Last year, Al Cattabiani, a Dobbs Ferry entrepreneur and amateur guitarist, had an idea for a business that drew on his lifelong passion for music: a record label to provide an outlet for his work and that of other local musicians.

Calling his new label Garagista Music, after the Italian slang term for a vintner who makes wine in a garage, Mr. Cattabiani, 47, put out a call for submissions last February in local newspapers, on Web sites and by word of mouth.

Within six months, Mr. Cattabiani, who plays guitar in a band called Daddy-O, had received few dozen recordings from bands and solo artists.

He narrowed the submissions to 20 musicians from the river towns, including Yonkers, Irvington, Dobbs Ferry, Tarrytown and Hastings-on-Hudson. Part of Mr. Cattabiani's goal for Garagista music is to tap into a community spirit in the Hudson River Valley through the musicians who live there. He said he believed a CD could serve as kind of community keepsake.

"These being difficult and uneasy times, people in troubled times look to their communities for reassurance," he said. "Zeitgeist-wise, this was a good moment to do something."

The first two CD's to be issued were "Rivertown Voices," a compilation featuring jazz and cabaret standards, and "Rivertown Rock," a collection of folk, rock and blues songs. The CD's were released earlier this month and are being distributed at places like coffee shops, grocery stores and hardware stores. They are available at online retailers like Amazon.com as well as at Garagistamusic.com.

Many of Garagista Music's contributors are active in various musical groups in the region. Matt Turk, a guitarist, singer and songwriter from Hastings-on-Hudson, is active with Tribes Hill, an organization of singer-songwriters from the lower Hudson Valley concerned with the environment. He learned about Mr. Cattabiani's label through some employees at his local post office.

"I've become friendly with the guys at the post office, who are all really into music," he said. "Two of the workers had found this posting on the Internet for Rivertown artists and they suggested I send my stuff to them."

Mr. Turk sent Mr. Cattabiani his self-released CD, from which two songs were selected for the "Rivertown Rock" compilation: a funk-rock song called "Broadway" and the roots-and-reggae tinged "Bette Says." Mr. Turk says the label can help show the vitality of the region's folk and roots-rock scene and showcase artists who may be overlooked by major labels.

Nicole Pasternak, a jazz vocalist, and Ralph Lalama, a tenor saxophonist, a couple from Dobbs Ferry who are featured on two tracks on "Rivertown Voices," met Mr. Cattabiani through a mutual friend. Mr. Lalama is a member of the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and his own quartet often plays in Manhattan. Ms. Pasternak sings in jazz clubs throughout the region.

"I like the grass roots idea behind it," she said of the label. "I like the fact that the label is building something from the ground up - as opposed to artists who are constantly knocking on doors to get attention."

Next month, Garagista Music will release "In a Word," a CD by Ms. Pasternak and Mr. Lalama, the first non-compilation disc on the label.

Not every song on the label is so freshly minted. Andy Bart, a guitarist and a songwriter who owns The Elegant Poster, an art and frame store in Dobbs Ferry, recorded his song "Letter from London" 15 years ago. Although the original master tapes were lost, he had a cassette tape of the song, which was made into a re-mastered CD. The song suggests 1970's folk-rock and has a warm analog sound.

"I grew up in the Beatles era," Mr. Bart said. "To me it's all about having a good song. I was very pleased with it all those years ago and I'm still very proud of it."

Scott Freiman, a business partner in Garagista Music and an owner of Second Act Studios in Irvington, where three of the songs on the label were recorded, says musicians in Westchester tend to be more mature and less ego-driven than those in New York City.

"They've had families, they've done the garage band thing," he said. "Now, they may be doing it still seriously but with a little more hindsight and more control."

With his experience in film and media distribution, Mr. Cattabiani says promoting the label will come naturally for him. In the 1980's, he ran a company that created PBS Home Video. In 1993, he was one of the founders of Wellspring Media, a distributor of foreign, documentary and arthouse films. After selling the company in 2004, he formed 1409 Entertainment, a film production and development company based in Dobbs Ferry.

Mr. Cattabiani said he intended to license songs from Garagista Music to films, commercials, and television. He said he would also like to make songs available as cellphone ring tones, widely considered a major frontier in music distribution. For now, he sees Hear Music, the label whose compilation CD's are sold nationally in Starbucks, as a model for Garagista Music.