Greg Preston

“Creative artist development is the core of our mission,” says Greg Preston, founder and president of 822 Management. “Our job is to foster a full-service matrix in which musicians can find a safe space where they can realize their artistic vision, build their craft, learn from their mistakes, and ultimately savor their victories. Deploying three decades of experience in all aspects of the music business, 822 will bring backroom insight and experience to the job of aiding musicians as they find their voices and secure their commercial footing.”

Based in Jackson, Mississippi, Preston’s new management endeavor succeeds five years as an instructor at the University of Mississippi’s College of Mass Communications and Journalism in Hattiesburg, where he taught classes focusing on record company operations, talent management, and the structure of the music business, and six years heading his agency Ignatius Talent Group, where he booked such acts as Blue Mountain, Cedric Burnside and Lightnin’ Malcolm, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Michelle Malone.

Previously, he spent nearly a decade as marketing director at Malaco Music Group in Jackson. Known as “the Last Soul Company,” Malaco is one of the country’s leading outlets for Southern soul music and down-home blues; during his tenure there, Preston worked with such legendary musicians as Bobby Blue Bland, Little Milton, Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, Latimore, Shirley Brown, and Bobby Rush. He was deeply involved in every area of Malaco’s operations — retail marketing, sales, distribution liaison, advertising, publicity, promotion, and ultimately record production.

In 1999, Preston conceived and co-produced an album that brought new attention to one of Malaco’s most gifted veteran performers: Welcome to Little Milton. The collection paired the singer-songwriter-guitarist with a slate of musical notables from the rock and Americana arenas — Govt Mule, Keb’ Mo’, Lucinda Williams, Delbert McClinton, Peter Wolf, Dave Alvin, G. Love, and Susan Tedeschi. It secured Milton’s very first Grammy Award nomination, as best contemporary blues album, and won him a new audience beyond his loyal soul-blues fans.

Following his productive stay at Malaco, Preston joined forces as manager and label partner with another storied performer from Malaco’s roster, the antic longtime soul-blues star Bobby Rush, who also had secured his first Grammy nomination with the company, for his 2000 Waldoxy Records release Hoochie Man.

Their co-owned imprint, Deep Rush Records, independently distributed by David Macias’ Nashville-based Emergent Music Marketing (now Thirty Tigers), was lifted off by Rush’s high-profile appearance in Richard Pearce’s film The Road to Memphis, an episode in executive producer Martin Scorsese’s 2003 PBS series The Blues.

Over the course of five years, the Preston-Rush collaboration bore fruit in 10 albums — one of them, Live at Ground Zero (2003), a live CD/DVD package recorded at actor Morgan Freeman’s titular Clarksdale, Mississippi juke joint. Preston garnered producer of the year recognition from Living Blues magazine for his work on Rush’s 2004 album Folk Funk.

Preston’s formative experiences in music retailing at Record Bar during his Knoxville college days, doing licensing work for performing rights organization ASCAP in Nashville, and serving as regional sales manager for the multi-genre New Jersey-based label PPI Entertainment all contributed to the development of a management executive with a top-to-bottom understanding of his industry.

– Chris Morris