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 Click for music events Rusk Factor Touch and Go marks twenty-five years as America's "most important record label"
Touch and Go's Ravenswood Avenue headquarters is as unassuming as you
could imagine--no giant sign shouting "T & G" on its door, just an
elephant, actually. Inside, owner Corey Rusk diligently taps his
keyboard from behind his desk in his office--glittered with records and
glass block, flanked by a variety of motorcycles--trying to finalize
details about the upcoming anniversary party, tie up loose ends.
There's
still much to do.
Rusk's Touch and Go, Chicago's grandmaster of independent rock
labels, celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary next week with three
days of virtuoso, head-scratching acts that cover all of the eras of
the
label's reign, including performances by Shellac, Ted Leo & the
Pharmacists, Calexico and the reunions of Scratch Acid and Big Black.
Touch and Go's taste in artists spans the spectrum of rock music--from
the noise-based anti-melodies of Big Black to the quieter,
acoustic-driven songs of Calexico and Seam. The foundation, of course,
has always been Rusk's handshake--when signed to Touch and Go, no pen
ever hits paper. It's word-is-bond, and Rusk's word is gold.
When Touch and Go was first launched, it was in Toledo, Ohio, where
Rusk was still a high-school skateboarder, living with his grandmother,
in a band that needed a gateway for releasing its records. "I was a
teenager in a band in the late seventies and early eighties, totally
energized by the explosion of punk music. It was a really exciting time
to be a teenager in a band. We wanted to put out our own record and
help
put out other people's records. There was no real plan. Once the first
record was out, it was like, `Okay, I know a little about this
process
now, and I have a lot of friends in great bands, and I want to help
get
their music heard, too.' Our entire existence was trial and error."
His band was the Necros, who were often booked in neighboring city
Lansing, Michigan, by fans Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson. At the time, the
pair ran a fanzine called Touch and Go--that's where Rusk
originally
acquired the moniker. "It evolved really quickly," Rusk says of
the
label. "As soon as our record was out, I got a job loading trucks and
I
saved up as much money as I could to record the Necros. It felt like
something I needed to do."
It seems that being in a semi-touring band, working as a loader,
running a small record label and trying to graduate high school
might be a bit too much for a 17-year-old. "It quickly made a
workaholic out of me," Rusk laughs. "I've remained that way my whole
life. It always feels crushingly overwhelming. I can always see when
there's more you can do, and because I care, I want to do more and
more."
He says that Touch and Go ultimately benefited from his young age.
"I think when you're that young, if you have motivation to do
something, you're young enough where you haven't really experienced
too
much, where you hit a brick wall and what you want to do is impossible.
You believe you can do it, more than you do as you get older and
you're
trained to think that certain things aren't possible. When you're
young,
everything seems possible because you haven't failed yet. It never
really felt like `No, I can't do this, it's too much.' It was more
like
`Yeah, it's gonna be a bunch of work, but how fucking cool is it that
I
can do this?'"
After he got his diploma, Rusk quit the Necros--"I had tremendous
fun being in a band, but I'm not a talented musician," he laughs.
"I'm
better at running a label"--and headed off to Detroit because "there
was nothing going on in Toledo other than the band I was in and the
five
friends who liked our band." This was 1983. Rusk had been hitching
rides with friends up to Detroit to see punk shows for years, and he
wanted to engulf himself in that scene. "It never really seemed like
the extreme example of urban decay that it really is," he says. "When
you're young, you really don't have anything to compare it to."
Rusk continued running the label in Detroit with partner Lisa
Pfahler, who he would marry. (They, unfortunately, later divorced.)
