In this month’s Label Spotlight, we talked to Mike Nobrega of Volcom Entertainment, home to bands including Pepper, Valient Thorr, Year Long Disaster, Turbonegro, and more…
They’ve had a busy year so far with some great releases like Torche’s Harmonicraft, Riverboat Gamblers’ The Wolf You Feed and the latest on the roster, Turbonegro’s highly anticipated Sexual Harassment.
Without further ado, here’s Mike Nobrega!
Can you give us a brief overview of the label and its history?
It was Ryan Immegart (now VP of Marketing for the brand) and Volcom founder Rich Woolcott, who launched the label in earnest back in 1995 around Ryan’s band TheLINE. Ryan was a wunderkind snowboarder when he was a kid, the first sponsored snowboarder for Volcom in fact, and over time (and injury), he redirected his energy more and more into his band and they decided to just go for it and put a record out themselves. That’s pretty much the Volcom style, especially back in the day. You just went for it, and with the introduction of theLINE’s CD to the lifestyle surf/skate/snow community, the label was on its way.
If you’re old enough to recall, CDs were a popular item back then and around 1999, with the exposure on MTV and Jackass, Volcom Ent had put out 20,000 copies of the cKy record, pretty much without any major traditional record distribution. I came in shortly after cKy blew up and the major labels were sniffing around. By that time Volcom Ent had also already established itself onto the Vans Warped Tour. The label bands who were granted a “few shows” on the tour turned into a guerilla stage set up, which became “The Locals Stage” till it was finally fully dubbed the “Volcom Stage,” as it was known for around 10 years. It was primarily staffed and produced by the label team and the bands. In the early years, if your band got a slot on the stage you actually had to set up and break it down every day. No room for p*ssys, you had to REALLY want to be there to play, and knowing how to drive a forklift didn’t hurt either.
The label has always been a hybrid, long before the idea of “Bands & Brands” was an industry buzz-term and marketing plan bullet point.
What is the most challenging thing about running a record label and what makes it all worth it?
Our label is a bit unique in that, while autonomous, we’re part of this big action sports brand. For us it’s balancing the passion for the music and bands we really love while staying relevant and keeping our brand identity intact. We’re a really small team (4 people) so we all handle a lot of different things day-to-day and it’s hard to make everybody happy all the time… What makes it all worth it for me personally are days like this year’s Free Beer Party at SXSW: our whole extended family of bands, friends, musicians and artists all in one place enjoying the music scene. Seeing it all happen on stage, in real time, that’s what it’s all about.
Name a tool you cannot live without.
At The Orchard, we value that our clients are also our partners. As such, they constantly keep us on our toes and challenge us with new ideas and suggestions that help us improve our service and our products. Every expression of a need, every communication of a wish, every outreach for support helps us stay ahead of the curve while always keeping our clients’ best interest top of mind.
Penned by our client managers themselves, here are 15 examples of how clients have pushed us to improve and be the best partners that we can be.
Arti Farti — Arti Farti is a leading Scandinavian client and home to superstar DJ & producer, Rune RK. The Nordic territories can work very differently, often with much shorter lead times. Working with them, we have grown to further understand the importance of close communication, particularly in native tongue, in order to execute quality campaigns under sometimes challenging circumstances. By working closely, we have secured outstanding retail and interactive results, including VEVO UK premieres and playlists, and #1 chart hits. –Emilie Snellman
Body & Soul — As a label, Body & Soul is a living encyclopedia of Jazz — a unique concept of releasing recordings based on a completely “chronological” approach which brought us the challenge of gaining them the same recognition they had in the “physical” world. With 1.5 million CDs sold, their expert knowledge of the genre has helped us adapt specific pricing strategies: Best Of’s by great names such as Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, but also prepare new work around streaming stores with playlists prepared together including great tracks from other lesser known artists. Check out: A History of Jazz/Une histoire du Jazz: 100 tracks. –Ben Oldfield
Cleopatra Records – Cleopatra Records puts out an incredible number and range of releases through The Orchard – from historical speeches to Broadway plays to cutting-edge dubstep. As a result, they’ve forced The Orchard client team to learn how to handle metadata rules for every single type of release across the entire spectrum of deliverable content. In addition, the label has been influential in helping us maximize our efficiency and improve deliveries for the future. –Jeff Stempeck
Cobra Entertainment — Our friends at Cobra are always pushing the boundaries of compiling Classical music. Focusing on quality music at an affordable price, they have come up with an amazing formula that just works, all the while creating thematic compilations that are truly relevant with today’s trends. These high-volume compilations have really kept us alert when it comes to Classical metadata rules, as these can be tricky for even the most seasoned professional. –Jeremy Sponder
Farol Música – As part of one of the most important media groups in Portugal, they definitely contribute to bringing top local Portuguese content and artists much closer to us, and also challenge us to learn how to market top international artists in the territory, such as Katie Melua. –Eulalia Rafols
The 2012 NARM Convention was a huge success this year for The Orchard in terms of business closed, deals announced and goodwill spread — and the Physical Team was no exception.
