Credit: Catweasels, one of the bands on the LMR roster

In late 2006 three friends from Newcastle – including Futureheads guitarist, Ross Millard – started a budding indie label, Longest Mile Records. Featuring artists such as Catweasels, Shout Out Louds, The Paper Cranes, This Ain’t Vegas, the label has caused plenty of buzz since coming into being. Music Towers spoke to label co-founder, Nick Jackson to find out how/why/when/where of an indie label in 2008.

“It started with three of us [Jackson, Ross Millard and a mutual friend of theirs, Paul Reed] deciding to stop banging on about how cool it would be to put a couple records out and actually do it. I was at uni in Newcastle, and at that time there was a whole bunch of interesting bands around there making great music,” Jackson recollects. “I guess we were inspired by labels like Dischord and early Sub Pop – you know, the idea of documenting a local scene or whatever. It turned out to be much less regional than that, but the inspiration still came from seeing and hearing everything that was going on and wanting to capture some of it.”

“I’m not sure we have anything as concrete as a mission statement, but we just want to put out bands that we love and think other people would too, regardless of what they sound like or look like. I think we wanted to marry the punk rock ethos of a small indie label, with the more ambitious scope and drive of a bigger company. That’s not to say we think independent record companies are naïve or small-minded (far from it, obviously), more that we wanted to try and stand out from other ‘bedroom labels’ of similar sizes, by virtue of our presentation and ambition.”

That policy of ambition doesn’t mean they are going to over-stretch themselves though – in today’s market, indie labels need to be about quality, not quantity of releases. “We have a schedule in place which dictates, at least to a certain extent, when and what we’re looking to release; we need to make sure that we have both the funds and time to devote towards a project – you can’t just take stuff on because it looks good, regardless of other commitments,” says Jackson, showing a bit of that aforementioned scope and drive. “Having said that, though, like most people, we’re always on the lookout for new, interesting stuff. Once we find a band we like the sound of, we try and look to those which have a certain degree of self-sufficiency – it makes the job of a small setup like ours much easier if the band you’re putting out wants to get out and about to support their own music. All it takes is a few quid - literally, a lot of the time - and a bit of initiative and you can get a mini-tour together, after all.”