Paper Garden Grows in Brooklyn
CLINTON HILL, BROOKLYN: It’s a good time to be a young music entrepreneur. Talented indie bands are everywhere and searching for the right partnerships to help them develop. NYC and, more specifically, Brooklyn is a breeding ground not only for the bands, studios and live music venues, but also for innovative music businesses like Bryan Vaughan’s Paper Garden Records.
Paper Gardener, Bryan Vaughan
Vaughan, a 20-something graduate of Belmont University in Nashville, is building his business — a full-service record label and publicity firm — more in the tradition of Saddle Creek and Sub Pop Records than Interscope or Jive. And this business is one that simply would not have been able to thrive ten years ago as it does today.
Paper Garden Records first popped onto our radar last November, with promotions for a music + art party they curated at Brooklyn’s 3rd Ward, called Multiverse Playground.
A multimedia exhibition featuring live music by Paper Garden artists among others, art/light installation, photography and comedy, the event demonstrated the label’s efforts to create a dynamic environment in which new audiences would experience their artists’ music in a new way.
Since then, Paper Garden’s roster has grown from 3 artists to 12 — including Peasant, Emanuel and the Fear, Philadelphia Slick, Mighty Tiger and SAADI — and the second Multiverse Playground just went off in Los Angeles this past weekend at Urban Outfitters’ Space 15 Twenty. Vaughan and the rest of the Paper Garden crew run the business as if there’s not a second to waste; new opportunities are both found and forged — sometimes in their own backyard. Literally.
When we visited Paper Garden HQ, and the home offices’ backyard in Clinton Hill, Vaughan pointed out the remnants of Hillstock, a DIY music festival that took place in his and the adjoining backyards. There, we talked about Paper Garden past, present and future over a beer…
Tell us about how Paper Garden came to be…you started in Nashville, right?
Yep, I started the label five years ago when I was still in school and interning at Saddle Creek in Nebraska for the summer. The first band was a Lincoln, Nebraska band, Eagle Seagull. For the first two years, it was basically me doing artist development with them and figuring out the whole distribution process.
After that, I signed two more bands — Peasant and Darla Farmer — and things progressed with them pretty quickly. That’s when I came up to NYC. I was still in school; Belmont has a program in New York City. So I did that for a semester and then went back down to Nashville to finish up school then moved to Brooklyn.
How do you get a band to sign with you when you’re in college? You must have had an impressive pitch!
Singer/songwriter Damien Nicholas DeRose is Peasant.
Tricks! (laughs) Well, it’s all been a little different with each band. Eagle Seagull were friends of my older brother’s. They were a small band looking to do what they could and I was just figuring it all out. Working together came naturally.
I discovered Peasant through Myspace. He was a fan of Eagle Seagull. I used to listen to every friend-request from bands on Myspace and I responded to this one. He sent me a few more demos and then I went to see him at CMJ and we talked more from there.
All the bands I started working with were in very early stages of things. Darla Farmer were friends of mine from school in Nashville.
So, once you moved to NYC, how’d you discover Emanuel and the Fear — the band we first heard/loved of the Paper Garden family?
I originally talked to Emanuel [Ayvas] through his other band, Motion Commotion. He sent me a demo. Then I met his manager at an Eagle Seagull show and we started talking. At that point I had just changed distribution to go through TeamLove, which goes to ADA, and in doing so established a much more solid distribution line.
Emanuel’s EP was a test run for both of us to make sure it made sense — he’d already put the money into making it himself, so it wasn’t the typical deal. If it worked for both of us, we’d develop that into a deal for the full-length album. And it did work out. As we moved into the recording of the LP, I finally left my day job. I’d been working at The MuseBox as director of online marketing.
So, what was your philosophy in setting up Paper Garden Records? What kind of music did you want to put out? What did you want to DO?
My goal was to build the bands that I liked and respected both musically and creatively and which would be cohesive with the Paper Garden brand.
I wanted to make sure the label’s roster was diverse, like my musical taste, but unlike a lot of other indie labels at the time that I still admired and drew inspiration from. The music industry is ever changing and ever evolving, and I really didn’t want to pigeon-hole the label into a specific genre.
How does the diversity in style impact the artists on the label? You have a hip-hop group, an 11-piece rock orchestra, an indie-folk-singer, an indie-rock-band, an ambient electro-pop artist, etc…
Occasionally, I’ll get a little flack for it being so diverse, but for the most part I think it’s a very positive thing because each one of the bands provides a different opportunity or hits a different demographic. Granted, media-wise, if a hip-hop band like Philadelphia Slick gets something with Okay Player that’s obviously not going to be relevant to Peasant.
But there are a lot of media outlets that do eventually tie-in and come back and provide new or different opportunities to a different act on the label.
Generally, I think people have more diverse tastes now than years ago where you had your genre and you stuck with it because you weren’t as easily exposed to different kinds of music and new bands.
