Justin Jones could be the only artist on 9:30 Records for a while. (publicity photo)

Asked if he is currently looking to sign any artists other than Justin Jones to his new 9:30 Records, Seth Hurwitz says, “No, not at all.”

“It’s not about being a mogul or owning a label,” says the I.M.P chairman and co-owner of the 9:30 club. “It’s about I love Justin’s music, and how do we get it out? No one is signing him, labels are dysfunctional anyway, so we’ll do it on our own.”

Hurwitz says his sole focus right now is his sole artist. “I'm sort of a one-step-at-a-time sort of guy — I have no grand vision of empires or anything like that,“ he says. “The things you see — 9:30, [operating] Merriweather, [producing] Virgin Fest — all grew organically. None of it is the result of a plot.”

“I’ve taken a natural approach since I was a DJ at WHFS,” Hurwitz continues. “If I loved a band, I put them on the radio. Now, if I love a band, I find a way to work with them. That’s the way things ought to be.”

Hurwitz says the idea for 9:30 Records came while he was shopping for a label home for Jones. “I learned quickly that the record business is not what I remember of it from a long time ago,” says Hurwitz of the days when he was managing Tommy Keene.

“I kept hearing, ‘Why don’t you put it out yourself?,'" Hurwitz says. "Then I ran across Thirty Tigers in Nashville, and it seemed to have the right combination of tools to put the record out but wasn’t so detached that is was simply a manufacturer. The model with Thirty Tigers is, it gives you the structure of a label, gets your record out, but you need to create a label. So, how much more obvious could it have been to make 9:30 Records?”

So what if a competing entity, like, say, Live Nation (a company Hurwitz has history with) wanted to book Jones?  “I'm gonna do whatever's best for Justin,” Hurwitz says. “I work all the time with bands that are managed by people I don't like, or are enemies to me on some front. That's normal in our business. You start not working with people you don't like or you have an issue with, you’re gonna have a lot of time on you’re hands. If I didn’t deal with everyone I didn’t like, I couldn’t be in my business, I’d be a hermit in Montana."