and voices on the finished product.

“The advances in technology really brought multi-track recording and quality to the masses,” said Hodes.

While there are disadvantages to having a home recording studio - namely sounds that have to be eliminated or electronically removed from the master - there are several major advantages to recording in such an environment.

“We can record any time we want to,” said Paul. “I can also spend as much time as I want to mixing and playing around with the tracks to get the right sound without it costing me $100 an hour at an outside studio.”

Despite the critical success of its albums, Big Round Records’ lack of name recognition has made the last crucial steps of distributing and marketing difficult. And the fact that Peggo and Paul’s self-titled albums have no clear-cut genre makes their marketing even more difficult.

Hodes said he’s not convinced that mainstream retail stores work for a small independent label. “Even when you pay a store to display your albums, many times they don’t follow through with their promises,” Hodes said.

The Hodeses have won half the battle, however. Albums on the Big Round Records label are now distributed by Fountainbleu Entertainment in New York.

With the advent of music download and file-swapping sites on the Internet, Hodes said that the recording industry is currently in a state of flux. “The new paradigm for music sales is a little uncertain,” he said. But that uncertainty can be a big advantage for smaller labels like Big Round Records. Today, many new artists and small labels distribute their music through Internet sites that offer legal downloads of songs for a few dollars or occasionally for free.

“We’re now talking seriously about alternative marketing,” Hodes said.

The Hodeses remain hopeful about the future. Returning once again to children’s music, they appear to be working on another landmark project for the genre: “Rock-A-Baby Band,” a book/CD collaboration with children’s author Kate McMullan. One of the first such combinations in the industry, the package is being published by Little, Brown & Company and should be in stores in April 2003.

For more information, visit bigroundrecords.com.

Part of a continuing series to assist New Hampshire businesses, sponsored by Citizens Bank.