Sound Asleep Records was started back in 1994 when Jerker Emanuelson from small-town Vara, Sweden, decided that there was way too much great American music that was being heard by too few. The result of this, was the release of the first compilation CD. The mix of pop and more roots oriented stuff on the same compilation was something new and turned out to be a great success. This CD set the standards for everything else we´ve released after that.

Hit The Hay When we got a chance to release a CDEP with Nashville pop master Bill Lloyd, we jumped at it right away. Bill examplifies the music that this label represents, with his involvement in both pop and country music.

The next thing we put out was our second compilation called, you guessed it, Hit The Hay Vol.2 including the same mix of pop and roots as the first one.
North Carolina popgod Jamie Hoover, from The Spongetones, was the next one to be included in the labels roster with the release of the 7" vinyl single "Nobody Wins This Time"

A new band from Detroit called The Phenomenal Cats caught Jerkers attention and their debut CD EP "Seagirl and 5 other Dogs" was the next outing.
Great country-rocker Tim Carrol, formely of the Blue Chieftains, had a track already on the first "Hit The Hay", but now it was time for his debut CD EP called "Good Rock From Bad".

A new concept in the compilation department appeared with "Fireworks".

Taking the same mix of pop and country-rock as the "Hit The Hay" compilations, but offering two songs by most artists instead of just one. This turned out to be a smash hit, so soon to follow was "Fireworks Vol. 2" in the same style. The next release was the debut CD by Robert Crenshaw called "Full Length Stereo Recordings" Oh yes, Robert is Marshall's brother and former drummer.

The Fall of 1999 saw the 5th Anniversary for the label, and to celebrate that, "Hit The Hay Vol. 3" was released. The new Millennium has seen two new releases so far. First out was the Mark Brine CD "Back In The Country" soon followed by "Hit The Hay Vol.4", this time being a double CD.

The original idea with Sound Asleep Records was to release compilations with great, and mostly unknown, pop from the mid 70's to the mid 80's. Now, we've started a series of compilations called "Home Runs" that compiles just that. Each volumes will be strictly limited to 200 copies. The Home Runs series is put together by Jerker and Christer Strömberg

More and more great music comes out all the time, so "Hit The Hay Vol 5" turned out to be a double CD with 46 artists.

In December of 2002, a second volume of Home Runs was released including more great and mostly obscure pop.

Early 2003 "Hit The Hay Vol. 6" saw the light of the day and once more it's a double CD.2004 - So, now ten years has gone since the start of the label. Time really flies. To celebrate this anniversary, we released Hit The Hay Vol. 7 including 47 great songs by 47 great artists.

We are also proud to announce that we have started to work with the great band The Accelerators from Raleigh, North Carolina. We are distrubuting their rocking CD "Nearer" that came out a few years ago. We are also working together on a compilation of stuff from their three great hard-to-find earlier CD's.

The original idea with the label was to release great and obscure pop from the mid 70´s to the mid 80´s, and Jerker and his good friend Christer Strömberg, started to release a series of compilations called "Home Runs" that was including music like that. The first volume came out in 2001 and the second one in 2002

"It was said from the start of the "Home Runs" series that it should only be three volumes, and in 2005, the third and final volume of this series was released. It was sort of sad to put an end to it here with so much more great American pop from 1975-85 still to release, but I guess three volumes is enough and then people hopefully have been inspired enough to seek out more great pop from this era themselves."

"I´ve had a plan for several years to put out a compilation with my friends and favorites in Nashville, and now that it was exaclty 20 years since I first came to Nashville on a tennis scholarship, I thought it was a great time to do it. "Between Goodlettsville And Murfreesboro" is a compilation including, except for a Webb Wilder track, only previously unreleased tracks by a lot of the great musicians that live and work in Nashville.

The name of the compilation comes from the fact that Goodlettsville is a small city just north of Nashville, and I always stay with friends there when I´m in town. Murfreesboro is a small town just south of Nashville, and Trevecca College that I went to in Nashville is on Murfreesboro Road.

