nothin New Haven’s Own Record Label Perseveres | New Haven Independent

New Haven’s Own Record Label Perseveres

Reports of the music industry’s demise continue today. And so does Fake Four, New Haven’s own record label.

Julio Ramos, who goes by the name Ceschi, runs the record label. Eight years at the helm have given Ceschi some hard-earned wisdom about what the future of making a living playing music could look like.

Ceschi started the label out of necessity, really,” in 2008, he said during an interview on the latest episode of WNHH radio’s Northern Remedy” program. That need, however, was built from over a decade of Ceschi being a working musician himself — and from seeing what the artists around him seemed to need, amid reports that the music industry was dying around them.

Ceschi started home recording on a four-track when he was 13 or 14, and messing around with samplers when I was 15 or 16,” he said. Also, I was an early computer nerd. I was into Unix hacking, and designing websites, and doing music on computers as well.”

By then, he was already in a band, Anonymous, Inc., which is still together today.
In high school, we actually went and pressed a tape.” A friend had an eight-track, and Anonymous, Inc. recorded an LP that we pressed to tape.” They then sold it at the dearly departed Tune Inn, in Ninth Square. We’d sling it outside of shows, or in high school, and we started like that,” Ceschi said. It was a fully shrink-wrapped, color-covered tape…. That’s how I first was forced into learning layout stuff. I’ve gotten rather good at graphic design because music forced me to do it.”

His first recordings were kind of heavier indie rock, with really quiet vocals,” he said with a laugh. So the music was kind of loud, but I whispered the whole time. I was shy singing into a mic.” But it wasn’t long before friends — going by the names Mike Z, Ike on the Mike King, and Kofi — were guest MCs on their songs, and we really liked how that felt. So we just started doing more music with them.” Their friendship deepened as well.

At the time, New Haven had a really bubbling indie scene,” Ceschi said. I was going to the Tune Inn all the time … and I remember seeing people selling their dubbed cassettes all the time, and seeing all types of bands from all over, mostly the U.S., coming to New Haven, and I would go there almost weekly. I lived there. I’d watch any kind of music. Could be ska. Could be indie rock. Could be hardcore, which is what I mostly liked at the time. And occasionally there’d be hip hop.”

He saw Sage Francis — with whom he would later collaborate — there in 1996, touring and selling his music. Over the next few years, Ceschi would develop his craft in front of the mic himself. I think of myself as a singer-songwriter who uses rap as a tool. I love the fact that I can say so many words in a rap, and I love the rhythms of rap. And I’m a rap fan. But it’s another tool. I can play a guitar, and I can make beats, and I can play these other instruments. It’s just another tool for making music,” he said.

Lucy Gellman Photo

Ceschi performing at College Street Music Hall in 2015.

Ceschi’s diligence through high school and college led to him being signed to a label called Beyond Space Entertainment soon after graduating from Trinity. Beyond Space wanted to release a collection of demos Ceschi had recorded, which became his first solo record, Fake Flowers, released in 2004.

In 2006, he found himself in a Los Angeles-based band called Toca, which Ceschi described, with a chuckle, as like Mr. Bungle, but with more Latin jazz and underground hip hop influences.” Toca was signed by Snoop Dogg’s management team, who found the group through Daniel Xololanxinxo” Rodriguez, more or less the frontman of Toca and a rapper. I really looked up to,” Ceschi said.

Snoop Dogg’s team took them out to dinner at some really fancy club,” Ceschi said. Eminem was there, I think. We had private bartenders and dancers for each little table. It was real Hollywood-style stuff.”

The band members noticed at the time that the advance they were being offered was small, and the terms of the agreement not so favorable. But we were young,” Ceschi said. They also figured it was their shot, and they were going to take it. Toca had been working on its record for five years; signing the agreement got the group into a $5 million studio. Toca finished its eponymous debut record, which was released in 2007 on a label called Two Tone Elephants.

But right after the album came out, we broke up,” Ceschi said. And a lot of us were upset with how the label handled the album.

We played two epic shows at the Knitting Factory in L.A. I think they were both sold out,” Ceschi continued. And then we never really played as a full band again.” In part Toca broke up to get out of the contract it had signed, which would have required the group to make more albums. But band dynamics also played a role. I think a lot of bands break up when business gets involved,” Ceschi said.

But that experience with Snoop Dogg’s management team inspired me,” Ceschi said, because I thought I could do a much better job than they did…. I thought they could have gone about it in a much smarter way with less money spent.”

