Morning After Records: Small stable, big splash
By John Wenzel
Morning After Records might be the new kid on the block, but he’s made a fistful of cash raking your leaves, and he knows the names of everyone in your neighborhood.
The Denver-based indie label, co-owned by Dan Rutherford and Adam Lancaster, has ascended to the top of the music heap through tireless self-promotion, good taste and a series of fortuitous events.
Sensing a groundswell of activity in the local music scene, Rutherford, 25, made plans to hatch his own label in 2004 after leaving his job at INDIEgo, a full-service promotions company.
“We had known each other almost four years,” said Lancaster of Rutherford, who had seen Lancaster’s band Curious Yellow at various local venues. “I was looking at something in the music industry like a booking agency, and Dan was getting offers with major labels. But I talked him out of moving to the coast. I told him he wouldn’t be able to work at another company because he couldn’t do it his own way, and that sold him.”
Officially launched on April Fool’s Day 2004, the label since has released the Hot IQs debut, “An Argument Between the Brain and Feet,” and The Photo Atlas disc “No, Not Me, Never.” The latter will see a rerelease this summer under a recently inked distribution deal with Stolen Transmission, a joint venture of Island/Def Jam.
The deal originated at this year’s South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, where The Photo Atlas played a well-received PureVolume.com afterparty to dozens of label executives.
“After seven hours of ingesting Red Bull and vodka the people there got a little happy,” Rutherford recalled with a smirk. “They mobbed the front of the stage when Atlas started and the place just erupted.”
“It’s really the SXSW fairy tale,” Lancaster, 29, added. “The second they were done there were all these drunk industry people getting up on stage and giving out their cards.”
The deal will allow The Photo Atlas album much wider exposure than Morning After could provide with its current resources, with a first pressing between 5,000 and 10,000 copies – and more if it’s successful. The album charted to No.36 on the CMJ Top 200 prior to the deal, so Morning After has high hopes for its rebirth.
Looking for bands with the perfect mix of marketability, work ethic and quality music has led the label to sign only three acts so far (recent signees Born in the Flood are working on an album for release later this year). But the label stands behind each of them equally.
“Morning After has been awesome to us, and mainly because they’re our friends,” said Photo Atlas drummer Devon Shirley. “The relationship between us isn’t that of a typical business relationship. It’s more of the relationship that you’d find between the X-Men.”
The distribution deal gives Morning After access to somewhere in the ballpark of $100,000 to push the rereleased Photo Atlas record, Rutherford confirmed. And that’s just a start. If the record takes off other signings and deals likely will flow.
When Rutherford and Lancaster talk about helping out their friends and elevating the entire Denver scene, they put their money and resources behind their words.
“That’s where the ethos of the label really stems from: Us helping our friends build a foundation for their careers,” said Rutherford.
He cited local outfits Public Service Records and Suburban Home as labels that have offered him indispensable help and guidance.
The rest of 2006 promises to remain busy as Morning After constantly revises its expectations upward. Rutherford left a couple of weeks ago for a 59-day stint organizing day parties for the Warped Tour, while Lancaster will remain in Denver to oversee day-to-day operations.
“A lot of people have raised their game at the moment,” said Rutherford of the local scene. “There’s really been a swell of these A-level bands like Hot IQs and Swayback and Bright Channel that kind of came up at the same time. And some bands have settled into either waiting for someone to come to them or establishing themselves nationally. We’re not waiting for anyone. We’re going to bring it to them.”
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-820-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
Not Bad Records: Punk’s spirit rules
By Ricardo Baca
A few months ago, Chuck Coffey was explaining his do-it-yourself record label, the 9-year-old Not Bad Records, on the patio at St. Mark’s Coffeehouse.
“In our minds,” he said, “the label was never a viable business opportunity.”
In his detached cynicism, Coffey wasn’t being fatalistic or self-deprecating.
He was being smart. And realistic. And punk rock.
For every indie record label that makes it, be it Vagrant hitting with Dashboard Confessional or Barsuk scoring with Death Cab for Cutie, there are scores of music ventures that die annually.
“We’ve been doing it for almost 10 years, and we’ve now broken even – and breaking even is pretty good when it comes to this,” said Don Bersell, Coffey’s partner in Not Bad. “This is a tough business.”
Starting a record label is a lot like opening a bar. At first it’s all glamour, fun and games. And then it’s not – it’s paperwork, difficult partnerships and the irritating minutiae of business ownership.
At least it is most of the time.
So while Barsuk sails on and hipsters mourn the loss of Kindercore, there are other labels that rock the underground with an adventurous yet subtle renegade spirit – and this is where we find Not Bad, which is run by Coffey and Bersell out of their respective homes in Aurora and Arvada.
How punk rock is Not Bad? It doesn’t sign contracts with its bands. Not to guarantee future records, not for promised tour schedules, not to mark the label/band royalty split.
“It’s all verbal,” Bersell said.
Added Coffey: “We’re just an example of how you can go a long way if you don’t mind keeping it in perspective.”
Perspective, for Coffey and Bersell, is both grand and narrow. Collectively they’ve released about 25 records in the past nine years with artists ranging from The Gamits to Call Sign Cobra, Pinhead Circus to Red Cloud West, Qualm to Sirr Issac Lyme, Machine Gun Blues to Falcon Crest, Out on Bail to Pariah Caste, Big Timber to The Facet, Gutbucket to Mail Order Children.
But they’ve done it quietly – starting as a traditional label and morphing into a co-op-centered model – working in mostly underground venues and rock clubs and with bands they release purely on musical merit.
“(Chuck) approaches the label the same way he approaches the bands,” said Nick Krier, who played with Coffey in both The Facet and Call Sign Cobra. “He’s like, ‘This is going to be for fun, and if we make tens of dollars or hundreds of dollars, that’s all icing.”‘
Coffey met Bersell in early 1997 through their bands, Mail Order Children and Gutbucket, respectively. Their bond soon became a label and an outlet for their bands. And their friends’ bands. And Coffey and Bersell’s post-Mail Order Children/Gutbucket bands, including the behemoth garage-punk collective Call Sign Cobra, of which they both were members before the band broke up earlier this year.
“They definitely put out stuff they like as opposed to stuff they think will make money,” said Mike Taylor, bassist for Out on Bail, which released its debut on Not Bad earlier this year. “And they definitely look to their buddies’ bands a little more than some labels would.”
But it’s more punk rock than it is nepotism, said Pete Biasi, who plays bass with Minneapolis band Falcon Crest, another Not Bad artist.
“In the small scope of D.I.Y. and punk rock and bands that are on that lower level, it’s inevitable that you’re doing things with people you know rather than taking a chance on someone you don’t know,” said Biasi, who met Coffey when his band Signal to Trust played a Midwestern show with The Facet in 2000. “Chuck has always seemed really community-minded, helping people do what they want to do. And he doesn’t expect anything more out of it than what he already gets.”
On July 14, Not Bad will hold its first showcase, at the Hi-Dive, with Machine Gun Blues headlining in front of Out on Bail, Big Timber and Reddmen, the latter of which is a Rapid City, S.D., band that is the next Not Bad release.
“They don’t fill a band’s head with big, lofty dreams of stardom,” said Virgil Dickerson, who runs the Denver-based Suburban Home Records and Distribution. “These guys have their heart and soul in independent music, and they want to plant that seed everywhere they go.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