They
tried to operate a punk club there, but the financial constraints
prevented them from fully succeeding. After a few years, it was time to
move again. "It became obvious that the quality of life [in
Detroit]
wasn't so great and moving somewhere else might be better." It was
just
a matter of where, he says, and Chicago was the next biggest town, but
still Midwestern, with a different aesthetic from the East and West
Coasts, something familiar and comfortable. Though the only people they
knew were the members of Big Black, the label fit right in. "We
moved
to Chicago at just the right time," he says. "In the late eighties
and
early nineties, there was this explosion of good bands here. There were
good things happening." His celebrated business model could cause some heads to shake. The
label splits the profits with its bands right down the line,
fifty-fifty, a far cry from the ten-to-twelve-percent an artist would
receive if signed to a major label. It's part of Rusk's deep belief
in
the old punk-rock standards of fairness and respect. Touch and Go, more
than any other label in the music business, has worked for the
artist
from the beginning, and has inspired so much that his method has
been
copied by a variety of labels across the country, including Ian
McKaye's
Dischord in Washington, D.C. and Thrill Jockey here in Chicago.
"I think Touch and Go has hands down been the most important record
label of the independent rock era," says Steve Albini, recording
engineer and member of Big Black and Shellac, both playing the
anniversary party. "It established a method of dealing with bands that
is both honorable and sustainable. The fact that the label is
successful
and has provided careers for so many people--that's the best thing.
They've been a bastion of honorable behavior in a sometimes unpleasant
business. You could say it's the most important label in the
history
of
rock and you wouldn't be far off. He's doing it the same way [as he
did
twenty-five years ago] for exactly the same reasons, and it still
works.
Touch and Go made an awful lot of things happen for an awful lot of
bands."
One of those bands was Albini's Big Black, which dismantled two
decades ago and is reforming for this event, something nobody would
have
ever imagined possible. "Touch and Go was the best thing to happen to
Big Black. Not doing [the show] would be an insult. We haven't
practiced
for twenty years, but we were like, `Let's get out there and play a
few
songs.' It would be a way to recognize how much Corey meant to us."
Sam Coomes, of Portland band Quasi, who "signed" with Touch and Go
in 2000, mirrors Albini's sentiment. "Every interaction is person to
person," he says. "There's no weird hierarchy or formalities. We
were
just like, `Okay, fifty-fifty,' and we shook hands and that was it.
He's
just like that--no runaround."
"I always want to do the best possible job for bands and records
that we're involved with," Rusk says. "It's just the way I am and
way
things work for me...I do it the way I do, and I feel proud that I have
some vested, personal interest in everything we do."
His methods got Rusk in trouble once, in 1999, when he was taken to
court by the Butthole Surfers, who wanted the sole rights to the six
records it put out on Touch and Go in the eighties. The court ruled
that
the handshake contract he had with the band didn't hold up. "That was
the big depressing era of our existence. The year afterward I
questioned
a lot whether I wanted to keep doing it or change how we do it. But
eventually I got to the point of where I was tired of being bummed out
about it, and started to get on with doing the positive things that we
do. I just got back to focusing on doing what we do." Touch and Go has released well over 300 records during its time, and
its sister label, Quarterstick--which was launched in 1990 and has
since
been a home for the quieter material, like that of Calexico, The Mekons
and the Rachel's--has surpassed the century mark. Rusk won't pick
a
favorite. "No, no, no," he laughs. "I can't play favorites."
He never saw this as a career. "For fifteen years if you had asked
me at any given point in time, `Will Touch and Go exist two years from
now?' I'd have said, `Maybe, maybe not.' Not because I didn't
believe in
what I was doing but because it seemed like, `This is crazy. I'm able
to
run a company that puts out music that I really love. This is some
freaky little blip in time that will disappear. This certainly can't
last.' After about fifteen years, I kind of had to admit that maybe it
would keep going for more than a year or two."
How does he feel now? "I can't imagine what else I'd do," he says.
"So I have no plans on quitting."
Just a
Friendly Neighborhood Barbecue
Touch and Go 25th Anniversary Celebration
Friday, September 8 (5pm-10pm)
Also by Tom Lynch Burlesque Queen
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