October 2, 2024 • 24 mins
#146. Ron takes a tour of Nashville's United Record Pressing - the largest and longest-operating vinyl manufacturer in the US - and talks 75 years of music history with URP's Cam Sarrett.Sponsored by DistroKid. Get 30% off your membership at distrokid.com/vip/independentmindedSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're the one that should be worried. You're a freak.
You're reading for Big Trouble. Trouble the Independent Minded podcast
has been independent for a dozen years now, can you
believe it? No corporate masters, no clueless stonecutters, no cockroach consultants,
no knee jerk reactions, no meetings, no marketing, no marketing meetings,
(00:26):
no pencil neck geek boss telling me I got to
come in early on Thursday, Go fly a kite, pencil neck.
I'm done with all that. An independently made podcast also
means less exposure, shoe stream budgets, zero employees, not even
a butler. But that's okay, because you know what this
podcast is as pro as it gets. I pour my
(00:48):
heart and soul into it because I love music and storytelling,
and I get to keep pouring thanks to help from
the fine folks at distro Kid, because I'm not just
a podcaster position to talk about a glutton for punishment.
And if you release your music online, if you're in
(01:08):
a band, you're in a label or a PR company,
you know you can't do it with just magic beans
and silly puddy. Distro Kid is the digital distribution service
that gets our music on all the places where the
kids are listening to the stuff where they're not staring
into the other thing. Spotify, Apple Music, even YouTube, and
all the ones you've never heard of too. But I'm
not here to convince you distro Kid's gonna do that.
(01:30):
I'm just here to nudge you yeah. With thirty percent
off your membership at DistroKid dot com slash vip slash
independent Minded. DistroKid dot com slash vip slash independent minded,
you can type it all thirty percent off your first
year of membership.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Scalzo Amazing Cocas, Run Style, Amazing Boys.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
He's talking to people, make on music, bugging the projects,
making them famous runs. He's helping them about just by
making them talk about all the.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Ship.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Then I was worried. Body has the drop of man
with a lutle more back hear me rocking mind, he
staring at the radio ven remember the first record you
ever bought? This one's mine? The money jumping on the man,
(02:54):
He's gotta be. If I close my eyes, I can
still see teenage me standing in the carpeted aisles of
the Sam Goodie inside Brooklyn's King's Plaza Mall I'm not
sure if I was looking for it or it was
looking for me, but there it was, prominently displayed in
(03:17):
the new Releases section Paul's boutique. The Beastie Boys problematic
long awaited follow up to their breakout debut, Licensed to Ill,
wrapped in glorious cellophane, the rectangular promo hypesticker announcing its
arrival alongside its price tag. I plucked it from its perch,
took it home, had the experience. I didn't really need
to buy many records when I was a kid. My
(03:38):
dad's collection kept me busy from around age five, and
my early fascination began with the covers the Roy Gbivprism
fold out of Dark Side of the Moon, the Candle
Melted band members on the back cover of Deep Purple's Burn,
shirtless albino Edgar Winter sporting his white mole and windswept
blonde hair on They only come out at night. Dad
(03:59):
played his part two Lasting Frankenstein and Money and Highway
Star at high volumes from his heath Kit amplifier. It
made an impact, and so for my elementary school graduation,
(04:19):
my parents bought me a stereo port radio receiver Port
dual cassette deck part beginner level turntable. That same summer,
a friend came by for a graduation pool party and
popped the cassette copy of License to Ill into my boombox.
(04:56):
It was loud, it was obnoxious, rebellious. It was even
a little filled three Jewish kids from our city who
were barely a decade older than us spitting over John
bonham Loops. Turns out the rest of the world wasn't
as ready for the Beastie Boys follow up as I was.
I spent considerable time sitting with it, marveling at the
rhymes and the packaging too, learning all the tiny lyrics
(05:17):
printed out on the inner sleeve, admiring the gatefold that
revealed the used clothing store that supposedly existed somewhere in
my enormous burrow. That was the first of many vinyl
records I would either purchase permanently, borrow from my parents,
or receive gratis as a prime perk of years working
in college and then commercial radio. By the time I
was in my thirties, I had a collection of over
(05:38):
two thousand platters.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
And then you can see it swirling right over my shoulder. Here,
what's being called a superstorm. Tonight, Hurricane Sandy is more
than two hundred miles off the coast and is about
to crash into two other systems when it makes landfall.
