There was a time when Jim Wirt was the young musician fighting for recognition, the guy rolling the dice and moving away from Springfield to take a shot at making it in rock ‘n’ roll. That was in the early ’80s, when his band Fools Face was all the rage in SGF and getting signed to a major record label and put on the radio was the big goal. Twenty-five years later all of that has changed; Fools Face split up less than a year after its move to Los Angeles, record labels are on shaky ground and Wirt, together with wife Claire, Tony Barille and Randy Chase, are out to put the power back in bands’ hands with the launch of Crushtone Music.

Crushtone has many facets within the name, operating as a production company, music label, management company and more. Once a band chooses to work with Crushtone and vice versa–a process typically handled by Claire Wirt–Crushtone can produce and record its album and help it get tours booked, either through Crushtone or, more probably, through trusted partners in the field. With any facet, the goal is to keep the band in control of what happens to it, not big business. “These kids will say, ‘ I want a deal.’ I say, ‘Why do you want that? Why do you want to sign your rights away?’” Claire says.

A Place for Jim to Stay

Crushtone’s biggest focus right now is in recording unsigned bands, and according to Claire the approach is straightforward: Make simple records, and make them fast. Most of the albums the label makes are 10-day projects, she says, allowing bands to have finished albums in their hands as soon as possible while retaining all of the rights to it. It’s a whirlwind process and 16-hour days aren’t uncommon for Jim. “The first question I always ask on the phone is, ‘Is there a place where Jim can stay?’” Claire says. From the moment Jim gets into the studio, he says, there is no time for bands to argue with him about details. “You’re in desperation mode the first night,” Jim says. “Then the next night is the same thing.”

For Jim, Crushtone is a breath of fresh air in his career. After producing the likes of Incubus, Fiona Apple, Hoobastank and Jack’s Mannequin, Claire says Jim went two years without getting a producing job from a major label. “I said to Jim, ‘You know, nobody’s gonna work harder for you than you,’ so we cut out the middleman,” Claire says. 

Anafair, one of the artists currently working with Crushtone Music.

Now Jim flies back and forth between Los Angeles, New York and Cleveland (where one of Crushtone’s financial backers, Randy Chase, lives), with additional trips to and from various recording studios to work with bands. Jim says his hope is to pick eight to 10 bands from among those he works with for Crushtone to be more involved in developing and booking. Some of those artists, such as Cleveland’s Anafair and Cincinnati natives The Flight Station, are already in place. To be a Crushtone artist Jim says a band has to put in the work to build and maintain an audience within its own market, since Crushtone’s promotion begins regionally and then works outward. “They need to be able to draw four hundred kids in their own market or it doesn’t work for us,” Jim says. “None of us can afford to do this kind of stuff for nothing. They’ve gotta do it for themselves.”

The Wirts are working in areas where bands have potential to extend their reach regionally, such as Cleveland, Chicago, New Jersey and possibly Detroit in the near future. Jim says you won’t find L.A. on that list anytime soon. He still calls L.A. home (Claire has been spending most of her time in Springfield while their daughter goes to school), and he sees a huge contrast in patience and interest in bands between the Midwest and West Coast. In his opinion, the famous Sunset Strip that launched bands during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s is dead. “They don’t listen out here,” he says. “Everybody’s here [in L.A.] to be a star. Crustone wouldn’t work in L.A. Bands can’t break in L.A.”

The New Direction?

If the idea of treating the artist as more than a product doesn’t exactly sound like The Revolution it’s probably because the same thing has been done before–ironically, in the days of Jim and Claire Wirt’s youth, when both record labels and radio were run with less corporate approaches. Claire Wirt knows the idea well; her father, Al Wyman, worked for Capitol Records for many years. In her opinion, the music business has lost its integrity, and Crushtone is at the leading edge of entities trying to restore it. “Jim and I don’t make money like we used to, but we feel a lot better,” she says. Have the owners of Crushtone found the record industry’s next direction by bringing it back to its past? It will be years before there is a definitive answer. But getting back their way of making a living while giving young bands their own chance to roll the dice in music is ensuring their own futures, and perhaps those of others.

But there's more! Check out these related posts on TAGsgf.com:

1. TAGsgf.com presents Fools Face at Patton Alley Pub Saturday, August 14

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2. VIDEO: Fools Face performs “American Girl”

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3. More Music on the Southside: Palen Music launches a concert series starting 1/15

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Gummerman (second from left) and Reasoner (middle), with Taylor Steele (far left), Chris Slater (second from right) and Jesse Pierce (far right) of Cornbelt Chorus.