So a year after Toca broke up, Ceschi started Fake Four, with the help of two labels he’d worked with in the past — Beyond Space and a California-based label called Grim Image.

We Have A Lot Of Close Friends”

Fake Four’s first release was This Up Here, by Ceschi’s brother, David Ramos. Many, many more followed, and pretty quickly. They included both up-and-comers and established artists like Myka 9, who was just a huge influence on me,” Ceschi said. He and the group he was a part of, Freestyle Fellowship, were basically the creators of progressive rap, in my opinion.”

Fake Four opened up shop at an interesting time in the music industry. Record labels were closing. People weren’t taking risks on newer acts or even older established acts,” Ceschi said. There was something missing, so when Fake Four came out — this was probably terrible business planning — but the scene had sort of died.”

But a lot of artists Ceschi had met, and many he admired, were still producing music and were looking for an outlet. Based on the friendships Ceschi had made in his years in the music industry, he developed his roster of artists, who now hail from around the country and a few from outside it.

At first I was doing everything alone. I was shipping everything myself.” A friend came in and started doing shipping, especially reaching out to college radio stations. We couldn’t do that on our own,” he said, so we hired the right people.”

Even when Ceschi was arrested in 2010 on charges of marijuana possession and imprisoned for four months in 2013, friends came to his and Fake Four’s aid. The label had four records coming out around the time he was going into prison. It costs a lot to put these records out, and I was going to be away with no access to the internet, and barely any access to a phone,” he said. We had publicists lined who were going to get paid, and I didn’t have any way to pay them.” More than going out of business, he was worried about getting the records out at all. As the Village Voice reported, he reached out to fans through an Indiegogo campaign, explaining his situation. Fake Four’s fans responded. Ceschi got the money he needed within 24 hours, and continued donations multiplied that amount eightfold.

Ceschi doesn’t get heavily involved in the production of the records Fake Four releases — which could seem surprising, given that there is a certain sound that Fake Four records have. Willfully cross-genre, combining hip hop, indie rock, and other elements, many of the records (including Ceschi’s own) have a sound that’s a little gritty, yet very warm, with each element clear and easy to appreciate. There’s an aesthetic for sure,” Ceschi said. I’ve selected almost everything that we’ve released … I’ll listen through and give my opinions on everything,” and he offers advice on how to sharpen and focus the music. It’s a lot of picking and choosing, throwing things out, and redoing certain sections.”

Fake Four now has 60 official releases, Ceschi said. Reports are that the music industry is still dying. Ceschi isn’t all that worried about it. I think it’s just that everything shifts. There was a time when people were probably jumping out of buildings because the cassette tape was dying. No one’s buying wax cylinders anymore,” he joked. The advent of streaming has made it that much harder for musicians — and the small labels that support them — to get paid. But people are actually listening to music a whole lot,” Ceschi said. It adds up. When people are hardcore, they’re listening all the time.”

Ceschi’s dual role as musician and record label head gives him a sharper perspective than many about the future of the music industry — and for him, that could mean the end of small labels. Recently, major labels have co-opted the smaller labels’ aesthetic and marketing ideas and used it to sell music more effectively, because they have a million dollars behind it.” Major labels can still make someone famous if they want to. It just happens,” he said.

Meanwhile, for musicians outside the major-label system, the future is about every artist sort of becoming their own little label,” Ceschi said. Every artist will be running their own little business, and if they’re hobbyists, they can put their stuff up on Bandcamp as easily as someone who makes $100,000 a year off of it. There’s less and less need for a label structure,” he added, though I think communities of music will still be strong.”

Is that future so bad? I don’t think it’s bad at all,” he said. There’s always going to be a Wal-Mart, and there’s always going to be the bodega down the street. That bodega can be self-sustaining and those people can have a great life. I don’t want to be much more than the bodega myself. I just want to be a working musician. My aspirations aren’t to be some sort of rock star. I don’t even think that necessarily exists anymore.”

In this sense, eight years later, Fake Four, with all its ups and downs, its twists and turns, has never strayed far from the impulses that brought it into being in the first place. When we first started, it was specifically for my brother, myself, and our group of close friends,” Ceschi said. But we have a lot of close friends. We have a lot of friends who are talented and didn’t have ways to release music. And it quickly got bigger than that. It grew quicker than we expected. Financially it was never a good business idea. It was just let’s get this music out and give it a shot.’”

Click on or download the above audio file to listen to the full interview with Ceschi on WNHH’s Northern Remedy.”

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