For our first record label interview episode of 2018, Cathy Pellow of Sargent House Records joins us on the phone from LA. We start with a bit of praise for Blis., and hit hot topics such as the changing music industry, a killer job opportunity (really), the great format debate, emo, Mike Watt stories, and tons of great, heavy music.

Stream the entire episode of the Subliminal Inevitable show Via BTRtoday.

This week’s guest is the irrepressible Cathy Pellow, founder and leader of Sargent House in Echo Park, California. I’ve been curious about her for a while. Like many others, my understanding of her was essentially derived from Facebook posts and Tweets – some of them quite hilarious, others misleadingly terse.  I am very aware that a Tweet is not the best way to judge a person’s character or even their current state of mind/status.  It’s all too meta and more than a little curated or in some cases, not very curated at all, which has been the appeal of watching Cathy’s Twitter feed.  However, recent debates about women in charge of companies, how they should or shouldn’t behave in business, had me wondering, “What would Cathy do?”

We talk about her business strategy (take no shit off no one!) and she opened up about her background and the drive that determined who she is today, why she does what she does and the reasons behind her apparent love of “instrumental music.”

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Niels Tubbing, author for Gonzo (circus) since 2009, spoke last October in the mountains of California with Cathy Pellow, founder of the American label Sargent House. He shows his favorites in this mixtape.

In Gonzo (circus) # 143 you can read an interview with Cathy Pellow, founder of the Californian Sargent House label. Pellow started the label more than ten years ago and Sargent House has become a quality mark for all that can be found in the corner ‘intense, somewhat transverse but beautiful guitar music’.

The list of artists on the label reads like the poster of a dream festival, including Emma Ruth Rundle, Boris, And So I Watch You From Afar, Earth, Deafheaven and Chelsea Wolfe. In the Mixcloud Monday of this week an overview of a little one and a half hour of music from the label: nineteen artists are covered in twenty songs. Dive yourself to the beauty that Sargent House has to offer. 

Full article via Gonzo (circus) 

Cathy Pellow, founder and owner of Sargent House, talks with Short Round about her ever-growing musical family. Featuring tracks by Native, RX Bandits, Good Old War, Lisa Papineau, Fang Island, Russian Circles and Cathy’s selection of a non SH favorite  Portugal The Man.  Listen to it on iTunes Episode #26 May 10, 2010 here. - Interview by Andrew Phan 

I visited the physical Sargent House once, after the Los Angeles stop on So Many Dynamos’ tour with Cast Spells, the solo endeavor of David Davison from Maps & Atlases. It was the birthday of Cast Spells’ touring cellist Rashaad, whom Cathy Pellow had not met. Still, she acquired a cake. Members of The Advantage and Sounds of Animals Fighting mingled casually, as did Jonathan Hischke, current touring bassist of Broken Bells and newest addition to Le Butcherettes. The Indiana quartet Native, Sargent House’s youngest signing, arrived in the small hours to stay the night and raid the merch storage room.

Through the evening, I realized Pellow is an Andy Warhol figure for the southern California art rock circle, her residence shifting between a cultural hub and a post-hippie commune. She commands attention without effort, cutting through dozens of conversations with choice quote-ables like “Do you think I give a shit about how many  fucking Myspace friends your band has?” and “Do you have any idea how much coke I’ve done with Steely Dan in my lifetime?”

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Sargent House works as a collective, rather than just being a ‘Record Label’ - they also grace their current roster with management, publicity and production as well as the traditional label features. ‘Artists come first. We love music.’ is stated by the Sargent House collective, not as a motto but rather as a fact of the way they work. I think it’s plain to notice and damn right refreshing to see a company working in this way: treating Sargent House as a family, showing the fragility, unity and brotherly/sisterly love between artist and label.

Whilst the top ten is littered with rich posers with repetitive songs that are auto-tuned, auto-made and auto-recorded, there is a new breed of real musicians heading your way. These bands tour relentlessly out of the back of vans, sleep on floors and use what money they have to bring you amazing music. Sargent House cherishes these ideals and helps to support truly great new music with a family style label setup.

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Get to know her on facebook , Twitter , Chelsea Wolfe Site

Our very own Cathy Pellow will be speaking as an industry know it all on the “A Team” Panel on October 7th at 3:30pm at the Button Factory. Also speaking will be Mick Roe from our Irish label partners The Richter Collective.  

Next weekend, the Hard Working Class Heroes carnival takes over the capital. There’s a ton of stuff on over the coming weekend, with the live gigs, featuring 100 bands playing various city-centre venues between Thursday and Saturday nights, the pick of the crop. If we were to recommend one gig from the very large schedule of shows, it would (natch) have to be the OTR vs Nialler9 shizzle with Moths, Cloud Castle Lake, Tieranniesaur,The Depravations, The Danger Is and Last Days of 1984 at the Workman’s Club on Saturday.

But we would also like to point you towards the HWCH Convention, a series of panels and workshops which (DOI) OTR has had a hand in putting together. The convention events take place in either Filmbase or the Button Factory in Temple Bar and admission is free. Yes, free. You pay zilch euro for this helping of knowledge. Bargain.

Between Bandtips, a series of informal peer to peer conversations where a bunch of media, festival bookers and venue bookers will chew the fat, and the panels (more below), there’s a ton of stuff to feed your brain whether you’re someone who is involved in music onstage or offstage. The list of panelists and industry delegates who’re in town for the weekend is very impressive, featuring festival bookers from those international events bands should be playing (SXSW, Great Escape, Eurosonic, CMJ, Camden Crawl, Reeperbahn etc), geeks from companies like Soundcloud, We7 and PIAS Entertainment and a plethora of international media and bloggers. It’s a who’s who of people who are doing interesting and cool stuff right now as opposed to a bunch of aul’ lads who did stuff 20 years ago which you often find at similar events in Ireland.

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