The offices of Epitaph Records are in a big off-white building in Silver Lake that was once a depot for the streetcars of the Los Angeles Railway. When Epitaph’s founder and owner Brett Gurewitz got the property in 1994, the neighborhood was mainly inhabited by working class Latino families, the Eastside gay community, and gangs, plus some film and TV writers. “It wasn't particularly hip,” says Gurewitz. “You could walk across Sunset Boulevard, you didn't even have to look both ways.”
Though Epitaph had been around since the start of the 1980s, in ’94 the label was enjoying unexpected and unprecedented success thanks to the Offspring’s multi-platinum album, Smash. The label continued to release music by other SoCal punk acts like NOFX, Pennywise, Down By Law, and Gurewitz’s own band, Bad Religion. Epitaph also was able to hold on to East Bay signees Rancid and release their album …And Out Come the Wolves in 1995, despite the pursuits from multiple major labels prospecting for the next Green Day. At the end of the ’90s, Gurewitz co-founded ANTI-, a sister label mostly focused on music outside of the punk realm, ranging from legacy artists (Mavis Staples, Os Mutantes), to interesting newer acts (Deafheaven, Xenia Rubinos), to staples in between (Grinderman, Neko Case).
In the two decades since the move to Silver Lake, while most of its Epitaph’s punk-focused contemporaries have either retrenched (like Dischord) or imploded (like Lookout!), the label has persisted. Even if their releases weren’t critically acclaimed—or more often, were critically ignored—they continued to find fans through Warped Tour stages, the now discontinued Punk-O-Rama compilations, and an expansive online presence.
But in recent years, Epitaph has been signing a dynamic collection of new bands from the still mutating strains of punk rock. Taking cues from younger West Coast institutions like Burger Records, FYF Presents, and Topshelf Records, the label’s roster now includes non-traditional punk acts like the World is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, the Garden, Plague Vendor, the Sidekicks, and Pianos Become the Teeth. This fall Epitaph will put out Cody, a collection of Roman candle bursts of dazzling sentimentality from Joyce Manor, and Stage Four, its first release with Touché Amoré, which greets the overpowering grief of cancer with equal amounts of rage. It has also aided in the return of hibernating Epitaph acts like the Descendents and Refused, as well as welcomed Desaparecidos, the formerly defunct punk band from Conor Oberst, who grew an Epitaph fan. (Recently G.L.O.S.S. singer Sadie Switchblade wrote on her Instagram that she found the label’s offer of a $20,000 advance and $30,000 towards marketing “deeply validating,” but that the band wouldn’t put out music on Epitaph because of its distribution deal with the Warner Music Group-owned Alternative Distribution Alliance.)
Gurewitz describes himself as a longtime geek. He has friends in the tech world who give him advice about adapting and preparing for the future. He’s a big fan of HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” But despite Epitaph’s decades-long history and financial success, at least in his head, Gurewitz doesn’t see the label as the megalith Hooli. He still identifies with the start-up. “This label is literally the Pied Piper of record companies,” he says.
Pitchfork: How do you find out about new music now?
Brett Gurewitz: I've been doing music one way or another since I was 17. I'm 54 now. I have a lot of friends and associates who are writers, producers, mixers, managers, and players, so it's usually just through a network of acquaintances. People send me stuff to listen to constantly. I try to listen to all of it if it's from somebody I know—it could be one of my employees, a music attorney, a music manager. Most often it's a recording artist, either one of ours or one of our alumnus. The drummer of some band sends me a recording of this kid he met at a gig in Canada. That's always the best, when it's from a band member, because they're out there and they're in it.
How many new artists do you check out a day?
I have my listening queue and I can't get through it. To keep up, I have to check out six things a day, but I can't dive deeply into it. Some of the stuff I just listen to very quickly and on the first impression discard it. Other things, if it's interesting, I'll keep that in my queue; I'll tag it in a certain way so I know that I have to go back to it.
That's probably my biggest challenge, to manage all the listening I have to do. I have to do critical listening for the artists I've signed. I need to give them meaningful feedback if they're recording for me. Maybe they're in the song demo process. Then I've got another type of critical listening where they're in the mixing process and they want my comments. I have to really listen to those with my undivided attention and give thoughtful comments. Then I have all the new stuff, which is a real mixed bag.
You said you’ll keep something in your queue if it’s “interesting” to you. How do you qualify that?