And look at this.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
October twenty ninth, twenty twelve was truly the day my
music died. Every record made its way into a dumpster
in front of my ruined half, all the twelve inches,
the forty five's old Dad's Beatles records, my original imprints
of led Zeppelin, four to fifty second Street Synchronicity, Rumors,
Master of Puppets by promo only colored double vinyl of
(06:13):
Sap and Jar of Flies, and yes, even Paul's Boutique.
A dozen years later, and it still stings. These days,
I own about seventy records, mostly reissues of my all
time faves and YEP I replaced Paul's boutique. So when
(06:37):
I arrive at United Record pressing for episode one six
of Independent Minded, I'm still bearing scars. Scanning the hallways,
I see lots of familiar faces. Eminem Adele, there's James
Brown next to Tam and Paula next to Lionel Richie.
Just a small sample of the big names who've entrusted
URP to make their vinyl for the last three quarters
(06:58):
of a century. United Good Pressing isn't just the og
of manufacturers. It's a crucial stitch in the fabric of
Nashville's music history. Naturally. It's a company that prides itself
on having music city as its home base, and so
does my tour guide, Cam Sarat.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I'm from Brentwood, Tennessee technically, but I've been in Nashville
forever and I work here at United as the director
of sales and Marketing.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
U RP is an institution, and this isn't awake. It's
a celebration. Before Cam Sarat became a sales rep here,
(07:52):
he was a customer.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I not only pressed me and my friend's old label,
Nashville's Dead, We did all our stuff here because that
was just the fact though, you know, it was like
the neighborhood pressing plant that was like, this is crazy.
This is in Nashville. I can't even believe it. And
I would tell my parents they were like where is it?
Like what is it?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Cam came to URP from third Man Records, the eclectic
vinyl focused independent record label and pressing plant founded and
co owned by Jack White. Here is the new resident historian,
Just the Cat to take us through some highlights from
seventy five years of record making. His one time music blog,
the interestingly titled Nashville Is Dead, evolved into a boutique
(08:34):
in the Imprint for regional.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Bands, mostly stuff in the Southeast. The first release was
a band from Memphis called Useless Eaters the Paperhead, which
(08:58):
is like a local like high school psych rock band.
(09:18):
We had like an awesome third birthday party in twenty
twelve at a place called the Zombie Shop that no
longer exists, of course, which is like a motorcycle repair
place in Sobro, like the Weird. It was so bizarre,
and it was.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Those humble, bizarre beginnings that ushered Cam into the world
of vinyl manufacturing and ultimately landed him here in this
facility on Ally Drive. But wait a minute. This is
one of the biggest vinyl manufacturers in the world, certainly
the longest running. Taylor Swift does business here, so does
Kendrick Lamar. How can a company this well revered a
(09:55):
business rub and elbows with the big dogs for this long?
How can you United Rect Pressing possibly be independent minded?
Why am I even here.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Really, since day one, indie artists have been what have
sustained this company in particular and this business in general.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Huh you hear that vinyl industry. You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
We're a large facility that's able to cater to indie
folks and work them into the same systems that Beyonce
would be worked into. So yeah, come get your Beyonce
level of service at United Record Pressing.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Francis Craig Sarah Aid's with Red Rose.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
This company started as Bullet Plastics, which is a subsidiary
of Bullet Records. Bullet Records is like a Nashville independent
largely like big band label in the forties, and they
struck gold with their first big hit, Red Rose by
Francis Craig Orchestra in nineteen forty six right around there,
(11:09):
so they opened a pressing plant just to keep up
with demand for that record.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Selling a song by Dixon, Tennessee born piano player and
band leader Francis Craig would lay the groundwork for urps
storied seventy five year history, one that from the nineteen
sixties up until twenty seventeen existed as a fixture in
a different part in Nashville a few miles north in
the Wedgwood Houston area.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So we had thirty presses over at the Chestnut Street facility.
