Formed around their mutual love of everything from John Lee Hooker to Iggy and the Stooges, Los Angeles-based trio The Record Company has been performing live since 2012. And, even though they’ve recently inked a deal with multi-conglomerate Concord Records, they still remain very grass roots and indie in terms of ethics and musical approach. “We write, record and mix all our music right in the same living room that we formed the band in,” says frontman Chris Vos. “Our sound evolved out of trial and error. We leave it raw, keep some dirt on it, but make sure that the sound has impact coming out of the speakers.”
The band actually played their very first show at their hallowed recording space for a small group of friends. When they entered the L.A. club scene the word spread and things started to happen. The first collective signing move the band made was to A&R man Chris Dunn. “He is a friend of ours and got it immediately,” explains Vos. “He started passing around our music to some of the people at Concord pretty early on in the band’s history. Eventually we toured through Detroit and Jason Linder brought some of the people from the label’s office in Cleveland to see us. We hit it off with those guys so it was a great start. Then we had some shows in L.A. and John Burk came out with folks from Concord’s L.A. office. We hit it off with them as well. Jason and the Cleveland guys came out to see us again in March and we started working on a deal. All in all, it was a very natural and easy progression of events.”
In today’s marketplace the Internet and social media have leveled the playing field, so to speak. But The Record Company believes the backing of a strong label that understands them is essential at this stage of the game. “Every situation for every artist is always going to be different,” says Vos, “For us, this signing was something we knew we wanted to do when the opportunity came. We had worked independently for just about four years and saw this as the next logical step, to work alongside a great company that puts out records by artists we love and admire. Concord likes what we’re doing and want to help us make it grow.”
Their as-yet-untitled full-length debut will be released Feb. 12, 2016.