One thing is, a distinctive voice is very important to me—a voice that has a distinctive sound, or a distinctive movement, or a distinctive sense of pitch and time. I can't say what's distinctive about it, but you could be a good singer and I don't care. Sometimes you hear a voice—I mean, like Stevie Wonder, it's one in literally a billion. You never hear a voice like that. You hear it on records and I used to think, “How did they get that sound?” Then I saw him in person and I realized, “Oh, it comes out of his mouth."
Then there's also obviously style and image. There are things I like that aren't suitable for either of my labels, so there's editorial point of view. Sometimes I'll take a shot on something because I love it so much, but I know there's not a built-in market for it. I can only do a few of those, because it is a business.
Can you give me a recent example of something like that?
The Garden. I love those kids, I think what they're doing is brilliant. I put them up there with great avant-garde artists like [Frank] Zappa or [Captain] Beefheart of the past, or today for fans of Tyler, The Creator and those sorts of things. The chance that I would sign an artist like that to Epitaph and it's going to resonate as a commercial entity, I wasn't kidding myself, but I didn't care.
So how did the Garden come to you?
Rob Schnapf, my friend who's a producer who I've known for 20 years or more. He was like, “I'm recording these guys, they're insane.” Oh wait, was that it? It was a combination. Rob did send it to me, but I was having lunch with Sean [Bohrman] and Lee [Rickard] from Burger Records. They're super nice guys, they're just music heads, and they don't know anything about the business of a label at all. They wanted to get advice from me and they were like, “Do you know the Garden? You should sign them to Epitaph because they're one of our biggest Burger bands, but they're not like any other Burger bands and we think they can be huge.”
Along with these new bands, you've brought back cult bands like Desaparecidos and Refused. Do you come to them or do they come to you?
Usually I get a phone call from an old friend. But I do turn some of those down. The danger in those is you don't want to become a legacy label. For each one of those I put out, I want to put out some young, exciting new artists.
How does ANTI- play into that?
It's the same thing with ANTI-.
A lot of the artists on ANTI- seem like people that you probably already loved and wanted to give them a chance to put out new music.
I also want to hear what they have to say today. ANTI- has been doing some very exciting new artists. We recently put out Title Fight and Deafheaven, who might as easily been on Epitaph, but there was a discussion. There's also young singer-songwriters like Andy Shauf and Xenia Rubinos. But ANTI- gets a lot of phone calls about legacy artists who are huge. We can do one or two of those a year. You have to be selective. That stuff is low-hanging fruit. We can sell a lot of records, but I don't want to be known as the place where legacy artists go to do their new record.
Having seen the landscape change so many times, in 2016 what do you pitch bands to bring them to Epitaph? What do offer them that someone else can't offer them or that they can't do themselves?
There's a lot of speculation that maybe labels in the digital economy are unnecessary, and I disagree with that, obviously. For me, what it comes down to is any successful artist or any successful individual isn't alone. Anyone who is profoundly successful has a team of amazing people behind them, period. I don't care if you're the Tour de France cyclist or if you're the best opera singer in the world—if you really want to achieve a lot, you need a team around you.
Which is not to say I don't believe in DIY. I built this all with DIY, but do it yourself doesn't mean do it alone. It means have drive, be resourceful, figure things out, don't depend on others. But music is art, and art is collaboration.
So what's the label's role in that? You basically give ideas, work, and tender loving care. Obviously you're working at the behest of the artist, you're helping them achieve their goals, whatever they might be. And it's different for different artists. We want to say to the artist, “Look, we're going to be part of your creative team. You'll probably have other associates—you're going to have a manager, you're probably going to have an agent when you get to some level, you may even have a bus driver—but whatever your goals are, how can we try to understand them? And how can we help get you there?”
In terms with what's happening in the music world now, why put out new records? You have this catalog that people are still interested in and there are new formats to get it out to people.
You're absolutely right, I don't have to. But the feeling of helping a young musician succeed, helping them to do what I was able to do, even on a smaller level—make a record that you're proud of, put it out, play it in front of an audience, have people singing your words back to you, have critics write about your ideas—to this day, it makes me cry. I'll stand in the audience for a kid that I've sort of mentored... I'm starting to cry just thinking about doing it. The first time I had that feeling was for L7 at this place called Raji's in Hollywood. I'm sitting there in the audience—I'm crying right now—watching them... That's why you keep doing it. Maybe for other people it's like being a little league coach or something.
