Having been massively impressed by the organisation of Book Yer Ane Fest in Dundee last month the spark of an idea to profile diy labels was kindled. What better way then to kick off what we expect to be a regular feature by putting some questions to Derrick Johnson of Make-That-A-Take Records, the label behind the festival?
MG: As my BYAF writings make clear I’d not been aware of MTAT until stumbling across the fest’s advert on Facebook a few months ago. I presume though that the label came first & then the festival, which would mean you’ve been releasing stuff for ten years or so? What then prompted the creation of Make-That-A-Take in the first place?
DJ:. I guess our label has it's roots in the mid '90s, when Michael (co-founder) and I started our first bands and started putting on our own shows anywhere we could - our first show was a birthday party in a Girl Guide hut back in 1996. We put on shows in Alyth Town Hall, at school, in local community halls. We were very lucky in that the local folk musicians took us under their wing and showed us the basics of how to set up your own gear etc., once they figured out that we were serious about music. We learned by our mistakes and by necessity; there was nobody else that was going to help us out musically so we just had to figure things out on our own. Our original band broke up in 2000 when we all went to university, but we all kept on playing in bands and built upon the foundations that we laid, at least ideologically, in high school.
I came back to my hometown in 2005 so was around this time Michael and I plus Barry, Michael's band mate, plus my pals in my band
The Try Hards came together; there were a few of us putting on shows and playing house party shows in and around Dundee, so it made sense to bring our collective efforts together to present a unified punk community. Somewhere in amongst my box of artifacts is a written manifesto of sorts from 2006 that states the initial aims and objectives of the collective. It was after a house party show in my late father's old flat that we put the "paperwork" together and birthed our label. It's crazy to think that it'll be ten years in 2016, but that's when we put on our first shows and put out our first releases under the name
Make-That-A-Take Records.
The label/collective was formed out of necessity, as nobody else was interested in supporting or promoting the music we were making at the time. I was
doing a lot of touring by myself at the time and it made things easier knowing that I had the support of my friends and wasn't just out there all alone. The first releases we put out were the
15 Minutes Together, Forever CD and my
Tragical History Tour Broken Strings And Senseless Things EP. The first
Book Yer Ane Fest didn't happen until 2008. We actually did two in 2009, hence why next year will be the tenth fest but not the tenth anniversary of the the fest. However, it will officially be ten years since the label began. It also marks ten years since the death of our friend Graham Motion, who's passing inspired the creation of Safe-Tay, the Tayside-based water safety charity to whom we bequeath the profits from
BYAF. Graham's friends hosted
Motionfest at
Barcode in Perth in September 2006 and held
Motionfest II the following year. It was only in 2008, after consulting with Graham's friends and bandmates, that
BYAF started as a
Safe-Tay benefit once we were sure that the Perth hardcore troops wouldn't be hosting another
Motionfest that year.
MG: Given that crowd funding wasn’t really a ‘thing’ in the previous decade how did you initially finance the label set-up? A mortgage is my one and only financial risk so to take the plunge in an area that might not ultimately pay off strikes me as quite risk. Following on from that has the label enabled you to give up the day job (or indeed create any for others)?
DJ: I was in my early 20s when the label started and I was living hand to mouth, not at all interested in forging any kind of "career" after I'd finished university. I was 21 when I graduated and while I had dreams, there was no grand plan in place. Really, the costs of putting a CD together yourself are so minimal that it is really not outwith the bounds of possibility for anyone to do. The label was really basic and barebones; we'd burn CDRs and write on all the titles, use cut'n'paste CD sleeves that we folded together with the lyrics printed on the back; that would be our CD release, sold from a box that I carried in my backpack at all of the shows we played, went to and/or put on. It never occurred to me that there'd be any sort of financial risk; if we could make back the money we spent on making the CDs, then we considered that a success.
At no point during our initial period of activity did we consider finances an important part of what we did, mostly because there was little or none to speak of. We paid for everything ourselves through our work and music, plus my father gave me a place to stay so I could tour right when we were starting out. Things have obviously developed from there across the years, as has our overall sense of how to run a "business", but the label was founded upon collectivist principles so there has never been a focus on making money. Everyone involved in the label works full time jobs in various different sectors. There have been opportunities at various points in time to "give up the day job" but we've consciously made a decision not to do that at this point in time. As regards "pay off"; the greatest pay off for me is seeing something that we believe in come to life. To me, that's success, regardless of financial returns.
