Connecticut’s Seagreen Record Label Offering Tangible Music

Everyone knows by now that walking into a record store, browsing through bins, returning home and listening to your latest discoveries used to offer a tangible thrill, a palpable endorphin rush — and that that thrill has mostly disappeared.

Of course, waking up to nearly every album ever released at your fingertips isn’t bad either, and online offerings by indie labels like Connecticut’s Seagreen Records might offer that same buzz. For a few bucks, you can order a few cassettes (roughly $5 each) or some vinyl (around $10), by bands you probably haven’t heard of; when they arrive, you can read the paper inserts, some of which are personalized by its senders. Play them in your beater car (the one with the tape deck) or in the yellow Sports Walkman you found online (or in the basement): for listeners of a certain age, or retro-minded youngsters, this seems like a no-brainer. (Bonus: the bands are really good.)

Kyle McEvoy, guitarist for Watertown’s the Guru, and Jordan Caulfield, drummer for High Pop, founded Seagreen a few years ago, along with their bandmates.

“We wanted something to release our own bands’ music on,” McEvoy said. When the other musicians lost interest, McEvoy and Caulfield stayed involved. “We just took it over. You can’t really run a record label with 10 people.”

Caulfield started High Pop in the summer of 2009 with singer/guitarist Sean Posila. The Guru, meanwhile, began playing together five years ago, when McEvoy was 15; they released “Native Sun,” their first album, in 2011, and began playing two or three shows every weekend, almost immediately drawing an enthusiastic crowd at local festivals and in venues like the Space in Hamden or NYC’s Webster Hall.

McEvoy and Caulfield met at Cafe Napoli, a Watertown cafe and ice cream store that hosted shows. “It was like Woodstock, but for 16-year-olds,” McEvoy said. “Looking at the place itself: you’d never expect it. They used to fit 100-200 kids in the back room, which had a capacity of around 30.” (Cafe Napoli closed down in late 2010.)

The duo’s takeover of Seagreen happened in 2012, when the Guru was recording “Go Easy” and High Pop had just released a record called “Hip Hip Hooray”; both bands now play fewer shows. “We’re all in a place where [the Guru] is not the main focus anymore,” McEvoy said. “For right now, we’re all just taking our time away from the band. It has affected our lives so much that we all needed to step back and figure out our own things.”

The time investment needed to run Seagreen, meanwhile, has ticked up. They represent somewhere between 15 and 25 artists, providing in-house management, booking tours and sending out LPs and cassettes. They produce only about 50 cassettes (duplicated in Caulfield’s apartment) and/or 50 lathe-cut polycarbonate records (by Connecticut resident Tyler Bisson) per release — like “Domesticated God,” a clear, square 7″ single by the Philadelphia band Lithuania (Dom Angelella and Dr. Dog drummer Eric Slick, who also released a self-titled cassette through Seagreen). It costs $10 to purchase, even though it costs McEvoy and Caulfield more than that to produce. “We can only sell it for $10,” Caulfield said. “With cassettes, they can’t go over $5.

“People want physical media now,” Adam Straus, a third partner in Seagreen and the Guru’s new bass player, said. “It’s an affordable way to have physical media. It’s more about getting music in the hands of people.”

The 25 acts on Seagreen’s 2014 sampler mostly produce folk or garage rock, with angular, fragmented song forms that often veer off unexpectedly — either a gesture against gratuitous repetition or because an idea ran out of steam. Slick’s solo album is a collection of 4-track demos. Some artists (Furnsss, Zanders, High Pop, the Guru and the Most, along with solo releases by McEvoy and Golden) come from Connecticut; the majority hail from NYC (Soft Fangs, Porches, Sam Kogon, Rivergazer, Pocket Hercules, the Hiya Dunes, Tall Boys), Philadelphia (Japanese Breakfast, Eric Slick of Dr. Dog, Alex G, Flesh Seeds) or the West Coast (California’s the Growlers, Dirty Dishes and Terrible Roars; Sun Dummy from Seattle; and Vancouver’s Bankrobber).

Most acts, McEvoy said, are personal acquaintances or come recommended by other artists. The Philly connection dates back to a Guru tour with Dragon King, which led to meeting Lithuania and Slick. “I’ve always loved the scene [in Philadelphia],” McEvoy said. “It’s such a community. People live in big warehouses and put on shows together.” In 2012, the Guru opened for the Huntington Beach, Calif.-based Growlers, who eventually gave them a single to release. But the Growlers are signed to Everloving Records, “a surfer kind of label,” McEvoy said. “It’s hard to do anything with them, because of music publishing and licensing.”

Seagreen’s models include Exploding in Sound and Double Double Whammy, both based in Brooklyn. “So many smaller labels came from [Exploding in Sound],” McEvoy said. “It’s the opposite of an image-thing.”

“Those kids are pretty good friends of mine,” Caulfield added. “It’s a tight community within their label. They’re all friends and go on tour together.”

Caulfield handles submissions, which can arrive at upwards of 10 a week, usually via e-mail. McEvoy books shows at the Space, Danbury’s Heirloom Arts Theatre, Woodbury Music Shop in Woodbury and at Peachwave, a fro-yo joint in Watertown, including one on Sunday, March 1 at 7 p.m. with No Stranger, Rare Beasts, Mandala and Lakowski. “We’ve been trying to get as many local bands as possible,” McEvoy said. “Mark [Nussbaum, of local promoter Manic Productions] gets every big band you can imagine, but if it’s a smaller band they might come to us. We’re not trying to make a job out of it. All the money is going straight to the artist.”

“I’ve been on the other side so much, you start to see through every label,” McEvoy said. “I’ve been involved with a lot of other bands as a booking agent and label. It turns into a bidding war. Bands lose track of what’s going to be best for them. The Seagreen idea was what we’d want in a label. There’s no written contract or anything.”

They also don’t make money — yet.

“We’ll do it, we’ll make our money back over time, never right away, and just our original investment,” McEvoy said. “We let the artists make their own deal. We’re just really asking what the artists asks from us.”

In the short term, McEvoy sees Seagreen as a “starter label.” “We know a good amount of people in the industry,” he said. “We’ll put the music in the right hands… I don’t see ourselves as the final step. We’re the first step. We’re an in-between label.”

In a sense, Seagreen’s only tangible long-term strategy is just to keep going.

“Seagreen is never going to just end one day. We’ve gone from tons of releases at once, [to] then chill out for a year or two, [and] then pump out as many as you can. You have time to be away from it for awhile.”

Correction: an earlier version of the story incorrectly identified two Guru albums as “Native Son” and “Big Easy.”

SEAGREEN RECORDS PRESENTS No Stranger, Rare Beasts, Mandala and Lakowski on Sunday, March 1, at Peachwave in Watertown. Showtime is 7 p.m. Information: seagreenforever.com.