Nabil Ayers Interview
Nabil Ayers is President of Beggars Group US and an author with bylines in The New York Times, NPR, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and GQ. His new memoir, My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family, details much of his life in the world of music, including his first encounter with his father, the musician Roy Ayers. Nabil is currently on tour with the book.
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
I was fascinated with music at an early age, and by the time I was 5, I recognized that some albums had the same label logos. Obviously I didn't understand what that meant, but I noticed some kind of connection. Whenever I played in bands as a kid, I also taped our rehearsals and sold cassette copies at school. I didn't realize that I was already in the music business at the time. I was a DJ at my college radio station, and interned at PollyGram Group Distribution in Seattle at the same time.
After college I worked at Easy Street Records in Seattle, while also playing drums in a band called the Lemons, who signed with Mercury Records when I was 23. I learned a ton in that band—from the label, our lawyer, our manager. I opened Sonic Boom Records in Seattle in 1997 with my business partner (the store celebrates 25 years this fall, we sold it to a customer in 2016). While running the record store, I continued to play in touring bands and started releasing music by artists I loved on a label I called The Control Group starting in 2002. It was always my band, the store, and my label (in that order) until 2008, when I moved to NYC to focus full time on The Control Group. That decision naturally led me to falling into an amazing job as the GM at 4AD US for 13 years. Now I'm the President of Beggars US in the same office, but working with all of the Beggars labels.