Interview: Ash From Sweat Records

bst interviews ash from sweat records. by eduardo moutinho It's a typical scenario: guy/gal sits around and wishes they could get their small-time garage/basement band a development deal with a local record label. In most instances, this particular person's band ends up with no deal, and becomes part of music purgatory. Well, in the case Dan Phelps, a prominent member of the Colorado music scene, he decided to literally take matters into his own hands by forming his own label, Ash From Sweat Records. Shortly after the label was formed, he recruited his brother Dennis, along with mutual friend Ryan Nee, to get the project up and running. Nowadays, the label is home to a select number of bands that encompass the scenes of Lakewood, Boulder, and Golden, Colorado. The label sets forth a simple philosophy of sticking to its DIY, or "do it yourself," roots and keeping a strong bond of friendship amongst everyone involved. Dan, Dennis, and Ryan are members of many Ash From Sweat bands. This interview is meant to show how a typical "grass roots" record label functions and survives, as this is not a profitable or fame-inducing hobby. So without further ado, here is a transcript of the interview I conducted with Dan, Dennis, and Ryan at a recent basement show, after the boys downed a significant number of Pabst Blue Ribbons... This interview took place on Saturday, April 19th, 2003 in person with Dan Phelps, Dennis Phelps, and Ryan Nee. bst: To start things off, could you go over what you guys basically do with Ash From Sweat Records? What is your aim? dennis: I do mail order, what else do I do? I help assemble all the packaging. Let’s see… I’ve dealt with pressing vinyl too. dan: I’m Dan. Uh, with the label, I started it, and these two (Dennis and Ryan) have helped immensely. These fellas help out a lot. I do a lot of what Dennis said, working on packaging concepts. I do a lot of the grunt work, a lot of the construction of the packaging and stuff. I put a lot of it together. ryan: Well, basically I also handle packaging and I do the website. I do all the design, well a lot of the design, of the artwork of the records. Usually, Dan and I get together to work on all the packaging and putting all the pieces together into one unit, to make sure it’s ready to go. dennis: I dunno, I guess the goal of Ash From Sweat is to make music that’s from people that we care a lot, our friends. Just to make it available to pretty much everybody, to keep it at a low price. We want to make the effort show through in the final product. And we want to have a lot of fun, that’s it. bst: What are the most enjoyable parts of running a grass-roots record label like this? dennis: I would say getting a chance to work with your friends. You always get to hang out with them and talk to them. dan: Having your collection of records grow as you put more and more of your friends’ records in there is great. dennis: Being able to put out our friends’ records causes them to put out better and better material, so that’s a real plus. ryan: I think hearing the progression that happens with your friends, and seeing them grow, is a big aspect of why I enjoy it so much. Like with The Green Fuse’s “Nemo” song, they recorded it three times, and the song gets better and better as they keep reworking it. It’s awesome to see them constantly evolving the material and making it better. Just the fact that they do it is really nice. bst: What are the least enjoyable parts? dan: The cost. The cost is considerable at times and we try to do everything, like, as thrifty as possible I guess. But, we’re just three guys who don’t work too much. I mean, some of us go to school. Funding everything is difficult. And making fucking 50 copies of the Giant Eyeball tape, having to hear it 50 times… dennis: I heard (the) kindercide tape like 100 fucking times… ryan: Uh… This is the least enjoyable parts? I would say it’s frustrating to want to put out everything you get from people. You want to put out the records, but you can’t invest $500 into something easily. But you know, if the band is breaking up and stuff, like Rivers Run Dry, it’s hard to do that. Because you know that they’re not going to be playing those songs anymore and stuff. bst: What made you guys take on this project? dennis: The first thing was to put out our own stuff. It grew from there. dan: I think one of the big things is to have an outlet for music that wouldn’t normally get attention. I think my friends’ bands deserve attention, so I’m doing this. ryan: Okay, um. I know I started doing this because I sort of felt like I could contribute what I know about design and packaging into something that is more productive than doing like, graphic design for corporate stuff. It’s an outlet where I can use what I enjoy doing and apply it to something I really love, like this. It ties together two of my biggest interests. bst: What is the criteria for an Ash from Sweat band? dan: They have to be our friends. Um, criteria… You have to be our friends and committed to helping out and pulling your weight. It’s a 50/50 thing, it’s not like you just go and give a label your songs and that’s it. You have to get your side of it done. Friendship and commitment. dennis: You have to play music that we like to listen to. You need to be willing to work as hard as we do, because it’s a lot of hard work. dan: Creativity. bst: Why do you guys prefer to keep things at this level instead of dealing with larger local labels and so forth? dennis: Well, I mean, a lot of larger local labels tend to only put out their friends’ stuff. So we put out our friends’ stuff too. It’s just the same. We