Jim Olsen Is Moving On Up

“No, I am not opening a nightclub!” Jim Olsen told the crowd up on stage as he debuted Signature Sounds new offices in downtown Northampton. He was standing on a stage with chairs set in front of it, but it’s a listening room, a place to hear new music, not another bar, he said.

Since opening his record label 17 years ago in his home in Whately Center, Jim Olsen has been one of the Valley’s most important music men.

He spent years on the radio programming our favorite FM station, the River, and now produces  records and arranges concerts for some of the hottest musicians all over the country. Not hot as in Nikki Minaj or Lady Gaga, more hot like Chris Smithers or Eilen Jewell.  The kind of music you hear on The River.

He was proud last night to share that his publicist Flora Reed (also a musician in the Winterpills) will no longer have to share his basement, now she’s got her own lovely office with a window.  Ray Mason, the Dean of Valley musicians, plus a handful of the radio DJs who bring us music on the River were there along with family and friends to hear the inaugural concert and tour the offices.

Nobody will have any trouble finding Signature Sounds new digs. Their huge lighted microphone logo is now a prominent landmark on Gothic Street, lit at night and welcoming to musicians and fans in the day.