Mississippi Records has been a beacon for outsider music in Portland since Eric Isaacson opened the doors at the shop’s original location on North Mississippi in 2003. Ever since, the shop and label have played key roles in cultivating the city’s DIY music communities.

Though Mississippi Records is known around the world for deep dive vinyl compilations and the attention to detail of each record release—it's played another, if lesser known, role: Isaacson and the Mississippi crew have been responsible for some of the city’s most inspiring music events for years. 

Isaacson has regularly brought the Sun Ra Arkestra to town. He’s organized festivals in Cherry Sprout Park across the street from the shop’s current location and hosted laughing workshops led by ambient legend Laraaji. He’s slotted in the Black cosmic music of Lonnie Holley with Roman Norfleet & Be Present Art Group. In short, Mississippi Records has brought music to this city at a clip that’s hard to match. 

But times they are a-changin’ at Mississippi Records: In the last couple years we’ve gotten the news that the shop and the label are no longer one and the same, that there was a fire in the shop, and, most crushing of all, Isaacson is retiring from booking shows in Portland.

We found Isaacson assembling the new Ural Thomas release (out on Cairo Records: a small sub-label he still helms), and he caught us up on everything that’s been going down at the corner of Albina and Sumner in North Portland.

PORTLAND MERCURY: There’s been a lot happening at Mississippi Records in the last year or so, like the label and the Portland shop splitting—what happened there, what was the impetus behind the separation? 

ERIC ISAACSON: The label just got too big for a guy like me to run. It basically got to the point where I was doing a disservice to the artists and their ancestors. I was really good at putting out records, but I wasn't so good at sync licensing, anything digital, securing rights with lawyers, and all that stuff. It got to the point where I either had to hire a bunch of new staff who knew how to do that stuff or find people willing to take it over and make it a little more of an official label rather than just the weird art project I was running. 

There were a couple guys I worked with on projects in the past who had mentioned to me that their whole life they wanted to do a label like the label I was doing. I was like: Well, shoot, they're smarter than me, they're young, and they have great morals. So I handed the label over, and now I work for them doing projects. But I also do a bunch of sub-labels still, because I can't stay out of the game. I do pretty small level stuff these days though, just for fun. 

Another bit of Mississippi Records news is that you’re not going to be booking shows anymore. Why? Was that a hard decision to make?

It's funny, I was planning on doing it a year earlier, and then the fire happened at the store. When that fire happened, there was so much community rallying and people insisting on doing benefit shows and stuff. It started this whole new momentum for shows. After we did that giant After the End of the World Festival in 2022, and then the next year we did the 20 year anniversary shows, I thought: All right, I should take a break. And then when the fire happened, I was like: Oh, or we just keep on rolling for another year. 

I'd been wanting to get out of putting on shows for a while. I love it, but I'm just a middle-aged dude who's spending way too much time working on this for free. I was really excited about doing it for years, but after 12 years, it's like most things in life, you have to make a decision. To make good art or to do good community work, often a gauntlet is thrown down: You either don't concern yourself with money and do good work, or you do shitty work and you're interested in money. I just felt like I had to stop in order to avoid burnout and to maintain the quality of other things going down.

So now that you’re going into booking retirement, who do you think is going to take up the mantle? Are there any bookers or crews you’re excited about in Portland right now?

There's plenty of room for other people to do this kind of show promotion. If anybody comes into the record store with any idea and is like: How do I get this crazy Japanese noise artist here who I'm obsessed with? I'm happy to sit down and come up with a strategy and do whatever it takes to put it together. I think there's going to be a lot of people doing it. There's going to be better people who have more energy and are more excited coming forward, and they're going to have the resources of Mississippi Records behind them. We're very open, and if someone wants to bring something rad to Portland that we support, we will throw down for them. We just don't want to hold the bank book.

And yeah, David Allen is bringing good artists from his label, International Anthem, to Portland. Ajay Ravi and Patricia Wolf have been hosting an event series around town called Moment with different, interesting ambient artists—the stuff they're doing is highly accessible and in interesting venues. And Albina Music Trust, they’re ruling it too!

So the final Mississippi Records show is December 21st at Revolution Hall with Ural Thomas & the Pain and is in celebration of Thomas’ 85th birthday. What a treat for all of us! What can we expect at the show? 

We're not tipping our hand too much on that, but there will be surprises. I don't know if they announced the biggest surprise yet, but you can announce it! We got the city to officially declare December 21 as Ural Thomas Day! We’re going to have someone come on stage and read a scroll and all that. 

Ural Thomas & the Pain headline the final Mississippi Records show at Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark, Sat Dec 21, 8 pm, tickets, all ages