article1=There is a minor revolution in the music industry; in many instances, artists are bypassing major studios and turning to smaller producers to get their music on record. Derrick Stout is one of those helping them in the process.
    Six months ago, the 30-year-old Lake Bluff pianist/composer created his own music company, Baby Doin' The Jig Productions Inc., and his own record label, Deerpath Music. The company has released two new-age piano albums.
    "Deerpath" is a re-release of Stout's 1995 debut piano album that raked in enough profits to finance the record company. Stout paid tribute to the album's success by naming his new label after it.
    The label's second release is "One Year Later," a debut piano album by Wilmette native and New Trier grad Scott Bennett.
    "The idea was initially prompted because I wanted to help out a musician friend of mine," said Stout recently. "A lot of the musicians I run into are extremely talented, but they're not usually able to do their own producing."
    Stout said that founding his own label has not been as difficult as one might expect.
    "It's definitely an option," he said. "It's not like it was 20 years age when it really was too hard."
    Stout finds he can produce CDs by keeping things simple. He bought the recording studio, which happens to be his apartment.
    "One room is for recording and the other is for everything else," he said. The "kitchen nook," as he calls it, is the office for his 17-year-old intern, Sean Nagle, as well as a professional sound engineer, Jon Seiller, and the latest addition to the staff - 13-year-old computer programmer Stephen Dewart.
    Because he does the design work himself, and pays no recording fee, he can produce CDs for a fraction of the cost of big-name record companies.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME
    Stout, a graduate of Lake Forest High School, is a booster of his home town. He tells the story of being on his own as a young adult without a place to live after his family left the area, and finding shelter in Lake Forest's Saint James Lutheran Church. The minister let him sleep on the floor for a week until he was able to find a more permanent place to stay.
    "So many people were so good to me," said Stout, who now finds that his community friends are helping him out again.
    Robert Kelly, a Lake Forest photographer, has worked with Stout on each one of the album covers and offered to shoot his photographs for cost, but the two have worked out a deal where Kelly gets a small percentage of the record sales.
    Other Lake Forest friends like Helanders, the office supply store, and Crescent Worth Art and Antiques, are playing Stout's music and selling his CDs.
    "I'm taking the CDs to stores that sell gifts or art," said Stout. "People hear the music as they browse around the store and occasionally they ask for it."
    Still, he agrees, CDs are most logically found in traditional music stores.
    "As a good principle, you have to have it in a record store," he said. "That's the first place a customer is going to look." He currently has albums at CD City in Highland Park and Tower Records in Chicago.
    In the next six months, musicians Warren Beck and Jeannie Tanner will have released CDs under the Deerpath Music label. Stout says he is always happy to get new demo tapes.
    "I'm not a wealthy man, but not everybody in the world can make their living doing what they want to do," said Stout. "I feel very lucky to be doing this. I love it."