Is there anything you’d say you actually look for in an artist beyond the obvious — talent — perhaps as far as attitude or goals?
Yes! And my criteria have definitely sharpened in the last couple years. First of all, I need a band to tour, because that shows their efforts towards developing themselves as an artist and growing their fan-base into different markets.
But the other thing I really look for is a band’s level of creativity outside of just the music. If they’re coming up with lots of ideas for different videos or remixes, or if they’re just out meeting and talking to other bands a lot, that makes a huge difference. I need a band to be active — whether it be touring, or coming up with video ideas, or getting your music out to the music supervisors, or just going out a lot in general and mingling —all of these things play a key part in a band’s ultimate success.
Touring is easier for some than others. What’s the approach with a large ensemble like Emanuel and the Fear, for example? How have you guys adjusted your approach?
Emanuel and the Fear
Emanuel knows how important it is to tour and he’s really a thinker as far as coming up with ways to make it work. For example, we’ve been brainstorming and trying to figure out ways to get into the college circuit, even outside of the NACA program. Since Emanuel is a composer and went to music school, we’re looking at music schools, even elementary schools where he can play and teach kids.
Then, also, there are the city orchestras: he has all the parts written out so if he’s able to connect with the program early on, we can create a show that will definitely have that town draw because the people in the band are now from that town.
What do you think is the most important aspect of what Paper Garden does, speaking to what it is artists seem to most need from you right now?
It’s a different thing artist to artist. Everyone on the roster right now knows that album sales aren’t going to be great. I think what Paper Garden does provide is a constant forward-thinking train of thought and actual proactivity. If you have some random idea, we’re going to figure out how to make it happen. We’re also able to setup the old-school distribution and promotion. And publicity.
A lot of companies will want to separate the label side from the publicity side, but I don’t see the need to do that because I feel providing publicity to a good band who already has a record label and distribution, will show Paper Garden’s credibility and may connect somehow to some of our label clients.
Also, we’ll represent the whole roster for all kinds of opportunities, i.e. when a synch licensing opportunity comes into Paper Garden as a whole — if we have an artist on the PR side of things that suits the request more, I’ll submit that over something that’s not as much a direct hit from the label side.
Some of your publicity clients are one-off shows and project deals, right?
Yes, and we often provide more than just PR when we do publicity. For example, we signed on to do PR for [Copenhagen-based band] Alcoholic Faith Mission, to get the buzz going on their album, but from there, we setup distribution, got the albums pressed and setup a little tour for them in the States. That type of model provides incentive for both parties — makes the band want to be proactive and make sure they’re getting their money’s worth and incentivizes us to come up with all kinds of new opportunities for the band because it’s in our interest to sell records.
There are a couple bands that we’re working with in the capacity of artist development, in which case it is very similar to a manager-style contract and percentage fee, etc…
Is Paper Garden also managing any of its clients?
Saadi
We do have one management client — SAADI. We started out doing PR for her EP which was released through Serious Business, and that naturally evolved into a managerial role.
My contacts and knowledge are more on the label and PR side of things, but if a band needs management and will trust in Paper Garden to get that ball rolling, we can do that. We really just want to see the band develop in the most positive way. We’re careful to build in a large degree of flexibility to our contracts so that we can adapt with the development of an artist.
Who’s representing your artists for synch licensing opportunities? Do you have specific companies you work with?
Peasant is with Zync Music, which is an exclusive deal. And then we have about five non-exclusive synch-licensing companies that we get along with really well who have provided different opportunities including Rumblefish, Jingle Punks, ishlab, Peace Frog, Tonic, and Music-By-Design.
Who inspires what you do? What record labels do you admire?
I will always have a strong respect for both Saddle Creek and Sub Pop. Saddle Creek were really at the very forefront of the new music revolution for independent artists. Also, Vice is very forward-thinking as far as events and branding. Also I really respect Cantora Records, which has a small, but incredible roster.
What is Paper Garden’s goal with the events you’re organizing?
What we’re always looking to do is get Paper Garden and the music in front of people who don’t already know of it. And we’re always looking to align ourselves with companies and ideas and individuals that that makes sense with our artists.
There are a lot of people doing a lot of creative things and I think there are different audiences for all of it. So to continue to beat the music snob crowd over the head with the same thing over and over…well, it may be a necessary thing, but we’re also looking to reach new audiences.
For example, at CMJ, we’re setting up shows at the New Museum. It will be the premier of an experimental short film for Emanuel and the Fear, which will be displayed on two projectors with the band in the middle playing live to it. When we’re able to connect our artists in that realm of not just music than I think it becomes a lot more impactful.
Paper Garden has grown significantly recently. Tell me about that.
Yes! In the last few months, we’ve seen more and more bands coming to us.
We’ve gone from three active bands to closer to 10-12 active projects. I don’t want the roster to get out of hand, which is always a risk….if one of our artists gets really big, we have to have room to grow with them!
Visit Paper Garden Records at http://www.papergardenrecords.com.