While we’ve interviewed a number of record labels over the years, this one is long overdue. Reveal Records began life in 2005 when founder Tom Rose, then the owner of an independent record store (Reveal Records Derby), took a leap into the world of record releases following a chance encounter on myspace with the widely acclaimed American songwriter Joan As Police Woman. This was just a year after the launch of Folk Radio UK and it wasn’t long before we met – virtually, via Myspace and then later in the real world, often at the BBC Folk Awards where Kris Drever and Lau (also early signings to the label) would pick up multiple awards (including ‘Folk Singer of the Year’ in 2017 and ‘Best Group’ in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2013).
Next month, on December 11th, Reveal Records will be celebrating their 15 years as an independent label with the release of “Home Is Where The Art Is”, their first compilation of the Reveal artist music featuring 57 tracks on a deluxe double CD with booklet (including the digital-only bonus tracks – see below), the compilation is a primer for new listeners and a chance to look back over the variety of world-class music Reveal Records artists have created to date.
We will be reviewing that album later this week, but before that, I caught up with Tom Rose to chat about Reveal Records and how it all started…
Tom: I left school early and went to work as part of Thatcher’s appalling Youth Training Scheme where you got paid £27.50 a week (about £10 more than my weekly bus fare to get to work). On the upside, I was fortunate to do my scheme in a record shop, albeit it sold mostly heavy metal, which I didn’t know anything about at the time. This was during the Acid House / Summer of Love end of the ’80s. Working in Nottingham in the shop I was fortunate to get to see so many amazing gigs of all kinds of genres (Janes Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Michelle Shocked, Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500 etc), often for free, several nights a week, because we sold tickets for the local gigs. What I lacked in knowledge about Rock music I made up for in running a tidy and organized Hardcore & Metal ship! At age17, I was no longer a YTS and had been given a job. I would read every music publication and scour American fanzines looking for the weirder, underground independent music, I’d visit Selectadisc Nottingham after work and see what was new and interesting and started learning all about importing and the retail buying process. As luck would have it a manager left their Derby store at this point, so without really knowing what VAT was or how to change a price gun or till roll, I suggested to the owner I would make an ideal manager for his Derby store and told him he didn’t need to give me more money until I had been successful for him. What could go wrong? a confident 17-year-old lad moving to a new town to run someone else’s business. As luck would have it things went really well, I ended up doing the buying for all his stores and opening a second shop on the other side of Derby. When at the end of the ’90s they sold up to become an online ticket agent, I used my redundancy, took a loan, visited a warehouse in Holland where I knew I could buy up overstocked new albums for less than a quid and sell them for £2/£3 and then took over one of the Derby stores and called it Reveal Records. I was 26, was just about to start a family and it was 1999.
While it may appear strange to be talking about Myspace with any positivity in this day and age after so many, including ourselves, abandoned their profile pages years ago, it use to be a great place to discover and share music… It was also through Myspace that Tom managed to sign his first artist.
To my ears, Kris was the best thing I had heard in years.
I was looking for something more creative to do alongside the shop, we made a free quarterly instore Revealed magazine and for each one, I enjoyed sequencing covermount CD’s licensing music from really great indie labels and artists (Smog, Jon Hopkins, Maximo Park, Laura Veirs, Bright Eyes), then in 2005 I started to think about bringing records in from America that didn’t get released here. At this time my friend Ian took me to a few folk gigs, the first ones he took me to were by Kate Rusby, Chris Wood and Bellowhead. At the Kate Rusby gig, during her headline set, Kate introduced her young guitarist Kris Drever who stepped up to sing one song “Farewell To Fuinary” – WOW! I was just stunned by him, so understated, his delivery and the depth of emotion he conveyed was like nothing I had heard before. To my ears, Kris was the best thing I had heard in years. That was it, I went home to find out who he was and started to plan out starting a label so I could contact him and offer his music a home. A similar thing happened the same month in Birmingham whilst watching Rufus Wainwright’s opening act Joan As Police Woman. I went home, wrote her on Myspace and bought a box of her EP off her to sell in the store. When we had sold 3 boxes I wrote again only this time I explained to Joan I wanted to start a label and make her my first release. We released the first albums by Joan As Police Woman and Kris Drever in 2006 and both got so many amazing reviews, plays on the radio and TV coverage and then the touring started to happen. I thought that was what always happened when you put out a record, things took off and the next signings Jon Redfern and Lau also got good attention and plenty of radio play. It was hard trying to run the store whilst learning the ropes of music business contracting, international record releases, tour work, management work (things I was doing for free as part of running the label, not realising this was a whole extra job usually) so in 2007 I decided I’d like to focus full time on the new label and management work, a break clause came up for my store, so I closed it.
I’ve always been intrigued about how labels decide who to sign, they can’t sign everyone they love…I share with Tom how when we interviewed Bella Union‘s co-founder, Simon Raymonde, he told us “I wouldn’t sign anybody I wouldn’t want to have round for dinner, and anybody that my dog would bark at!’” So what does Tom Rose look for in an artist and what else drives those choices?
