![]() “It’s a little challenging when we do a singer-songwriter, some blues guy, some garage-rock guy, some indie thing. That might mean that they’re not able to return to the same customer core for every album. ![]() The label has never been about its own brand or the micro-celebrity of its owners rather, Yep Roc has always tried to follow the path of the artists it claims. They’ve very rarely pursued indie rock’s latest buzzing commodity or chased a trend washing through the industry. I like the idea that Yep Roc has the idea of an all-inclusive approach.”īoth Dicker and Hansen like to joke that such a release-what-you-love approach might not always make the most financial sense. I accept that, and I think it’s actually pretty great. “If I’ve got on my Yep Roc T-shirt,” explains label co-founder Tor Hansen, “I’m not really a part of one music scene. Yep Roc calls itself "the artist-driven label that refuses to be labeled." In 2016, Dicker was elected to the A2IM Board of Directors. I’m also grateful that they support the Young Fresh Fellows occasional releases, with no hope of monetary gain.” “I’m surprised by the way they embraced my other bands, especially The Baseball Project. The label’s partnership with McCaughey has lasted nearly a decade, something he attributes to the openness of Dicker and Hansen to put their brand and money behind something they simply enjoy. “I’m a huge Nick fan, and I figured any label that was into Nick had to be cool,” McCaughey says. And after recording an album with a band named Wilco, Young Fresh Fellow Scott McCaughey simply knew he wanted to be on the same label as Lowe, so he sent it over to Yep Roc. The success of Los Straitjackets and the experience of working with Dicker on the Rounder-distributed Upstart helped provide the convincer to Nick Lowe to join Yep Roc. Jump down a few more catalogue numbers, and Yep Roc followed the debut of terse, tense post-punk act Cities with discs by alt-country progenitor Dave Alvin and Los Straitjackets, the masked surf rock stars whose sales a year earlier helped convince Hansen and Dicker that their personal and open approach to curating releases was a sustainable move. Slow growth has been a good thing for us."Īfter about its first 100 releases, Yep Roc entered one of its most indicatively taste-driven spurts, releasing, in succession, records by Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould, Springsteen proselytes Marah, drifting folk act Dolorean and rock ’n’ roll madmen The Legendary Shack*Shakers. There were roots to this thing, and they start way back. “It has been a sort of organic growth,” says Hansen, “It wasn't like we just started a record label with all this money. It was all simply stuff that Hansen and Dicker liked. There were no strictures or typecasts, no attempts to use the best bands in the vicinity to define a North Carolina sound or a Yep Roc brand. It started with a few local compilations featuring some recognizable names (Ryan Adams archivists will note Whiskeytown’s “Take Your Guns to Town” on YEP-2001, the inaugural 1997 release) and some names they hoped people would soon spot. They made the decision to try and do both together with their own label and their own distribution wing, Redeye. Tor had worked in sales, and Glenn had worked in promotions. Back in Boston, he’d worked at Rounder Records with his childhood friend and former bandmate Glenn Dicker. In and around the musical hotbed of Chapel Hill, he encountered bands making good music but not really knowing how to get it out. Tor Hansen started the label in 1997, two years after moving to North Carolina to help manage a chain of record stores in the South.
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