HPR goes to SXSW to meet with two indie rock kingmakers

Fargo natives mark 20 years of running record labels

How do two brothers from Fargo manage to successfully run some of the biggest indie rock labels in the country, two of which are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year? It’s a little bit timing, part luck, hard work, and their ability to adapt to the ever changing music industry and sign exactly the right new acts on their way up.

Chris and Ben Swanson went to Fargo South high school and graduated in 1994 and 1996. In 1996, they formed Secretly Canadian Records. Today, they run the Secretly Group, which is among other things, a group of record labels headlined by Secretly Canadian, Jagjajguwar and Dead Oceans, which boasts a roster of acts like The War on Drugs, Bon Iver, Sharon Van Etten, Antony and the Johnsons, Okkervil River and The Tallest Man On Earth. We caught up with them at this year’s SXSW Festival in Austin, TX where the labels hosted a showcase of their bands preparing to release new material.

Like many teenagers from that era, the Swanson brothers caught the music bug going to punk concerts in the 1990s at venues like Exit 99 and The Bowler in Fargo while in high school. They just happened to be one of the only ones to make careers of it. The elder Swanson Chris brought the younger Ben to his first punk concert Bikini Kill in September of 1991 and proceeded to get gum spit on him by singer Kathleen Hanna.

“She threw her gum at me because I guess I was the boy closest to the stage. I didn’t know the rule, she said no boys in the front row and she spit her gum on me and I was humiliated, it was embarrassing. I probably had it coming but it was like oh no!” Chris Swanson said.

Gum spit incident withstanding, the early 90s were a thriving time for the D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) punk scene in Fargo where shows could attract over 500 kids put on by the kids themselves. This got the wheels turning in the Swanson brothers minds.

“It felt really fertile especially for high school. I am sure every generation or every high school year has that fertile music period but I have a hard time connecting what that is for high school kids now.” Ben Swanson told us. “It felt like we were out of the way enough where we were sort of left alone but we got just enough bands from out of town that were just cool enough to feel plugged in to at least know what the rest of the world was like.”

It was the height of zine culture, all flyers from the era were handmade and copied in black and white on Xerox machines. All of the shows were all­ages and put on by kids in the scene. One of the biggest local bands was noise rock duo godheadSilo who opened for a lot of the touring punk bands and eventually left Fargo and put out records on some of the biggest punk record labels at the time, Kill Rock Stars and Sub Pop. But while they lived in Fargo, godheadSilo weren’t exactly prolific in putting out recorded material and that was noted by Chris Swanson, the first time he ever thought of starting a record label.

“godheadSilo was everything to me growing up, I remember I had my first moment connecting the dots you know both Ben and I were voracious record and CD collectors and stuff and then my favorite band in the world didn’t have anything out, they had one song on a local CD Moo Bob the NoDak compilation.” Chris Swanson remarked.

That one song was “Pull” on the Nodak: Distorted Hallucinations compilation, the one and only release from Fargo promoter Jade Nielsen’s Moo Bob Records. While that wasn’t enough to get Swanson to put out records, moving away to college at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN was and the major impetus for that was college radio, which was unavailable at the time in Fargo. Chris Swanson would eventually become music director at WIUS, a college radio station with a 10 watt signal that you could only hear on campus. It didn’t matter to Chris, this new labor of love opened up constant exposure to a treasure trove of new music and friendships with people who shared that love of music. It was that spark and the relationships made within where it was decided to form Secretly Canadian records in 1996.

“Pump Up The Volume was a huge touchstone, pirate radio, like the only way you are going to play legit punk or DIY music or underground music is you had to do it illegally. That was our only connection to cool radio in Fargo. And then I get to Bloomington and in my first week I am granted a show, I fill out an application and it was in the wee hours but it was mind blowing, it was like I won the lottery, “ Chris Swanson told us.

He began sending mix-tapes of new music (filled with bands like Cat Power and Smog) back to his younger brother Ben still in high school in Fargo who then decided he too would go to Indiana University when he graduated in 1996. Chris developed close friendships with Eric Weddle and Jonathan Cargill and the four hatched a plan to form Secretly Canadian in the summer of 1996 over email. The label didn’t really take off and get noticed for a couple of years. The first record put out was the reissuing of Grand Forks native June Panic’s “Glory Hole” album. The label is still run out of Bloomington, Indiana to this day.

“It didn’t feel like a business, it felt like an expensive hobby. The model was that it was supposed to be sustainable. We put out a record, once we saw some revenue, we put out the next record. So we were always thinking in a real sustainable way but we realized it was going to take us a while to make some money on it. We all had coffee shop, record store jobs and working at restaurants and stuff,” Chris Swanson remarked.

In the label’s infancy, a key decision was made to form their own distribution service, starting on a micro level to model what Chicago’s Touch and Go Records was doing at the time, where they would distribute fellow like ­minded record labels of the same size . Secretly Canadian partnered up with Jagjaguwar (then run solo by Darius Van Arman who now runs it in conjunction with the Swansons), Temporary Residence and Western Vinyl to start.

