Skybucket Records
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Skybucket Records, based in Birmingham, Alabama was formed in the summer 2002 to release a CD sampler of local music. After the success of this initial release, Skybucket continued to grow, concentrating on signing local musicians and independently releasing their recordings.
Five years after the compilation, Skybucket Records has seventeen releases under its belt, with several more planned in the near future. Thanks to considerable local and regional attention, Skybucket is slowly expanding into national markets.
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[edit] Artists
Artists with releases on the Skybucket Records label include:
[edit] Dan Sartain
[edit] Barton Carroll [1]
[edit] The Dexateens [2]
[edit] 13ghosts [3]
13ghosts, of the dirty south (Birmingham, Alabama), began as a recording project in 1998. The founders were Brad Armstrong and Buzz Russell, who had been in bands together off and on since 1990. The project came together to record some songs about their friend and bandmate Thomas Rhodes, who had killed himself earlier that year. They brought in their previous bandmate Mikey Williams to play drums on the project. It developed into a fulltime band a year or so later, and Sammy Boggan was added on bass. 13ghosts began performing regionally and set out to make a record with the intention of securing a label deal. They recorded We are the Sun (2001), and their friend John P. Strohm (Blake Babies) shopped it to the independent label circuit. There were no takers. They recorded a second album (Your Window is Burning, 2002), and Strohm put it with a big time entertainment lawyer. It was shopped. 13ghosts showcased for Atlantic. American Records was interested. Warner Bros. was interested. Then they weren't. 13ghosts began recording their next record. During the process, Mikey Williams quit the project. With the album not even half finished, Brad and Buzz decided to finish it by recruiting all of their musician friends. They logged almost 25 contributors. One of them stuck, and Jason Lucia joined on drums. Andrew Vernon, who had recorded the band since the beginning, was also added as a full time member. Cicada was released in a limited edition pressing in 2004 with fledging label Skybucket Records, then in a standard pressing in 2005. Cicada was the band's first truly independent and mature effort, recorded with no labels or audiences in mind, made purely for themselves and with no expectations of any kind. Pitchfork took notice and gave it a good review. Then a lot of other publications followed suit, including Performing Songwriter, PopMatters, Pop Culture Press, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Splendid Magazine, Skyscraper, SE Performer (cover feature), and many others. Cicada went to radio in early March 2006, and received airplay at over 100 stations nationally, going top 10 at 8 stations, top 30 at 39 stations, and spent 4 weeks on CMJ's Top 200, peaking at number 139. 13ghosts went on their first national tour, in support of Maria Taylor (Saddle Creek, formerly of Azure Ray). It was very successful, and they went back into the studio in June 2006 to begin work on the next recording. They finished it six months later. It is untitled as of yet, and will be released by Skybucket in early 2008.
[edit] Through the Sparks[4]
Through the Sparks was named when Birmingham musicians James Brangle and Jody Nelson began writing and recording with longtime friends and collaborators Nikolaus and Thomas Mimikakis and Greg Slamen in early 2004, but the music had been culminating for years. The band had worked together in full and partial forms with other Birmingham bands, such as Stateside and Cutgrass and as a backing band for other folks for a decade that began . . . in relative childhood.
Nelson, Brangle and the Mimikakis twins taught themselves to play music together in high school, when "Blues Before Sunrise," the Band, the Blue Oyster Cult, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, ELO, Neil Young and Steely Dan were the soundtrack to Canadian whiskey-swilling sing-alongs in the Alabama kitchens of any out-of-town parents with unwarranted confidence in their children's judgment. However, they spent most of their time learning to play instruments rather than falling prey to the perilous Trans-Am revving years of youth (or at least living to tell about them).
Slamen, an oddly familiar face from the guitar stores and record store aisles, became a mainstay in the group early in the college days, when full-time music-making became the norm. Upon the realization that they were sitting on a library of songs and ideas, and with multiple songwriters in the band, Through the Sparks pooled their pile of beat-up pianos and organs, 8-tracks and a Protools rig, and formed Alamalibu Studios, the band's heavily fortified, though often transient, music-making space in Birmingham. The band released an EP titled Coin Toss and a limited edition collection of early recordings, AudioIotas, during the first year and a half of its existence, both released on Skybucket Records. They've recently completed their first full-length release for Skybucket, while playing as many shows as their recording schedule allowed.
Lazarus Beach is due May 1. The album was a year in the making, and hosts many Birmingham guest musicians to round out some of the instruments needed that Through the Sparks either didn't have on hand, or didn't know how to play.
Through the Sparks' upcoming release, "Lazarus Beach" will be their first official full-length recording for Skybucket Records. Release date is May1st, 2007. The collection includes the cream of a twenty-plus song crop, recorded at the band's Alamalibu Studios in the first half of 2006. While hosting several Birmingham guest musicians and utilizing the band's multi-instrumental talents, it keeps Through the Sparks' guitar-and piano-rock format at the forefront.
While there are still the noise and synth-laden marshes, horn and big-harmony choruses and crescendos loom over beds of ukulele, honky-tonk piano, funeral home organ and pedal steel. Of course, there's still a copious amount of gleaming guitars and a few signature triplet beats.
[edit] Taylor and the Puffs
[edit] Wes McDonald [5]
A Birmingham, AL native, Wes McDonald remains a Birmingham resident and operates out of the sleepy town that is rumored to be waking up. In the late nineties, having zero record releases under his belt, McDonald moved from Birmingham to Athens, Ga , where he did a 6 year residency. He released his first solo album, Alarm Clock Recordings, in 2000, and in the process, formed The Ohms with fellow former Tuscaloosa musicians, Jeff Buckley, Mark Evces and South Carolina's Andrew "the Fidldlin' Heatwave" Heaton. The Ohms became a local favorite in Athens, and toured all over the southeast. The Ohms released 2 records, Electrical Resistance and If you don't Think I Love You.
Amidst the success of The Ohms, McDonald continued his solo work, recording two more albums, 2001's Chandelier, and Cutting Up Rocks in 2002. The release of Cuttin' Up Rocks coincided with McDonald's return to Birmingham, the end of the Ohms, and a reunion with his former Birmingham mates from wayback, Matthew Jackson, Drew Davis and Jake Waitzman. This lineup made up the Wes McDonald Plan, and McDonald's venture back into the Birmingham music scene had begun.
Soon after, McDonald released The Guest, on Birmingham-based indie label, Skybucket Records. Touche, a song from this record, earned the opening slot on the Birmingham music scene double-disc compilation, Low Dose Exposure, put together by Skybucket Records chief, Travis Morgan. During this time McDonald and the Plan toured a lot, including a 2005 showcase at SouthbySouthwest. Following The Guest came 2006's1:50 in the Furnace, a tawdry break out rock album produced by Ken Coomer (of Wilco fame) and Charlie Brocco. McDonald would later call this album pivotal, and say that the experience of working with Coomer and Brocco greatly improved his approach to making music. As 1:50 in the Furnace sank in, Wes was busy making an ep with his Alaskan buddy, Terry Ohms. Terry Ohms plays Wes McDonald released in October of 2006, is an 8 song ep that comes out of nowhere and as McDonald puts it " . . . is a taste of much more to come from Terry Ohms.
All this time, McDonald was teaming up with Lester Nuby (Verbena), Jake Waitzman, and Keelan Parrish to form a band. That band is VULTURE WHALE, who's first record is due out in 2007. McDonald says of his new band, " I'm excited about our new record, but I'm totally stoked about the bumper sticker."
