Been meaning to post this one for days and finally here it is. For our next interview we go back to a record label. But
a unique one, due to the good taste, being responsible of making me discover a bunch of great bands, like my beloved
The Swapsies,
The Pretty Greens or
Caténine among others. And because its run by two of the nicest folks I've been lucky to meet (virtually to this date, would love to solve that soon). Ladies and gentlemen, a very special pleasure to introduce you the answers of Dan & Kristin, the bosses at February Records.
These Go to 11!
Kristin Gill & Dan Goodwin, February Records
 |
| Dan & Kristin, indiepop all year 'round |
Created as Tweefort Productions in late 2008, initially as a live music booking and promotions project in New Haven, CT, with their first show arriving in March 2009 and releasing first CD-R compilation albums afterwards. The focus of the project quickly shifted from booking shows to releasing music, so they changed their name to
February Records in May 2010, with the label putting out its first original recordings few months later. February Records has hosted three
Elm City PopFest in New Haven in 2009-2011 and 37 releases to this day, primarily online-only, from bands all around the world with a DIY ethic and a clear goal:
offering amazing indiepop tunes, in all their styles. The micro-label is run by founder, label manager and creative director Dan Goodwin, who operates from Boston, and Kristin Gill, primary artist liaison and contact person, who recently moved to gorgeous Stockholm.
Here we go!
 |
| The "other" Swedish pop |
1. First record that you bought (be honest)
Dan Goodwin: I think the first
music that I bought with my own money was a cassette single of Ace of Base's "I Saw The Sign." I loved that song so much when it came out. I guess
it foreshadowed my love of Swedish pop music.
Kristin Gill: The first album I
bought was The Wallflower's “Bringing Down the Horse.” I loved that
song “One Headlight,” though I can't say I really remember anything
else from that record.
2. First and last concert you have attended (be honest too!)
D: I believe the first
concert I attended was a Christian rock band called Newsboys with a church
youth group when I was in middle school. I'm not ashamed to say I thought they
were awesome at the time. The last proper concert I
went to was Elvis Costello at the University of Connecticut in November 2013.
The last DIY show I went to was Eastern
Phoebes, Pier
Jump and some other bands at a very cool DIY space in Pawtucket,
Rhode Island, called Machines with Magnets, in January 2014.
K: I suppose the first show I ever went to was something my friends organized at the local VFW. However, if we're talking about actual concerts, I'll have to go with seeing
Howie Day when I was 14 or something. The last gig I went to was the Eastern Phoebes and Pier Jump show with Danny in Rhode Island back in January.
 |
| Taylor Swift, country pop? |
3. Guilty pleasure (song/band you shouldn’t like but you do, yes, it’s the embarrassing question)
D: I'm not ashamed to
admit that I own more than one Neil Diamond record.
K: This was tough as I'm
not embarrassed about anything that I like. I'm really not ashamed at all to
admit I like Taylor Swift. I don't own any of her albums, but I'm certainly not
afraid to sing along. It's never been a secret - I think multiple people have
been subjected to that by now.
4. Most precious music item you own (collector mode on)
D: I guess my most
precious music items aren't really collector's items. I have a bunch of records
that belonged my parents when they were teenagers. There are some really great
records in there ― The Beatles, The Monkees, The Everly Brothers,
Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Beach Boys ― and they are
all marked up by my parents with their names and other doodles and writings. I
just think it's cool to kind of get a glimpse of what my mom and dad were like
and what kind of music they were into when they were younger.
K: I don't think I'm a collector by any means, though I have a great deal of records and instruments lying around. Like Danny, I inherited a lot of records from my parents, though I've grown the collection quite a bit on my own in recent years. I suppose the most precious records that I own are ones that have stories behind their acquisition or hold sentimental value for me.
5. Favorite lyrics (not yours)
D: For an art class I
took in high school, we had to choose song lyrics for a typography project. I
remember I chose a couple lines from "Strawberry Fields Forever," by
The Beatles. I'm not sure I would say they're my favorite song lyrics, but they've
always stuck with me. Living is easy with eyes closed / Misunderstanding all you
see / It's getting hard to be someone / but it all works out / It doesn't
matter much to me
K: Since I merely pretend to know anything about the technical side of music, lyrics are usually what draws me into a song initially. Therefore, this question is absolutely impossible to answer. Just about any song I like has at least one verse or phrase that I think is wonderful. I simply couldn't choose.
 |
The drummer of that small band
from Liverpool, you know? |
6. Musician/s you would like to meet (should be alive, for obvious reasons, but you can choose a dead one too)
D: I'd love to meet
David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
K: I've already embarrassed myself in front of
Barry Tashian, so I'm going with Johnathan Sebastian and
Peter Noone.
7. Favorite artwork album (not yours)
D: I've always loved the
artwork for The Beatles' "Revolver." When I was younger I used to try
to draw it all the time, but I could never get Ringo's nose quite right.
K: Admittedly, I don't pay a lot of attention to artwork on albums. There have been quite a few that I find aesthetically pleasing, but I couldn't narrow anything down. If anything, I focus on bad artwork more than I should!
 |
| "Heartbeats"poster |
8. Books or movies? Depending on your answer recommend us one (trick: you can choose both)
D: Lately, I've been watching a lot of movies. I even started documenting and rating them in a Tumblr I call
I Like Movies. The last movie that I watched that I thought was really beautiful and moving was
"Heartbeats." The original title in French is "Les amours imaginaires." It came out in 2010 and was directed by Xavier Dolan, who also stars in the movie. It's about a love triangle between three close friends. The music is amazing, the story and acting are great and it's beautifully shot. I'd highly recommend it. I recently read Gabriel García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" for the first time. I can't recommend it enough.