keep it at this level so we can keep things non-corporate and do-it-yourself. We all deal with enough corporations everyday, and that’s why we need to keep it out of what we do. ryan: I think we’re at a place where we don’t have to worry about moving units and selling records to the point where it affects our incomes. I think once it gets to that point, you’ve sort of lost what the purpose was in the first place. It’s about having fun with your friends and making music, sort of enjoying yourself. bst: How easy is it to bypass the middleman like you guys are trying to do? How do you go about recording, printing, and distributing records? dennis: We do as much as we can for free, leave it at that. dan: Surprisingly, a lot of it can be done for free. dennis: We are resourceful, not everything needs to be done at Kinko’s. dan: Not everything needs to be glossy and colorful. dennis: You think of ideas and churn them out yourself. ryan: Well, I’d say that mostly we distribute through shows and mail order through the website. Um, and bands pretty much pay for their own recordings. They don’t even need to pay for them necessarily, if they did it themselves. We don’t care that much about the quality. It’s better to put out a good record that was badly recorded than a bad record that was recorded well. dennis: You can find some stuff at Wax Trax actually. dan: A few copies were sold there too. dennis: Whoever’s interested in carrying any Ash From Sweat stuff, we’ll think about it. dan: We haven’t gotten to a point where we think we need a larger distribution. We’re still getting off the ground. We’re just hoping that in the future we can get to more shops in town and some cool distros around the region and country, eventually. bst: What do you think about the Colorado music scene in general? dan: The Colorado music scene that is more prevalent and known, to be honest, I think it’s kind of a disgrace. Like, um, I just believe that the bands that get the attention… dennis: They’re not as deserving as some other bands. ryan: They just market themselves correctly. Some bands just want to be famous and know how to get there, so they do it. The great thing about the Colorado scene is that there’s a whole group of people that have rejected that mentality, like the people at Monkey Mania and Double Entendre, and you know, bands like Zombie Zombie, Cost of an Arm, and Bailer. dennis: I’d say Planes (Mistaken for Stars) most of the time. ryan: Alright, so, I think bands like Planes show that you can play big shows, shows at the Ogden, with bigger bands, without compromising your ethics. dennis: While still having shows at your house, and making sure your records are cheap and well-done. Planes is huge, and I think they handle it really great. dan: Underneath, what isn’t known yet in the Colorado scene, is really thriving. I see everyone getting exposed to that really soon. ryan: I think that the biggest problem with the Colorado music scene is that when people, uh, when people think of Colorado music they think of The Gamits, The Fairlanes, Qualm, and you know there’s a lot more going on here than pop punk. There are so many genres represented in Colorado that don’t get any attention. Labels and promoters feel like that’s what’s gonna sell records and tickets. That’s not true. They’re underestimating the people in Colorado, I think. bst: What are your opinions regarding the Internet, and sites like blood.sweat.tears? dennis: I think that it’s really great. I’ve always loved music zines, and I think the ability to put them online makes them much more cost-effective and interesting. dan: Doesn’t even waste the trees… dennis: If blood.sweat.tears was a print zine, you guys would reach one-eighth of the people you are trying to reach. The idea of online zines is a great one. I still love print zines, and having them in your hands. Putting them online though, makes them so much more available. dan: Um, I think Dennis answered it pretty well. ryan: Um, I think zines like bst allow people to communicate with each other and tell each other which records are good and which records are bad, new bands, and what’s going on in the scene. And it allows people to create better friendships. It allows people to communicate outside of the show environment, creating a link that wasn’t there before. dan: Not to interrupt, people open up differently at shows or when chilling at someone’s house. It’s a different medium. At shows you’re there already and you’ll go outside during bands and go inside when the band starts. There’s only so much communicating that can be done in the crowd, when everyone’s yelling, and you can’t hear shit. On the Internet, it’s just a different medium I suppose. ryan: I’m gonna finish what I was talking about then. For example, I talked to Brian from Shogun online on the bst community, and without sites like bst, I wouldn’t have had that opportunity before. You get the opportunity to meet new people that ordinarily you wouldn’t have talked to at a show for one reason or another, but the Internet gives you that opportunity. bst: What do you think about mp3s, in particular, and how it's really easy to get free music that way? dennis: Awesome (raises fist), I think it’s one of the greatest things to happen to the distribution of music. If bands really care about what they’re doing, then they should care about getting the most people to hear their music. dan: It just doesn’t matter if a band sells their record, or anything like that. If you like your band and you’re confident about your band, you should be able to show off your music for free. dennis: I think the other thing that people tend to overlook with