Do-it-yourself bands along the Front Range have nabbed substantial ink in recent months, from DeVotchKa’s Grammy nomination for its “Little Miss Sunshine” soundtrack to deafening buzz for the Photo Atlas and Born in the Flood.
Less obvious but equally important are the local independent labels that support the emerging bands. The ethos that defines the music – fiercely independent, wonderfully strange and challenging – extends to the record labels, too.
“We were always friends with our favorite bands,” said Sara Padgett, co-founder of Boulder-based Hometapes. “We would break into swimming pools or play kickball with them after shows. We learned very early on there was little boundary between anything and everyone else, and we always acted as if we were in control of everything we did.”
Padgett and husband Adam Heathcott, both 27, run the eclectic, internationally respected Hometapes label from their Boulder home after moving last year from Miami. Like most indie labels, their releases sell in the thousands instead of millions, each one a lovingly fussed-over product.
Hometapes invests impressive chunks of time and money into its slick, attractive releases, which include albums from the Caribbean, Paul Duncan, Pattern in Movement and recent signee Bear in Heaven.
“We put out records that people can cherish and look at a hundred times and continually get things out of,” said Heathcott, a graduate of the Savannah School of Art & Design. “It’s about the whole package.”
Just helping “our friends”
A growing number of Denver indie labels also invest huge amounts of time and sweat into their releases, like the charmingly lo-fi Still Soft Recordings, the modest Public Service Records or the ready-for-primetime Morning After Records. The latter’s stable includes Born in the Flood, which recently released the excellent “If This Thing Should Spill,” the Photo Atlas, Nathan and Stephen, and others.
“In the end we’re all out for the greater good,” said Morning After co-owner Dan Rutherford. “We want to help our friends out so they’re ideally able to quit their day jobs and do what they do best.”
Morning After is coming off a successful spate of South by Southwest festival shows in Austin, Texas, and finishing renovations on its new space at 29th and Larimer streets. Like last year’s Austin visit, the Photo Atlas’s Purevolume set was a place to see and be seen, and Born in the Flood rocked a trio of incendiary shows. Both bands will hit the road this summer to spread Denver’s musical gospel.
Though none of its bands are Colorado-based, Hometapes’ presence in Boulder is helping make that city a haven for more than just jam and bluegrass. The label’s SXSW shows reaped a crop of curious ears, sweaty hipsters crowding the showcase to get a taste of groups like the Caribbean and Slaraffenland.
“I was really happy with the audience response to every act,” said Michael Kentoff, lead singer of the Caribbean, a band that will play Denver in August. “I was psyched about it down to the merch table at the front entrance. You knew when you walked in that this label had its act together.”
The economics of running an indie label usually dictate a day job and personal investments. Though Kentoff describes Hometapes’ Padgett and Heathcott as “two art-damaged people trying to do something different,” he marvels at the progression of their business savvy the past couple of years.
Other labels function more as communes, granting each band equal say in business dealings.
“Our structure in some senses is the absence of one,” said Bryce Merrill, part of the Needlepoint Records family. “There’s a noble poverty to the label in that whatever we have goes back into everyone else.”
Merrill, a singer and guitar player in Denver’s Everything Absent or Distorted, said the lack of a hierarchy allows the label to be flexible in its radio and press campaigns, letting each band use profits from CD sales to directly fund its own publicity.
Andy Tennant of Cat-a-Tac, Needlepoint’s co-founder and president, operates a studio for its groups (7 1/2 Recordings), allowing them high-quality recordings without the wads of cash. The label continues to grow with the addition of acts Rabbit is a Sphere and Thank God for Astronauts.
Piracy takes a toll
Some labels, like the punk-oriented Suburban Home, have faltered as illegal file sharing takes bites out of its CD sales.
“There are entire generations of music fans that don’t consider music to have any monetary cost,” founder Virgil Dickerson wrote in a recent blog post. “Where will that leave labels like Suburban Home in the future?”
Dickerson has responded by cutting staff, promoting bands through samplers and offering CDs at $5 each. Whether it saves the label or not, the realities of selling and promoting music from the trenches shapes every aspect of Colorado’s indie labels.
“Expectations and goals are very different things,” said Hometapes’ Heathcott. “We don’t really set sales goals. We try to figure out what the right number is to make, and how to get as many records as possible into the hands of people who will appreciate what it is, aesthetically and musically.”
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