Here we have over sixty. So it just allows for
us to do almost every part of the process in house,
and that simply was not a possibility at a facility
like Chestnut, which was a third of the size of
this place.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
And three times the size means three times the tour.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So we're heading back the plant right now.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Any manufacturing plant where their salt is going to display
the dopest records they've made up on the walls, and
U RP is no exception. Me. I'm like a kid
in a candy store tool.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
That's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I'm sure else a lot of my favorites.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, And this is just like a small smattering of
what we got.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
United covers enough surface area to handle practically every aspect
of the manufacturing process in house.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
We have in house the classic car kind of equipment
right next to the prius if we're going to go
with the car, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
They were hard to come by, I would imagine, Yeah,
as the years progressed, like these weren't machines or devices
that were being kind of manufactured on the regular.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So no, and then you'd have to machine parts for it, right,
And like the knowledge base for how to work on
these machines is it was incredibly limited. So that has
exploded in the past decade, and a lot of the
knowledge base, to our credit, has come out of here
and sharing that with this record pressing where with you know,
any of the other kind of homies in the record
(13:03):
pressing community have relied on shared knowledge and that's that
it is a community just like I come from, like
the indie record store, kind of like world, and there's
a lot of parallels between the two.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Our tour moves on to the main floor. This is
where the hot action is, forklifts, cranes, shipping stations.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Now we're talking like I'm at the dunder Mifflin ware
yep right now, where the what it's locally called the warehouse.
This is where we store all of our print material,
so LP jackets, sleeves for future jobs, the inner labels
for the records which we cut, drill out and bake
in house. Those are the ovens for the labels. If
(13:41):
we've just come from the music side of things. We
are now very clearly on the art side of things.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
But there's an art to all of this symphony that
takes place on nearly one hundred and sixty thousand square
feet of concrete.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
And metal, basically like three airplane hangars worth of space.
So we got this tarped off because we have a
confidential job running right now. Competential job is just a
new release from a new artist that hasn't been announced yet.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
What a tease? Yeah, I know, can I guess?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
You can guess, but it hasn't been announced yet, so
it's gonna be a tough but.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
It's anomous stuff. Heard. Yeah, that's why it's confidential. Otherwise, yep,
nobody will care. Chris Stapleton, who could say you can't?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
That's true. We're gonna move into building too. It's about
to get loud because we are going into the hard
of the building with the old hydraulic presses. These are
limited presses from the nineteen seventies. When we talked earlier
(14:51):
about machines having to be found and then retooled and restored,
That's what we have going on in.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Here and there.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
You can see the fun and the labels going into
the press. It's about to be hydraulically pressed one, two three.
There'll be some excess splashing on the exterior perimeter which
will be cut off on the other side.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Billy Joel the Stranger, A good one is It's all
Billy Joel the Stranger or there.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
On this press today.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
So this is you know, this is the kind of
machine where you can easily.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Imagine somebody ripping sticks and pressing records. And I love
it for that. Hell yeah, oh that's good.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Next it's on to the new machines, Cleaner, sleeker, safer.
These don't pair with Marlborough alights as well as say
Blueberry vapen. Where does one acquire one of these?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
These? In particular from Sweden? A wonderful company called Phoenix
makes these machines and they produce about one thousand records
in a given shift.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
How clean they on In the manufacturing world, size matters.
When United CEO Mark Michaels purchased the company and its
real estate back in O seven, he was looking to
invest in a passion project. A few years later, an
unexpected resurgence had begun.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's just been kind of a roller coast, like a
wild ride for him. He is very involved not only
in the operations here, but also in historical preservation of
the old building, a.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Massive chunk of land, and the desirable wedge hose section
of this city in twenty twenty four. That's likely worth
more than a few ducats, but rp's previous site holds
historic significance that exceeds any price tag. One of the
cool things I learned about the old building is you
had something called the Motown Suite.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yes, yep, bath People Gap Batho United. In the early sixties.
One of their main clients, apart from VJ and pressing
the first American beatles seven inch, was Motown and we
did not all but most of the Motown seven inch
releases in the sixties and early seventies. Seeing your records
(17:15):
getting pressed is very fun as an artist.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And everyone from Smokey Robinson to the Supremes to a
teenage Hank Williams Junior rumored to have had that experience
while staying in the Motown Suite space that remains largely
unchanged since it's hey day on Chestnut Street.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
It's an emotional experience. It's oftentimes you've been working on
that finished product in a studio or in your practice
space or whatever for years, So it's kind of like
seeing it made real for the first time, and you
have a visual document, a tangible document of all the
work that you've been doing. I'm a big believer that,
(17:52):
like the best possible case scenario for an artist is
to wind up on someone else's shelf. Yeah, the whole
thing is just very sentimental to me.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
It's that wave of sentimentality that the vinyl industry continues
to ride. Hang in ten through the good times, the
lean times, the gnarly times, during the dark ages of
the nineteen nineties when compact discs reigned supreme, RP struggled
a bit, then after a slow and steady two decade
incline the closed door challenges of a global pandemic. But
(18:24):
it was that new normal that drove us towards all
sorts of solitude. Sitting alone and listening to your copy
of the first Broken Social Scene album on a reputable
sound system, maybe a cold beer in hand and your
dog at your feet, became for some a more realized
and fulfilling event. That was Cam Sarah's first ride, and
(18:57):
of course he became a collector. He's got that oc D.