It’s amazing to think not even three years ago Cornbelt Chorus was exactly where local bands such as The Cropdusters are today: Playing to packed rooms onstage and on the tip of everyone’s tongue off it. No band garnered as much attention at the time as quickly as Cornbelt, and a series of serendipitous events looked like they were going to push the band’s momentum into the stratosphere. The group made connections that would lead to some financial backing in order to record a full-length album, and although they didn’t make the trip to their ideal recording studio–Tiny Telephone in San Francisco, owned by indie songwriter John Vanderslice–the dialogue opened up the chance to work with producer Scott Solter, who has worked with artists such as Death Cab for Cutie and Spoon. Recording in Springfield and sending tracks to Solter in San Francisco for mixing, the band’s presence in the local consciousness went away almost completely while life and the recording process got in the way.

Today, singer and principal songwriter Zach Reasoner is a father, guitarist Todd Gummerman is on the road regularly with his day job, as it were, and bassist Chris Slater owns downtown hookah lounge The Albatross, to say nothing of the other things absorbing the band members’ time. With the album, titled Monsters and the Color Red, ready for release, there has never been a better time to seize the moment… but is that moment already gone?

I met up with Reasoner and Gummerman at Billiards of Springfield to take in some 9-ball (turns out Gummerman is a pretty good shot) and to ask them about these topics and more. The guys were pretty relaxed after the game, and, as you’ll see, they had quite a bit to say. We begin with the simple:

Chris DeRosier: From start to finish, how long did this album take to make?

Todd Gummerman: The actual studio time was about a month. We reserved a month at Jeremy [Larson]‘s studio and we worked nights after everyone was done with work and then basically a whole month and just took our time. It was really comfortable.

Zach Reasoner: Basically it broke down to where each member had a week, or a little less than that. That’s kind of the easiest way to think about it.

TG: Then, honestly, the actual tracking… I thought it took about an extra month after that and put a bunch of that extra keyboards-

ZR: More of that sublayer [of music]. There’s quite a few songs where Todd went back and added extra synth or whatever. When you listen to it on a regular basis you may not even ever notice it as far as consciously to where you go, “oh, there’s a synth track in there,” but there’s just something about the way it feels and the way it makes the song kind of progress that we feel like it helps.

I think there’s a fine line… You want to give the listener a little something more and make it maybe a little more special than what you do live, but you don’t want to create something you can’t re-create live. As far as extra stuff we did, it’s really subtle, kind of an ambient thing. When you listen to the album you hear a guitar part, you hear a bass part, you hear a drum part, a vocal… it’s Cornbelt. It’s not like we added five other instruments that are really prevalent to where you’re like, “Whoa, I’ve never heard that in a show before!”

TG: Yeah, the important parts I can still pull off live. So a month for the band, another three or four weeks for that extra stuff and I think Scott [Solter] took maybe a month to mix it, and then the mastering. It’s gonna be a year and a half from first note to album in shrink wrap, but the actual time was about three or four months.

It’s amazing to think it’s been that long since the band was out playing regularly. Thankfully Cornbelt already had an EP out before this so fans could already put their hands on the band’s music in some way.

ZR: Yeah, the reason it’s a year and a half or two years from the first idea of recording with Jeremy started is just a lot of down time in between actually being able to do something that progressed the album. I mean, there’s a lot of dead time. It’s me having a son, [bassist] Chris [Slater] owns a lot of real estate, he has a lot of responsibilities and his own business now and Todd getting married. But actual time working on it is pretty normal, I think.

True, a few weeks in a studio is nothing new. But a year and a half out of the spotlight–I can seriously count the number of Cornbelt shows I remember on one hand in that time–is something quite unusual. Granted, the band got to work with exactly the man it wanted to in Solter, even if it meant sending tracks back and forth for mixing. But at what cost? Well, let’s get to that…

CD: So with it having been close to a year and a half… You guys had a lot of attention when you first started playing together. After a year and a half taken in the recording process, with so few shows during that time, now there’s a finished product. Do you feel like that momentum is still there?

ZR: No. I don’t feel like it’s there at all. I feel like it can be re-created, but I feel like we made some big mistakes. Not that they necessarily could’ve been avoided, but I personally feel that we really did have a decent buzz going on for the amount of work we had put into it. But I feel like that can happen again. We are definitely at a loss, because there were a lot of people that were excited, and then we just, you know… and I hate that, but like I said, it’s just kind of the life stuff. Being a father has taken a lot of time, and that’s obviously really important to me, so that really is the main reason, I would say, that there has been a delay. But I fell like the momentum can be there. Any of those people who were excited about Cornbelt, if we try to re-present ourselves there’s still that excitement there in the back of their minds.

