Able labels

Tar Hut and Monolyth hook up

Cellars By Starlight by Brett Milano

It's the sort of thing music fans dream of: you go to a club one night and you love the band so much, you sign them up and start a label on impulse. The album sells well enough to put some change back in your pocket. Next thing you know, one of your musical heroes is offering to distribute the records and you've got a national operation with major-label distribution. Everybody involved gets rich and famous.

That's pretty much what happened to the people who run the local Tar Hut label, except for the rich and famous part. "A little money right now would be nice," co-owner Jeff Copetas admits. But Tar Hut has still come a long way for a label with only three albums in its catalogue. Beginning with next month's release of the second album by Angry Johnny & the Killbillies -- the Northampton country maniacs who inspired Copetas to start the label -- it will be distributed by E Squared, the label owned by alterna-country hero Steve Earle.

E Squared is in turn distributed by Earle's label, Warner Bros., so Tar Hut has effectively leapfrogged into major status. It's one of two local labels to make such a jump recently: the long-running Monolyth label has signed a distribution deal with Velvel, which will reissue the debut Amazing Royal Crowns album next month with a joint imprint.

So how did a tiny operation like Tar Hunt link up with Steve Earle's label? "One day Steve knocked on my door, rolled a big joint, and we hung out. That's the rock-and-roll version of it," Copetas confides. Nice try, but the truth is more mundane: Copetas works at Rounder Records, where he made the acquaintance of E Squared co-owner Brad Hunt, who in turn liked what Tar Hut was doing and made a place for it. So far there's been no direct contact with Earle.

"Brad's pretty notorious for being a good music guy," says Copetas. "When he gets behind something, it's well backed. If I'd gone to the label directly and pitched them, things would have been a lot more difficult."

Along with Angry Johnny, the Tar Hut roster includes a pair of more commercial country-pop acts: the Ex-Husbands, from Nashville, and the Lonesome Brothers, from Northampton (who include area music veteran Ray Mason). But despite the roster, Copetas says that Tar Hut doesn't plan to niche itself as a country label. "We've got some cool power pop that we want to do as well; we're big fans of that. I think Boston's a terrible area for alternative country -- you see that kind of band here and there's always room in the club to walk around. So it's more ironic that a label from Boston is getting this attention."

Still, you've got to love a label that makes its national debut with something as off-the-wall as Angry Johnny & the Killbillies' What's So Funny?, which must have the highest body count of any album released this year. I'd estimate an average of three people killed per song. The six-minute "High Noon in Killville," about a liquor-store robbery gone very wrong, drives that average up a bit: when the hero finally gets sent up the river, his main regret is that he didn't kill more people when he had the chance. The 24-track production makes the music sound relatively normal: Johnny's voice has a twang similar to Earle's, and the line-up is fleshed out with horns, banjo, and keys (New York alterna-country hero Eric "Roscoe" Ambel is among the guests). Then there are the lyrics, which make the redneck tales of Southern Culture on the Skids or Nine Pound Hammer sound almost wholesome by comparison. Consider this touching slice of life in "All American Girl": "You tried your hand at football and shagged the quarterback/Watched your older brother decapitate your cat."

"Yeah, Johnny's nuts," Copetas confirms. "He lives in a warehouse with no kitchen or bathroom and drives a truck at night delivering USA Today." He's also the visual artist who did the last few Dinosaur Jr covers. The E Squared hook-up doesn't necessarily mean that Angry Johnny's about to become a household name, but it does mean that Tar Hut is in with a chance. "The hardest thing about running a small label is distribution. Now our focus has shifted from getting our records into stores to getting them out of stores -- having people buy them, in other words. That's a good thing to adapt to."

Monolyth owner Jeff Marshall has had his run-ins with major labels before. In the '80s he licensed Heretix to Island and the Raindogs to Atco. Four years ago he licensed a locally popular Modern Farmer album to Victory/PolyGram. None of those deals came off quite as planned, especially the last, since Victory went under soon after reissuing the album and guitarist Reeves Gabrels split the band for a full-time gig with David Bowie. The current Velvel deal came about because Marshall's lawyer's son works at the New York label. It was then sealed by the Royal Crowns' local buzz.

Marshall says he'll avoid the old pitfalls this time around. "We're keeping control over the direction and development of the artist -- keeping control over advertising and marketing, and recording the next album without being forced to do anything the band doesn't want. In basic terms, keeping control of the artistic side so the machine doesn't gobble them up and spit them out."

