RPM by Kevin Stadler

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

SUB POP RECORDS Punk Rock Branding

INTERVIEW: FATHER JOHN MISTY All Good Things Occur On The Floor

THIRD MAN RECORDS The House That Jack Built

THERE IS NO BEGINNING TO THE STORY A Conversation With Saddle Creek Records

RPM RECOMMENDS The Years Best Albums

PUNK ROCK BRANDING How Bruce Pavitt Built Sub Pop In An Anti-Corporate Nirvana by tyler gray It’s 1990. Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman are in New York City visiting Sony Records, the biggest label in the world. Their own Seattle, Washingtonbased indie label Sub Pop had only scraped by full-time for a couple of years. They’d sunk almost all of the cash they made back into the company (Pavitt paid himself $25,000 a year) and into signing bands including Tad, Mudhoney, and a trio called Nirvana, who made fuzzed-out, blissed-out,

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punk-tinged noise rock that was never intended to top charts. (Nirvana’s album Nevermind would bump Michael Jackson from the No. 1 slot on the Billboard album charts in 1992, and the band would go on to sell about 50 million records). Sub Pop would grow to a $20 million company in less than 10 years and become a driving force in “grunge,” one of the last modern rock genres to earn status as a full-blown movement, one that influenced all sorts of art, fashion, and culture for decades.

BRANDING GRUNGE One of the ways Pavitt distinguished Sup Pop was by thinking of it as a brand from

day one. That was a big deal in an era where Kurt Cobain appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a T-shirt with the message “CORPORATE MAGAZINES STILL SUCK,” and anything corporate was dismissed as fake. Pavitt took his cues from Factory Records in the U.K. or the U.S. jazz label Blue Note. “You pick up a Blue Note record and you know what you’re getting,” he says. Even Sub Pop’s stark black-and-white logo was far more clean and corporate looking than others with hand-scrawled fonts. Sometimes they’d put the Sub Pop logo on the front of the record instead of tucked away in the back like most punk labels. “We were trying to be very consistent in our packaging, very consistent in our sound, really putting focus on the region, in the same way that Motown put focus on Detroit Soul,” Pavitt says. The second big way Sub Pop developed its brand was by making good on promises-even while dealing with massive cash flow problems. More than once, distributors they’d hired to would sell Sub Pop’s stock to shops, pocket the wholesale bucks then go out of business owing the label as much as $40,000. (Meanwhile, the bands would be asking for their money to make rent or just survive--usually they got it.) That’s why the Singles Club was such an important innovation. When Sony’s chief Ienner asked how Sub Pop did it, “We said, counterintuitively, we limit the pressings of our records for the Singles Club,” Pavitt says. “And because they’re limited, people know they’re unique and that they’ll most likely not be able to get these records unless they pay us up front. But also because they trust the brand.”

Given that Warner ended up investing in Sub Pop, it’s fair to say Pavitt didn’t give Sony the secret recipe it was looking for. The label would never have impacted the culture if it weren’t for the bands themselves living up to the promise. And the one thing you could expect from Sub Pop bands’ shows was the unexpected: a face-melting cover of a song from a band you’d never heard of; a bell-ringing boot to the head from a stage diver; musical experimentation and whimsy that always teetered on the edge of chaos.

“ IT COMES FROM PUNK DIY CULTURE. IN ORDER TO SURVIVE YOU HAVE TO BE CREATIVE AND RESOURCEFUL. IF YOU’RE CREATIVE AND RESOURCEFUL, YOU CAN MAKE IT. ALL THE BANDS WE WORKED WITH, SAME THING. AS A STARTUP IF YOU DON’T HAVE THAT, YOU’RE TOAST. ”

PUNK ROCK BRANDING

FATHER JOHN MISTY: ALL GOOD THINGS OCCUR ON THE FLOOR by emma brown

Father John Misty is the sort of musician who infiltrates his listeners’ dreams. Scroll through his Twitter page, and it is quite striking. According to fans, Misty’s dream-world doppelgänger plays “Go Fish” on trains, fathers twins, performs at the circus, and sings pop songs in Italian. Not exactly fantastical stuff, but enough that it could creep the subject out. Yet Misty, whose real name is Josh Tillman, remains unfazed. “Someone at a show in Santa Cruz told me I kept floating down out of the sky to comfort them during a DMT session. I told him that didn’t really sound like me,” he deadpans. As Father John, Tillman is clearly up to some exciting things. Earlier in the month, he met Kid Cudi for the first time and the two “went on a spiritual journey in the studio.” But he’s careful not to reveal too much: “I don’t want to say ‘I can’t talk about it’ and make it into a big deal, but there are major labels involved.” He’s just worked on scoring his first film—a horror short involving his “lady”—an experience he greatly enjoyed. Currently, however, the musician is on his North American tour and is playing in New York with another RPM favorite, La Sera.

