Inside The Label: ADD Records

Tiltwheel
As any even semi-educated music fan knows, record labels are usually created for one of two reasons. Some are made to make money. Others are founded upon a passion for music.

The good ones are, inevitably, of the latter variety.

And ADD Records, based in Tampa, Florida, is most certainly of that latter variety.

For almost 10 years, Dave Disorder (name sound familiar? you must’ve read our recent Too Many Daves profile) has been running the label out of his house - and out of the goodness of his heart, more or less. That’s not to say the label is struggling financially - hell, if it can survive this climate, it must be potent enough - but after hearing from the big guy behind the whole operation, it’s impossible not to come away with the impression that this is an artist-centric labor of love.

“I don’t make any money,” Mr. Disorder informed IndiePit. “Any punk label that is about putting out records and not about making money is just about putting out good records.”

And for years, he has let that mantra guide him. The ADD roster is more or less straight-up punk - with the exception of Pretty Boy Thorson and the Falling Angels, who have an ostentatious country bent - but Disorder looks past genre and wholeheartedly embraces all music. Like any true music fan would.

“The good thing about most of the bands we have is that they all have their own identity,” he said. “You can have Pretty Boy Thorson play country music with a punk and edge. I don’t sign anybody to anything - there’s no contracts or anything like that. These are all people I’ve known over the years - we’ve toured together and I’ve ended up putting out their music. There’s nothing else behind it other than, ‘Hey, I like this band.’

“There’s a lot of people who have been doing this for a while who have been telling younger people you gotta do it for the music and not for a career. It’s punk music; you shouldn’t be making money off it unless you’re selling a lot.”

Spoken as a true music fan. And as Disorder spelled out in our interview, it was that infatuation with three-chord songs, the concept of DIY and simply having a good time that has fueled the punk-talent beachcomber that is ADD.

“I started doing a magazine called ADD first, around 1996. Kinda got started on that after doing cover art - I used to do some MRR covers and stuff like that. Then I started interviewing bands and started my own magazine.”

Scorekeeper, please give this man 10 DIY points.

Tiltwheel, Pretty Boy Thorson and the Falling Angels, the Dukes of Hillsborough - all these bands had been on the road for a good eight weeks as of our conversation with Disorder earlier this week.

But that’s hardly the extent to which Disorder has flung his carefree punk net: Just about every band on the ADD roster has been to Japan at least once, which is actually kinda jaw-dropping.

For his own part, Disorder does duck out of his HQ on occasion, for brief (usually local) trips with Too Many Daves, his sloppy side project of merry pranksters.

“Sometimes shit gets backlogged for a week or two at the label while I’m gone, but it’s getting to the point now where I’m going to have some people help me out,” he admitted - a “good problem to have,” as the saying goes.

“Now we get so many more orders, I probably need to have somebody helping. ”Still, we got other people shipping our stuff - Vinyl Collective, No Idea.”

That said, he really doesn’t have too much ancillary support; for example, he does promotions after the records are already out. But that’s also owed to the fact that most ADD releases are of the limited-edition variety.

Until a band’s release sells more than 1,000 copies, royalties aren’t shared. “It’s a loss for me and them,” Disorder reasoned.

But beyond that, it’s more about staying true to the term “limited edition” - which more and more labels are not doing these days, he asserted. “A lot of labels will call something ‘limited’ and then re-press it. Saying something like that and not meaning it is totally being a fucking businessman.”

And a businessman - at least a traditional one - Disorder is not. As he told us, “We just try to keep putting out stuff I like, and make sure I take care of bands myself, and make sure that we do make some money.”

Amen.

Don’t miss our previous installments of “Inside the Label”:

Prosthetic Records

Ipecac Recordings

For all things ADD, go to their IndiePit profile.