Most of us vinyl lovers have that sweet sickness of
specifically organizing and then reorganizing, cataloging, numbering, alphabetizing, ranking, displaying.
It's our own crazy formula, and we like it that way,
and it's all part of the passion, no matter how
many records you may own.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I'm an idiot, and I don't count my seven inches.
I just I kind of love just twelve inches. Most
like seven inches. I don't know. They're they're they're good,
they're fine. I just don't have the same reverence for
them as like the full album experience. I think that's
it is that I love the full album experience. So
seven inches are kind of like a teaser.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
See what I mean. Don't tease the crazy man. But
this is the crazy you want, This is the crazy
you need if you want to work in this business.
The album experience is something less tangible in the digital age.
Vinyl people know all about this tragedy.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
People don't make albums anymore. They don't make albums. They
just try to sell a bunch of little quick singles
and they burn out and they put out a new one,
and they burn out, and they put out a new one.
People don't even listen to a body of work anymore.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
The good news is there are enough middle aged purists
combined with the cult of younger music fans who crave
that experience enough to keep business booming.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Whether you're a fan of like classic rock or like
techno or whatever, whatever your cup of tea is, Like,
vinyl has had some role in it for.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Music nerds like Cam and I and probably you too,
that role is significant.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I like the ritualistic kind of element of it as well.
I'm just like putting a record down, putting the needle down,
you can make like a nice Sunday morning, you know,
brunch with that is like your soundtrack, and that is
as part of the ambiance.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Damn, it's like Cam's got a cam in my.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Kitchen threading the needle. To bring any seventy five year
old business that was down to twelve employees in the
nineties into the modern era and keeping up with a
crazy resurgence that I don't think many people could have
(21:09):
predicted in the nineties is a big undertaking and it's
something we're incredibly proud of. A lot of plants did
not make it through the nineties and two thousands straight up.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Today, one hundred and twenty people roam this plant, the warehouse,
the offices, plus one curious podcast host, Folks from all
walks of life, committed to maximizing that album experience for
the artists, for the fans, and for the collectors too.
Vinyl is their business, and business is good. Seventy five
years after it all got started, the passion for production
(21:39):
inside these walls proves to be a crucial ingredient.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Like we have like a chemical engineer, we have a
plant manager who comes from electronics and automotive industries and
is bringing that experience into it that's really important. He
cares about music, Yes, of course he cares about music,
but it's like leveraging that experience from a bunch of
different industries in creating a team that is able to
support and improve the processes of this once archaic industry.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
But that sort of unity would never exist without the
independent music that this team has made for the masses.
Go on, cam take us out with some good old
fashioned name dropping.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
The very first release that we ever did was an
independent artist who just happened to have a hit on
an independent label, and that is a through line. It
has gone all the way through in the nineties, a
lot of garage rock, like the first Mummies record was
pressed here, and the first Cat Power, the first Jay Retard,
(22:37):
the first at the Drive In, just like all sorts
of stuff, and then Ween Quebec was pressed here. I'm
a big Weien fan, so I think that's cool. Ween.
You can come through for a tour whenever you want.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
They're listening.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
They're definitely listening.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Geen Dean hidiots, it's.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Tell me.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Find out more about United record Pressing at yourepressing dot
com and follow them on social media at United Record Pressing.
Gotta give a big thanks to Cam for the tour
and the wisdom, and special thanks to Maria Ivy at
iv p R for connecting us. Show your love for
Independent Minded simply by subscribing and door leaving a kind
(23:47):
review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Get in touch via
email at Ron at Baldfreak dot com and find out
more about all the stuff I'm making and see pictures
of my dog at Baldfreak Music Independent Mind and it's
a bald Freak music production. In me, I'm still Ron Scalzo.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
You're a national, You're a freak.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
A
You're the one that should be worried. You're a freak.
