Vancouver indie label Mint Records celebrates 15 years without major funding

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This article was published 20/10/2006 (7240 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER (CP) – Bill Baker and Randy Iwata still do most of their own grunt work – designing art work, stuffing merchandise into reused envelopes and promoting bands and projects – without much worry whether their indie label Mint Records will produce a hit.

But after 15 years, almost 100 musical releases, a DVD and a punk-rock calendar, Mint has done just that.

The do-it-yourself operation is arguably one of Canada’s largest 100 per cent independent rock record labels.

Unlike other indie labels, such as Vancouver’s Nettwerk and Toronto’s Arts and Crafts, Mint does not have a distribution deal with a larger record company and is run by only five people, three of them full-time.

Baker said he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m terrified that one day we would wake up in a situation where we’re working on a project that we don’t really like because of the money,” he said.

Baker and Iwata met while working at the University of British Columbia’s radio station.

After five years there, they realized they were too old to still be in college radio but wanted to continue working with independent music.

Their shared love for local punk bands led them to form the label in late August’91 and with $6,000 borrowed from their parents, they released their first album. It was a seven-inch record featuring several Vancouver bands covering songs by industrial rock band Ministry.

“It was a completely over the top, conceptual release,” said Baker.

Mint hasn’t stopped putting out bizarre projects. Recent examples are a CD featuring French versions of songs by the band Immaculate Machines and a 40-page punk rock calendar.

The calendar was conceived by musician and guerrilla journalist Nardwuar the Human Serviette, who has released several albums on Mint. He said such an ambitious, expensive and random project would never have gotten off the ground at a major label. Especially when it comes to promotion.

“A lot of record companies are like, ‘OK, you have 100 (promotional copies) allotted, where do you want them to go?’ ” but with Mint Records, the artist gets to decide how many and where, he said.

Mint’s can support its artists because of the success of its more popular acts.

Although the majority of the musicians on the label are B.C.-based Canadians, Mint’s biggest success has come from American Neko Case. Mint has released all of her albums, which have sold approximately 400,000 copies worldwide.

The popular singer-songwriter, who attended art school in Vancouver, got her musical start on Mint as a drummer for punk bands Cub and Maow.

Baker recalls being taken aback by her booming voice and knew Case had something unique. He encouraged her to do more singing but she was hesitant, saying it was difficult to do so while behind a drum kit.

In’96, Case approached Mint about putting out a country-inspired album.

“It was one of those great moments where you get what you wished for,” said Baker. “There wouldn’t have been a way we could have asked her or pressured her into (singing) since she was (already) in a band.”

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Mint organized a country-wide tour that winds down this weekend in Vancouver. The tour’s headlining act, the New Pornographers, is the label’s second best-selling act.

Frontman Carl Newman said Mint’s success can be attributed to its commitment to its artists, who are often also friends.

“Mint will do things that are a total labour of love and they don’t care whether it’s going to sell,” he said.

Co-founder Baker said the obvious downfall of producing artistic projects over ones that could be commercially successful is the lack of revenue it produces.

“If Randy and I had put the amount of energy into an actual job of some kind that we have into this label, I’m sure we would both be enormously wealthy,” he said. “If your goal is to just become as rich as possible playing music. . . then Mint is not where you want to be.”

Several large labels have asked to partner with Mint but Iwata and Baker have turned them all down.

“Nothing that was ever offered to us was ever remotely appealing to the degree that we’d even consider throwing away essentially everything that we’d ever worked for,” he said.

Baker said he can’t predict how long Mint will be around. With the popularity and growth of online music, he said it’s hard to know what will become of record labels in general.

However, he vowed to continue signing, promoting and producing projects until he and Iwata become so “old and out of touch that we just can’t understand what kids are hip to.”

“To our great pleasure, some of our most successful artists at the moment are roughly close to our age,” Baker said. “We’ve grown with them, they’ve grown with us and that’s been a pretty lucky break.”