I have a lot of admiration for Bella Union and I am a huge fan of Cocteau Twins and some of his label’s artists, I don’t think we should really mention Reveal in the same breath as Bella Union in terms of impact or size of record company, but I definitely share his views on not wanting to work with anyone you wouldn’t wish to have round for dinner. I learnt early on in life the importance of doing exactly what you say you will, on time and I expect the same in return, Reveal has a mantra of ‘world class music, world class human beings’ that’s the magic formula for me, now I don’t put out anything I don’t want to stand by forever.
Naturally, Tom has no shortage of highlights the memories…
I get a huge rush of excitement when I hear something new for the first time and realise it’s exceptional and I know I have one of the best jobs in the world for a music lover.
Gigs! Most of the highlights are gig related or hearing a new song for the first time. Joan at the Spitz, solo 2006. Kris in the pub in Derby, Lau at Union Chapel, Eddi Reader in Glasgow, Chris Wood in Nottingham and releasing his first two albums on vinyl. Drinking and relaxing with my friends at Cambridge Folk Festival after handing out thousands of 3 inch CD promo samplers to get people to listen to Kris and Lau’s music. Walking into a soundcheck and hearing Lau with Elysian Quartet performing The Bell That Never Rang for the first time ever. I get a huge rush of excitement when I hear something new for the first time and realise it’s exceptional and I know I have one of the best jobs in the world for a music lover. That just happened recently when Eamon O’Leary sent me his new record and The Little Unsaid sent the demos for their 2021 album and Boo Hewerdine recorded The Language of Love for our compilation album as an extra track. Amazing.
A lot has changed in the music industry since the launch of Reveal…where Myspace failed in its ongoing usefulness for music discovery, the likes of Bandcamp and Spotify came into being shortly after Reveal was founded. These new models have brought with them their own set of challenges, some of the most spoken about being a fair pay model for artists on streaming platforms.
That was a good time for social media, it worked. People got discovered and connected through it. It felt liberating and fresh. I try to be optimistic and focus on what we can do and if something is hard, find a way around it or leave it be. Making a living in an age of streaming is certainly challenging, Reveal operate between the cracks of the mainstream, our artists are career artists who tour and are extremely connected directly to their listeners online and as such we still sell a lot of music directly to those who choose to buy and support independent business’ and people.
I would like to see artists paid fairly for their streams, the current set up on Spotify, Apple and Amazon where major labels sweep up most of the available income can’t continue. It’s immoral. We have our artist downloads from our label page now and there is also Bandcamp who whilst better than the rest are still linked to corporations, I’d rather not do business with (Paypal for instance).
Curating an album of 57 tracks must have given Tom a greater holistic view of changes in the label roster as well as the music they produce. He must have been struck by some of those musical changes. Take LAU as an obvious example…experts in musical deconstruction and then pulling it all back together again within one song. I can’t think of any other artist on the folk scene that did that at the time…it was more of a contemporary jazz thing.
When I saw Lau for the first time in 2006 I really only went along to pacify Kris who insisted I come and hear them as he was really into playing with them and it was local to me. I was concerned at the time he might be distracted by trying to develop a band and a solo career all at once. I remember it was a friendly but small fiddle festival in a village hall in Lincoln, during the daytime, not very rock n roll. However, by the end of the day, we had agreed a record deal and I had witnessed one of the greatest gigs I had ever seen 3 people with 3 acoustic instruments perform. During the gig I was imagining Lau years later playing in big theatres with light shows and being a kind of large experimental band, maybe the Sigur Ros of folk is what I was thinking back in 2006. They certainly lived up to those ideas and had hundreds more of their own making. More than that Kris, Aidan and Martin are extended family to me, friends who have been through great highs and lows together. There is still no one else like Lau.
If there is a common thread running through the label maybe progressiveness is the strongest…the music I’ve played on Folk Radio UK in the last fifteen years has changed dramatically. Music that once felt risky and maybe too progressive (and for which I got occasional complaints from the folk police) is now more accessible, and experimentation quite normal. That’s thanks to the risk-takers – they help shape and progress listener tastes and that in itself lays down new challenges to others and encourages more experimentation and progression. Maybe this is one of the most vital roles Reveal has played for its artists – creating a safe place to do that in.
Progression and stretching out musically is definitely encouraged.
I think we have artists who have joined us as brilliant players, writers and or performers and then naturally progressed and taken more risks because they are free to do so.
I hope they feel they have been encouraged to do that, I have always valued more the art and the song and recording more than any idea of commerce or if fanbases might enjoy it. Watching Joan take her fans from delicate piano ballads to hip hop influenced duets with Gorillaz or kraut-rock experiments with analogue synths, Lau creating their own new instruments and sampling techniques within ‘folk music’ experimentation and a variety of collaborations that reap artistic rewards for us listeners to enjoy is really special. They are all at it in their own ways, Boo Hewerdine making EP’s without a guitar and found instruments, Dan Whitehouse creating an album from soundscapes and improv’s, Parker Kindred (Jeff Buckley & Antony & The Johnsons drummer) making incredible punky, lo-fi songs in the night out in the New York State woods. Progression and stretching out musically is definitely encouraged.
