An Interview With Sharktooth Records Founder Stuart Buckley

by Kenneth Fury

Founded in Saint John, New Brunswick born out of the DIY scene, Sharktooth had some of the most important releases from the area. In a smaller area, the labels, venues and other scene essentials we do have become immediately part of the culture forever. Whilst I knew Sharktooth Records weren't active anymore, I knew they deserved a place in the zine to immortalize them, if nothing else. However, Stu was more than happy to do an interview, through Twitter DM's, no less. Check it out.

Provided by Sharktooth Records

When did you start your record label? Was it something you had been considering or did someone help you get into the process?

I started Sharktooth back in the spring of 2013. It was something I'd always wanted to do, but never really knew how to start. Eventually I just decided to give it a go, not really knowing how to do it at all.

Photo provided by Amelia Bailey

Most rewarding part of running a label?

The most rewarding part of running Sharktooth was honestly getting the Shark Tank going. The label itself was never all that active and didn't have many physical releases, it was more about just documenting and amalgamating all of the music my friends and I were creating. Starting up the venue/rehearsal space/studio the Shark Tank was the first time it felt like I was doing something that served someone other than me and my close friends.

How much time did running a label take of your average day?

The day to day of running Sharktooth wasn't all that busy honestly. Most of the releases were digital only, and we rarely got online orders for cassettes. It was busier leading up to a release for sure, sending a ton of e-mails out to blogs trying to get the music heard. But overall it really wasn't a huge investment of time.

Have any giant mistakes/horror stories? With so many responsibilities, there must be a couple funny stories.

The worst one was definitely the first release we did. When Sharktooth had just started, we hadn't even put out a release yet, we got an e-mail from 2 kids in North Las Vegas who played in a band called Anorexia. They were asking us to do a tape release for them and the song they sent was catchy and cool, really lo-fi bedroom pop stuff so we said sure, why not. I didn't think about the complications of shipping merch over the border and long-story short, they got the tapes 2 days AFTER their release show... needless to say, they were pretty pissed and I don't blame them. I fucked that one up big time. Funny part about that was the singer of that band, Shamir, ended up making it pretty big doing their solo thing and I still see news about them all the time.

Provided by Sharktooth Reocrds

Did you run the label by yourself?

When it started, it was me and my girlfriend at the time, but after we split up it was pretty much just me. I think that was my biggest mistake with Sharktooth, honestly. It could have been a lot better and a lot more impactful if I had have involved more people from the community.

From Sharktooth, what are your favourite releases?

I honestly and truly love them all and they all have some very fond memories attached to them, especially the ones I recorded myself. My favourite though is probably the NVN EP. We did it all in a weekend at the Shark Tank and it was just so much fun the whole time. I have a pretty vivid memory of Sadie kicking back in an office chair, legs wrapped around the mic stand, drinking a bottle of wine and improving her harmonies and absolutely nailing it.

Provided by Sharktooth Records

What was it like getting into running a label? I can only imagine the pressure.

It was kind of scary sometimes, it's always scary putting your name out there and announcing to the world "I do this now!", but yeah it was a huge learning experience. I was far from being a good head of a record label but I learned a lot from my mistakes and think the whole process helped me grow a lot as a person.

Your label isn't active anymore, correct? Did it just slowly stop or did you decide to disband it?

Yeah, the label isn't active anymore at all. Corey started up Monopolized and I saw him just really do it right and felt like it wasn't really needed anymore. I was moving out of the city too, and the whole Sharktooth thing is so tied to Saint John for me that it felt like it'd be disingenuous to either run it from afar or to put out releases from my new location