We were lucky to catch up with Underlined Passages recently and have shared our conversation below.
Underlined, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
This predates my current band, Underlined Passages, by many years. As important as this band is to me, the most inspiring work I did was on behalf of others to elevate their music with my own label, The Beechfields Record Label.
The year was 1999, and I was a college student when I saw a band from Virginia called The Exploder open for Rainer Maria at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The intensity of the moments during that show (The Exploder was the most intense and mesmerizing live band I have ever seen) and the musical community that came together for those dorm shows created a tapestry of experiences that I knew at the moment were special and nearly unreplicable.
At the time, I had my own band (lowell), who was moving and shaking in their own right, and I thought to myself, “I want to do this night over and over again; how can I make that happen?” I quickly realized that the Baltimore scene did not have a place for this sort of music or these experiences. The world of music at the time was retracting into Napster (which would later morph into streaming services like Spotify)-so I knew that I was at the wrong place and the wrong time to look to others to do it. So I started The Beechfields Record Label in 2003 in a row home in Federal Hill in Baltimore and built my own music scene the best I could with the help and support of a diverse tapestry of amazing friends and musicians.
It was 3 years after that fateful night, and right when I started my Ph.D. studies in Neuroscience, so my time was either spent in the lab or with my own band at the time (The Seldon Plan) and the label. I don’t know where I got the time or energy, but with the help of my close friend Austin Stahl, who played in the amazing band Private Eleanor, the two of us built a roster of bands from the local scene and started releasing records, and putting together shared bill shows, and The Beechfields steadily grew. It was a lot of hard work, late nights, and a few tears that most people did not see, but it was worth it, and we gave our all to the artists on the label.
From the label’s beginning, I was adamant about making physical records with unique artwork and emphasized that those releases should be as special as possible. That is because I grew up listening to vinyl and also during the indie mixtape/hand-made cassette era, so art was important to me, and so were hand-made records. That became the calling card for The Beechfields, a highly curated quality roster and well-designed and assembled records that did justice to the talent of the artists they displayed.
As the label faced the iTunes takeover of music, we had to fight the rising tide of people wanting a digital download in lieu of a real CD. Setting aside all the issues with how uninspiring MP3s sound compared to a real CD, it became clear that, over time, digital was winning. Thus, I had to come up with an acceptable way to release things digitally while still maintaining some connection with the label’s vision.
During early 2008, I had been reading about microfinance because I had been trying to design a way to increase science education in poor communities using it. When I finished my doctorate, I was disappointed with the state of American scientific progress and funding in my areas of research. So, I became a consultant to several neuroscience companies to help them design a system that used microfinance in that context—to allow local communities to fund science research, thus creating a bridge between citizens and the labs in their community.
When The Beechfields faced our digital dilemma, I shifted the label to use a microfinance model to allow more connections between my label and our community. In return for their monetary support on current records, I offered listeners free digital versions of our back catalog with downloadable art and liner notes. I also opened this exchange system to our artists so that they could release “digital only” releases but still make them special. This worked, and The Beechfields developed a solid reputation for being an artist-friendly place to release quality music.
That label existed for nine years until I moved to NYC to pursue my postdoctoral studies. Closing it down was one of the most difficult things I had to do in my musical life, but the service of others and building my own network when there was none for my music reverberates to this day.
Underlined, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Over the years, Underlined Passages has built a solid musical reputation and an ever-increasing network of fans and friends through their hard work and sheer grit on tour and by appealing to listeners passionate about original indie rock/pop songwriting that is guitar-driven, emotionally intense, and slightly nostalgic.
The Baltimore-based band has been steadily winning over audiences that “just get” the nostalgic-yet-modern rock Underlined Passages has been creating in the vein of early ‘aughts Nada Surf, American Football, and Promise Ring-but of course, with a sound that is uniquely theirs.
The band’s guitar-driven, soulful, lush, and shoegazey music is on full display with their latest releases, Neon Inoculation and the forthcoming record Landfill Indie, which will be released for streaming on November 15th, 2024, on Mint400 Records.
The Big Takeover pointed out, “Getting more profound and musically compelling has made Underlined Passages one of the best bands around.” The Jersey Beat wrote, “Underlined Passages offer gorgeous celebrations of brilliant musicianship.”
With a new record to share with the world, Underlined Passages is currently back on the road and engaged with new audiences. The Rodeo wrote, Underlined Passages is “[musically] spot on…big and festival-ready…”
If you love college indie rock that gives you all the feels, you may fall in love with Underlined Passages.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Many people will try to tell you how to make your music work and how to try to make money in this modern amalgam of social networking and free downloads. Some will say that the music industry is dead; “no one pays for music anymore.” Some will argue that music now is more alive than ever with buzzwords like “freemium model,” “organic search marketing,” or “democratization of music distribution.” Finally, some think that the song will always speak for itself, and the cream will always rise to the top and be recognized no matter what economic model exists.
I believe musicians and those who help distribute music should always be progressive, forward-thinking, and optimistic. However, I don’t think a life in independent music is about any of the ideas I just mentioned in that first paragraph. Independent music is really about local ecosystems, about making tangible connections with your neighbors and cultivating long-term relationships that don’t always center on music. A life in indie music is about story creation – the un-written autobiography of your journey through lives that interconnect, and the adventures that connect them make all the time and sacrifice worthwhile.
The act of creating art is both a public and private venture. Private in the sense that art reflects some deep connection to the artist’s hidden psyche, but the public airing of that creation gives it lasting meaning by connecting it with a larger zeitgeist. In lieu of adding more text to the “how to make it in indie music” conversation, I thought the reader might get something out of the personal story behind the creation of my own independent record label.
Hopefully, these personal stories will inspire and motivate readers who feel that they must create and distribute music to exist but also must reconcile the economic realities of such an existence and find a space that makes the most sense for them. As we progress with AI-driven music and art, the personal and local will again take center stage. Society can do best by letting this play out on its own time scale and supporting the concept of the local = the global.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The freedom to craft your own story using what you know and with the support of people who care for you and your dreams is the only way to “make it” in indie music. If you see something that needs to be done, do it. If you want to make the music industry a better place for yourself and others, then improve your local scene. Create and cultivate out of self-interest balanced heavily with a viewpoint for advancing the cause of others.
Yes, the democratization of music means millions more boats are out there in an already crowded sea. The idea that Spotify uploads nearly 50,000 songs per day can be demoralizing! It also gives more power to those with the biggest boats and the loudest megaphones. We have entered a new era of payola and the rich owning the platforms for distribution on a scale that even the robber barons of the early 20th century could not imagine.
But the old cliché still holds true in some contexts of this changing tide: a rising tide lifts all boats.
Independent music requires you to be that rising tide. A strong sense of direction guided by the artistic dreamer in you, coupled with your pragmatism, will make you a beacon for others. In this service to others, through sharing your music, but most importantly, through helping others share theirs, you will find true independence and happiness navigating the new landscape that our generation has crafted for the future of music.
I know this is a hard lesson to learn and requires time, and I empathize. Keep chipping away at it because if you can know and discover yourself within this journey, you will truly reap the most rewarding aspects of being an artist.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.underlineslove.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/underlinedpassages
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gooh0dY6_M
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5fSux0sPGUm76aOmTQFmMD?si=Cm40l-G0S_unQakBerm3iQ
Image Credits
Rick Barnwell, RFBV Films
James Appio, CoolDad Music
Jason Hird