I had the pleasure of doing a Q&A session about what it's like to own your own label with Donald W. Mohr, the founder of Get Off My Lawn Records. Check out his insightful answers below.
TT: So what made you want to start your own record label?
Don: What made me start...
I've been recording myself since I was 15 years old. I think I released my first album on the now-defunct mp3.com which was the predecessor to today's CDBaby or Bandcamp. You could upload mp3s and sell CDs that they made for you and kept most of the sale. I got to the top 10 of the particular sub-genre I was unknowingly mis-classifying my stuff as. I'm from the first generation that first started by recording to hard drive. If you're much older than me, you would have started by recording to 4-track cassette.
Unlike many of my peers at the time, I eventually started co-writing songs with people, rather than trying to start a traditional band, and once I decided that my strengths were not in singing, it became clear that I'd need to find other people with vocal talent. This led to me producing for a friend from college who came out and we produced an EP of attempts at dancehall reggae and I had a friend who was working for qn5.com (QN5 Records) as an engineer and that's probably the first independent record label I had heard of at the time. They had a much nicer setup than me, but they were generally doing the same thing I was doing, so the idea of functioning as a record label started.
TT: What was the first step you took to make that goal a reality?
Don: The very first step I took to make that a reality was I registered the domain of dmusicrecords.com and then proceeded to bask in the glory of "being a record label" until DMusic Group contacted me and offered to buy the URL. Because I hadn't released anything as mp3.com was gone and there were no other apparent CD-on-demand services, I shifted my focus to studying music and production and shortly transferred to Berklee.
TT: What are the pros and cons of owning your own label?
Don: Setting money aside, the real pro is being able to say "no." After Berklee, I moved to Austin and started gigging as a for-hire instrumentalist, arranger, mastering engineer, and producer. I made demos for a lot of people and was charging by the hour or by the project, depending on what it was. I worked with a youth group doing a slam poetry compilation that we recorded in my apartment and scored an independent film, but generally work was slim trying to work out of the apartment and it's unreasonable to ask your neighbors to be quiet to record when you're the guy mixing audio at full volume. This created the need to find an alternative space. I wound up making friends with a guy who was coming out of a local recording trade school (don't go) and was renting a studio with an attached apartment. We teamed up and produced a couple small things, but his lease fell through and I found myself renting an office in a small business incubator, paying rent and creating a serious need to make money immediately. I worked on records I didn't want to work on for ethical reasons. I mastered a record for an actual pimp, and while I found the guy generally cordial and not too weird about paying, it's kind of hard to sleep at night when you know exactly how that money came about, and the music was extremely denigrating towards women. I also got to work with some really great people, including extremely talented female singers. But, it was hard emotionally at times, especially when an artist didn't have sufficient budget to also press and market. The projects I'd do as a lump sum turned into hundreds of hours and the largest budget I ever worked with was $3,000. Most people can't come up with $500 to make their record, and few of those will make that much money in sales. So, because I can only do so many records a year, and because I don't charge to record anymore, I no longer have to take on a project I don't feel 100% good about.
The real con is that every record is a gamble of hundreds of hours of work and actual money. Bring the result to market and if they sell zero copies, you lost not only your time, of which 90% of it is actual work, but also the money it takes to set up digital distribution, registering ISRC codes, buying a URL, doing a run of stickers- the list feels endless.
TT: How did you come up with the name?
Don: I know I told the story about the name on the #GOMLpodcast somewhere.
TT: What is your label's goal?
Don: The goal of the label is to sell enough copies and generate enough money to employ people to help us market and manufacture copies. We set aside $1/disc per sale to employ someone (currently my wonderful wife) to run the duplicator and printer, do the cuts, assembly, and shrink wrap. The process takes 3 minutes ideally, which turns into $15/hr with a 15 minute break every hour. It costs $1 in materials to make the disc, and the rest is an even split amongst the musicians, me, the photographer, and promoter.
TT: Ok, last question: Fans of which bands or artists would be most interested in the music GOML puts out?
Don: I try hard to have a diverse catalog so we have something to offer everyone, regardless of what else you enjoy. Each record is kind of it's own thing. Millicent's record is somewhere in the vein of Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette, Bjork, St Vincent, Queen- I'm sure there's more. For Joe Beck is somewhat related to Pat Metheney as it's the same tuning as One Quiet Night, Joe Beck (obviously), Charlie Hunter, and Chet Atkins. I do a tribute to Wes Montgomery on there, too.
Jomo and the Possum Posse I call the Tenacious D of country music. You should ask Jomo (though I don't really know the influences, but I love the result).
Paul Serrato is an old-school new york jazz pianist, so that list is extremely long as well.
#FreeformFridays is jam-bandesque so Medeski Martin and Wood, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, and Lounge Lizards all come to mind.
It's A Secret To Nobody is somewhere between Squarepusher and Daft Punk with me trying to do something in the vein of Deadmau5 and Skrillex with my dubstep bass fun.
At some point the list becomes quite a bit long.
And for a 10% discount on all GOML records, enter the code ninja1 when making your purchase:
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