You're reading for Big Trouble. Trouble the Independent Minded podcast
has been independent for a dozen years now, can you
believe it? No corporate masters, no clueless stonecutters, no cockroach consultants,
no knee jerk reactions, no meetings, no marketing, no marketing meetings,
(00:26):
no pencil neck geek boss telling me I got to
come in early on Thursday, Go fly a kite, pencil neck.
I'm done with all that. An independently made podcast also
means less exposure, shoe stream budgets, zero employees, not even
a butler. But that's okay, because you know what this
podcast is as pro as it gets. I pour my
(00:48):
heart and soul into it because I love music and storytelling,
and I get to keep pouring thanks to help from
the fine folks at distro Kid, because I'm not just
a podcaster position to talk about a glutton for punishment.
And if you release your music online, if you're in
(01:08):
a band, you're in a label or a PR company,
you know you can't do it with just magic beans
and silly puddy. Distro Kid is the digital distribution service
that gets our music on all the places where the
kids are listening to the stuff where they're not staring
into the other thing. Spotify, Apple Music, even YouTube, and
all the ones you've never heard of too. But I'm
not here to convince you distro Kid's gonna do that.
(01:30):
I'm just here to nudge you yeah. With thirty percent
off your membership at DistroKid dot com slash vip slash
independent Minded. DistroKid dot com slash vip slash independent minded,
you can type it all thirty percent off your first
year of membership.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Scalzo Amazing Cocas, Run Style, Amazing Boys.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
He's talking to people, make on music, bugging the projects,
making them famous runs. He's helping them about just by
making them talk about all the.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Ship.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Then I was worried. Body has the drop of man
with a lutle more back hear me rocking mind, he
staring at the radio ven remember the first record you
ever bought? This one's mine? The money jumping on the man,
(02:54):
He's gotta be. If I close my eyes, I can
still see teenage me standing in the carpeted aisles of
the Sam Goodie inside Brooklyn's King's Plaza Mall I'm not
sure if I was looking for it or it was
looking for me, but there it was, prominently displayed in
(03:17):
the new Releases section Paul's boutique. The Beastie Boys problematic
long awaited follow up to their breakout debut, Licensed to Ill,
wrapped in glorious cellophane, the rectangular promo hypesticker announcing its
arrival alongside its price tag. I plucked it from its perch,
took it home, had the experience. I didn't really need
to buy many records when I was a kid. My
(03:38):
dad's collection kept me busy from around age five, and
my early fascination began with the covers the Roy Gbivprism
fold out of Dark Side of the Moon, the Candle
Melted band members on the back cover of Deep Purple's Burn,
shirtless albino Edgar Winter sporting his white mole and windswept
blonde hair on They only come out at night. Dad
(03:59):
played his part two Lasting Frankenstein and Money and Highway
Star at high volumes from his heath Kit amplifier. It
made an impact, and so for my elementary school graduation,
(04:19):
my parents bought me a stereo port radio receiver Port
dual cassette deck part beginner level turntable. That same summer,
a friend came by for a graduation pool party and
popped the cassette copy of License to Ill into my boombox.
(04:56):
It was loud, it was obnoxious, rebellious. It was even
a little filled three Jewish kids from our city who
were barely a decade older than us spitting over John
bonham Loops. Turns out the rest of the world wasn't
as ready for the Beastie Boys follow up as I was.
I spent considerable time sitting with it, marveling at the
rhymes and the packaging too, learning all the tiny lyrics
(05:17):
printed out on the inner sleeve, admiring the gatefold that
revealed the used clothing store that supposedly existed somewhere in
my enormous burrow. That was the first of many vinyl
records I would either purchase permanently, borrow from my parents,
or receive gratis as a prime perk of years working
in college and then commercial radio. By the time I
was in my thirties, I had a collection of over
(05:38):
two thousand platters.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
And then you can see it swirling right over my shoulder. Here,
what's being called a superstorm. Tonight, Hurricane Sandy is more
than two hundred miles off the coast and is about
to crash into two other systems when it makes landfall.
