Pleased To Meet Us
Tower Groove Records is an eclectic collective of St Louis-based artists and musicians dedicated to supporting each others’ endeavors. Through this common vehicle, we promote our projects and shows with a goal of encouraging St Louis culture. We’ve always done this on our own, and now we’re doing it together. The success of any of us can only be good for all of us. We’re all about shameless selfless promotion.
Tower Groove Records on Channel 5–Friday, May 18
“Local Musicians start record label to promote Saint Louis music.”
For the record, Jason Hutto is not now called, nor was he ever called, a “co-manager.” Well, by anybody but KSDK.
“…and then people started showing up in our backyard and talking about tax ID numbers.” –Tower Groove Records in the RFT
“Tower Groove Records is Worth Its Weight in Vinyl” –Kelsey Whipple, Riverfront Times
Call it a rags-to-record story: Fueled by frustration with other labels, the members of bluesy local quintet Magic City joked about the idea of creating their own. They could just do it themselves, right? (Right?) With bravado on the brain, it wasn’t long before organist Adam Hesed took the thought seriously. Last June he had one idea, no plan, no support system and, even worse, no funding. In their place, he had sweat equity, good friends, a few beers and a borrowed back yard.
He made do.
The result is Tower Groove Records, a label-cum-co-op established to organize the St. Louis scene while promoting it with the kind of aggressive good nature cemented through decades in its venues and basements. Almost a year from its founders’ first inkling and nine months from their first announcement, the label will release its wildly insightful, overtly ambitious debut this Friday, May 18. The first ever Tower Groove Records compilation features two LPs, 21 songs and 22 bands, many of which weren’t certain they’d ever hear a final product.
“It was very much just an extremely vague, undefined idea,” Hesed admits, though it should be noted he and many others spent more than twenty hours a week developing that vague idea. “It was just friends who go to shows and play in bands, and then people started showing up in our back yard and talking about tax ID numbers. I can’t even remember when it became real.”
That reality likely struck around October, when Tower Groove opted to ignore expectations altogether. They were more like hopes, Hesed says. And despite being artfully named Tower Groove Records, the working musicians’ collective is not really a label, he insists. He doesn’t like the word. He prefers to use another: community. His peers borrow still more: movement, action, fellowship and, with no embarrassment, family.
Within the collective, it is a universally acknowledged truth that a city with as much talent and dynamism as St. Louis must be in want of a voice, someone to push this music outside city limits. To take that idea from the short term to the long, Hesed, co-founder Duane Perry, Jason Hutto and the rest of Tower Groove’s core are counting on the group’s politics (or lack thereof), its freewheeling, turn-taking conversations and utilitarian organization.
Lo-Fi Cherokee captures St Louis bands in their element
Tower Groove Records is proud to be a part of Bill Streeter’s Lo-Fi Cherokee video project, the latest amazing work by Lo-Fi STL. Fourteen bands set up shop in various locales up and down Cherokee Street, one of the primary arteries of the independent art and music scene here in St Louis, and played stripped-down versions of their songs, while Streeter and a series of production crews moved from one to the next, capturing immaculate audio and video of the performances in the span of a single day.
“Most of them [were] one takes and even when we did two takes the first was almost always the best,” said Streeter via his Facebook page. “And most of them took less than 10 minutes to shoot–the bands and the audio engineers had an hour to set up, but we would come in find our shots and roll pretty quickly.”
In their review, the Riverfront Times calls this project “an efficient showcase of St Louis bands.” But when you consider the combination of performance and production values, spontaneous energy and well-honed craft, and the sheer ballsiness of the concept, this goes way beyond efficient and into the realm of the astounding.
Video 2 in the series: Pretty Little Empire performs at Fort Gondo
The project was originally commissioned by Tower Groove Records, though as Jason Rosenbaum writes for the RFT, the end result blossomed far beyond our original intent.
Several Tower Groove bands are featured among the fourteen that performed: The Skekses, Catholic Guilt, Warm Jets USA, Demon Lover, Beth Bombara, Ransom Note and Fred Friction will all have videos released as a part of this project. But every one of the bands in this project is worthy of your attention.
Lo-Fi Cherokee is just one example of the vibrancy of the St Louis music scene, and the reason why we do this Tower Groove Records thing in the first place. “St. Louis has soul, it just has to organize in a way to show it to the rest of the world,” said TGR’s Duane Perry when this collective was just getting started.
Well, we’re showing it. Is the rest of the world watching yet?
RFT lists Tower Groove Records compilation among its six most exciting Record Store Day releases
Record Store Day is coming this weekend, and with it come some exciting vinyl releases. Of course, we’re most excited about seeing all 22 tracks of our double-vinyl compilation make its street debut in glorious colored vinyl. We love hearing that others are as excited as we are. Here’s what the Riverfront Times has to say, listing the album among its top six Record Store Day releases this weekend:
The sheer ambition of this comp is a middle finger to the naysayers of local music; here’s twenty-two bands who aren’t just good, they’re vinyl good.
Read the full article for more of their preview, and their other five selections.
Video: Beth Bombara at the Mud House
Beth Bombara performs “Direction” and “Rainbow” at The Mud House on Cherokee Street in St. Louis. Audio and video recorded by ListenSTL.
