About Ignatius

Greg Preston began his career in music at an early age. After meeting two gentlemen from CBS Records when he was 8, he decided that music was his calling. Preston worked record retail while in college at the University of Tennessee where he earned a BS in Communications. In 1989 after 4 years of working in his major of advertising, he went to work for PPI Entertainment Group as Southeast Regional Sales Manager where he began to create his network. After 5 years at PPI and several hundreds of thousand miles in the air, he moved his family to Jackson Mississippi and began work as National Marketing Director for The Malaco Music Group. While at the label, Preston worked with some of the greatest artists in R&B and Blues including Bobby Blue Bland, Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, King Floyd, Bobby Rush and Little Milton. It was with Milton in 1998, that Preston began producing his first project Welcome To Little Milton. The album was nominated in 1999 for a Grammy in the category of Contemporary Blues Album of the Year.

After leaving Malaco in 2003, he teamed up with Blues legend Bobby Rush to create the Deep Rush Record label. The label released seven projects including the DVD Live At Ground Zero and Folk Funk, which Preston produced with Rush. Folk Funk received critical acclaim and was voted Best New Album of the Year by Living Blues readers poll. Following a discussion with a close friend, Cary Hudson, Preston started Ignatius Artists, an artist-booking agency, and began booking Hudson's solo gigs. As fate would have it, Blue Mountain made the decision to re-group, record a new record and begin touring to re-establish the band's presence with it's legions of fans. Since beginning to work with Blue Mountain, the agency has grown and added new artists to its roster such as Michelle Malone, Blues legend Bobby Rush and a few other incredibly talented artists.