K: Danny's Tumblr does have some great movie suggestions! I haven't watched many as of late. I think the last film I watched was “Robinson in Ruins.” I never thought I would enjoy watching a butterfly sit on vegetation for five full minutes, but I did! The imagery was wonderful. Books are much more my thing, though. I was a literature major in school and I still tend to devour books quite quickly. Before I left for Sweden I read Donna Tartt's “The Secret History” in about a week, followed by Jonathan Lethem's
“Motherless Brooklyn” in about the same amount of time. I highly recommend both! I'm currently reading Andrew Brown's “Fishing in Utopia.”
 |
| The Swapsies, better than any World Cup |
9. Release (of yours) you are most proud of
D: I love all the music
that we've been fortunate enough to release on February Records, but the ones
I'm most proud of are probably the first three that we released back in January
2010. We had three digital offerings come out on the same day to make a splash
as we made the transition from a booking and promotions outfit to a record
label. Those releases were Onward Chariots, "I'm So Good at Shining";
The
Fictional West, "Giant Clouds"; and Women's Basketball, "An Octopus, But Like An Octopus With MassiveWings And Junk". When Onward Chariots went on to release with
Elefant Records, I considered that something of a victory for our little record
label.
K: There isn't one release in particular that I'm more proud of or that I like more than the rest. I genuinely love everything this label has produced since the very beginning. I'm glad that my involvement brought the label back from it's hiatus, and I suppose in that sense I'm proud of the first two singles we released in which I played a major role: Finnmark's Everyone's Dying” and
The Swapsies “Another Game on Saturday”
.
10. What’s does it mean indie for you? (yes, the “serious question”)
D: This is such a loaded
question. In a sense, I feel like the word "indie" has nearly lost
all meaning. A lot of people see it as an aesthetic, whether or not the band or
label is actually independent or not. Indie is not a sound or a look. To me,
it's a conscious choice to go your own way, do things how you want to do them,
and seek the approval of a much smaller, but much more devoted, group of fans
and music lovers, rather than the approval of the masses, the majors, or the
corporate media.
K: I don't necessarily think “indie” holds the same connotation that it used to. Personally, it simply means doing things on my own terms. It's a concept in which I try to live my own life by.
11. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
D: This is so far out
for me to be thinking about. I guess I'd like to see February Records as an
established record label with enough money to support a successful roster of
bands.
K: I hardly know where I'm going to be a month from now, let alone ten years! I hope the label is still around in some capacity - maybe we'll be able to press vinyl eventually. Hopefully I'll still be in Europe, teaching somewhere. Maybe I'll even have learned how to play guitar by then. Better yet, perhaps I'll finally have caught up with the
Lloyd Cole discography.
Zillion thanks Kristin and Danny!
The Treasures of Mexico. Here comes an unmissable one! The Dentists were a fantastic, criminally underrated and mostly forgotten indie band from Chatham, UK, active from 1984 to 1995. Coax, Fortress Madonna, The Great Lines, The Claim... Side projects and music contributions with several bands followed, proving that founder members Mark Matthews and Bob Collins were very far from done, luckily for us, from this unfair & cruel world (replace with word industry) called music. One of this new adventures has now crystallised, on which Mark has the control over the songwriting duties with the help of Bob and another usual suspect, Russ Baxter from Secret Affair. The Treasures of Mexico are here with debut album 'Holding Pattern', out just now digitally thanks to our dear friends from Shelflife. Melodic, janlgy, effervescent, upbeat, shimmery, delightful from song one to thirteen, is very hard to analyse the record with objectivity. It's the kind of music that made this humble blogger be writing this Blog. Needless to say, look for The Treasures of Mexico on our best-of-the-year lists. 
Turnover. Hailing from Virginia Beach, Virginia, the band was born in 2009 with an initial demo surfacing that year, although first release, a self-titled EP, didn't arrive until 2011. Tours, a split record with Citizen and signature with label Run for Cover Records arrived in 2012, with whom they released debut album, 'Magnolia', a year later. A prolific combo, in 2014 they came out with another EP, 'Blue Dream', and a split with Ivy League, Maker and Such Gold. Finally, in this 2015 we can enjoy their sophomore LP, 'Peripheral Vision', out since May. Evolving from their pop-punk origins without losing their idiosincracy, Turnover has embraced the dreamy landscapes of Wild Nothing and the chiming guitars of our beloved Real Estate. The result is excellent: a pleasing, blissfully melancholic record, enjoyable from start to finish.
Funeral Advantage. Let's move to Boston, MA, to meet Tyler Kershaw. In 2013 he began his lo-fi bedroom pop project releasing a demo tape and split 7" with Caténine on Disposable America. But since then it has evolved into a full band with an impressive cv of gigs alongside Alvvays, Whirr or Craft Spells. This 2015 they have released the double a-side 'Not In My House / That's That' with The Native Sound and, in April, another split 7" with Former Ghosts, with debut album scheduled later in the year. Moody, reverb-drenched dreampop crafted with jangly guitars. Looking forward to Kershaw's band new tunes. Most promising.