Time to look forward, ambitions? Tom is not short of them…
I’m staring at a 2021 calendar that includes – new albums and music from Gramercy Arms, Benjamin Lazar Davis, Aidan O’Rourke, Boo Hewerdine, The Little Unsaid, GRIP TIGHT, Eamon O’Leary, State of The Union, Parker Kindred and over on the management side of things Joan As Police Woman collaboration with the late great Afro-Beat legend Tony Allen and The Invisibles’ Dave Okumu.
So with all this knowledge what is the No.1 Tip Tom Rose would give to someone wanting to start their own label?
Follow your own instincts, don’t copy other people’s business behaviours just because the industry might expect you to do things a certain way. You can do it your way and whatever you do, never release publicly music you don’t want to 100% stand by forever (there are things in the past I wish I had not released, can you tell). Good luck you are going to need it. Enjoy today and try not to ‘churn music out’
He ends…
Up the Drever
A remark that takes me back in time…Inside the album you’ll find a number of quotes…including this one
I first came into contact with Tom back in 2006 on Myspace (back when social media was useful to musicians). It was just two years after I’d started Folk Radio UK and he introduced me to this fella Kris Drever – wow! What I recall most was his enthusiasm (Up the Drever!)…it was on another level – and infectious! It’s been a great journey and thanks to their passion, Reveal now have one of the most talented rosters out there.
Alex Gallacher (Folk Radio UK)
It’s been great listening to this release, for me it is filled with fond memories, as it will be for many of you. If you are new to Reveal Records, then here’s the chance to discover something great. Here’s to the next 15 years!
And
For those who miss Tom Rose’s record store – The award-winning Reveal Records record store is re-opening for business in 2021 (online at www.revealrecords.co.uk ) specialising in vinyl and world class sounds regardless of the genre. Something to look forward to…
You can order Home Is Where The Art Is – 15 Years of Reveal Records 2006-2021 for the special price of just £5.90 – Available now via the Reveal Records website: https://www.revealrecords.co.uk/shop/home-is-where-the-art-is-15-years-of-reveal-records-2006-2021/
Home Is Where The Art Is – 15 Years of Reveal Records 2006-2021
Disc One
- Valid Jagger (live) – Joan As Police Woman *
- She Put On Her Headphones (radio edit) Lau *
- Tricky Love Stuff – Gramercy Arms *
- If You Want It – Benjamin Lazar Davis *
- In Luck (radio edit) GRIP TIGHT *
- Human – The Little Unsaid
- Dreamland – Dan Whitehouse
- I Defy – Joan As Police Woman feat. Antony
- Silhouette – Boo Hewerdine
- Hard Year – Kris Drever
- I Love The Sun – Jon Redfern
- Love Has Left The Room – A Camp
- For About A Month – Aidan O’Rourke
- Red Flowers – Mascott
- Beautiful Disguise – Gramercy Arms feat. Lloyd Cole & Joan As Police Woman *
- Whitechapel – Blue Rose Code
- Vagabond – Eddi Reader
- Marina Blue – Eamon O’Leary
- More Than You Know – Kris Drever
- Real Life – Joan As Police Woman
Disc Two
- Take Me To Your Leader – Ian Carr & The Various Artists
- Strike The Colours – Kris Drever
- Blooming – Richard J. Birkin *
- The State of The English – Dan Whitehouse
- Atomise – The Little Unsaid
- Tin Drum – Dead Air
- The Bell That Never Rang (radio edit) *
- My Favourite Dress – Eddi Reader
- Hinba – Lau
- Awake Isn’t Good – Aidan O’Rourke
- The Poorest Company – Drever,McCusker,Woomble
- Sister In Song – Eamon O’Leary *
- Broke Me In Two – Joan As Police Woman & Benjamin Lazar Davis
- Strange Sky – Martin Green feat. Adam Holmes & Becky Unthank
- Latenite – Parker Kindred *
- Sunset – Boo Hewerdine
- Ghosts – Lau
- To America – Joan As Police Woman feat. Rufus Wainwright
Disc Three (Digital Only Bonus Tracks)
- Vigil I – Richard J. Birkin
- The Portal – Martin Green with James Holden
- Dolly – The Little Unsaid
- Give Away Your Heart pt.1 – Jon Redfern
- Love Is The Answer – Dan Whitehouse feat. Gustaf Ljunggren
- Scapa Flow 1919 – Kris Drever
- Half Alive – The Little Unsaid
- Wild Mountainside – Eddi Reader
- Shining Bright – Gramercy Arms
- Poor Mans Son – Kris Drever
- The Flow Country – Ian Carr & The Various Artists
- Tomorrow (Gustaf Remix) – Dan Whitehouse
- Shoot Out The Stars – Nels Andrews
- Far From Portland (Album Version) – Lau
- I Saw The Dead – Martin Green feat. Becky Unthank
- Mark The Hard Earth – Kris Drever
- Gallowhill (Live at the Bongo Club, 2007) – Lau
- Weightlifting (Instrumental) – Dan Whitehouse
- The Language of Love – Boo Hewerdine (brand new song) *
*Denotes previously unreleased or first time on CD