mp3s is the idea that the more people that hear it, the more people will come to the show. And there, they may buy the record. If they didn’t hear the mp3, then maybe they wouldn’t want to see the band. It’s for the benefit of everyone to hear mp3s. We have them on the (Ash From Sweat) site and we plan on changing them around so people can hear everything. And if we only sold 50 copies of a record, instead of 100, because people downloaded mp3s, we don’t really care. dan: I think the trick, when people complain about mp3s and people not buying CDs, is that there’s got to be something wrong. What we try to do, with a record, is have every part of it be outstanding. Instead of having just a CD-R and a jewel case or something, we go way beyond. We want to make sure that there are a lot of parts to a record, so if you just get the mp3s, you’re still missing out on like half of the record and experience. ryan: Uh, yeah. I think we strive to make releases that people want to buy. We try to make our packaging and lyrics and artwork as good as possible to give people a reason to buy the records instead of downloading them on mp3. I think if major labels had that same mentality people wouldn’t even download mp3s, they’d see the value in buying the release in the first place. bst: What are your opinions about bigger local labels, and the major underground labels in general? dennis: Uh, I think that they are still independent, and that’s admirable. They do some great stuff, but I think there’s a lot going on that’s being left out. They only release stuff that they know they can sell. When they have the chance to challenge someone with something new and interesting, they usually don’t. By no means they’re as bad as they can be. But, there’s also many better things they can be doing for Denver music and music in general, in the position that they’re in. (Regarding national labels) I think anyone that’s independent is good. Most of the big independent labels that people know around the country release really interesting stuff. Labels like Level Plane and Dischord are great. dan: Really, I think Dennis just nailed that one. ryan: Well, I think bigger underground labels like Victory and Trustkill are shooting for what’s the flavor of the week. I mean like, putting out an emocore record is not that challenging, it doesn’t break people’s conceptions of what’s possible with music. It’s taking what’s been done before and recycling it into a more marketable form that happens to be popular at the time and exploiting the fact that people are into that. bst: I already have an idea of what you guys are jamming to, but for the record, what are your favorite all-time bands? dan: What are my favorite all-time bands? Uh… As far as national bands go: Coalesce, Reversal of Man, Twelve Hour Turn, Joe Bologna and the Meat Cutters, and many others. As far as local bands go: The Facet, Still Left Standing, No Cash Value, Planes. ryan: National bands, I’d say The Honor System is one of my favorite bands. Although they didn’t gain much popularity, even in their own scene, they are one of my favorites. I think Single File really influenced me musically and lyrically. As far as the label goes, I’m influenced by bands like Hot Water Music, who put out records that documented what they were thinking of at the time, which I really admire. I admire the “DC sound” the most, like Q and Not U, Beauty Pill, Smart Went Crazy, Black Eyes, Sin Desires Marie, and stuff like that. dennis: Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of what was called “emo” in the nineties, a lot of the Ebullition bands. I’ve been listening to a lot of screamo from that time. I don’t really want to do all-time favorite bands, it’s really hard to do that. bst: What about up-and-coming bands? dennis: Hella! Dude, Hella. Who else is up and coming? Light the Fuse and Run, and I would also say Hot Cross. dan: What other up and coming bands? Too bad Rivers Run Dry broke up, I would say them. ryan: I guess I need to answer this too. I think there’s a big local scene that’s up and coming and gaining popularity, like Zombie Zombie and Cost of an Arm. You know, all the Ash From Sweat bands. I don’t want to promote my label or anything. I’m not in any of the bands. The stuff we’re releasing is really good, worth listening to, and from the heart. Those are the bands that I think are gonna be up and coming, or at least deserving of being listened to. dan: Uh… ryan: We should definitely say rickyFitts. dan: Yeah, rickyFitts and iCollide. What are some other bands that we played with on tour that are the shit? Um… Claire De Lune. We should say where these bands are from. ryan: rickyFitts is from Wichita, right? dan: Yes. iCollide and Claire De Lune are from Minneapolis. bst: Ash From Sweat seems to still be in its early stages, what are the long term plans for the label? dennis: I would say, just having more people hear the same stuff we’ve been doing in the same way we’ve been doing it, you know? We plan on keeping it as a means of friendship, and keeping it DIY forever. So I guess the only thing we can hope for is for people to check it out. dan: I say the long term goals for the label, Dennis really answered it. ryan: Okay, yeah, I would say that we probably will end up expanding a little bit from our “friend” group and going a bit more into other local bands that have the same mentality as we do. dan: And putting out a rickyFitts record… bst: Any final thoughts? dan: Thanks for the interview, and do not support D.O.R.K. That’s my two cents. dennis: DIY, or your face will fall off… ryan: Christ, I don’t have any final thoughts… ash from sweat records official site