#it's lumpy of lumpy and the dumpers' new project!

[rustbeltjessie]

Bikini Kill // Riverside Theater, Milwaukee, WI // April 19, 2023

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The Underdogs: St. Louis’s Record Labels

[A feature I wrote in spring 2014 about St. Louis record labels. Amazingly dated already, but such is the lot of articles about DIY scenes.]

[Eads bridge, STL.]

So, here’s the situation: in the last 20 years, digital production and the Internet have demolished the traditional record industry. There are all kinds of statistics to show the dire state of the giant record companies of old, but the fundamental fact is that record sales go down every year. According to a January 8th Rolling Stone recap of the music industry’s performance, even digital downloads sank 6% from 2012 to 2013. Major labels are mummies, the big indie labels—Merge, Drag City, Jagjaguwar, and all the others—have staked out some space on a sinking ship, and Record Store Day itself is a tourniquet, an annual reminder that physical products are alright. Of course, all that is totally fine, because musicians are still out there making music. The same technologies that annihilated the record industry blew open the doors of music production, so now you can now record, distribute, and promote music for a fraction the former price. In the age of Bandcamp, it’s totally feasible musicians to do it all.

Who, then, are the intrepid souls who start small labels, who throw their time and money down what Robert Severson, Pancake Master of Pancake Productions, calls “one big money pit?” Why do they stick out their necks for the creative projects of others?

We asked the daredevils who run St. Louis’ labels, and they say a top reason is the joy inherent in working hard on something good. Running a record label is an artistic process of its own, with all the highs and low that come with the territory. For Joe Schwab of Euclid Records, it’s about the work itself. As he puts it, “my favorite thing about doing a label is simple: dealing with creative people. Not just the musicians, but the cover artists and graphic designers as well.” Pat Grosch of Mounds Music echoes the sentiment. He got into the game because being “around extremely creative individuals as they let you into their projects, and thus their hearts, is reward enough.”

People start running labels for pragmatic reasons, too. Local scenes are generally composed of loosely organized groups of friends with various degrees of interest in promoting themselves. Forming a label can coordinate the knowledge and energy of young and veteran members of a city’s scene, as well as provide an infrastructure for artistic cross-pollination. Damon Davis of the FarFetched Collective sees his label as an artists’ union. He started the organization, he says, to interact “with artists and [foster] connections between us in the music community.” Robert Severson of Pancake Productions was frustrated with the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of a lot of St. Louis music, so he started his label, Pancake Productions, partly just “to be an entity that never died.” And a coordinated scene is easier to explain to outsiders, so a label can be a doorway to out-of-state promotion. As Extension Chord’s Tim Rakel puts it, “an umbrella label seemed a good strategy for promoting music from Saint Louis.”

And then there’s the most fundamental concern of all: getting the music out! Major labels and even the big independent labels have simply never had an interest in putting out a lot of adventurous and underground music. Gabe Karabell of Don’t Touch My Records says it best: “Small labels have been killing it since the '50s and '60s, so I'm not surprised that the real jams remain underground to this day.”

Small labels work hard for the bands on the ground, and we owe so much excellent music to lonely owners. To get a sense of what’s really going on in the vinyl mines, we conducted a census of a dozen local labels in honor of this year’s Record Store Day. See a label you’re interested in? Check it out! Don’t think any of these labels look cool? Go forth! Start your own!

Twelve Saint Louis Labels

Big Muddy Records 

In a business where many labels close up shop soon after they open, Big Muddy Records is a crusty old uncle on the scene. Chris Baricevic lost a bet and started up the operation in 2005 with the self-titled Vultures EP, and gradually began putting out records by some of the city’s best-known Americana acts, including Bob Reuter’s Alley Ghost, The Hooten Hallers, Rum Drum Ramblers, and Pokey LaFarge. According to Baricevic, big things are in the works for Big Muddy: “a constant cycle of life and death, ulcers and dishwashing jobs, and we might have a hot dog party for our brother Brice.” He’d also like to say that Record Store Day should be about giving record store employees gifts.

Extension Chord Records 

Tim Rakel and Melinda Cooper of The Union Electric started Extension Chord Records last year as a way of releasing work by their side projects Town Cars and The Chainsaw Gentlemen. The label racked up five releases in its first year, and it’s moving fast: Town Cars’ debut CD is coming out this year, and the honchos are considering expanding the label’s roster. According to Rakel, the organizational headaches and sometimes glacial movement of the production process can be demoralizing, but ultimately, “it makes most sense to go ahead and do everything on your our terms.’”

Euclid Records 

Euclid Records (the store) has been around for thirty years, but the label has only been putting music out since 2009. The label got started pressing in-store sessions onto vinyl singles and selling them for the benefit of The New Orleans Musicians’ Relief Fund, but Euclid has quickly expanded the roster, issuing full-lengths by Troubadour Dali and Sleepy Kitty. Joe Schwab, the owner of both the label and the shop, sees underground labels and independent stores as closely entwined. “The only game in town these days are independent record stores,” he said, “and we're the ones that have been pushing indie bands and indie labels.”