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Fresh—or probably exhausted—from Austin City Limits, Tillman is on the road when we speak with him over the phone. “I’m in a van with a bunch of dudes, so they get to listen to me pontificate about myself,” he tells us. His

first album as Misty, Fear Fun, came out in May. Before that, Tillman released numerous albums under his own name, J. Tillman, and joined Fleet Foxes as their drummer in 2008. Father John is not, Tillman assures us, a character; the album preceded the name, and Tillman “just liked the idea of naming myself something so ridiculous.” It was time for a change; to distance himself from the Joshua-turned-J. of yesteryear. “I don’t think I could even play a J. Tillman song now... I’m not ready to return to that period in my life,” Tillman explains. Fear Fun is very much about Tillman himself, what he terms his “real time” experiences following his arbitrary move from Seattle to Los Angeles. “There was no good reason to move there, and thus I would never have to explain why,” says Tillman. His neighborhood of choice, Laurel Canyon, was something of an accident: “I confused Laurel Canyon with Topanga Canyon... I found myself living in the middle of Hollywood,” he continues. His songs are filled with humor and satire: “Tee Pee 1-12,” recounts going “to get some work done/So our faces finally matched/The doctor took one look at me/And took a skin graft out of my ass.” In “I’m Writing a Novel,” we get the portrait of a mad author: “First house that I saw I wrote ‘house’ up on the door/And told the people who lived there they had to get out ‘cause my reality is realer than yours.” His first two videos—for “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings,” starring Aubrey Plaza, and for “Nancy from Now On,” starring a dominatrix (who happens to be Tillman’s “lady”)—begin with a very similar shot: “They’re both face to the floor, but in one the eyes are closed and in one they’re open. I’m doing quite a bit of communicating with that one eyeball. All good things occur on the floor,” Tillman notes. It is all wonderfully silly, but it’s easy to see bits of Tillman peek out; the musician was indeed writing

TILLMAN “JUST LIKED THE IDEA OF NAMING MYSELF SOMETHING SO RIDICULOUS.” a novel when he recorded his album, and it’s included in the liner notes. As for the album title: “‘Fun’ is an economy based on scarcity. It is only made possible because, in the Schopenhauer sense, life is boredom.” Handsome and a little bit mysterious, Tillman’s the sort of indie character you fall in love with in the hopes of uncovering a hidden depth of soul—the male equivalent of the manic pixie dream girl. When we ask him if he ever had an imaginary friend, Tillman slyly replies: “I did, for my whole childhood. His name was Jesus Christ. He was a really bad friend, he’d just take and take and take.” He’s an advocate of magic mushrooms as a tool for spiritual awakening, correcting us that “The thing with shrooms is that even the bad trips, they’re informative. It’s not a party drug; if you’re using it for that, you’re doing it wrong. It’s a drug for discovery. They’re like medicine, and sometimes medicine tastes bad.”

FEAR FUN IS OUT NOW VIA SUB POP RECORDS. FJM INTERVIEW

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THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT by adam gold

In a dark corner, taking in this view from the shadows, is a man clad head-to-toe in black. He is international rock superstar, guitar god and Nashville transplant Jack White, and this epicenter of cool, Third Man Records, is his house.

paper beforehand,” White tells RPM one afternoon, long after the crowds are gone and the blue lights dimmed. “The funniest thing is, the bands, and the building, and these records, they’re all the exact opposite — they’re all just happenstance.”

In it, no detail appears without purpose, as if art-directed to a photo-shoot T. And every artifact, from the photo booth in the corner, to the logo behind the stage, to the red sparkle-wrapped drum-kit with peppermint painted skins — familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a White Stripes video — bears the fingerprints of White’s seeming Midas touch.

Still, for anyone venturing into this room for the first time, it all just looks too perfect. In a sense, it is. Local rockers hoped White’s cachet of cool would galvanize the scene when he planted roots here four years ago — even if they feared he’d overshadow them.