And look at this.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
October twenty ninth, twenty twelve was truly the day my
music died. Every record made its way into a dumpster
in front of my ruined half, all the twelve inches,
the forty five's old Dad's Beatles records, my original imprints
of led Zeppelin, four to fifty second Street Synchronicity, Rumors,
Master of Puppets by promo only colored double vinyl of
(06:13):
Sap and Jar of Flies, and yes, even Paul's Boutique.
A dozen years later, and it still stings. These days,
I own about seventy records, mostly reissues of my all
time faves and YEP I replaced Paul's boutique. So when
(06:37):
I arrive at United Record pressing for episode one six
of Independent Minded, I'm still bearing scars. Scanning the hallways,
I see lots of familiar faces. Eminem Adele, there's James
Brown next to Tam and Paula next to Lionel Richie.
Just a small sample of the big names who've entrusted
URP to make their vinyl for the last three quarters
(06:58):
of a century. United Good Pressing isn't just the og
of manufacturers. It's a crucial stitch in the fabric of
Nashville's music history. Naturally. It's a company that prides itself
on having music city as its home base, and so
does my tour guide, Cam Sarat.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I'm from Brentwood, Tennessee technically, but I've been in Nashville
forever and I work here at United as the director
of sales and Marketing.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
U RP is an institution, and this isn't awake. It's
a celebration. Before Cam Sarat became a sales rep here,
(07:52):
he was a customer.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I not only pressed me and my friend's old label,
Nashville's Dead, We did all our stuff here because that
was just the fact though, you know, it was like
the neighborhood pressing plant that was like, this is crazy.
This is in Nashville. I can't even believe it. And
I would tell my parents they were like where is it?
Like what is it?
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Cam came to URP from third Man Records, the eclectic
vinyl focused independent record label and pressing plant founded and
co owned by Jack White. Here is the new resident historian,
Just the Cat to take us through some highlights from
seventy five years of record making. His one time music blog,
the interestingly titled Nashville Is Dead, evolved into a boutique
(08:34):
in the Imprint for regional.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Bands, mostly stuff in the Southeast. The first release was
a band from Memphis called Useless Eaters the Paperhead, which
(08:58):
is like a local like high school psych rock band.
(09:18):
We had like an awesome third birthday party in twenty
twelve at a place called the Zombie Shop that no
longer exists, of course, which is like a motorcycle repair
place in Sobro, like the Weird. It was so bizarre,
and it was.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Those humble, bizarre beginnings that ushered Cam into the world
of vinyl manufacturing and ultimately landed him here in this
facility on Ally Drive. But wait a minute. This is
one of the biggest vinyl manufacturers in the world, certainly
the longest running. Taylor Swift does business here, so does
Kendrick Lamar. How can a company this well revered a
(09:55):
business rub and elbows with the big dogs for this long?
How can you United Rect Pressing possibly be independent minded?
Why am I even here.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Really, since day one, indie artists have been what have
sustained this company in particular and this business in general.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Huh you hear that vinyl industry. You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
We're a large facility that's able to cater to indie
folks and work them into the same systems that Beyonce
would be worked into. So yeah, come get your Beyonce
level of service at United Record Pressing.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Francis Craig Sarah Aid's with Red Rose.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
This company started as Bullet Plastics, which is a subsidiary
of Bullet Records. Bullet Records is like a Nashville independent
largely like big band label in the forties, and they
struck gold with their first big hit, Red Rose by
Francis Craig Orchestra in nineteen forty six right around there,
(11:09):
so they opened a pressing plant just to keep up
with demand for that record.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Selling a song by Dixon, Tennessee born piano player and
band leader Francis Craig would lay the groundwork for urps
storied seventy five year history, one that from the nineteen
sixties up until twenty seventeen existed as a fixture in
a different part in Nashville a few miles north in
the Wedgwood Houston area.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
So we had thirty presses over at the Chestnut Street facility.