MG:
Get It Together were one act appearing at
BYAF who have a release out on
MTAT. How do you make the decision as to whether you’ll put out a release by a particular act? I expect it’s never comfortable to turn someone down when they present you with songs they’d like to see on a 7” or other format but is there anyone who you’ve said no to who has then been accepted elsewhere and enjoyed a level of success it would have been useful to be part of?
DJ: We have no hard and fast criteria with regards what we put out beyond that it has to be something that we collectively believe in. I'd never work with an act or artist that I didn't believe in, that would completely negate the point. There are personal connections with all of the bands and artists that we've worked with so the decisions are often very easy to make. I've been friends with the guys in Get It Together for a very long time, their guitarist Craig and I played together in a band called
13 Broken Fingers when we were in university, and that was a formative experience for both of us; it gave us our first experiences of touring, of managing our own band's affairs and of getting involved in political activism. Get It Together are also an incredible band and when it came time to discuss putting out a new release (after they'd put out their
Perspectives EP by themselves), then it was a no-brainer.
We've been approached by many bands and artists with a few to us putting out their music, but oftentimes it's just not viable or just not something that we're interested in doing. The last thing we want to be is a vanity label, a vehicle for ego, so we only work with artists that we love and care about, otherwise what's the point? Decisions about which acts to work with are generally pretty easy; we have a wealth of collective experience now and I'd like to think that I've got pretty good instincts when it comes to these things. Bands that we work with have to be prepared to work themselves, it's a collective co-operative effort that has to be beneficial to both parties; work together to reap reward together, or some such. It's never nice to tell people that you don't want to work with them but at the same time, if something doesn't align with how we see/want to do things, then there are plenty of other avenues for people to explore. There no doubt have been a couple of bands that we've passed on who've gone onto do "bigger" and "better" things, but it's not something that we dwell upon.
MG: Related to that does increasing digital availability of music make things better or worse for you in terms of general sales and having physical stock unsold and taking up space? Get It Together's EP is a good weight of coloured vinyl, keenly priced at £4 with a good insert, free sticker & the download code so overall a nice package but you must have to gauge how many to actually have made. In the past people could easily tape physical releases to save their mates having to shell out but do you see online sharing as a help or a hinderance?
DJ: The internet has given MTAT a reach that would never have been possible 10/15 years ago. We have people all over the world who have heard of our label through the internet and we've sent records all over the globe, so it has undeniably been a massive help in spreading the word of what we do. The deals that we make with bands are done on a case-by-case basis and we don't sign contracts; our agreements are based on respect, mutual understanding and a desire to work to the benefit of everyone. We also try to be fair, forthright and honest with the bands that we work with, and that respect and honesty is reciprocated.
Pressing records isn't a cheap or particularly easy process, and obviously nobody wants to make a loss with regards physical product, but there is also a way of producing high quality product without the necessity to charge £8 for a 7". Punk rock has always been about keeping costs down and keeping the music accessible to all who wish to find it, so in that sense, I see absolutely no issue with selling a 7" for £4. I'm a massive record collector myself and I'd argue that a 7" should be at least £5, although in the case of Get It Together, they wanted to keep things cheaper than that, so we came to an agreement that the 7" would be £4 and we stuck to it.
To answer your question though; online sharing is a massive help. The internet is the shop window to an entire underground world, not just of punk music, but of the underbelly of society and culture in general. Things have shifted from the record stores and clubs to the internet, it's just a fact of life and the latest evolutionary step; it has opened doors for touring and the sharing of music, ideas, contacts of the like that could never previously be imagined, like fanzine/tape-trading culture accelerated by high-speed broadband. It'd good to have some awareness of what it is you're trying to achieve before you set out; if a band isn't going to tour then there's no point in pressing 1000 copies of an EP. On the flipside though, there's no point in only making 100 copies of something that's going to fly out of the door. Some records have obviously done better than others but we've never released anything that could be considered a disaster.
MG: Sticking with physical sales do you manage to have your releases placed in many actual record stores around the UK or further afield or is it more a case of like-minded souls buying a few copies from you and then selling them at shows, as a few of the stalls at BYAF were doing?