“People always look at the finished product and they assume it was written down on

But past experience made the acclaimed rocker slow to impose his identity and curatorial savvy upon a music city so steeped Article Title

in its own traditions. From The White Stripes’ early success in Detroit’s happening garage-rock scene of the 1990s, and the resentment it fostered, White knew the pitfalls of local rock politics and pissing contests. By the time he left, bands he’d helped get national attention tried to get even more by slagging him publicly and milking confrontations for coverage. “I tread lightly on the scene in Nashville because I don’t wanna infiltrate it and be too involved in it,” he says. “I got really burned in Detroit, being heavily involved in the scene up there, so it’s a little bit scary. I have some trepidation about it. I don’t wanna cause any problems” — he laughs — “you know? I don’t wanna interrupt the flow of what’s naturally happening with [Nashville] bands either.”

THE THIRD MAN Instead of painting the town a White Stripes red and white, he settled for black and yellow (and white). He recruited a tight group of close confidants to start up Third Man — a boutique record label, store, production and distribution center, photo studio, and live music venue. Each show is recorded, and most are released as live albums — souvenirs of an experience, not a concert. In so doing, Third Man Records has produced one of the most counterintuitive, and inspiring, business models the music industry has seen since the extinction-level advent of digital. Its releases are primarily vinyl. Promotion and marketing costs are almost nil. Above all, its artist roster is driven by personal taste. And yet Third Man has become something of an indie-rock tourist destina-

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tion — a magnet that attracts collectors, early adopters and vinyl junkies, as well as the attention of typically indifferent-toNashville media. Its headquarters acts as a veritable Chocolate Factory to White’s Willy Wonka. And there’s almost as much curiosity, and misconception, about what goes on inside. People know Third Man is a store, but what does it sell? They know Conan played there, but who could get in? They’ve heard there’s a recording studio inside. There isn’t. Why do they wear matching suits? Because they feel like it. True, the place is a monument to Jack White’s musical accomplishments. But the dirty secret behind Third Man is that it’s not a vanity project. You don’t have to be a fan of White’s to find records there you’d like but have never heard. And for those of you who are fans of White’s, well, there’s Mastercard. It also helps if you own a record player. If not, they sell those too — in addition to headphones, and any other item that accompanies onset audiophilia

YOUR TURNTABLES NOT DEAD. Third Man’s slogan, “Your Turntable Is Not Dead,” applies to both the products they sell and the experience they provide. In this day of featureless digital downloads — the boneless skinless chicken breast of the music industry — White is the rare post-Napster artist who’s a celebrity even to people who don’t follow music closely. Accordingly, the label’s focus is on the tangible. While the rest of the music business struggles to keep up with ringtones

and apps, Third Man is doing the opposite — investing in, and capitalizing on, the visceral appreciation of collectible vinyl artifacts, as if records were baseball cards or comic books. And just as the card collector gets little intrinsic payoff from a JPEG of Mickey Mantle, significant numbers of Jack White’s fans get little from an MP3. “I think the labels are just as confused as the fans are — confused by how many formats, and how many different types of experiences are thrown at them just from the Internet alone,” says White, who describes his business and his aims in quick, disarmingly conversational terms. “[With] this place, we start with something real, and tangible, and things that you can only get and experience if you got up off your seat and went and did it. “It’s kids getting real records in their hands and listening to them, and starting a whole new trek down some other path that’s not digital, not invisible, not disposable. It’s about appreciating real experiences, and real objects, and art that can be appreciated, listened to, and loved.”

JACK WHITE’S CULT Unsatisfied with the original vinyl pressings of his White Stripes and Raconteurs records, White seized the opportunity to retouch and reissue them under his total control. To assist in the endeavor, he called upon Blackwell and longtime friend Ben Swank, a jack-of-all-trades whose background includes label promotion, music journalism and a stint as drummer in The Soledad Brothers. At the same time, White had grown tired of paying rent on storage spaces. He reveled in the opportunity to design his east of Eden — his Graceland, if you will.

“I’d never had the time to take courses in design or architecture like I’d wanted to when I was younger,” White says. “So places like this, constructing them, I finally get to expand on the design fascinations I had when I was younger and I had my upholstery shop [also called Third Man].” In March 2009, the label celebrated its private grand opening with a debut performance by White’s latest project, The Dead Weather. Nearly a year would elapse before another audience would pass through the back doors to The Blue Room. Third Man was open for business, but the establishment was, and is, largely a mystery to most Nashvillians. In terms of the label’s mystique — and White’s — Swank says, “We cultivate it to a degree, but I think people think it’s worse than it is.” He laughs. “I’ve had people tell me we’re in a cult.” Really, he says, the mystery is no greater than quality control. “I think Jack’s misunderstood a lot because people are like, ‘Oh, he doesn’t like computers. He doesn’t like this, or that,’ “ Swank says. “No. I think he doesn’t like having his art misrepresented.” “If you don’t stand for something to begin with, you can’t be branded,” says White, “It has to come from what you love to do, first and foremost. I happen to care about the design of covers, and the design of the presentation, the aesthetic, the lighting onstage ... [But] I would never put anything out that looks cool just because it looks cool, or sounds cool just because it [sounds cool].”