We definitely dropped the ball, I think, with… once we got into the recording process it became really hard to try to do shows. I think [we got] really distracted. I do feel a little bit of guilt. I fell like I’ve let down some people. I think we could’ve capitalized a lot better, but now that we have a product it’s definitely gonna help. I think new songs are happening a lot faster now, so I think having fresh material for shows and being able to come out of the gate again and having sort of regrouped-

TG: And that’s really hard to do given the limited number of venues. It’s really hard to keep it going because you really want to hit different venues but there’s very few venues to hit, and the people who like to do that stuff is pretty limited, too. You really have to work hard to build a crowd, and we weren’t very good at promoting or advertising.

At least the guys are realistic. To be honest, any answer other than “no” to the question of retaining momentum would have been delusional. Not only do people have short attention spans, but in a city with so many colleges and an ever-changing business landscape they move away all the time, too. The people you played for six months ago will not necessarily be the same ones you play for today; imagine the amount of change a couple of years can bring. Todd is bringing up an interesting point here, too, though: Original-music bands in Springfield aren’t playing in as many rooms as cover bands. That’s a whole other conversation, really, but I’m curious enough about their perspective to let them go on.

ZR: I have seen quite a few people come from Springfield or who were raised around here that I felt were incredibly talented as musicians and sort of nothing ever came out of it and they move on, and that sucks. [Cornbelt drummer] Taylor [Steele]‘s dad always said… he used to live in Seattle, I guess, and he said, you know when Seattle blew up and had its moment and there was just a massive explosion of music and the whole artist scene, not just music, but everything really blew up from that. Taylor’s dad said Springfield feels like Seattle did right before it blew up, right before it flourished, and I feel like that’s been the case for a while but there’s some kind of a dampering effect… We want to be able to give [people] the original stuff and keep that going, but it’s hard in this town, because there are also so many other people that want cover bands or that want something like, you know, Seether.

TG: We’re not about the money, but at our age, to be playing every show that we play, it’s like… we need to be making some money, because we’re adults, you know? The scary thing, and, I think, the hard thing, is to be jumping around at venues. We’re scared we’re not gonna make any money, so it’s a big jump to just be like, okay, let’s go play at these four places that we’ve never played at, because we might not make any money.

There’s such a thing as playing for the fun of it, too, but I get the feeling Todd is talking about compensation for time here. He is the rare musician in town who makes a living playing music, so his time does have a value attached to it, in a way.

I think this whole development thing has been totally crucial, totally vital to what we want to be and what we want to sound like, because if we would have kept that momentum going, we would have played at every venue all the time. It would have been oversaturated without the quality we knew we were capable of. We kind of held back a little bit and said, “look, we need to spend some time on this material, even the stuff we’ve been playing out a bunch.” It’s going to be super obvious, almost comical, if you listen to the EP and then the new album. And not a bad comical; it’s more like we obviously sat down and said, “Let’s listen to this song and let’s really pay attention to it and get it right. What’s it trying to do?” And obviously, a lot of them just wanted to be slower. We really did work on our sound and on developing as a band. I think it was totally worth it.

ZR: I think the point is that we really wanted to raise the bar for ourselves and for the music.

TG: The original Cornbelt, I mean back in the beginning… the raw talent was there. That’s the reason why it worked so well. But after that initial thing we knew we needed to mature as a band. We can make this smarter and deeper. We can make better music. We just needed to take the time to do that.

ZR: I feel like in some ways this album might be the most ambitious thing we’ll ever do artistically. From here on, it’ll be more–and who knows if my opinion will change–but I feel like from here on we’ll be more free to just create music that’s fun… Every member of our band are the types of guys that the music we obsess about… We’re all listening to bands like Radiohead, bands that just, if you’re a music guy, every time a new album comes out it just challenges the f*** out of your brain. We’ll sit there and chew on that s*** for, like, a year. Deep down, I think we all really want to be in one of those bands like that. I’m never going to compare ourselves to Radiohead, but I think our ambitions were really high for this first album. It was like, let’s challenge people’s ears, or let’s try to, anyway, and let’s also create something that’s fun to listen to and draw a big crowd, but let’s put a lot of thought into it. I have no idea if that’ll translate to the general public having interest in it, or if it will be pleasant for them or not. I honestly am completely baffled whether that will happen or not. I hope that lots of people will like it, obviously.

I’m feeling really happy that we got that out of our system. Not that it was a bad thing to get out of our system; I think it’s a great thing to get out of our system, and I’m really excited about the album. I think it sounds incredible. But it was also very intense in a way, and I can see our next album being, like I said, something really upbeat and fun, stuff you really can’t help but tap your feet and dance.

