Yep Roc
| Yep Roc Records | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1997 |
| Founder | Glenn Dicker Tor Hansen |
| Distributor(s) | Redeye Distribution |
| Genre | Indie |
| Country of origin | U.S. |
| Location | Hillsborough, North Carolina |
| Official website | www |
Yep Roc Records is an American independent record label based in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and owned by Redeye Distribution. Since 1997, the label has released albums from North Carolina and international artists, including Aoife O'Donovan, Chatham County Line, Dave Alvin, Gang of Four, Los Straitjackets, Nick Lowe, Paul Weller, Robyn Hitchcock, Ryan Adams, The Apples in Stereo, The Reverend Horton Heat, and Tift Merritt.
Tor Hansen started the label in 1997, two years after moving to North Carolina to help manage a chain of record stores in the South. In and around the musical hotbed of Chapel Hill, he encountered bands making good music but not really knowing how to get it out. Back in Boston, he’d worked at Rounder Records with his childhood friend and former bandmate Glenn Dicker. Tor had worked in sales, and Glenn had worked in promotions. They made the decision to try and do both together with their own label and their own distribution wing, Redeye.
It started with a few local compilations featuring some recognizable names (Ryan Adams archivists will note Whiskeytown’s “Take Your Guns to Town” on YEP-2001, the inaugural 1997 release) and some names they hoped people would soon spot. There were no strictures or typecasts, no attempts to use the best bands in the vicinity to define a North Carolina sound or a Yep Roc brand. It was all simply stuff that Hansen and Dicker liked.
“It has been a sort of organic growth,” says Hansen, “It wasn't like we just started a record label with all this money. There were roots to this thing, and they start way back. Slow growth has been a good thing for us."
After about its first 100 releases, Yep Roc entered one of its most indicatively taste-driven spurts, releasing, in succession, records by Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould, Springsteen proselytes Marah, drifting folk act Dolorean and rock ’n’ roll madmen The Legendary Shack*Shakers. Jump down a few more catalogue numbers, and Yep Roc followed the debut of terse, tense post-punk act Cities with discs by alt-country progenitor Dave Alvin and Los Straitjackets, the masked surf rock stars whose sales a year earlier helped convince Hansen and Dicker that their personal and open approach to curating releases was a sustainable move.
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