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

THERE IS NO BEGINNING TO THE STORY A Conversation With Saddle Creek Records by dan robinson

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WHEN YOU THINK OF FAMILY, YOU DON’T THINK OF A RECORD LABEL. AND YET FOR MANY YEARS, THAT WAS THE IMAGE OF SADDLE CREEK RECORDS. And for good reason. The small, independent label was founded in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1993, by Mike Mogis, Robb Nansel, and Justin Oberst, under the moniker Lumberjack Records. The label’s roster consisted almost entirely of artists from the local area, including Oberst’s younger brother, Conor Oberst. Lumberjack Records soon became Saddle Creek, and came of age circa 1998-2002, with the rise of such acts as Bright Eyes, Cursive, Spoon, Rilo Kiley, The Faint, and more. Some of those groups have moved on from Saddle Creek, but others, like Bright Eyes, Cursive, and The Faint, still round out a perpetually strong roster of new acts like The Rural Alberta Advantage, Icky Blossoms, and Azure Ray.

Saddle Creek’s label manager, Jason Kulbel, has been there since the early days. For the first part of our interview with Kulbel, we talked about a record label’s place in the current landscape of the music industry, career advice for new musicians, and the importance of a band’s live show.

DR: I remember, maybe ten years ago, when a band got signed by a label, even an indie like Saddle Creek, there was the feeling that the group had made it and that their struggles were over. What are some of the things a label can help an artist out with today, and some of the things it can’t? JK: I think you’re right there. The label did seem to be the end-all. 10 years ago, as soon as you made it, especially with the bands we were signing at that time, it just

seemed like that was kind of the only goal. The looming parallel to that has always been getting a booking agent. And that’s more important now than ever, that there’s someone there booking your shows. The label has always provided someone who’s working on your band, working on your record, everyday. Or at least five days a week, when we’re in the office. Some bands can handle a lot of that on their own, and some bands can’t. We’ve got bands that have managers, or pseudomanagers, that work within the band and they work with us together to get a lot of different things done. Some bands don’t have any interest in that whatsoever. The less interest a band has in that, the more they need a label. And even if a band has lot of active interest in that sort of thing, they still often times don’t know how to do it or don’t have the connections or don’t want to work on it that much. To me, what a band should be doing is writing music and playing shows and getting out. And doing more of that, over and over. Whereas a lot of the label work can get in the way of that. DR: You need them to focus on their career. JK: Yeah, a lot of bands also have jobs outside of music. If you want to make being in a band your career, that can be the biggest distraction: if you have to work 40-plus hours a week, and then try and maintain your band as well. The sooner you can get away from that, the better, obviously. It’s SADDLE CREEK INTERVIEW

“Everyone was just kind of working and playing together for those years and it was a lot of fun.”

easier said than done, of course. DR: How much of the things you used to tell new artists, in terms of career advice, has changed over the last five or so years? What’s remained the same? JK: The thing that’s changed, I suppose, is having a presence that people can feel, via Facebook or Twitter or their website. The more that the people can feel the bands and have some sort of interaction with the bands the better. A decade ago, that wasn’t even on the radar. The band maybe had a MySpace page, and maybe had a website, but all of that sort of funneled through the label. Any sort of contact that you got to have with a band, I mean, you might have to drop them a letter in the mail or something. When I started doing this, that’s kind of how this was done. But the more that a band can interact with fans, at this point, the better.

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DR: Saddle Creek has always seemed like a real closely knit organization. Is that impression true and to what would you attribute that? JK: Yeah, it is. It’s probably gotten less so over the years just because we’ve sort of branched out and taken bands that don’t live here. I think that reputation came around in the late ‘90s or early 2000s, when all of the bands, except maybe one or two who still visited here constantly, everybody was right here. And that helped a ton too. That was definitely a fun time working with the label in my mind, just because everyone was around all the time. If you ever needed to talk to anybody, they were probably either in the office, or going to be in the office soon. If not, you saw them out that night. Everyone was just kind of working and playing together for those years and it was a lot of fun.

RPM RECOMMENDS

BLUNDERBUSS - JACK WHITE Third Man Records/Columbia Records

FEAR FUN - FATHER JOHN MISTY Sub Pop Records

I AM GEMINI - CURSIVE Saddle Creek Records

RPM RECOMMENDS

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