Brett Gurewitz's Anti Label

Now that the dust kicked up from the media conglomerate couplings of the past decade has finally begun to clear, it looks like there just might be some hope for indie labels. The few independents that survived the consolidation of the industry seem on steady feet, and better yet, there's a growing number of entrepreneurs starting new label ventures.

Brett Gurewitz's Epitaph Records made it through the buyouts and bankruptcies of the mid-90s by sticking to what they knew best: no frills, no bullshit, anthemic punk rock. Gurewitz, guitarist for Bad Religion and a savvy businessman, saw the need for a specialty label in the midst of the hair-metal mayhem of the 1980s. For him, not only was supply not meeting the punk rock demand, but major labels were working with an antiquated theory of art and commerce ill-suited to the musicians he admired.

"In the 80s the impression was that recording artists worked for a record company," says Gurewitz. "They got signed and they went to work for these companies. There was something wrong with that picture. The real truth is, record companies work for the artists. Because record companies don't make records, recording artists do. Let's say you're a painter. You might have an art broker, they help you sell and in exchange they make a fair profit. And that's the way I see the record company-artist relationship."

While these ideas may have seemed naively optimistic at the time, Gurewitz's unorthodox business technique?and a young public's unflagging demand for music to thrash to?has kept his imprint in the money for nearly two decades now.

"I think when you look at it that way it's a surprisingly fresh perspective," says Gurewitz. "I don't know why no one else has thought of it. It makes it easy to set your priorities when you work this way."

It's this perspective that first attracted the attentions of Tom Waits, who had left his partnership with Island in the mid-1990s and was looking for a new label home. Through Waits' wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan, Gurewitz was contacted, despite the Epitaph roster consisting entirely of bands with names like Burning Heads and Choking Victim.

"I got a phone call out of the blue saying 'What would you think about having Tom Waits on Epitaph?' and my jaw dropped," recalls Gurewitz. "And I said, 'If you're not just pulling my leg, I'll say to you right now, if you're serious about letting me work with Tom Waits, then the sky's the limit, I'll do anything.'"

The possibility prompted Gurewitz to act on a plan he had been considering for some time.

"I had been thinking about doing another label. I had been thinking about what Epitaph was and where it was going. It's not supposed to be all things to all people. It's not supposed to be the major label paradigm. It's a punk rock paradigm, and punk rock has become very diverse lately. I wanted to keep Epitaph a punk rock company, and also have an imprint for releases that were simpatico with punk rock but could not be called punk rock necessarily."

The result was Anti-Records, an eclectic roster of musicians with the motto "real artists creating great recordings on their own terms."

"With Waits, I just said, 'Let my company have a fair share of the profit for doing what we do, and Tom gets everything else, because he deserves it.' That's the tacit mission statement of Anti?it's kind of a role reversal in terms of record company and artist relationship."

The company's first release was Waits' Mule Variations in 1999. The current roster includes the Promise Ring, British triphopper Tricky, solo work from Cypress Hill's Muggs, reggae great Buju Banton and country legend Merle Haggard?an astoundingly and unapologetically eclectic mix.

"All these acts are sort of musical outlaws," Gurewitz claims. "That's what they have in common."

Of course, they also share the rare benefits of diehard fans and long-established reputations, the kind of foundations that allow them to reject major label promotion power. "They're not coming to us because they crave a giant hype machine," Gurewitz concedes. "They come to us because they want a nurturing environment to do their art. We can't shove the word down people's throats, and if that's what a band needs to get over, then we're the wrong label for them. On the other hand, there are artists who want to be free to do their work on their own terms and we are the label for them."

Gurewitz has also spawned other Epitaph offshoots. His HellCat imprint, formed with Rancid's Tim Armstrong, puts out ska-flavored punk subgenres. His Burning Heart is currently one of the biggest indie labels in Sweden, responsible for the Hives. In 1996 Gurewitz also rescued Matt Johnson's Fat Possum Records from financial disaster, and has since remained a 50/50 partner.

Considering the extent of his output, in some ways Gurewitz has become a kind of mini-major himself. It's a position he has no problem accepting.

"I'm not a socialist, I'm not a communist. I'm a capitalist, and I have a company that we run for profit. I'm not into major label-bashing. For the most part there are a lot greater injustices in the world that people who consider themselves liberals could concern themselves with. For instance, we're bombing the crap out of almost everybody in the world right now. So I have no antipathy for major labels. They're excellent at doing what they do, which is breaking mega-superstar artists. I think my labels are excellent at what they do, which is giving artists a fair share of the profit and letting them make music their own way."