Inside The Label: Bloodshot Records

[The Bottle Rockets]

The funny thing about punk rock is that it isn’t always best exemplified by punk rockers. Johnny Rotten is a true punk-rocker, sure - but wasn’t Johnny Cash one too? After all, he gave the finger to the establishment, glorified murder (”I once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”) and abused his body more than Mr. Lydon ever will.

Along those same lines, while the purists might not like to hear it, Bloodshot Records is one of the most punk-rock labels out there. And it has been for some time - 15 years, to be precise. That’s right, the label that has claimed Neko Case, Ryan Adams and the Old 97’s among its ranks over the years has been just about as subversive, iconoclastic and working-class a label you’ll find.

From outlaw country dudes the Bottle Rockets to the booze-soaked klezmer-punk dissidents Firewater to immortal roots maverick Alejandro Escovedo, Bloodshot has some of underground rock’s ultimate badasses. That’s not to mention the swath of blues, soul, rockabilly and bluegrass bands that have also been in the mix. Broken bottles, gratuitous tattoos, choppers and bar brawls don’t only belong to punks, ya know.

And if you’re still not convinced about the label’s grit and grime, here are two more pieces of evidence: its Web site motto is “There comes a time when every man feels the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats”; and the name of its 11th anniversary compilation was “For a Decade of Sin.”

From the Wild West-ern sound of the above, you might be inclined to think Bloodshot is based in Tombstone, Arizona. But it ain’t. In fact, the label isn’t even located in Austin - for the entirety of its 15-year existence, it’s been in Chicago, that still-underestimated city that has magically facilitated the long-running success of other critical indie labels like Thrill Jockey, Drag City and others (RIP Touch and Go).

“The beauty of Chicago is that there’s all these labels that are coexisting peacefully,” co-founder Rob Miller recently told IndiePit. “There’s never a sense of competition. We’re all very much a community.”

And that isn’t just the case now - when Bloodshot was founded in 1994, there was also a vibrant collection of people whose devotion to good, country-tinged, punk-spirited rock and roll was of the religious variety. And like fans of bridge or monster movies, the music geeks who founded it inevitably stumbled onto each other.

Miller met his friend and fellow Bloodshot co-founder, Nan Warshaw, around the time she was getting her master’s degree at Columbia College, while simultaneously DJ’ing a country night at a punk-rock bar. Their mutual love of - or, more accurately, obsession with - music glued them together and soon led to the formation of the label.

Bloodshot started as a hobby, with Miller, Warshaw and their co-conspirators keeping their day jobs the first couple of years so they could finance the operation. While there was hardly any label experience between the lot of them, Warshaw had promoted and publicized shows and bands in the past, while Miller had some production work under his belt.

“We didn’t know what we were doing, and there were some growing pains early on,” he admitted. But “there’s a great deal of freedom that comes with not knowing what you’re doing. We didn’t know we were breaking certain rules because we didn’t know what the rules were. It was very intuitive.”

The accidental indie executives kept the trials and tribulations going for the first couple of years, limiting the label mostly to compilations and 7-inches. But in the fall of ‘95, everything changed, thanks to one particular record: Wreck Your Life, the second effort by a bright-eyed young country/rock band called the Old 97’s.

“All of a sudden we’re working with this Dallas band and they’re selling five, 10, 15, 20 [copies] - it just kept going up and mushrooming. And then shortly after that, Robbie Fulks and then Alejandro Escovedo and then the first couple of Neko Case records [came]. And then the next thing we knew, we had several things that, while they weren’t breaking sales records, were selling in the tens of thousands.”

A little over a year later, those day jobs were no more.

“Once we had a couple records that were doing really well, we just thought that it was the natural order of things to just keep expanding,” Miller said. They brought on a glut of acts - Jon Langford (check out this rad illustration he gave IndiePit), the Detroit Cobras and loads more - even while Miller found himself able to put in fewer hours than he did at the label’s onset. But eventually, “we kind of over-expanded and then went through a little contraction.”

As Miller said, running an indie label even during the best of times is damn near impossible. But, as Warshaw intoned, as long as the passion is there, the dream can live on.

“It’s the only reason to have an independent record label. You have to be geeked about the music, because it’s not like we’re getting rich - it’s not like there’s a huge payback other than being able to further the careers of the bands we love and being able to release great records.”

There should be no doubt that Bloodshot puts its artists front and center. Like every good, honest independent label should, it allows artists on the roster to propose their own contracts, which can range from 50/50 oral deals to more formal, long-term investments. And that carries over to making records as well: Artists can turn to Miller for production help, as countless bands have done in the past, or hand-deliver their already-finished albums directly to the label - like Robbie Fulks recently did.

“We give them enough rope to hang themselves,” Miller cracked.

Fiercely pro-artist, Miller made no secret of his disgust toward the industry Apocalypse and the factors that he believes has contributed to it.

“It’s an interesting philosophical question about where we’re going to be in 10, 20 years, how our artists are ever going to support themselves,” he wondered. “We [at Bloodshot are] just doing everything we can in this really kind of brutal environment of not only the economy but also this era of entitlement where all art should be free - not just music but photography and writing and video. It’s a question that goes well beyond our existence and it speaks to whether or not as a culture we’re going to decide if music has value. And I don’t know where we’re coming down on that question right now. We’re just trying to keep from going off into the rocks.”

Moreover, there’s also the increasing flightiness of music fans, gushing volumes about a new band one minute and then dropping them like a bad habit the next.

“In 20 years, will Pitchfork be having Vampire Weekend do their great body of work?” Miller wondered, facetiously. “Or will these bands just keep cycling through in an ever mind-boggingly fast cycle?”

Whatever does happen from here on out, Miller knows one thing for sure: “When I stop feeling that rush of being in a roomful of people connecting with music that they and [I] feel passionate about, that’s when it’s time to burn the office down.”

Till then, he’ll continue to create his very own record collection, right there in the Bloodshot offices.

—–

Miller was kind enough to give us a quick roundup of how the Bloodshot roster is shaping up for the rest of the year:

Dex Romweber: “Legendary roots-rock archivist that messed me up but good the first time I saw him in the Flat Duo Jets almost 20 years ago. A grand return to form.”

“Lookout”