In addition to meeting with top accounts, from Amazon, Transworld, AEC, Hastings and Super D to the all-important indie stores and their coalitions (including Spencer Hickman, the manager of the soon-to-be open Rough Trade Megastore in Brooklyn), the team found time to “socialize” with these same accounts as well as some of our label personalities like Michael Nobrega from Volcom and Curtis Casella from Taang! Records.
On Wednesday night, the Physical Team attended the Dodgers/Giants baseball game (where for some reason they still rooted for the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies anyway), then we headed back to the Hyatt Regency lobby to find more old friends like Liz, Andrea and Reg from CIMS and Luann Myers from AIMS. Our favorite car music at NARM this year? A tie between the new albums by The Shrine and Kadavar (two great driving albums on Tee Pee!).
Another exciting win for the team last week: The Orchard announced the acquisition of Iris Distribution!
Check out the pics of what went down at our high-level meetings with NARM veterans such as Mark Hudson from Transworld, Record Store Day co-founder Carrie Colliton, and Larry Mansdorf and Carl Mello from Newbury Comics. There was some steak-eating, refereeing, bullying and cheering… You’ll wish you were there.
Vintage Trouble at The Orchard's Day Party, SXSW 2012
Even if you did not attend SXSW, you must have heard about the giant Doritos vending machine/stage, free BBQ via pedicabs, homeless hotspots, The Boss’ “you can do it” keynote or at least, A$AP Rocky’s do-rag.
No? Well it’s easy to lose track of what’s going on at SXSW and cut through all the noise, so I’ve put together some documentation of what The Orchard crew was up to for SXSW 2012.
Some members of our team arrived for Interactive to touch base with some of our tech partners and fellow nerds. Among the many were our friends at Webdoc, Fanbridge, Topspin and Rdio. We hit up some panels, tried to squeeze into the Al Gore + Sean Parker keynote and checked out the Google Village whenever we had a spare moment.
The Music Fest brought us together with loads of our clients and we did our best to get out to as many shows as we could, namely, Cleopatra Records‘ Blackburner’s mind-blowing set, Lefse‘s lovely showcase, Volcom‘s beerfest and metal mania, Barsuk‘s stellar jam sesh and MANY more. Not to mention IODA’s day party with some of our favorite buzz bands taking the stage. The Orchard’s Day Party with Radical Dads, Arms, Scoundrels, Races, Vintage Trouble and Rhett Miller had us enjoying every minute of the day on Friday along with free tacos and beer at Parkside in Austin (PICS HERE). Also, we were thrilled to host the event alongside our sync department who announced their new venture, Concentrated Music.
This only touches on all of our festivities at SXSW but we do want to thank everyone who attended The Orchard’s Day Party and all the amazing showcases hosted by some of our favorite labels. Signing off with some of our staff favorites from SXSW 2012 (Poliça and Vintage Trouble took the top):
TORCHE have announced the release of their long awaited 3rd LP, Harmonicraft.
The band self-produced the album in their very own studio, Pinecrust Studios, located in their hometown of Miami. They then delivered the finished tracks to Kurt Ballou of Converge for mixing.
The band’s self-recorded factor brings a whole new level of intimacy to the LP that cannot be replicated or found on other top metal albums.
TORCHE just premiered their soaring first single “Kicking” from Harmonicraft via Pitchfork. Look for the new album to be released on Volcom Entertainment April 24th!
Led by vocalist/guitarist Steve Brooks, Jonathan Nuñez, Rick Smith and new guitarist, Andrew Elstner, TORCHE have been steamrolling the underground-metal scene since their 2004 inception and made big waves in 2008 with the release of Meanderthal, their second full-length album. With outlets like Pitchfork, Spin, Paste and Stereogum praising the band for their super heavy yet totally accessible brand of melodic metal, TORCHE soon found themselves on top of the underground metal heap, not to mention plenty of Year-End lists, most notably grabbing the #1 spot on Decibel Magazine‘s Top 40 Albums of 2008.
TORCHE will preview new songs from Harmonicraft during their run of tour dates with metal legends, Corrosion of Conformity, and label-mates, Valient Thorr. This explosive tour is not to be missed!