TG: The new stuff is way poppier.

Ambition is good, though they seem to be aware of the risks involved with that. I think Andre 3000 nailed it on “Hey Ya” when, after spending the first half of the song talking about how modern living seems more and more at odds with monogamy in relationships, he gives up and says, “Y’all don’t wanna hear me. You just wanna dance.” High-mindedness is a minefield. Sometimes people do just want to dance. Serving both masters is hard to do, especially at once. Let’s reel this back in, though.

CD: When will the new album actually be in your hands?

ZR: We’re just waiting on artwork at this point. We’re probably two to three weeks from the artwork being done, and then by the time we get it pressed… I guess, realistically, like two or three months. Hopefully two.

CD: So when it’s done and it’s in people’s hands, what’s the plan for the band then?

ZR: I think at this point the plan is to number one try to capitalize on some of that local momentum we were talking about earlier and play enough locally that we can keep people plugged in and make it feel like we’re not a bunch of a**holes just off in a studio somewhere and not giving a f*** about them, because we do care about them. I think other than that really just try and use the Internet. I really want to capitalize on getting some local reviews and, if we get good reviews, building some momentum off of that. I feel like this album… It sounds so crazy for just some guy sitting in Billiards in Springfield, Missouri to be saying, but I feel like it deserves a certain amount of buzz in music scenes across the Internet. I feel like, at least with certain crowds–and maybe that’s a very specific, small percentage–I think it will generate a certain amount of buzz. I feel like we made an album. I don’t feel like we made a CD with two or three good songs and then seven filler songs. I feel like we made a great album from start to finish.

Zach is walking a very fine line here. I’ve sat down with him enough times to know Cornbelt is his baby more than anyone else in the band–it’s his music finessed and fleshed out with the help of the others–and he believes whole-heartedly in his bandmates and in the finished product. To say that his band’s music “deserves a certain amount of buzz” will come across to some as arrogant, but the truth is if Cornbelt wasn’t his band he would probably be saying the same thing, just about someone else’s music. Todd wants to pick up the thread regarding the “we made an album” part, though.

TG: All of the guys in the band really appreciate that. None of us really have exactly the same tastes. We don’t listen to the same stuff. We have a common dozen or so bands, and that’s it, and then the rest we’re off in our own directions. But we wanted to make a complete album. I think for most of us, it’s probably single digits, at least in my head, of complete albums that I like.

ZR: To me, at this point, I’ve heard the songs so many times, and it’s obviously different when you’re listening to yourself, and so I think what I’m about to say is really great: I think there’s probably only three songs I would delete. Here I am, after listening to this album more times than any album I’ve ever listened to, and I would still only delete three songs. I think that’s pretty solid.

TG: From my standpoint, I’m employed full-time in another band. I play in Candy Coburn‘s band. It’s a great group and it’s a great job. The rest of the guys have normal jobs around town. Ideally, it would be nice to have some support, from a label or something, to go on some small runs and some small tours. But it takes money, because obviously you’re leaving your job for that section of time. Right now, currently, I mean, it would be tough, but we could leave for maybe three shows before we would have to be back. It’s hard to get a whole lot done in just three or four days on the road.

ZR: And it’s also kind of like, what’s the payoff? How much is it really increasing our chances of success? I think one thing we realize is the chances of Cornbelt Chorus taking off and becoming something and being able to make a career out of this are pretty slim. Really our plan as far as the future, more than anything, is to try to generate interest with labels that can provide tour support. But here’s where we don’t have nearly as good a chance as other talented bands is that we can’t afford to go around and survive off ramen noodles and live in some s***ty van and be away from home a lot. We all have responsibilities here. I’m not going to leave my son to lose money on the road. I can’t. It’s not an option.

The payoff, to a band that can, as Zach puts it, “survive off ramen noodles and live in some s***ty van and be away from home a lot,” is to play in front of new faces and–again, what playing music is theoretically about–to have fun. It’s also an antidote to the “playing the same venues all the time” issue Todd brought up earlier. If it comes down to taking food off a child’s plate or straining one’s relationship or job status to do it, though, it’s not that simple.

The industry is changing so much, so we have that going for us, but labels still to some extent like to see that you’ve played “X” amount of shows and have “X” amount of fans already. It’s not like they’re just looking at the music. For us to be able to make a career out of this thing and be able to go forward, we’re going to have to have a label or something come alongside us and say, “here’s some financial support. Here’s the ability to go out and tour.” Because we can’t do it like most bands can do it. We’ll keep making albums as long as we’ve got free time. It might take us two years to make every single album, but we’ll keep making albums.

