Scott McDowell - Kith And KIn Records Interview
When and where were you born? What was your childhood like growing up? When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Were these things that were relevant growing up in your guy's household?
Born outside of Chicago at Lutheran General hospital. I don’t remember anything about being born but still feel a certain kinship to Chicago and its music and musicians. I lived outside of Phoenix and then outside of Philadelphia before moving to New Jersey at age 8 up through high school. I grew up with the rise of MTV as the dominant cultural force, and when I was 9 or 10 I loved the J. Geils Band, the Go-Gos, and Motley Crue.
What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? When and where did you see your very first concert?
My favorite things growing up were skateboarding and playing soccer. I got into a lot of music through skateboarding, especially punk, hardcore, and perhaps most enduringly, reggae. I heard fIREHOSE for the first time in Natas Kaupas’s classic Streets on Fire part which led me down the rabbit hole to the Minutemen and Black Flag and the Meat Puppets and SST Records. Soccer perhaps was a less important gateway to music, but I recognized at a very young age that the global nature of soccer is a way to learn about and appreciate different cultures and attitudes, the same way food and music are. I was always very curious and restless to see the world. Music and books and sports can teleport you into a foreign place when you’re a kid.
Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When did you realize you wanted to spend your life pursuing music?
My 4th grade teacher had a WFMU sticker on his door and declared it was the best radio station in the world. It took a while to sink in, but that was the doorway. Around middle school, in interviews I heard Anthony Keidis and Flea name check Parliament, Bad Brains, Circle Jerks, James Brown, James Chance, The Misfits, The Meters, X, John Coltrane, the Germs, etc., which sent me off in many directions. I had a friend who’s older brother had Grateful Dead tapes and they were golden sacred objects. My first concert was Poison and David Lee Roth at Brendan Byrne Arena in 7th grade. By high school I started going to Maxwells in Hoboken to see bands like Fugazi and Dinosaur, Jr. I was a radio DJ at my college station, WCNI, and that again was pivotal to opening up the world of ‘90s indie rock and music like Sun Ra and Television and The Clean, as well as labels like Siltbreeze, Flying Nun, Quarterstick, and Table of the Elements. I like to say that I’m the same age as indie rock, even though that’s not strictly accurate. In the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, my girlfriend at the time was working for the Milarepa Fund, the Beastie Boys-related nonprofit that put on the Tibetan Freedom Concert. I got a part-time job helping to set up and work the Milarepa info booth on the Beastie Boys west coach tour with Bad Brains, as well as the west coast Lollapalooza shows and the Dave Matthews Band shows that summer.
I started listening to jazz and improv records in earnest after taking a Jazz History course from an amazing professor named Gary Chapman, who saw something in me and gave me a copy of the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD (go find a used copy, it’s a goldmine). I became obsessed with early jazz, Fletcher Henderson, Charlie Christian, Duke Ellington, Carla Bley, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Alice Coltrane, Leo Smith, Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, Don Cherry, Grachan Moncur III, Peter Brotzmann, and on and on. It wasn’t until the end of college that I started to think of music as something to pursue in life as a vocation, or more accurately an avocation, which is what it’s become. Two weeks before graduation I called every label in New York City and asked for an internship. Caroline Records was the sole label to return my call, and I interned in the retail promotions department mainly for the Caroline subsidiary Astralwerks, which was big at the time with Fatboy Slim, Photek, µ-Ziq, and the Chemical Brothers. They eventually hired me to work in the mailroom but I got fired after being wrongly accused of stealing promotional CDs. I was blindsided and it was devastating. I eventually managed to clear my name, and they offered me a full-time job at Caroline Distribution as an olive branch, but my pride was shattered and I turned them down.
Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to starting the label?
Well, I already mentioned WCNI, but also in college I started my first record label, Yeeeaaaahhhh Kid Records, which was launched to release a punk 7" by the band Meathead, in the Fat Wreck Chords vein and totally great. The B-side was a punk cover of "Toys R Us Kid." The band broke up before I even got the test press back from the plant and that was the end of the label. In the late ‘90s, I was hired as a production assistant on 120 Minutes at MTV, which felt like a dream at the time. I was a huge fan and somehow I found myself writing scripts and cutting segments on The Fall and Minor Threat and sneaking them on to the air. It felt subversive. I still remember seeing the “Teenage Riot” video for the first time on 120 Minutes sometime in the ‘80s. I eventually became the producer of 120 Minutes and presided over the last remnants of the show in the weird turn-of-the-century when “alternative” music was waning and rap-rock and boy bands were huge. My final 120 Minutes show was basically a paid infomercial for Loud Rocks, a very mediocre rap-rock compilation financed by Loud Records. It was so disappointing and sad and ultimately out of my hands, but I did get to interview Ozzy Osbourne for that.
