Spring Fed Records
is Grammy Award Winning
record label operated by
The Center for Popular Music
at Middle Tennessee State University.
Spring Fed Records preserves and documents the traditional music of Tennessee and the Mid-South region through the release of recordings of historical and cultural importance. As part of MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment, Spring Fed Records also serves as an experiential educational platform for students, and offers cultural outreach and education to the public.
Spring Fed Staff
John Fabke
SFR Manager
John Fabke has been immersed in the study of American traditional music since the late 1980s as a performer, teacher, researcher and radio show host/producer. He worked as an archivist at both the Country Music Hall of Fame and at the Center for Popular Music at MTSU since 2011.
Greg Reish
Director/Center for Popular music
Greg Reish is a musician, musicologist, producer, and Director of MTSU’s Center for Popular Music. He is an active bluegrass and old-time scholar and performer, with interests also in conjunto music from South Texas and son jarocho from Veracruz, Mexico.
Martin Fisher
Curator of Recorded Media
Martin Fisher has been working at the Center for Popular Music since 2005 as the curator of recorded media. From an early age, Martin developed a love for records and recording. Previous to working at the CPM he gained experience in audio while working at several radio stations. As the Audio engineer for SFR and the CPM, he works with the media of the Davis Unlimited releases in order to make them sound as good as they possibly can while also holding true to the original integrity of the record.
Spring Fed Records
Internship
Since 2018, Spring Fed Records has had the opportunity to provide an internship experience to MTSU students enrolled in the Music Industry program. This semester-long project gives the student first-hand experience working with the Center for Popular Music’s Spring Fed Records label.
During the course of the semester, the student will help with the day to day responsibilities of running a record label. This work might include writing copy, social networking, maintaining the SFR website, marketing, research and more. The intern will also be responsible for reissuing one of the 1970s era Davis Unlimited LPs. This project gives the student experience managing a large, complicated project from beginning to end.
Lillian Hickman
Summer 2023 Intern:
Lillian is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in music business and minoring in Jewish and Holocaust studies at Middle Tennessee State University. She just completed her undergraduate thesis about how music in the Holocaust was used in many different ways. She plans to go into archival research about music in large instances of oppression and genocide in History.