STRIKING A CHORD Merge Records celebrates 30 years by CATHERINE CURRIN photography by EAMON QUEENEY
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n 1989, Laura Ballance & Mac McCaughan met while working at Peppers Pizza in Chapel Hill. They didn’t realize the friendship would turn into starting a band: The two formed Superchunk that same year, an indie rock group known for putting Chapel Hill music on the national map, with Ballance on the bass
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and McCaughan on vocals and guitar. The quartet, with Jim Wilbur and Jon Wurster, released its 11th album, What a Time to Be Alive, in February 2018. As the band got off the ground, they also created a record label, Merge Records. Originally, it was a way to record their own music as well as make tapes for their friends’ bands. “When
we started out, bands would get paid by the copies they could sell at their show,” says McCaughan, so having cassettes on hand was key. Merge’s first office was in Ballance’s home in Chapel Hill, and over the years Merge grew to expand into its current downtown Durham office space in 2001. Thirty years later, both the band