Yeah, but I really don't have to do it. The catalog does phenomenal. From a business standpoint, it's a bad idea for me to do it, because I'm just reinvesting all this money in new bands.
Are there people who tell you not to do it?
No, nobody tells me not to do anything.
I imagine you have financial advisors.
Yeah, but they know me, they're not going to tell me not to do it.
How much of what Epitaph currently puts out is a reflection of your tastes?
Maybe 30 percent. I'm almost always listening to music. If I'm at home, music is on. If I'm taking a shower, music is on. If I'm doing the dishes, music is on. I even have a medicinal reason for it now—I have tinnitus, so it helps cover it. I'm still passionate about hearing new music, but I also go backwards. I'm trying to become more well rounded as a listener. These last couple years I've discovered jazz—I always knew a little bit about it, but I never really liked it. Something happened to me over the last couple years and I went down this jazz rabbit hole. I listen to a lot of minimal techno. I listen to Dylan, Velvet Underground—I'm not discovering those guys. I've got my staples, I've got my backwards discovery, and I've got my forward discovery.
In terms of Epitaph, I want to keep the label fun and reflective of my personal taste, but it's also my goal for Epitaph to be a robust, vital label. So we have to sell records. I can't be so discriminating. Sometimes I have to say, “This is not necessarily for me, but as a professional, I can see what is good about this and people are going to like this and this is a good version of this for those people.” I didn't used to be able to do that. When I was a punk rock kid, either I liked it or it sucked. As I matured and became a professional, I realized that's reactionary and closed-minded. I can now identify that maybe if I don't personally like it, something doesn't suck.
When did you realize you had to make good business decisions in terms of who you signed?
Epitaph was this sort of shining example of what a little punk indie could do in the ’90s. I was proud of what we did, we had built it up, we had gold and platinum records by local punk bands. I had numerous offers to sell my company to the majors; I turned them all down. We were idealistic and I still l believe in that. By not selling to a major, it benefitted independent distributors and independent record stores and the entire independent community, which has blossomed. I think it has democratized the industry and put a different slant on things.
During that whole period of growth, I was clean and sober and I had my shit together. [Then] I had this massive success, and I didn't really handle it that great. I had a pretty ignominious relapse on my drug of choice. I wound up in jail and rehab and so forth, and I sort of went away from my company for a little while. When I came back to myself and to life, I found music had been changing in my absence. I had to be a quick study and I had to start signing things. It was sort of phase two when I came back after half of ’97. I realized I've got to do things and it can't just be my friends’ band that I grew up with. I've got my company, I've got my employees, I've got a lot of people depending on me, let's get with it.
Do you feel that more recently you've had the opportunity to put out more music you like?
A lot of it has to do with, you can only sign the bands that exist. But yeah, lately I'm very, very excited about this new development in music. The signings you're talking about—like Pianos Become the Teeth, the World is a Beautiful Place, Joyce Manor, Plague Vendor, the Garden—[with] these bands, for the first time in many years, there seems to be a scene. It's an organic scene of kids starting bands that are informed by an ethic that I can really relate to. And it's fucking exciting to me.
How do they react when they learn that Epitaph is interested in them? Are they aware of the history?
A lot of them are, but they don't tell me at first. Joyce Manor is one of my favorite new bands. Sean Carlson [of FYF Presents], one of his first jobs was an intern at Epitaph and now he's sort of the pope of indie rock festivals. He introduced me to Barry [Johnson, Joyce Manor’s singer and guitarist], and Barry didn't tell me anything about having any history with Epitaph at all.
It was a long courtship. I think Joyce Manor was flattered, but it wasn't like they wanted to jump right into signing with us. We made the first record [Never HungoverAgain] and it did great and it was really gratifying. Some point in the making of the second record, I was in Barry's car with him, we were going to get a coffee or something, and he's like, “Dude, I used to buy your Punk-O-Ramas and would get the little piece of paper out of the back and I used to buy records from your mail order.” I was like, “Oh really? That's cool."
Stuff like that is really amazing for me. It makes me feel like I was meant to do this job. I am a businessman, I like business, but I've contributed. When Rancid had a gold record, Tim [Armstrong] grew up listening to [Bad Religion’s] How Could Hell Be Any Worse? because his big brother had it. I've contributed to the community and I'm able to continue paying it forward.