On the list of things you absolutely need when starting a record label, you might expect “bands” to be right there at the top, but really that’s all relative, dependent on what you hope to get out of it. If, like local graphic designer and music enthusiast Shaun Miller, your goal is to hone your Photoshop skills and get your work out there, bands take a backseat to band names and recordings count less than record covers, the container being the product as opposed to the content. Of course, as with any sort of affectation, the line between pretending to be a record label and simply being one is easily blurred, and for Miller’s Ear Records project, that’s precisely where things start to get interesting.
“It’s kind of an offshoot of this Weather Press thing I do; I was an English major and wanted to get into publishing so I don’t really have a background in graphic design, but I wanted to sharpen my skill,” says Miller, explaining the genesis of his intriguing Bandcamp page, where tantalizing album covers can lead to unexpected dead ends. “I wanted to treat it like I went to school for it, what it would be like, you know, you’d have different assignments, so one of the ideas I wanted to do was a fake record catalog. I said, ‘Hey, let’s make up some bands, make album covers and that will be a nice little design portfolio in itself,’ so that was the original idea.”
Soon however, that simple original idea had evolved a bit, when Miller realized that he did in fact have some audio at his disposal, if not of the sort fledgling record labels tend to trade in. “I’m not in anything right now, but growing up I had been in bands in high school and college,” Miller said. Then there was his uncle’s old band. “One of the albums I have out is a live one he did back in the ’60s, which is crazy—I had no idea until just a few months ago,” says Miller, referring to The Romans’ Alverno ’65, a rough-around-the-edges but still extremely fascinating slice of local garage rock history. “If I have the resources to put out real music,” says Miller with a shrug, “Why not?”
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Eventually though, Miller sees Ear Records putting out new material by local Milwaukee artists, citing power pop mavens Midnight Reruns and classic rock champions Platinum Boys as ideal picks, albeit in a very informal, low-pressure way. “Honestly, I’m coming at this from more of a graphics background than a music background, compared to other local labels where music is really at the forefront and there’s a business plan and things like that,” he explains. “Hopefully I can connect with some of these bands and say, ‘Give me your throwaway tracks, your cover song that you don’t really have any plans for, your solo stuff that you don’t really want to commit the energy to, and hopefully the album art is going to be pretty good.’”
Ear Records might occupy that gray area between fictitious and concrete, but ultimately, according to Miller, creating more design opportunities, especially among the Milwaukee music scene, is the real goal. “Honestly it’s probably always going to be more fake bands than real bands,” he says, laughing. “I’ve got specific ideas for those and some of them are almost screaming to get out of me so I can move on to the next thing, but I’d love to do more stuff for local bands too and see where that goes, concert posters, logo work, really anything, I just haven’t put myself out there much yet because I’m trying to build more of a backlog.” As they say, you’ve got to fake it until you make it.
Visit Ear Records online at earrecords.bandcamp.com.
