Record labels spearheaded by musicians is a story nearly as old as the industry itself: Johnny Mercer penned songs like “Jeepers Creepers” and “Autumn Leaves” before and after founding Capitol in 1942. Tijuana Brass leader Herb Alpert is the A of A&M Records. Ian MacKaye not only boasts Minor Threat and Fugazi membership but also co-founded in 1980 perhaps the world’s most successful punk label, Dischord Records. Ostensibly, musicians love music and their friends who make it, so it’s a logical extension for them to sometimes make releasing it their life’s work, especially if their own careers emptying spit valves or spitting polemics seem permanently peaked or perpetually promising. But now more than ever, popular musicians seem able to foster their own labels, injecting an air of freshness into a business that seems stifled by its own models (hustle-and-bustle A&R, quick turnaround on riches, disposable artistry) and threatened by the new ones (namely, the Internet and rise of the indies). The mainstream record industry is funny these days, a predictable beast whose self-proclaimed “hot new trends” become signed as the waves they rode in on are collapsing beneath everyone. Atlantic Records signed Death Cab for Cutie years too late, and every bad dance-punk band became a potential bidding point post “Take Me Out.” “I’m certainly not going to do the typical A&R stuff like trowel the clubs of SXSW or something for new bands,” says Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore the day after Be Your Own Pet, the first album from the Nashville band of the same name, was released on his Ecstatic Peace label. Moore has run Ecstatic Peace since 1981, the same year he started Sonic Youth. It’s seldom been more than a one-man operation, a self-proclaimed vanity label of esoteric, experimental music whose stock consistently overwhelmed his basement or closets. “So much music comes through here, and I hear so much, and some of it I really like. But it has so much more commercial potential than I’ve ever been able to give it,” says Moore, who, in 2002, presented his dream of an expanded label to Andrew Kesin, a friend intrigued with web design and business planning. “I’d love to present some of it in a way so that it’s competitive in the marketplace.” With Sonic Youth manager John Silva and Universal Records general manager Andrew Kronfeld, Kesin and Moore developed a plan to do exactly that and retain near-complete label autonomy. Moore plans to continue releasing challenging, subterranean music by bands like Carlos Giffoni’s Monotract or New York noise extremists Mouthus through the same small, independent distributors that have handled Ecstatic Peace for two decades. More accessible releases will be handled through Fontana Distribution, a Universal subsidiary. The real victory for Ecstatic Peace, though, is its deal to release records Moore believes have broad commercial appeal through Universal’s main distribution wing. Ecstatic Peace and Universal will split the cost of a promotional onslaught, and Moore says there’s no set quota of releases for any given year. Be Your Own Pet, who Moore says are “arty and trashy with a distinct garage energy,” is the arrangement’s trial run. The band had been at the center of a major label tug-of-war for months, though Moore was a fan since ordering the band’s single off of its website. He even considered releasing a BYOP seven-inch until he heard had prior commitments with Rough Trade and XL. “I’m not interested in putting out a record by people that have something like that going on already,” Moore says. “I’m interested in putting out a band’s record if they don’t have anything like that.” By the time Moore sat down with Universal to discuss Ecstatic Peace’s first major-label outing, Universal had quit pursuing BYOP. When Moore found out the band was still available, he rekindled the relationship, immediately hopping on a plane to catch the band’s live show and coax the deal. “I told them, ‘If you guys want to do it, I think doing it with us is a good idea. We’re the only label that sort of knows you in any kind of real way,’ ” says Moore, who insists that Ecstatic Peace is an outcropping of the idea that the mainstream cannot make it without the underground. “I had heard the record when we were in negotiations, so I was never on the fence about it.” Isaac Brock—the front man of Washington’s Modest Mouse, longtime indie favorites who became a national sensation when their song, “Float On,” became ubiquitous in 2004—feels the same way about Mason Jennings, the first artist on his new Epic imprint, Glacial Pace. “I am just so goddamned proud to play a part in the release of this record,” Brock said in a signed press release, explaining his choice of Jennings, whose acoustic guitar, nasal Minnesota voice and alternating love letters and political philippics have little to do with Modest Mouse. “I hope that every time a record comes out on Glacial Pace I feel this good about it.” “I am just so goddamned proud to play a part in the release of this record,” Brock said in a signed press release, explaining his choice of Jennings, whose acoustic guitar, nasal Minnesota voice and alternating love letters and political philippics have little to do with Modest Mouse. “I hope that every time a record comes out on Glacial Pace I feel this good about it.” Jennings had long shied away from signing to a larger label, releasing four albums and an EP on his own Architect Recordings (and small New Jersey label Bar-None) while long entertaining or ignoring offers from established outfits. But Brock and Jennings had toured together, and Brock (along with other well-known fans like Eddie Vedder and The Shins) wasn’t shy with his admiration. “I had never met him, but I opened some shows for Modest Mouse,” says Jennings, on the road into New York to play Webster Hall, a venue twice as large as those he played just two years ago. “He told me about the label he was doing, and I wasn’t sure it was right for me at first. But he didn’t bullshit at all, and everything he said came through.” Jennings spent a year writing and recording Boneclouds, hiring (and amply paying, he adds) his longtime bass player Chris Morrissey and The Bad Plus drummer Dave King for the sessions. Now, he’s busy backing the release, doing more interviews and playing for more music executives in boardrooms than he ever imagined existed. “That stuff’s been all right, man. It works as long as you remember they’re just people who like music, too, and that’s why they do what they do,” he opines. Jennings sounds a bit more frazzled in conversation these days, answers to questions coming in clipped form, as though he’s exhausted with talking about something that’s been his craft for so long. But he also sounds genuinely excited by the possibility of what’s to come. So does John Biondolillo, the label manager for ATO Records, an RCA imprint founded in 2000 by Dave Matthews and his longtime business partners. Biondolillo left the impersonal fold of a California-based major four and a half years ago to start his own management company. But ATO got to him before it got off the ground. Life has never been busier—or better. “I’ve worked harder in the last four years than I have in the previous 10, partly because the nature of ATO’s work force,” says Biondolillo, who notes the ATO staff has grown from four to seven full-timers since he’s been on the clock. “But it’s mostly because we’re so psyched about what we do everyday.” Love or hate Matthews, the label he’s established is, artistically, one of the most successful in music today. Early financial help came with English electro-folksinger David Gray, an old tour mate and friend of Matthews, whose White Ladder hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart. Success with Government Mule, Chris Whitley and Ben Kweller soon followed. Like the best independent labels, ATO (“According to Our”) has remained viable strictly by putting out exactly what it likes, from African folksinger Vusi Mahlasela to brilliant Texas songwriter Patty Griffin.