Root Doctor Collective (RDC) is the record label supporting Saint Disruption and its community of artists.

• We support the production and sharing of timely, compelling music and art

• We explore pathways to resilient and sustainable music economies

• We cultivate promising artists, songwriters and visionaries

• We Partner with NGOs and non-profits to catalyze positive change

Mission

RDC supports, cultivates and collaborates with top musicians and artists to create works that support positive change in the world. 

What We Do

We bring musicians, artists and their fans together through common purpose.

We explore novel business models to help link donors and music fans to positive change-making.

The Team

Aaron Kayce

Aaron is a high impact leader, General Manager and Talent Buyer, as well as journalist and editor, with over 20 years in the music industry. Pre-Covid Aaron’s focus was with Live Nation at The Fillmore in Silver Spring, MD, where he brought over 200 concerts a year to the people of his community and managed a business with over $8M in revenue. Prior to his work with Live Nation Aaron orchestrated a $1M turnaround at Bob Weir’s Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, CA where he booked thousands of concerts and rebuilt the brand and business from the ground up. Today Aaron’s passion is using his vast experience, knowledge and relationships to make the world a better place through the power of music.

Ted Kartzman

Ted spent the past 21 years immersed in the independent music industry, applying technology to help level the playing field for independent artists and labels.

In 1998, Ted co-founded JamBase.com, a website dedicated to providing musicians and fans with a grassroots community for finding artists on tour, selling geographically targeted email marketing to venues/promoters & labels.

In 2001, Ted segued into artist management, working with avant-rock trio The Slip. The result of this experience was focusing on digital licensing & distribution.

In 2004, Ted expanded his understanding of the digital music licensing landscape while at Rhapsody. As Director of Independent Label Business at Rhapsody, Ted worked on the first streaming subscription deals while overseeing the ingestion, promotion, and legal contract processes for the indie labels.

At Rhapsody, Ted developed a series of corporate sponsored live events ("Rhapsody Rocks"), recording exclusive live audio/video content in a party setting, then streaming the audio exclusively through Rhapsody.

Ted's understanding of end-to-end digital product delivery through reapandsow, a boutique digital distribution agency. In April of 2008, Ted joined IODA as Vice President of Client Services, overseeing both label clients as well as content ingestion team, bringing a unique client perspective (reapandsow was an IODA client).

In December of 2010, Ted left IODA for Google, where he currently oversees licensing of sound recordings for the Google Play Music vertical, as well as YouTube, scaling back his global Google Play role, focusing locally across the Americas for both divisions.

Specialties: conversation & sales abilities, quick learning, knowledge of contract processes and music licensing of sound recordings, deep rolodex of music industry, understand the many hats worn within the business of music, from promoting concerts to licensing music to encoding and ingestion of digital music to online marketing.

Jeff Firewalker Schmitt

Folk Healer, Musician, Ceremonialist and Scientist – enjoys a rich life filled with community, science, music, art, and family. As founder of the Eagle Condor Council and Tobacco Freedom, Jeff is an advocate for indigenous healing and wisdom traditions and works closely with the Wisdom Keepers. As both a noted scientist and practitioner of Peruvian Folk medicine, he seeks to build bridges of understanding. Jeff is a challenging and evocative speaker/storyteller; in 2011 he presented the first TEDx talk on Ayahuasca – inspired by his life-changing sojourn with the Secoya of the Amazon rainforest. He did his graduate work at the University of Bath and Oxford University (doctorate in Molecular Biophysics). He has held professorships at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Biochemistry and Physiology-Pharmacology and was the Director of Research for the Center for Integrative Medicine. He is a founding member of numerous companies and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and patents. Jeff co-founded and directed Wake forest Innovations. He also devotes his time to organizations serving the greater good ( board member of 5 non-profit organizations). He is also a Chinese martial Arts expert.

Jeff has collaborated with numerous American and European artists, including ex-King Crimson drummer Michael Giles, LA sound artist Rhan Small, rap artist and spoken-word poet Agent 23 and John Medeski of Medeski Martin & Wood. He recorded two albums with REM’s producer Mitch Easter. Jeff winning the Savannah College of Art ‘Savannah 3D’ invitational in 1986 for his sculptural works. Jeff and his collaborators composed music for Alban Elved Dance 1994-2005, leading to collaborations in England, USA and Germany. Jeff is also a founding member of the Wheel Theater Company led by Juilliard and Moscow Art Theater artist Felix Ivanov. Finally, while in Europe, Jeff was a founding member of the Bio*Art collaborative, a group of philosophers, scientists and artists working together to foster an esthetic appreciation of scientific discovery. Their work led to a Royal Society exhibition as well as the first musical compositions based on the 3-dimensional structure of proteins.