In the summer of 2007, the "Road Chill" CD by Raleigh, North Carolina band The Accelerators was released. The CD includes the 19 best tracks from their first three LP´s.

Jerker has only released records with American or Canadian bands, when he, in the spring of 2008,  got the chance to release the new CD by Swedish band The Mop Tops, he jumped on it right away. I´ve been a big fan of The Mop Tops for 20 years, so it was a big thrill to be able to release their great new CD, says Jerker.

In the spring of 2008, Jerker bought a CD with the band Dropkick from Glasgow, Scotland and thought it was their debut CD. The CD called "Dot The i" was really excellent, so Jerker decided to find out a little more about the band. He found that they had made 7 previous CD´s! He bought them all right away and was knocked out by how good they were and that he hadn´t discovered this great band earlier.

The band consists of the two brothers Alastair and Andrew Taylor plus guitarplayer Roy W. Taylor, who amazingly, is not related to the two other Taylors!

Then when Jerker was at The International Pop Overthrow Festival at The Cavern in Liverpool in May, he was lucky enough to get to see the band play two excellent shows. He asked them, if they might be interested in having a CD released on Sound Asleep, and he was very pleased when they said yes.

Now, that CD is out, and it´s called "Patchwork". It´s an excellent mix of the best of The Jayhawks, Wilco and Teenage Fanclub

Dropkick is the best new band that I´ve heard in many years, and they are also very productive. I loved being able to release their previous CD, so when I was asked to release the new one "Abelay Hotel", I jumped on it right away. The CD was released in mid September 2009. Dropkick is the first band that Sound Asleep Records releases two full-length CD´s with.

In the summer of 2010, Jerker and his friend Christer started the Sound Investment CD Club where great and hard to find music will be released in strictly limited editions of 100 copies of each CD. These CD´s will only be available to subscribers who subscribe to four releases at a time. The first release was a previously unreleased album by the great country singer Hank McCoy. The album was recorded when Hank lived in Germany. The second release was a lost power pop classic by Julian Leal. It came out as a limted LP in 1985, and not many people had heard it before.We´ve been thinking about releasing some kind of Christmas record for many years, and when Dropkick had a few really good ones, we decided to make an exclusive 7" vinyl EP in red vinyl pressed in 100 copies.

Dropkick are a very productive band, and the Taylor brothers write and record new songs all the time, so we decided to release the third CD on Sound Asleep with them in the spring of 2011.
Then there was time for two new releases in Jerker´s and Christer´s CD Club during the summer. The first CD is by the Swedish band Gillis Jordan & The Bad Lovers. They released a couple of cassettes in the mid 90´s, but this is the first time on CD.

The second CD is with the legendary popband The Patriots from Philadelphia. They only released four songs on a split LP in the 80´s. Here those songs appear on CD for the first time together with five previously unreleased songs. Hit The Hay was the name of the compilation that started the whole label, and now seven years after the release of Vol. 7 in the series, it was time for Vol. 8 in December of 2011. Right after that, it was time for our third 7” vinyl single release. This time it´s a single with great Swedish band Southern Skyline who have managed to find two previously unreleased songs by the late, great American songwriter Jim Ford. The single comes in three vinyl colors: Red, orange and clear.

Here is the story about how the Bob Woodruff CD came to be released.
I love the two Bob Woodruff albums “Dreams And Saturday Nights” from 1994 and “Desire Road” from 1997. I saw Bob do two great live shows, one at Down On The Farm outside Halden in Norway and one in Trollhättan in Sweden. Then nothing was heard from Bob in a long time, and I wondered what had happened to him. There were rumors of a third unreleased record, but nothing happened. Then in 2010, me and some friends were talking about what could´ve happened to Bob, and I asked my friend José Ruiz in France, if he knew because I knew that José had been in touch with Bob before. José said that he had the unreleased tracks on a cassette tape that Bob gave him some ten years ago. José transfered the tape to CD and sent me a copy. I was totally blown away how great it was and thought that this really should be heard by more people. I got in touch with Bob´s lawyer Edward Cosgrove, and he helped me to get in touch with Bob and to set up the details for this CD that you now after so many years finally can get to hear.
So, big thanks goes out to José Ruiz, Edward Cosgrove, and of course, Bob Woodruff himself for making all this possible.