I also produced the hip hop show Direct Effect, which was hosted by Funkmaster Flex. It was a great time, but I also soon realized that working in the “industry” had a deadening effect on my love of music. I wanted to work on music, I just didn’t want to work in the music industry. I volunteered at WFMU marathons and record fairs and in the early 2000s, started as a board operator and then eventually started DJing there in 2006, which I still do on a fill-in basis. I’ve featured a ton of live music and interviews on the show over the years with people like William Parker, Carla Bley, Nate Wooley, Mary Halvorson, David Grubbs, Ashley Paul, Jessica Pavone, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, 75 Dollar Bill, Dawn of Midi, Chris Forsyth, and many more. Armed with a copy of the Mechanics Guide, I started another label in the 2000s called The Sea Isle Recording Company to release records by my own band, The Vowels, as well as great records by Clown Down and Loup. It never quite took off, but members of those bands went on to form Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Takka Takka, so maybe we were just too early to the party?
You’ve recently released some pretty awesome works from One Eleven Heavy with titles such as “Everything’s Better” and their most recent work “Poolside”. How did you first hear about James and the guys? What inspired you to work with the band and essentially launch the label with them?
I met Nick Mitchell Maiato (one of the guitarists and songwriters in One Eleven Heavy) in 2015 when his band Chalaque played live on my WFMU show and we hit it off and stayed in touch. I had not met James yet but we had exchanged emails a few times and I bought records from him in the decade prior in sort of overlapping musical communities. My friend Hans Chew was recruited to play piano on that first record. Hans and I had become friends over our mutual love of Jack Rose (RIP) and US soccer.
How did the label initially come to be and how did you first set out to launch it? What inspired the name and the overall vision for what you now do with the label?
When Nick and James started One Eleven Heavy they approached me to start a label and release their first record. I flipped for their Cosmic Americana, indie jam, Royal Trux/Santana/Youngbloods/Grateful Dead thing and immediately got what they were trying to do. I told them there was no way I was going to start a label (haha!), but I offered to help out as their “manager” and try to help them get a label and make connections and get the ball rolling. Long story short, I eventually capitulated and Nick and I agreed to partner on the label. We named it Kith & Kin because it was started as a project by and for family and friends, a real community affair. I have to mention Cory Rayborn from Three Lobed Recordings here, as he has been a major help in the practicalities of running the label with distribution, as well as advice and answering my inane questions. Darryl Norsen did the Kith & Kin logo, which I love. We released a CD compilation to benefit the Freedom of the Press Foundation in 2018--called, naturally, Freedom of the Press– with tracks from Garcia Peoples, Rosali, Elkhorn, Sunwatchers, The Weather Station, etc. One Eleven Heavy’s Everything’s Better came out later that same year. I helped One Eleven Heavy get hooked up with Beyond Beyond is Beyond to release their second album, Desire Path. BBIB disintegrated shortly thereafter so not the best decision. When it came time to finally release Poolside, we decided to do it ourselves. I’m at root a huge fan of One Eleven Heavy and I think their songwriting has only gotten better with time. They are a truly captivating live experience and about to embark on a European tour with dates in Spain, France, Germany, and Italy this summer. They’ve also booked studio timethe crevices of this tour so they’ll likely have a new album recorded by the end of the summer.
Anything in the works for this spring/summer? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
Aside from the One Eleven Heavy tour, I’ve been helping do some press and promotion for the guitar/synth duo, Tacoma Park, as well as helping out a new label with a very exciting yet-to-be-announced Madlib Songbook project. Nick lives in Spain and while booking the One Eleven Heavy tour he realized there’s a bit of a vacuum for booking, routing, and tour managing bands in the EU/UK coming over from the US. So he’s in the process of starting a booking agency and tour management operation under the Kith & Kin umbrella with already some great artists: Mike Cooper, Chris Forsyth, Wet Tuna, Monarch, Bobby Lee, and James Toth’s other band, James and the Giants. We have a brand new website for this, and it will eventually include label info and such. There are also some other records in the works, but our ambition is sometimes tamped down by day job, financial, and family realities. I would like to release jazz records at some point, and Nick has his ideas, too, and we’re set up in a way that we can each create our own projects using the label. It’s a very satisfying partnership. We’ll see what happens!
