HoZac label celebrates by reviving Chicago Blackout Festival
The sky-is-falling financial numbers from the music industry say it’s a lousy time to start a label specializing in actual records as opposed to no-fuss digital music with its convenience, considerably lower overhead and instant portability.
But don’t tell that to Todd Killings; he and his boyhood friend Brett Cross have released a steady stream of vinyl artifacts on their Chicago-based HoZac Records. In less than five years, HoZac has released nearly 90 records by bands ranging from the Smith Westerns and Dum Dum Girls to Nobunny and the Spits. The label's rise has coincided with a surge in vinyl sales; while CD sales have plummeted in the last decade, the much smaller niche market for vinyl albums has climbed 33 percent in 2009 and 14 percent last year.
“It’s actually a great time for labels like ours,” Killings says. “Even in 2008 and ’09 when the economy was slowing down and I lost my day job at a skateboard company, we got confirmation that the Dum Dum Girls wanted to do a split release with us and Sub Pop. The fact that she (singer Kristin Gundred) went to bat for us was a great sign we were doing the right thing. It’s been smooth sailing ever since.”
The label, which favors big melodies and a garage-rock production aesthetic on many of its releases, is celebrating this weekend by bringing back the Chicago Blackout Festival, a two-day showcase of bands that are either on the label or influenced it in some way, such as Chicago ‘70s punks Tutu and the Pirates.
The festival was originated by Killings and Cross when they edited the fanzine Horizontal Action and ran from 2001 to ’06 before being revived this year. The two grew up in Bradley, Ill., and then Killings began working at a record store in the mid-‘90s while going to college in Bloomington, Ill. There he discovered a vibrant underground scene that catered to punk, garage and psychedelic bands that had a hard time getting gigs in Chicago.
After college in 1997, he moved to Chicago to start Horizontal Action with Cross, and the two began booking shows at clubs for bands they championed, including the then-unknown Dirtbombs and one of Jay Reatard’s early groups.
“Some of the bands coming out of our little universe got big,” Killings says. “We were guilty of pushing these bands about five years before their prime.”
In the grand tradition of ‘zines that morphed into record labels -- notably Sub Pop and Touch & Go -- Killings and Cross left Horizontal Action behind to start HoZac.
"It’s a natural progression,” Killings says. “You start a magazine because it’s cheaper, develop a universe around it, and sure enough one day one of those bands needs help putting out a record.”
The growth of e-commerce business tools such as PayPal made it a more attractive business opportunity, he adds. “There was a huge difference between even just 2001 and ’06, because of the number of people who had email accounts,” he says. “With PayPal you could have a record paid for within 48 hours of making it available. Coming from the days of mailing a money order for $3 from a 7-11 to buy a record, that was unbelievably progressive.”
HoZac rarely presses more than 1,000 copies of its releases (it sells 75 percent vinyl, 25 percent on CD and digital), making modest profits that it splits with the artists. The label’s biggest-seller, a Nobunny single, has sold fewer than 5,000 copies. Killings attributes the strong vinyl sales to a mix of nostalgia and durability; "six generations have grown up with vinyl and it just seems more permanent" to listeners who are serious about music.
Though it deals primarily in physical goods, the label keeps its overhead low, in part because many bands come to HoZac with music already recorded in home studios. That was the case with the Smith Westerns’ self-titled 2009 debut.
“The Smith Westerns sent that record to Fat Possum and Matador and didn’t get a response,” Killings says. “Years later Fat Possum ended up buying the rights to the same album they rejected. We put it out because we loved it immediately, while other people were still making up their minds whether it was good.”
Killings says he was initially discouraged when bands such as the Smith Westerns and Dum Dum Girls moved to bigger labels, but realizes “it’s great publicity.”
“We pride ourselves on discovering stuff. Go down our list of releases, and three-fourths of it is either a band’s first album or first single. We like to be the point that a band grows from. We test the waters for a lot of labels. From our mailing list I can see how many people from other labels buy our stuff. Sub Pop has six subscribers, Gerard Cosloy and other people from Matador are on there. We feel like we’re being watched by them. It’s OK if they pick off one of our bands. We don’t get discouraged, we just find more.”
greg@gregkot.com
Chicago Blackout Festival: 7 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Saturday at Velvet Perineum, 2515 N. Milwaukee, $20 (Friday), $30 (Saturday) and $45 (two-day pass); ticketweb.com.
Friday: The Spits, the Brides, K-Holes, TV Ghost, the Happy Thoughts, Mickey, Squish.
Saturday: Nervous Eaters, Nobunny, Tutu & the Pirates, Timmy's Organism, Puffy Areolas, Idle Times, Read Rainbow, People's Temple, Heavy Times, Radar Eyes, Outer Mindsm Nones.
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