Here we have over sixty. So it just allows for
us to do almost every part of the process in house,
and that simply was not a possibility at a facility
like Chestnut, which was a third of the size of
this place.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
And three times the size means three times the tour.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
So we're heading back the plant right now.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Any manufacturing plant where their salt is going to display
the dopest records they've made up on the walls, and
U RP is no exception. Me. I'm like a kid
in a candy store tool.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
That's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I'm sure else a lot of my favorites.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, And this is just like a small smattering of
what we got.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
United covers enough surface area to handle practically every aspect
of the manufacturing process in house.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
We have in house the classic car kind of equipment
right next to the prius if we're going to go
with the car, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
They were hard to come by, I would imagine, Yeah,
as the years progressed, like these weren't machines or devices
that were being kind of manufactured on the regular.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So no, and then you'd have to machine parts for it, right,
And like the knowledge base for how to work on
these machines is it was incredibly limited. So that has
exploded in the past decade, and a lot of the
knowledge base, to our credit, has come out of here
and sharing that with this record pressing where with you know,
any of the other kind of homies in the record
(13:03):
pressing community have relied on shared knowledge and that's that
it is a community just like I come from, like
the indie record store, kind of like world, and there's
a lot of parallels between the two.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Our tour moves on to the main floor. This is
where the hot action is, forklifts, cranes, shipping stations.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Now we're talking like I'm at the dunder Mifflin ware
yep right now, where the what it's locally called the warehouse.
This is where we store all of our print material,
so LP jackets, sleeves for future jobs, the inner labels
for the records which we cut, drill out and bake
in house. Those are the ovens for the labels. If
(13:41):
we've just come from the music side of things. We
are now very clearly on the art side of things.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
But there's an art to all of this symphony that
takes place on nearly one hundred and sixty thousand square
feet of concrete.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
And metal, basically like three airplane hangars worth of space.
So we got this tarped off because we have a
confidential job running right now. Competential job is just a
new release from a new artist that hasn't been announced yet.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
What a tease? Yeah, I know, can I guess?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
You can guess, but it hasn't been announced yet, so
it's gonna be a tough but.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
It's anomous stuff. Heard. Yeah, that's why it's confidential. Otherwise, yep,
nobody will care. Chris Stapleton, who could say you can't?
Speaker 2 (14:30):
That's true. We're gonna move into building too. It's about
to get loud because we are going into the hard
of the building with the old hydraulic presses. These are
limited presses from the nineteen seventies. When we talked earlier
(14:51):
about machines having to be found and then retooled and restored,
That's what we have going on in.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Here and there.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
You can see the fun and the labels going into
the press. It's about to be hydraulically pressed one, two three.
There'll be some excess splashing on the exterior perimeter which
will be cut off on the other side.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Billy Joel the Stranger, A good one is It's all
Billy Joel the Stranger or there.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
On this press today.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
So this is you know, this is the kind of
machine where you can easily.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Imagine somebody ripping sticks and pressing records. And I love
it for that. Hell yeah, oh that's good.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Next it's on to the new machines, Cleaner, sleeker, safer.
These don't pair with Marlborough alights as well as say
Blueberry vapen. Where does one acquire one of these?
Speaker 2 (15:56):
These? In particular from Sweden? A wonderful company called Phoenix
makes these machines and they produce about one thousand records
in a given shift.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
How clean they on In the manufacturing world, size matters.
When United CEO Mark Michaels purchased the company and its
real estate back in O seven, he was looking to
invest in a passion project. A few years later, an
unexpected resurgence had begun.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's just been kind of a roller coast, like a
wild ride for him. He is very involved not only
in the operations here, but also in historical preservation of
the old building, a.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Massive chunk of land, and the desirable wedge hose section
of this city in twenty twenty four. That's likely worth
more than a few ducats, but rp's previous site holds
historic significance that exceeds any price tag. One of the
cool things I learned about the old building is you
had something called the Motown Suite.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yes, yep, bath People Gap Batho United. In the early sixties.
One of their main clients, apart from VJ and pressing
the first American beatles seven inch, was Motown and we
did not all but most of the Motown seven inch
releases in the sixties and early seventies. Seeing your records
(17:15):
getting pressed is very fun as an artist.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
And everyone from Smokey Robinson to the Supremes to a
teenage Hank Williams Junior rumored to have had that experience
while staying in the Motown Suite space that remains largely
unchanged since it's hey day on Chestnut Street.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
It's an emotional experience. It's oftentimes you've been working on
that finished product in a studio or in your practice
space or whatever for years, So it's kind of like
seeing it made real for the first time, and you
have a visual document, a tangible document of all the
work that you've been doing. I'm a big believer that,
(17:52):
like the best possible case scenario for an artist is
to wind up on someone else's shelf. Yeah, the whole
thing is just very sentimental to me.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
It's that wave of sentimentality that the vinyl industry continues
to ride. Hang in ten through the good times, the
lean times, the gnarly times, during the dark ages of
the nineteen nineties when compact discs reigned supreme, RP struggled
a bit, then after a slow and steady two decade
incline the closed door challenges of a global pandemic. But
(18:24):
it was that new normal that drove us towards all
sorts of solitude. Sitting alone and listening to your copy
of the first Broken Social Scene album on a reputable
sound system, maybe a cold beer in hand and your
dog at your feet, became for some a more realized
and fulfilling event. That was Cam Sarah's first ride, and
(18:57):
of course he became a collector. He's got that oc D.