The Midwest Beat are one of the best and coolest new young bands from the United Statres over the last few years, and when we in the summer of 2012 got a chance to release a 7" vinyl single with them containing two exclusive tracks, we jumped on the chance right away.
In 2012, the fourth Dropkick CD was released on Sound Asleep. The band continue in their great melodic styler with every CD getting stronger and stronger.
The fall of 2012 also saw the release of two new release in The Sound Investment CD Club, The Nads "You Don´t Know Me" and Dave Schultz "Leaving Here For Good: The Songs Of Dave Schultz".

When the whole record industry is struggling, Sound Asleep Records release more records than ever. Two new releases from Sweden´s kings of pop, The Mop Tops. This time, they do their own great versions of songs by the English band The Equals. We release both a CD and a 7" vinyl EP with those songs.

Then we release three projects that we have been working on more or less for several years. Three of our favorite artists, Chris Hickey, Charlie Burton and Buttercup all get their first releases out on Sound Asleep now, and we are really pleased an honored to have these great artists on our label.

In 1981, a really great 7" EP was released by Eric Collins from Ohio. I bought a copy shortly after that and have loved the record all these years. Now, we re-release the EP in its original vinyl form with exactly the same cover and label that it had back then. One of the best and rarest popsingles are now available again through our new label Singles Goin´ Steady Records.

In 2013 the second volume of the very succesful series called "Souvenirs" was released. It contains more great American pop from 1975-1995. Also in 2013 we became aware that in 1979 there was a great promo 7" EP released by our great favorite Ian Gomm containing six tracks that only ever have been available on this very hard to find EP. We were delighted when we got the chance to re-release it on CD, and it´s called "Demonstrates". In 2014 we released two more CD´s in the CD Club. It was a best of compilation with the great band The Frampton Brothers and also a best of by the fine pop band Max Wheel & The Sheades. in 2016 we released yet another record by the great band Dropkick from Scotland. This tine it was released on both vinyl LP and CD. Also in 2016 we released the brilliant debut LP, on white vinyl, by great Swedish band Swedish Polarbears.

Six years after "Hit The Hay Vol. 8" was released, it was time for yet another volume is this series that started the whole label back in 1994. On September 29th 2017, "Hit The Hay Vol. 9" saw the light of day.

After releasing seven albums with Dropkick, in the spring of 2021 we released a "Best Of" CD containing songs both from our previous releases but also from the albums that the band released before they became a Sound Asleep artist! November 2021 saw the release of volume 12 in the long running series of "Hit The Hay" compilations.
Skinny Dyck from Canada have a track on "Hit The Hay Vol. 12", and when he asked me, if I wanted to release his second record "Palace Waiting" I just had to do that, so that came out in June 2022. Following the release of the Skinny Dyck CD, a 7" vinyl single was released with two songs from the CD. In April of 2023 the next Dropkick release came out on Sound Asleep. As always it´s full of great pop. At the same time, we released a CD version of Skinny Dycks´s first vinyl LP on CD including two demo tracks as an added bonus.

The Morells recorded a classic debut album in 1982, and only recently have recordings made later that year and in 1984 been discovered. We are now very happy to be able able to release these recording s on the CD "You´re Gonna Hurt Yourself" in August of 2024.

At the same time, we are also releasing "Hit The Hay Vol. 13" to celebrate that the label turns 30 years old.

The late fall of 2024 saw the release of the new Skinny Dyck album "Easygoing" being released on both LP and CD. Also a new Dropkick CD called "Primary Colours" came out at the same time.

- Jerker Emanuelson, Decemder 18th 2024

See discography for more info on these releases and see links for places to get them.