Relix Returns from the Dead (Dylan Stableford)

  Investment group, former employees acquire music magazine on brink of folding.

  Dylan Stableford -- Folio:

  May 3, 2009 -- Relix magazine was launched in 1974 as a handmade fanzine for Deadheads.

  Now, it’s returning from the dead.

  Three months after its publisher, Zenbu Media, put Relix -- as well as a pair of metal magazines, Metal Edge and Metal Maniacs -- on temporary hiatus, a group of investors led by Peter Shapiro -- a former New York nightclub owner and concert producer well-known in the so-called jam band scene -- and a core group of the magazine’s employees have acquired Relix and a pair of related Web sites from Zenbu founder Steve Bernstein.

  “I thought there was a good chance we were done,” Josh Baron, Relix’s editor, told FOLIO:.

  Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. (Zenbu is said to be in discussions to sell its metal magazines; the planned launch of a new country music magazine appears to have been scrapped.)

Relix, with a frequency of eight-times per year, carries a circulation of 102,000. The Web sites, Relix.com and Jambands.com, carry even more.