Engine Company Records (Burnside Distribution) is a nationally and internationally distributed record label based in New York City, founded by recording artist and producer Blake Morgan.

Blake Morgan is hardly one to rest on recent laurels, but he's confident and at ease juggling his multiple successes as label owner, producer, and recording artist, based in his beloved New York City. After producing seventeen albums in five remarkable years filled with nonstop album sales, national press, television, and radio, Morgan has realized an extraordinary dream: an unselfish and revolutionary "home" for music, a home both productive and profitable. A home that gives its artists the balance of profits from their own album sales. A home that evokes the early days of the classic labels: where many artists appear as guests or as backing musicians on each others' records, often crossing style and genre to do so. A home where the unimaginable is simply the norm: where all the artists on the label own their own music and recordings.

That home is Engine Company Records.

Morgan's successes as a recording artist, as well as a producer, have paired him with Lenny Kravitz, Lesley Gore, Mike Errico, Phil Ramone, Terry Manning, and Phil "Butcher Bros." Nicolo, among others. His work has taken him from The Hit Factory in New York to Sound City in Los Angeles, from Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas to Studio 4 in Philadelphia.

In 1997, after signing a multi-album deal with Phil Ramone’s label N2K (Sony/Red), Morgan criss-crossed the country for more than a year, promoting his album “Anger’s Candy.” Yet despite rave reviews for the album and for Morgan’s shows, the dissatisfaction of working under traditional record company control was undeniable. “But I didn’t want to become one of those recording artists who spend their lives complaining about their label.” Spotting an opportunity to, as he puts it, “break free,” Morgan did the unheard of: he told Ramone he wanted out of his long-term deal. (Three months after Morgan’s departure, N2K folded.)

Morgan began writing and recording new material, for himself and for others. “Since I’d co-produced both ‘Anger’s Candy’ and my previous EP, ‘Sneakers,’ musicians started asking me for help with their music and recordings.” At the same time, though, he began to showcase for a different major label deal: “I was following standard advice, still caught on the treadmill, not realizing I was running backward.” Then, in 2001, at a packed, applauding showcase, he had an epiphany: “It was great--the show, the band, the songs. But I couldn’t help feeling that basically we were asking permission from these people to make our own music.” That realization, he says, changed everything.

Defiantly, Morgan began inventing a totally different future for his music--creating what has become the Engine Company Records home for himself and the growing list of artists he produces. “I’m so in love with the music I’m making now--as a recording artist and as a producer. It’s all on my own terms, with people I believe in. And I never have to ask permission from anyone to do what I’m doing.”

And doing incredibly well.