Kenney Jones is launching his own independent record label, Nice Records.
The 72-year-old drummer – who is best known for his work with Small Faces, The Faces and The Who – plans to use the label to issue previously unreleased recordings spanning his whole career in music.
The label will launch in September with ‘Small Faces – Live 1966’, a previously unreleased live recording from Kenney’s personal archive.
Kenney said: “It’s great to launch Nice Records and to be able to take back control of the Small Faces products and recordings. I have assembled a first class team who understand the importance of the Small Faces legacy.
“I am so pleased there is a record of us performing at this time. We were a great live act then and even though we started to have hits, our live act was never the same again. This gig is really what the Small Faces were all about.”
The record features the very earliest known live concert recording of Small Faces, playing two live sets at the Twenty Club in Mouscron, Belgium on January 9, 1966.
Small Faces archivist and reissue producer Rob Caiger added: “Kenney has set up Nice Records to ensure the artists – and their dependents – get paid for their recordings as opposed to the many companies that have sprung up recently to exploit the ‘use it or lose it’ EU ruling for previously unreleased material over 50 years that is now deemed to be in the public domain.
“He is following Frank Zappa’s brilliant initiative, taken on by bands such as the Stones, to beat the bootleggers and give control back to the musicians. In this case, we think Kenney is the first artist to exploit the current EU ruling for the benefit of the artists.
“We want to do this properly. There is still previously unreleased material locked away in archives because record companies can’t – or won’t – release it, as well as material that labels lost or never got from the artist in the first place. In Kenney’s case, he has been diligently looking after session and live tapes he has played on from the Small Faces onwards. As some will know, as well as his work with the Small Faces, Faces and The Who, Kenney played on countless sessions by other artists (particularly during his time recording at Olympic Studios in London). Kenney usually got a copy of the tape and in many cases, he was the source for the only surviving copy of the masters, as he was when we put together the Small Faces remaster series.
“When I started breaking open his old Faces flight-cases in 2007, I found all these unbelievable treasures – a goldmine of unreleased and live material spread across dozens of sessions, multitrack and master reels by artists with whom he played – and not just confined to the Immediate Records stable. There is a great tradition of drummers being the member of the band that just archives everything – and Kenney has done that tradition proud!”
Small Faces formed in East London in 1965. They were awarded the Ivor Novello Outstanding Contribution To British Music prize in 1996, and inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2012.
The ‘Small Faces – Live 1966’record will be released on September 3, 2021 and pre-orders are now open via the Small Faces Shop www.thesmallfaces.com