features national scene ELEVEN: I wanted to first ask about the decision to part ways with Capitol Records and not only start your own label, but a multifaceted company that “makes stuff.” Damian Kulash: When we left Capitol Records, we had to quickly decide if we were going to go with another major label, an indie one, or start our own thing. But it was a pretty easy decision to go our own route because most of the problems we had with the label weren’t specific to that particular company. It more had to do with the label system overall. If we wanted to do things like plan tours, release albums, make our videos on our own, and do things like release the app, we needed a “company” for all of these endeavors to fall under. We actually tell other people not to call it a record company because it’s really just the business office of whatever stuff we want to make. We’ve done some traditional things like release records for other bands, produced video content for other people, and stuff like that. . . but I guess in terms of the business entity, it’s there as a matter of convenience and helps us shape whatever ideas we may have by whatever means are necessary. 11: One thing that probably wouldn’t have gone over well at the label was the idea to release an EP that is basically a preview of your upcoming LP.
Ok Go live at The Hawthorne Theatre. Photo by Caitlin M. Webb
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DK: Ha, no. They probably would have just said, “Well how do we make money off of that?” We believe in the record and wanted to go ahead and get it out there. We really love getting things like that out to the fans. 11: Once the decision was made to leave the label, how long did it take you guys to come up with the basis for this new label/business venture? Tim Nordwind: [laughs] Well we were touring the record at the time... DK: Yeah so Capitol had released our album and it had been less than a month when we got them to let us off the label. We basically said to them, “Look, it’s not worth it having these same arguments over and over about how we want the money spent or what we should be doing. If we can’t get on the same page, can we just have our record back?” It was basically the nuclear option, and fortunately they relented and gave us the record back. So we knew right then we had to come up with a company to deal with things like getting the record out into the world. You’d think setting up Amazon and iTunes stores would be easy, but even the smaller steps take time since you have to learn all that on the fly.