Local label Flemish Eye celebrates 5.5 years with 20/20 hindsight
Looking back it doesn’t seem like the wisest business decision ever made. Armed with boundless determination and naive chutzpah drummer and music lover Ian Russell decided to start a record company. His motivation: To bring the music of his friends notably Chad VanGaalen and Clinton St. John (formerly of Trikl Act latterly The Cape May) to the world. Russell got a $6500 grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and leapt in with both feet.
“I was like ‘Wow what are we going to do with all this money?’ and then when it actually happened I suddenly realized ‘Oh this is going to be so difficult’ Russell remembers. “I thought ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ I’m going to be doing this for the next three years of my life!”
At that point in Calgary’s musical history VanGaalen was busking and passing around basement mixtapes to his art school buddies. Outside Calgary he was unknown but not for long. Mid-size American labels started calling with the buzz catching the ears of Seattle grunge juggernaut Sub Pop.
“Tony K over there heard about Chad from a blog and bought a record on the website” says Russell. “I noticed his Sub Pop e-mail address and started to have a conversation with him. There were a couple of other labels at the time that were interested so I put a fire under his ass.”
The lawyers jumped in and Sub Pop secured the international rights to his work while Flemish Eye kept the Canadian share. VanGaalen was caught unaware by the attention. “It was pretty cool and pretty horrifying at the same time” he admits. “I wasn’t really ready to be a musician; I wasn’t taking it all that seriously.”
Since then Flemish Eye has released two more VanGaalen discs as well as two from The Cape May who recently teamed up with Victoria’s Run Chico Run and morphed into The Pale Air Singers. A little over a year ago Flemish Eye signed a group called Women without hearing a single note of their music. “I threw them on as an opener for Chad’s show at the Grand last year or 2007 as kind of a means to give them a bit of a kick in the pants” Russell says. Women have since gone global played over 170 shows in the last 300 days and garnered rave reviews in the music press in North America and the U.K. Women’s meteoric rise has almost eclipsed that of VanGaalen’s who recorded and produced their debut disc in his basement studio.
This weekend the Ball offers a rare opportunity to catch the Flemish Eye roster with other artists. It will also showcase VanGaalen’s other outlet Black Mold which Russell describes as “just Chad and usually an immense stack of poorly wired electronics.” VanGaalen himself seems to have difficulty quantifying it. “It’s just the stuff that I’ve been circuit bending for the last decade” he says. “It’s more like noise-scapes but it has been a dance party I never really know.”
He’s even less specific about his highly anticipated collaboration with beloved Sackville New Brunswick chanteuse Julie Doiron who’s flying out for the event. “I don’t even know what’s going on with that” VanGaalen admits. “We haven’t even talked about it. We’ll probably rehearse a couple of hours before and just laugh at each other.”
The Ball will also afford Russell an opportunity to contextualize the events of the last five and a half years. The label founder has been so busy that he’s had few moments to rest on his laurels and enjoy the success. “I would never have imagined it” Russell admits. “It’s all been very organic but suddenly last year we had two active artists who were touring Europe and playing sold-out shows. That was a big shock for me and a new level for us. The world is really receptive to Canadian music right now. Might as well jump on it and take advantage.”
