So far in the Label Talk series, PropertyOfZack has spoken with Jesse Cannon (Producer/Manager), Chris Hansen (No Sleep Records), and Jeff Casazza (Run For Cover Records). Now we are proud to finally release our Label Talk chat with Craig Ericson, the founder of Rise Records. Craig and I discussed Rise’s new signings like Man Overboard and Transit, the preconceptions that the label, the music industry in general, the future of the label, and more. 

Over the past few years, Rise Records has more or less been the punching bag of the music scene its band’s live in, whether it’s about haircuts or dance moves. Last week you stunned us all with signings from Man Overboard, Transit, and Sharks; bands who do not fit the roster at all. Can you discuss the transformation that these signings have started for Rise?
Totally. Basically, they don’t fit into the roster of my best selling bands. That’s pretty much what it is. If you look deep into the roster of its career, because we’re on release like 118, if you look back we’ve put out bands that sound like Hot Water Music and Rise Against and stuff like that. I understand why people only know about my heavy screamo bands, but I personally have always liked pop-punk type bands and we’re never going to stop doing it. Man Overboard, especially, it took a while to get them because they were worried about the stigma and whatnot.
 
Man Overboard and Transit particularly have had incredible years under Run For Cover Records and have set themselves up to be the next big things in the pop-punk world. When did Rise start inquiring about signing the bands?
We probably started talking to them about a year ago. Were just casual at first and then we went on a full-court press. They came to Portland on that Transit tour with The Swellers. That’s when we first officially met them face-to-face and took them out to dinner and gave them the pitch. The cool thing about Rise is that we have the infrastructure of a big label, but we have three employees and it’s still a boutique label. So we can get big stuff done if needed. Sometimes bands like that, there’s not a lot of red tape over here, there’s no big marketing meeting or anything. We just do what we want to do. I’m the owner so for bands it’s nice not to have someone who can just walk away like an employee can at a major label. Because some guy who works at a major label signs you and he could very well be gone the next day, which has happened a lot.
 
People have been wondering, will Run For Cover stay on board with the bands for just their next releases on Rise or for forever?
Basically, those bands were free and clear of Run For Cover and they’re not going to have officially anything to do with it, but the bands are still very much friends with Jeff and they’re still gonna be a part of Run For Cover, current contract or not. It’s always going to be their home base. That’s pretty much it.
 
Is there more to come? Are these signings the start of Rise slowly turning away from the current types of bands on the label?
Yeah, there are probably two more, most likely that are going to be like this. I think these three are the biggest, but we’re going to announce another one next year, in just a few weeks. That’s going to be another “What the fuck?” kind of thing. We’ve got a couple more in store. One’s an older, reuniting band. One is a current band. There are a couple hints for you.
 
Is this a step for Rise to continue its diversification in the music scene?
Yep, definitely. We’re always going to be diverse within the all ages music scene, so we’re going to sign pop-punk bands, edgy-rock bands. I don’t even know what genre to call Transit. They’re like aggressive pop-punk. They sound like Hot Water Music to me, who is like my favorite band. We’re gonna put out metal and screamo, but I doubt we’re going to dabble much in the electronic kind of thing. We’re going to keep it guitar oriented. The Breathe Carolina was a one-off type thing. There’s not going to be much more of the dance-type stuff.
 
On one hand it could be said that many of the bands on your roster are constantly being poked and prodded at, but on the other hand, many of them are very successful. As the founder of Rise, how do you feel about the preconceptions of your bands?
I know, it’s funny. Most of the people that poke, prod, make fun, and tease are people that may have been in a band before and didn’t have success, so we’re easy targets. Successful bands are always targets. I think jealousy spurs a lot of the hate. Some of these kids that love to tease would love to be playing House Of Blues in Dallas. That’s pretty much it. I think jealousy spurs a lot of it, or they just purely hate the music. If you actually listen to some of the bands that are targeted, they are actually pretty good. I think a lot of people make fun of it before they even get listened to. Most of the music is pretty heavy stuff with some melodic choruses. I think there are a lot of preconceived opinions before they actually hear it, which is common and nothing new.
 
Has it been a successful year for the label in terms of releases in your mind? Miss May I and Emarosa were a large forefront of what the label put out this year.
Definitely, 2010 was great. I have no complaints. 2011 is looking great. We’re even looking to 2012 already because a lot of the 2010 bands are gonna have new records in 2012 with that year and a half type cycle. We have a very low band break-up rate on our label. Over the past few years we’ve only had a handful of bands break-up, which is great. I don’t like bands breaking up. It’s always a sad day when that happens.
 
