Pressing Matters

There’s laughter on the count-in but heartbreak in the beat, and as a deep, sliding guitar snakes beneath the start of Maggie Koerner’s fourth album “Upstate,” her voice tumbles and pierces. It’s a sound raw and close, and it’s the voice of a Louisiana songwriter baring her soul on the mic.

“It feels like I’ve finally tapped into my voice and understood fully who I am as an artist,” Koerner says of the gorgeously confessional songs she put on tape with co-producer Ajai Combelic at his Lil Squeeze Studio off St. Claude Avenue and then on vinyl just a few blocks away at New Orleans Record Press. “This is definitely the first time I found joy in the recording process, and that’s everything to me. So, choosing where it got pressed was important. I like the idea of keeping my dollars in the community, but also this album that means so much to me staying in my local arts community for its final step.”

Bright aqua and purple brick stands out on most streets, but not in the Bywater of New Orleans where the city lays its character on thick across its colorful porches and storefronts. Here lies the ironic convergence of two of Louisiana’s largest legacy industries: music and plastics.

Past some wrought iron and a pair of unassuming open doors, the early morning winter sun blankets tall stacks of large brown boxes packed with Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s new Christmas album.

“It’s chaos, but it’s controlled chaos,” says the Press’ co-owner Brice White, known on-air as Brice Nice, and looking like a silver-haired music prophet just struck by a new vision as he bounds into a labyrinthine two-story production space. “This is literally plastics manufacturing, but that’s not why any of us are really here. The only reason anybody cares about this PVC is because we put music on it that we all love.”

When the press began in 2018, an album on Sinking City Records — the indie label White owns with fellow WWOZ DJ and Director Scott Borne — was one of the first out the door. After the pandemic hit and his club DJ gigs nearly vanished, White, an avid vinyl collector, thought about launching his own press with Borne to meet rising industry demand. After talking with New Orleans Record Press founder Dan Lauricella, they bought his majority stake and agreed to split duties on the daily operations.

Now they manage nearly 20 employees and two presses. From hoppers full of virgin compound, to the vinyl hitting more than 300 degrees, to the hockey puck-sized hunk getting rolled by hand in plastic pellets that melt into enviable splatters and swirls, to master lacquer disc and metal stampers cutting the precise grooves that will vibrate a needle and, magically, make a righteous sound — it all happens here.

Koerner praises the press for its attention to detail and speed, and says working with White and Borne feels like collaborating with friends.

“They’re the nicest and most helpful vinyl partners I could imagine,” Koerner says. “To get a text from the record press owner himself that your album is ready and picking it up the same day cuts out all the shipping costs — it saves a lot of time, too.”

For these music obsessives and business partners, expansion won’t be outward. It will be inward.

Pressing for Cajun stalwart Joel Savoy and soulful crooner Kristin Diable, to rootsy rockers The Deslondes, they have decided to put Louisiana’s people first.

“We don’t take major label work anymore, because we don’t want to have to tell local artists to wait,” White says. “The relationships here are too important to us. We want to press Louisiana artists, and we want to see their music spread.”

As 2026 unfolds, the duo believes they can increase capacity by maintaining high standards and a strong connection to the music community they have poured into as WWOZ personalities and culture warriors for years.

“We definitely found our strength, and more of ourselves, in being local, in being in the New Orleans music economy,” Borne says.

And with icons like Jon Batiste, Big Freedia, Trombone Shorty, and the bayou’s latest newcomer, Lana Del Rey, enriching the musical soil, this growing press can always find a new groove.

“We do need to connect with Lana,” White says, looking over a bin of black and gold scraps destined to be recycled into a brand-new batch of records. “I know my daughter would freak out.”

Scott Borne & Brice White

Occupation: Owners, New Orleans Record Press

Social Media: @neworleansrecordpress on Instagram

Radio: WWOZ New Orleans 90.7 FM
Listen to Scott Borne: The Morning Set with Scott Borne, Thurs., 6 – 9 a.m.
Listen to Brice Nice: Block Party with Brice Nice, Sat., 6 – 8 p.m.

Q&A: Scott Borne

What band or artist first really made you first fall in love with music? Run DMC. I remember hearing them on the radio, and then tracking down the cassette of Raising Hell. I poured over that album almost nightly ‘til I knew all the lyrics.

When you’re not working, what do you love doing for fun in and around New Orleans? I am a big fan of my neighborhood. I live in Mid-City (New Orleans). I love going to the Broadside for movies and shows, Cafe Degas and 1000 Figs for dinner. And I love taking my kids to City Park.

Give me three Louisiana artists, from any time period, that might not be household names in 2026, but that everyone should know. Jazz drummer James Black—who played with everyone from Cannonball Adderley and Ellis Marsalis in New York City, to Fats Domino and Dr. John in New Orleans; Clyde Kerr, Jr., a trumpeter and composer who played with Aretha Franklin and the Jackson 5, and taught at NOCCA, mentoring Trombone Shorty and many others; and “Creole Beethoven” Wardell Quezergue, an arranger and producer who collaborated with Dave Bartholomew, Otis Redding and Stevie Wonder.