DJ: Yeah, we work with a bunch of independent record stores throughout the UK. You can pick up our releases in various places;
All Ages Records in London,
Punker Bunker in Brighton,
Europa Music in Stirling,
Groucho's and
Assai Records in Dundee, and various other places throughout the country. Our releases can also be found through various distributors; stock trading is a common practice among small independent and DIY labels. We also sell a lot of our records through our website and bandcamp. We actually recently turned down a distribution offer on account of it not really benefiting us, insofar as the offer made didn't match what we are capable of doing ourselves. Not to sound insular, but why bother outsourcing something you know you can do yourself? That's not to say that wider distribution is something we'd dismiss out of hand, but again it's something that we'd consider on a case-by-case basis. The bands that we work with also tend to work very hard and tour as much as possible, so through the collective efforts of bands, stores, distro, online presence, etc, we feel that we're continuing to grow and evolve at a natural and organic pace.
MG: The label's first release must, I assume, hold pride of place but have you any other output of which you’re particularly proud to have been the facilitator for?
DJ: The very first release was the 15 Minutes
Together, Forever album way back in 2006 and I'm super-proud of that record and think that it still stands up to this day. I remember how we felt when the finished CD finally came together; it was a feeling of creating something from nothing really. The first piece of vinyl we put out was a split 7" featuring two songs each from my band
Uniforms and our American friends
Loaded 45 from Colorado. That record was pressed at
United Pressing in Nashville, TN and was limited to 100 copies in the UK and 100 copies in the USA. Our copies are all long since gone so if ye can find one for yourself then you'll be doing well!
I'm very proud of all the records that we've put out and all of them hold a very special place in my heart. If pushed, I'd say that perhaps my favourite release is the
Thick Letters To Friends LP by
Kaddish. That was a collaborative effort with a bunch of other labels (
Black Lake Records and
Boslevan Records in the UK and
The Ghost Is Clear Records in the USA) and is just an absolutely incredible piece of work across the board. I first met the guys from Kaddish on my 16th birthday and have watched them grow into a band that means something beyond what is expressible in words to me. I truly believe them to be one of the most intense, important and special bands in the world, utterly peerless, and to have played a small part in bringing that record into existence may well be one of my crowning achievements.
To have worked with some of the folk that we have continues to blow my mind on a near-daily basis; we put out a
Franz Nicolay 7" that features members of
Against Me! and
Leftover Crack that was recorded and mixed by the legendary
J. Robbins; the
PMX Dark Days EP was mastered by
Jason Livermore at the legendary
Blasting Rooms, the
Bonehouse LP was pressed on "pick'n'mix" random coloured vinyl;
Broken Stories are a folk band from rural Perthshire who may never have been in a position to release a 10" piece of wax; these are all things about which I am super proud. Our latest release is the
Stonethrower Swells/Repels CD EP and it may be one of the most sonically challenging releases we've ever done that very nearly fell apart at the last moment, only to be saved at the last and released officially at
BYAF IX.
MG: Finally what does the year ahead hold for MTAT and, although it’s clearly a long way off, is there anything you can add about the tenth edition of BYAF?
DJ: Well 2016 will officially mark 10 years of our existence so there are a few plans afoot for ways to celebrate that, although in reality it's not really all that important as it merely signifies the passage of time and not much else. For the first time in a long time, we actually don't have any shows booked at the moment but that will undoubtedly change in the near future. We already have some plans for more releases in 2016; there will be new records from Get It Together,
Billy Liar, The Shithawks, Shitgripper and Kaddish for sure, plus I'm finally going to get around to recording and releasing a full-length Tragical History Tour album after being bullied into it by a host of comrades. Our first scheduled release for 2016 is the
Screamer Songwriter LP from
Stoj Snak; a Danish acoustic punk singer/songwriter from Copenhagen, and that record will be released in the very near future in collaboration with Manchester's
TNS Records and a whole bunch of other cool DIY labels from across Europe and South America. In general, the year will hold more releases, more shows, more tours, more of everything really.
We're just in the initial processes of planning for BYAF X. It's pretty much a year-long operation at this stage and once we decide on the dates then we'll begin putting the pieces in place. We've already got some things we'd like to do in mind and given that it's the tenth BYAF, there are a few surprises that we'd like to be able to pull off, however, it'd be imprudent to talk of them at this moment in time. We shall though continue to aim to provide a worthy, challenging, interesting and diverse bill that provides value for money whilst promoting the values that we hold dear. At this moment, all I can say with regards BYAF X is "keep your eyes peeled".
Many thanks to Derrick for taking the time to answer our questions and, readers, the links are all there in the piece so get clicking and check out the bands, stores and label(s).