 
Being that Rise is such a small label, what is your regular day like at the label? It is it more kind of managing how your roster is doing as a whole and prepping releases, or is there a lot more to it that most people wouldn’t think of?
I think there’s a lot to it and there’s a lot of little stuff you need to do. All three of us that work here multi-task. We all pitch in. They do have duties and I have duties, but we all three manage the bands and talk to them and make sure they’re all good. We do all our stuff here. Matthew, our general manager, is a graphic designer, among other things. So we have someone doing graphic design, we have our distributor that we always have to be in contact with. There’s a whole bunch of little stuff. Making sure we don’t miss deadlines on artwork. Getting CD artwork is always a pain in the ass because you can’t put a time limit on art sometimes and we’re like, “We need the cover in two weeks.” We’ll give them a little reminder and it’s tough. We always have to bug people about deadlines, which sucks, but you’ve got to do it.
 
Like you said, Rise has the infrastructure of a larger label, but you’re small. Giants like Universal can, essentially, manage lower sales for their bands and artists because those names are more likely to sell out larger arenas like MSG or Staples Center in LA. How do you, as a smaller label, handle the same issue of decreased music sales?
It’s funny because our sales are still going up. We’ve yet to see a downturn. I think the answer to the question is to spend smarter. Major labels used to have $15,000 photo shoots and $50,000 videos and expense accounts and all that shit. Now I think they’re not spending as much and they’re downsizing. They’re actually signing 360 deals, so that sold out Staples show that Jay-Z sold out, he’s giving 15% to his label, but the label gave him probably a $3,000,000 advance, so it’s all relative. We don’t take any of the bands tour money, so we don’t do 360 deals. We’re doing fine with CD sales as it is. We tend to like where we’re at and are not really eager to grow much more than we already are at right now because more problems arise when you get bigger. We’re doing good as it and I like where we’re at.
 
You obviously just brought on three new bands and have more announcements to come, with the industry struggling the way that it is, how do you make decisions about who to bring into your family and how to market them?
I kind of just use a gut-instinct with that. When we come into sign the bands lots of factors come in. Mainly just liking the band. You need to like it and have faith in it. Press is important too. We spend just enough money on print-ads and then let the kids decide what’s going to happen. You can’t spend money to sell records. I’ve tried and I’ve spent the most money on whatever band and they don’t sell the most. Word of mouth sells albums. We try to get the band out there to the public and then word of mouth will do the rest. If they’re meant to be huge, then it’s going to happen. If not, then there’s nothing a label or a band can do about it. It’s just going to happen organically. It’s just the way it is, which is good for us. We don’t have to spend lots of money to sell albums. Selling a lot of albums is relative. For us, selling 20,000 is awesome, but it’s shitty for a major label.
 
2010 is obviously winding down and to start of 2011 we’ll be seeing new releases from Man Overboard and Dance Gavin, but what else can we be on the lookout for?
Decoder is a new band I really like. They’re coming out January 18^th. That’ll be the first new record of the year. It’s pretty cool stuff. It’s kind of proggy, almost with a stoner rock feel. Trippy guitars, but they’re clear. The vocalist kind of soars like Anthony from Circa Survive. They have ex-members of Oceana and VersaEmerge. That’s going to be our new band that we’re pushing at the beginning of the year. We have The Color Morale coming up in March. Of Mice & Men is going to be coming out in April. You already know about Sharks, which is coming out in April. We have a lot of other stuff too. The bigger pieces are going to be Dance Gavin Dance, Of Mice & Men, Man Overboard, Sharks, Transit, Sleeping With Sirens, and we have some smaller bands and we’ll see what happens there.
 
At the end of the day, what do you want people to take away from the recent moves of 2010? You’re obviously not moving away from any of the recent music that you’ve been putting out, but do you want 2011 to be a new slate?
Yeah, I think so. We’re making a statement by saying that we’re not just a heavy label. We’re going to put out other music that we like that fall under that all-ages umbrella. I’ve always been in the all-ages music scene since I was like 15, and I always think those kids have the pull. I grew up watching Green Day get big, they were my local band and I’ve always just liked that. We’re just going to keep doing what we do. We have no written strategy. We’re just going to do what we want to do.