TG: Yeah, I think that’s the ultimate goal. We would like to make a living off of Cornbelt, but we’re not planning or betting on it. The ultimate goal is just the music, because we love it.

Yes! Love! Fun! The truth emerges. I can’t help but wonder, though, especially with it coming up…

CD: What about something like South By Southwest, where you can submit music and do it yourself?

ZR: Yeah, stuff like that I want to capitalize on. I think that’s the plan. What can we do on the Internet ourselves? Where can we submit? I think the thing that’s great about this Merge Records thing that’s happening is that we’re creating a really great sort of press packet for them. Once that package is done, we’ll be able to send that not only to other labels but like Later [with Jools Holland, a music-oriented talk show on the BBC]. Jools Holland has great taste, but they’re not necessarily bands that have arrived. They’re up-and-comers. But things like that, it’s like, who knows if they would ever care, but maybe someone out there likes Cornbelt.

There’s really no telling how many doors an association with a label such as Merge Records can open. It could be 20; it could be none. Solter has worked closely with Merge–home of artists such as The Arcade Fire and Spoon–before, so Zach is hoping Solter shows the album to someone at the label and they take an interest on his recommendation.

TG: From our point of view, we’ve got more momentum than ever. Now that we have an album we can actually push ourselves. We’re a lot more confident with our sound and more mature.

CD: This actually touches on something I’ve thought about a lot in the last few months, the difference between EPs and full-length albums. Let me ask you this: If you had it to do over again, would you have done the EP or would you have held out and gone straight to the full-length?

ZR: I think there are a lot of reasons why that would have been worth it, but it’s just so hard to do. When you’re fresh and you’re new, not only are other people really excited about your music but you’re really excited about your music and the potential of the whole project.

TG: I think I’d still do it.

ZR: I think I’d still do it, too. The recording of an EP is really good, but in some ways I almost feel embarrassed by it now, but I think that’s mainly because of knowing where the songs have come to and where our band has progressed and the hard work we did and being able to hear the album and the full potential of all those songs. But when that EP came out I was really excited about it and I loved it, and I think other people loved it too. It does show that freshness of the band. It’s kind of exciting to see things a little underdeveloped, I guess, is what I’m saying. I think the one thing I would change is the amount of time between when the EP came out and now the album. But I don’t think it’s a mistake for a band unless you have enough songs for a full-length, and then it’s like why not record the full-length. But, I mean, our first show we played seven songs because we knew seven songs.

I think one of the things that is supporting Cornbelt is that Todd and I are now working on a children’s album.

Huh?!

TG: This is part of the thing that says we’re not betting on Cornbelt to pay our bills.

ZR: Here’s the thing. We’re not gonna sell out Cornbelt. We’re not gonna change Cornbelt’s sound in a way to sells records. We’re not gonna do that. We’re gonna keep challenging ourselves, keep raising the bar all that s*** we’ve already said that are just generic terms…

Some surprising self-directed cynicism. Perhaps not unfounded, though; those are all cliches to a degree.

We’re gonna keep doing that with Cornbelt and keep the artistic value intact. But we want to find ways to support being artistic. It’s just another idea. I mean, after having a son, it just came out of being in the car on the way to my mom’s and he’d be like, “Daddy, sing!” I’m like, “what do you want me to sing about?” and he’d say “an elephant!” Or he was obsessed with sharks for a while and so I made up a song about sharks one time. But these songs just start coming out really naturally because I was doing it for Hudson, but all these people started hearing about them and I started singing them for them and they’re like, “you really need to record these.”

TG: We’re not making cheesy kids’ songs. We’re making, like, Cornbelt kids’ songs. We still want it to be cool music.

ZR: They’re just catchy melodies that are presented in sort of an indie, fun way. At some point I realized most parents today are my age, and what are we listening to? So I’m really stoked on that project right now, because for one it’s really satisfying because I’m a parent and being able to play a part in kids’ lives is f***ing incredible. I would almost prefer that to the Cornbelt thing. But from a business perspective and from a money perspective it’s just through-the-roof more promising than something like Cornbelt. What I love about that is Cornbelt can always be about challenging ourselves to make the best album we can, and hopefully we can make money off this other thing to support that thing, you know what I mean?

CD: So how far along are you guys with that?

ZR: We’ve got two songs finished and recorded and we’re got seven songs now that are written. And they’re all really fun! Even as an adult. Everybody I’ve played them for is like, “Dude, I would listen to this!”

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1. The Dude Abides: Cornbelt Chorus playing a Big Lebowski theme party Friday night (Links NSFW)

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2. The Show Report, 3/26: Cornbelt returns

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3. Summer/Fall Album Preview

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