Most of us vinyl lovers have that sweet sickness of
specifically organizing and then reorganizing, cataloging, numbering, alphabetizing, ranking, displaying.
It's our own crazy formula, and we like it that way,
and it's all part of the passion, no matter how
many records you may own.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I'm an idiot, and I don't count my seven inches.
I just I kind of love just twelve inches. Most
like seven inches. I don't know. They're they're they're good,
they're fine. I just don't have the same reverence for
them as like the full album experience. I think that's
it is that I love the full album experience. So
seven inches are kind of like a teaser.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
See what I mean. Don't tease the crazy man. But
this is the crazy you want, This is the crazy
you need if you want to work in this business.
The album experience is something less tangible in the digital age.
Vinyl people know all about this tragedy.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
People don't make albums anymore. They don't make albums. They
just try to sell a bunch of little quick singles
and they burn out and they put out a new one,
and they burn out, and they put out a new one.
People don't even listen to a body of work anymore.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
The good news is there are enough middle aged purists
combined with the cult of younger music fans who crave
that experience enough to keep business booming.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Whether you're a fan of like classic rock or like
techno or whatever, whatever your cup of tea is, Like,
vinyl has had some role in it for.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Music nerds like Cam and I and probably you too,
that role is significant.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
I like the ritualistic kind of element of it as well.
I'm just like putting a record down, putting the needle down,
you can make like a nice Sunday morning, you know,
brunch with that is like your soundtrack, and that is
as part of the ambiance.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Damn, it's like Cam's got a cam in my.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Kitchen threading the needle. To bring any seventy five year
old business that was down to twelve employees in the
nineties into the modern era and keeping up with a
crazy resurgence that I don't think many people could have
(21:09):
predicted in the nineties is a big undertaking and it's
something we're incredibly proud of. A lot of plants did
not make it through the nineties and two thousands straight up.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Today, one hundred and twenty people roam this plant, the warehouse,
the offices, plus one curious podcast host, Folks from all
walks of life, committed to maximizing that album experience for
the artists, for the fans, and for the collectors too.
Vinyl is their business, and business is good. Seventy five
years after it all got started, the passion for production
(21:39):
inside these walls proves to be a crucial ingredient.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Like we have like a chemical engineer, we have a
plant manager who comes from electronics and automotive industries and
is bringing that experience into it that's really important. He
cares about music, Yes, of course he cares about music,
but it's like leveraging that experience from a bunch of
different industries in creating a team that is able to
support and improve the processes of this once archaic industry.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
But that sort of unity would never exist without the
independent music that this team has made for the masses.
Go on, cam take us out with some good old
fashioned name dropping.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
The very first release that we ever did was an
independent artist who just happened to have a hit on
an independent label, and that is a through line. It
has gone all the way through in the nineties, a
lot of garage rock, like the first Mummies record was
pressed here, and the first Cat Power, the first Jay Retard,
(22:37):
the first at the Drive In, just like all sorts
of stuff, and then Ween Quebec was pressed here. I'm
a big Weien fan, so I think that's cool. Ween.
You can come through for a tour whenever you want.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
They're listening.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
They're definitely listening.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
Geen Dean hidiots, it's.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Tell me.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Find out more about United record Pressing at yourepressing dot
com and follow them on social media at United Record Pressing.
Gotta give a big thanks to Cam for the tour
and the wisdom, and special thanks to Maria Ivy at
iv p R for connecting us. Show your love for
Independent Minded simply by subscribing and door leaving a kind
(23:47):
review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Get in touch via
email at Ron at Baldfreak dot com and find out
more about all the stuff I'm making and see pictures
of my dog at Baldfreak Music Independent Mind and it's
a bald Freak music production. In me, I'm still Ron Scalzo.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
You're a national, You're a freak.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
A
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