Monolyth has been retrenching since the Victory fallout, though it reappeared two years ago with the Music for a Modern Home compilation. Last year the label put out the best comeback nobody heard about: Grandpa Boy, the pseudonymous all-solo turn by Paul Westerberg (who came to the label through Marshall's partner, former Raindog and Westerberg bassist Darren Hill). For old fans dissatisfied with Westerberg's increasingly polite solo direction, the two Grandpa Boy records (seven tracks spread over a single and an EP) were the perfect antidote. The single, "Gimme My Money Back"/"Undone," paired a nifty, scruffy rocker with a touchingly tossed-off acoustic number, just as the first Replacements single, "I'm in Trouble"/"If Only You Were Lonely," did. Yet the material landed with almost no buzz and no press coverage, in part because Westerberg wanted to keep it quiet. The EP still shipped 12,000 copies -- probably no worse than Westerberg did with his last official album, Eventually, on Sire.

Marshall now plans to re-promote the Westerberg material. Unfortunately, he can't license it to Velvel, since Westerberg has a forthcoming high-profile, Don Was-produced album due for release on Capitol. And so far Velvel's committed only to the Amazing Royal Crowns, but Marshall's assembling a new roster with major-label link-ups in mind. He's already signed the North Carolina band Planet Mosquito and California Angels pitcher Jack McDowell's band, Stick Figure. For the time being, Marshall seems rather amused that both his label and Tar Hut got their national distribution by way of psychobilly bands. "That's kind of funny," he ponders. "Backlash on electronica, maybe."

BUTTERSCOTT

Low-tech pop doesn't get any lower-tech than God Is Odd, the latest cassette album by Winchester-based popster Jonathan Scott, who records as Butterscott. The 20-song a cappella album was made largely in his downstairs bathroom; the only frills are overdubbed harmonies and handclaps.

Total cost of production: about five bucks.

A cult hero in the making, Scott has turned out hundreds of songs in the past five years, most of them insidiously catchy and diabolically funny -- often with the poignancy that comes when real life doesn't measure up to pop-inspired dreams. The tape includes a few songs inspired by a romantic break-up, the perpetrator of which is mentioned by name.

As ever, his work is informed by his obsessive love of pop trivia. The title God Is Odd is a nod to another guy who makes albums by himself, and the Todd Rundgren reference is by no means his most obscure in-joke. That would be either "Sticky Sticky," a rewrite of a 1910 Fruitgum Company B-side, or "Magnificat," which he wrote after realizing nobody had done a mini-opera about a cat since the Monkees' "Shorty Blackwell." The Monkees figure highly in Scott's musical universe: the tape includes a bonus track recorded in the parking lot after their show at South Shore Music Circus last summer.

Scott's greatest assault on pop culture may be the one that almost took place last year: he snagged the opening slot for a show at Mama Kin by original Beatles drummer Pete Best, who was sacked in 1962 to make way for Ringo Starr. For that show Scott instructed his band (the members include WMFO's Mikey Dee on drums) to learn an entire set of Ringo covers. Alas, the gig was canceled when Best got held up in England.

But Scott's become comfortable with his fringe-dweller status. He recently heard that a tape of his music had been played for Creation Records president Joe Foster, who was sure it was LA eccentric Kim Fowley and Teenage Fanclub in disguise. "Someone else I know heard me on a college station down South. They said, 'Here's this mad genius from Boston who does all the wacky tapes.' The difference between me and other mad geniuses is that I'm pretty physically and mentally grounded. Maybe that's what puts off the labels who approach me; they want me to be really fucked up like Daniel Johnston. When they meet me they start thinking, 'You can't be Butterscott, you're too normal.' "

Scott's current tape and its 10 predecessors can be ordered from him at 7 Wainwright Road #8, Winchester 01890.

COMING UP

Walk, don't run, to the Middle East tonight (Thursday), when the Ventures hit town for the first time in a decade. Also tonight, Boy Wonder and the Pills are at the Lizard Lounge, the Sterlings and Francine are at T.T.'s, and Ape Hangers and Caged Heat are at Bill's Bar . . . Tomorrow (Friday), Jen Trynin headlines a fine pop bill at the Paradise with Gravel Pit and Jack Drag, Cheri Knight is at the Lizard Lounge with the Pale Brothers, the Blue Route are at T.T.'s, Western Mass songwriter Settie, who's just released a solid CD, is at Bill's Bar, and Debbie Harry, who's put the Blondie reunion on hold to play more dates with the Jazz Passengers, hits the Regattabar with them for the first of three nights.

On Saturday the Lyres headline the Middle East upstairs, Unwound are downstairs for an all-ages matinee, Michelle Willson is at Johnny D's, and the Bee Charmers are at the Tam . . . On Sunday it's No Use for a Name at the Middle East . . . Slide are doing a Tuesday-night residency at the Plough & Stars this month, and Chandler Travis and his Philharmonic continue doing Tuesdays at Club Bohemia . . . Matador's best-named band, Fuck, are at the Middle East Wednesday, a night that also brings acoustic godfather Dan Hicks to Johnny D's.