Ted Lee & The Legend Of Feeding Tube Records
Are you originally from Massachusetts? When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Was this something that was relevant around your guy’s household growing up? What would you do for fun growing up?
I am originally from the lovely city of Providence, Rhode Island. I attended Hampshire College and never left the lovely valley. My early memory of music is listening to the best of queen volume one and Best of beach boys on cassette and just wearing them out until they didn’t play. They were an escape and always made think of places that only exist in your head. Music was always around when I was growing up. So it’s hard for me to remember exactly. My father worked in the local theater and television. I remember seeing lots of musicals and plays. Growing up around a community of people to make some magical happen was probably very helpful and inspiring to me. Huge. Music and art was always around as I grew up. My mom went to RISD and is a great painter, my father worked in showbiz as a production designer. My godmother continues to work in the arts, she has a career in the fine art glass world and has been a curator, gallerist, and all around expert in exquisite glass works. So there were always lots of creative people around. I took art classes at RISD during the summer, and go see movies almost every week. I always wanted to be a filmmaker or an artist. My family always inspired and encouraged these passions. Going to places like Fort Thunder and AS220 shows as a young lad which was a lovely eye opener to how the world could be. Or that another world existed.
Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your first concert and when did you realize you wanted to spend your life pursuing music? Did you participate in any groups yourself prior to starting FT Records? When did you realize you wanted to be a label owner and how did this initially come to be?
My parents, R Crumb. David Lynch, Pauline Kael, Basquiat, the movie Withnail and I, and the Sun City Girls. The surrealists and Dadaists were always exiting to me. I love music, cinema and the visual arts cause they were tactile to me. You could grab them and move things around and rearrange things to see what you’d get. My brain is foggy on which exactly was my first concert. I believe the first show I went to was a Paul Simon show because my father worked with him - designing sets for many of his live shows. But once I could get into shows at the original Lupo’s, one of the first bands I saw was definitely Sonic Youth. And I remember the whole club was a mosh pit. Also I loved AS220 and Fort Thunder cause you could be under age and see all kinds of local bands that forever shaped my music and art mind. Landed, Lightning Bolt, Men’s Recovery Project, Six Finger Satellite, etc. Mainly high school bands, then I started playing drums in a band called Zebu! when I was a student at Hampshire college. I started putting out CDRs and vinyl records in college just because I liked my friend’s acts. It all happened very naturally. I always loved labels like Load Records and Sub Pop, Time-Lag, Mississippi Records, so I was inspired to just start releasing what I wanted to hear. Or what I was hearing at local shows. I was for awhile a videographer of the local western mass “scene” for about 11 years so I was always very inspired by the shows and artists. I remember coming back from a show in a high from just creative energy. Fun times.
What was the overall vision and approach when you sat down to launch the label and when was this exactly? You guys have released some incredible works by the likes of Michael Hurley as well as Ralph White, Joseph Allred and SHOTM. What goes into running an independent label as well as the comparison from when you first started to now?
I think it was around the early 2000’s when I started the record shop with Thurston and Byron. When I look back, there really wasn’t some planned out vision - we just started with one release after another and before we knew it, we were building quite a catalog. I’ve been very lucky to work with amazing artists. I still kinda of can’t believe how many lovely artists I’ve met over the 15 plus years I've been doing this experiment. It’s different now because over time you’ve gotten to know everyone better.
What have been some benchmarks for the label as well as some of your favorite projects to work on?
There are so many to name so it’s difficult to choose, but off the top of my head I’d say Josephine Foster, Big Blood, Micheal Hurley, Myriam Gendron, MARS, Chris Corsano, Maxine Funke, Weeping Bong Band, Powers/Rolin Duo, and Sunburned. To name a few.
Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
Thank you kindly for all the support to everyone who’s ever bought one of our records, or attended any of our artist’s live shows.