“We were struggling to get our distribution really strong, we couldn’t get people to call us back or reorder or pay us. We knew we needed more supply and so we reached out to a few smaller labels about the same age as us whose records we really liked,“ Chris Swanson said “We said hey you’re having the same struggles as us, we’ll distribute your records, we’ll act as your sales force, we’ll just take a small cut, we’ll take 50 cents off the top of each one and it will help us because it will give us more supply to get the blood flowing a little more, we’ll make a little bit of money, out of that we kind of built up a model.”

It paid off and helped get the label’s releases in the record stores they needed to be in. From there, a key milestone was to sign and release records from Songs:Ohia, the alt country project of the late Jason Molina, whose records became instant best sellers and new releases would double the sales of the previous efforts.

“We were tenaciously trying to maintain that relationship and make sure he didn’t go some place bigger so we were trying to feverishly keep up pace with him and grow alongside him,” Chris Swanson told HPR.

When asked what they were most proud of with the label, both Swanson brothers mentioned their work with Molina, who later went on to record as Magnolia Electric Co. which made two stops in Fargo and Moorhead in the 2000s. Molina died as a result of alcohol abuse ­related organ failure in March of 2013 at the age of 39. Molina had a huge impact on the label and his early passing was tough for many in the industry to take.

“We grew up together, musically. He taught us a lot about how to be a label and work ethic. Definitely a total brother,” Ben Swanson replied.

In 2003, the label signed Antony and the Johnsons, one of the first openly trans gendered musicians who almost instantly became one of the label’s biggest sellers and exposed the label to a whole new audience worldwide. In 2007, they added Dead Oceans to their roster of record labels which has put out records by likes of Phosphorescent and Destroyer. In 2012, Jagjaguwar act Bon Iver from Eau Claire, Wisconsin was named best new act by the Grammy’s.

A lot has changed in the music industry in the last twenty years, vinyl was non-­existent for awhile in the 2000s, now it’s cool again. The internet wasn’t a big factor for record sales in the 1990s but it sure is now with downloads and streaming. So how did Secretly Canadian and the Swanson brothers manage to survive all that?

“I think part of it is luck of timing, I think indie’s had the benefit of being more small and more nimble whereas bigger labels, it’s just harder to adapt to new situations. So I think we benefited growing up in the weird state of flux that we grew up in,” Ben Swanson replied.

The brothers still have family in the region and usually make it back to Fargo for the holidays. Bands on the Swanson’s roster of labels come through Fargo on a regular basis, this spring and summer will see visits from Black Mountain, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Whitney and Angel Olsen. Of course whenever their bands roll through Fargo, the Swanson brothers hear about it.

“They love it, we always get texts from them like we’re here, where should we go? Duane’s Pizza!” Chris told us.

“You always get the 3 am texts from the Fargo Theater sign. I mean it’s awesome but I have like 80 texts of that,” Ben said. Note to his bands: get more creative!

At SXSW this year, the Secretly Label group hosted a showcase that featured acts such as Mitski, Bleached and Kevin Morby, all about to unleash new albums. It was a reminder of how the label has a knack for signing up and coming acts who are talented artists about to have a wider audience with the right nurturing and tender love and care. For all the public slagging that goes on about the SXSW festival, the Swanson brothers still see its merits. They tell their bands they don’t have to play it twice, but they have to at least do it once.

“If you love to see bands at a really exciting time in their career at this time where they are still figuring out who they are, they’re still figuring out how people are reacting to them, to what they’re doing, they’re still naïve enough to play 20 shows in 6 days, that’s an exciting spot to be in and have a front row seat,” Chris Swanson remarked.

“It’s good for bands to play here and to do multiple shows in the sense of especially young bands because it is kind of a sport, it makes you think more on your feet as a live band and to adapt to very rapidly evolving situations. You can either do that or not do it, you either give into it or you don’t,” Ben Swanson said. “It says a lot about bands on how they react to the situation. Bands that do really well at SXSW can roll with the punches and last on tour for a long time and those that can’t especially when they are early in their careers are just going to have a rough time on tour. It’s a real test of a band’s live show.”

The Swanson brothers have no plans for a 20th Anniversary celebration for either Secretly Canadian or Jagjaguwar records because they are too busy but they do plan to mark a future milestone in the coming years. As to what the future will bring from the Swanson brothers, of course both gave us a litany of new records they are eagerly anticipating releasing this year.

“Whitney on SC is definitely one that’s exciting, Damien Jurado has got a new record coming that I am really excited about,” Ben Swanson replied.

“The new record by Mitski on Dead Oceans, it’s really special. She is just starting. It’s gonna be good. We got new records in the fall by Angel Olsen and Viet Cong. Foxygen has a new record that’s real good, got a lot of stuff,” Chris Swanson said.

At the pace they are going, twenty more years of Secretly Canadian and the Secretly Canadian Group will easily be achievable.