Tower Groove Records 

Tower Groove Records is less a label than a loose collective of South City bands. Tower Groove’s been silent for a few months, but in the last several years Adam Hesed, Jason Hutto, and the rest of the collective have made some very unique releases happen. They got things rolling with a double LP compilation of 22 bands, and last year Tower Groove released a mail-order singles series. Each month of 2013, subscribers received a brand-new single that paired two local bands.

Mounds Music 

Mounds Music is the brand-new project of a few of the Bug Chaser dudes, an effort to put high-quality analog recording into the hands of local acts. Pat, Jake, and Zeng secured a start-up grant from the Regional Arts Commission, and they’ll be producing between 6 and 10 cassette releases in the next year. According to Pat Grosch, Mounds will be a creative platform, “an attempt to provide some new opportunities to musicians, and help let them focus on their craft—music—as we manage the production side.” The list of future collaborators is long, but Mounds is currently cooking up cassettes by Maximum Effort, The Bad Dates, Kisser, and Zak M. Details will be revealed soon.

Eat Tapes 

Eat Tapes is Matt Stuttler’s cottage industry, an all-cassette label that started when Stuttler moved from putting out tapes for his own projects to putting out tapes for his friends’ projects. The label has released material for Burrowss, Bruiser Queen, and others, but Stuttler has made a specialty out of sticking two bands together on one split tape. Split tapes are definitely in line with the label’s mission. As he puts it, “labels like Eat Tapes operate on a local/regional level that concentrates on supporting bands/artists that aren't going to necessarily have mass appeal. But who cares about that?”

Don’t Touch My Records 

The mission of D.T.M.R. is simple. Gabe Karabell, founder and tapemaker, says, “I just want to document some of the bands that I like before they break up.” Karabell is casual about the whole thing, but since 2012, the label has been in the right place at the right time to release music by The Brainstems, Rat Heart, Wild Hex, and Shaved Women. The only downside, Karabell says, is waiting in line at the Post Office to mail tapes when I'm late for work.” What’s up next? The debut of Self Help, “a new band with folks from Doom Town, Los Contras, The Vultures, Jack Grelle's band and the Bill McClellan Motherfuckers.”

Spotted Race 

For the last year and a half, Spotted Race has been churning out tapes from the city’s punk and hardcore underbelly. As operator Martin Meyer puts it, Spotted Race exists to release “bands that deserve to be put out but probably wouldn't be otherwise.” Meyer has assembled around 25 releases, by hand, for free, all to get the word out about bands that would normally never be heard outside the city. His work is paying off, though: Spotted Race has sold enough tapes, at home and around the world, to afford to release a Ruz flexi disc, a Black Panties flexi, a Trauma Harness LP, a Nos Bos flexi, a Dem Scientist 7-inch, and a Lumpy and the Dumpers 7-inch.

FarFetched Collective 

The goals of FarFetched go beyond simply distributing music. According to founder Damon Davis (LooseScrewz), the hip-hop centered collective aims to “create and nurture all forms of progressive music everywhere,” and even more fundamentally, to “create art that is genuine and thoughtful and make a living from that for my artists and myself.” FarFetched is home to artists including Scripts ‘n Screwz, 18andCounting, CaveofswordS, and Black James. Davis calls the label fundamentally focused on community and collaboration, an “artists’ union” rather than a hierarchical business. Look out for releases this summer, including a vinyl release of label comp Prologue III.

BDR/Rerun Records 

The BDR/Rerun collaboration is all about issuing lost gems of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Jason Ross, of Rerun, and Matt Harnish, of BDR, have done much to dig up, dust off, and reissue St. Louis punk, post-punk, and rock ‘n’ roll gems from The Welders, Max Load, and The Retros. After a period of silence, the label is returning April 1st with a bunch of releases from vintage Milwaukee bands.

Encapsulated Records 

 Encapsulated is the new, improved incarnation of I Hate Punk Rock Records. In 2012, owner Mike Jones opened Encapsulated Studios, a punk rock fortress in Maplewood where bands can practice and record, and where the operations of the label are centered. The label is still home to punk and hardcore acts from St. Louis and around the country, including Bent Left, Black for a Second, Fister, The Haddonfields, and Jetty Boys.

Pancake Productions 

Robert Severson, Pancake Master, created Pancake Productions as a production company for his student films. Sometime in the early 2000s, though, he started a one-man band, Googolplexia, and got caught up in music as well. Severson began by issuing albums by broken-up bands, a move that was not financially lucrative but certainly reflects the label’s ethos. Severson says, “Pancake Productions has never been about turning a profit. In some ways it's not even about breaking even. Really it's just about using every last dime (of both real money and credit extended to me) that I have to get good music out and available.” There’s a lot ahead for Pancake Productions, including a Vanilla Beans EP, a potential Stonechat CD, and “some top-secret things in the works for summertime.”