In addition to holding it down as a freelance publicist—after a ten year tenure at Earache Records—Curran Reynolds keeps things busy in the NYC as drummer for the acclaimed underground acts Wetnurse and Today Is the Day. This is in addition to overseeing his weekly Precious Metal series of gigs held at the city’s LIT venue every Monday night. Needless to say, Reynolds is a busy man with a lot of wisdom to impart to those willing to listen. Cape Cod Rock phoned Curran one Wednesday afternoon to talk shop about his bands, projects, working public relations and changing times within ‘the industry.’
CCR: So was Earache your first gig? Where were you before that, and how do you remember your beginnings in the business?
CURRAN REYNOLDS: Well, I started playing drums when I was ten. I started playing in bands, and I think the first show I ever organized was a sixth grade talent show where I played a drum solo…and got last place! (laughs) I was just really obsessed with music. I was into Pink Floyd, Metallica, The Who and then I moved into Jane’s Addiction, hardcore and back into metal. Around ’93 or ’94 there was a lot of hardcore going around in Maine, imitating most of what was going on in Boston and New York. With that going on, there were a lot of kids putting on shows out there in the Maine woods, in whatever spaces we could at the time.
When I was seventeen, I left Maine to go to college in New York, and I’ve been there ever since! The job at Earache was my first real job like that, and I got lucky. I just saw an ad in the paper. That just goes to show you how things have changed. It wasn’t online, and it wasn’t via a reference from anyone I knew; I literally just picked up the Village Voice and answered a classified ad which said, ‘indie metal label seeks publicist.’
I thought, ‘well, I love metal. I know how to write. This could be a good job for me!’ I was working in a record store at the time, and I wanted to get out of there, so I replied to the ad and got the job. This was in the Summer of 2000, and I was a publicist there up until 2005.
Were you nervous at all leaving Earache and starting your own thing?
I’d been there five years, and I learned so much. I have so much gratitude to Al Dawson and everyone there for everything, but it was five years, and I felt it was time to move on to something else. Part of it was that I was playing in my band Wetnurse, and we wanted to do bigger stuff, like going on tour. So I wanted to leave the nine-to-five thing behind, and be free tour.
Being there for five years, I felt that I had learned a lot about doing publicity, and that I could do this on my own. I met a lot of people through Earache and from playing with Wetnurse, so the idea formulated that maybe I could do this stuff on my own, instead of working for just one label. It was definitely a leap of faith. I had nothing really lined up when I decided to leave Earache, but sure enough it worked out.
Did it help having contacts and writers who worked with you during the Earache years, and just continued on doing so after the move?
Yeah, I didn’t know how it would work out, but it did. People like yourself, I’m still in contact with—at this point it’s ten years, right?—and you’re still around today, and that’s awesome. There are still people around who I met when I started at Earache, and there’s also people I work with who weren’t around back then, but it’s all cool, man. It’s always changing, and there’s always new people coming into it."
"The cool thing about doing PR is talking to people from all over the country and the world. All of these different perspective and ages—I’m thirty-three—and it’s a cool way to get in touch with all of these different people."
Given that you and I have seen how the nature of the promotional beast has changed over time, I was wondering your thoughts on all of this, from sending out tons of individually packaged promotional cardboard slipcase discs to sending out digital copy?
I like the fact nowadays that I can deliver music to people so fast, so cheaply and without any waste. I can remember in the early days of Earache doing some really big mailings, with a lot of packaging. It’s a lot of waste and time spent stuffing envelopes and sending stuff out. It’s a crazy process which takes a lot of time and money, and that’s in addition to the wait of people actually receiving their stuff, or it being lost in the mail. The way things are now is much more efficient. As a music fan, however, I value tangible objects, because that’s the way it was when I first was getting into music. It was all about saving money, deciding what you were gonna buy and getting excited for new releases coming out.
Coming home with that object—in my day it was cassettes—I would take it home and just obsess on it for months. I would have one to three albums which were all I wanted to listen to for months at a time. It’s very different from what’s going on now, with this oversaturation of new music and information all at your fingertips. If gives you a different relationship to the music than when we had getting into this stuff.
What’s the most challenging aspect of doing PR for you?
Well, I’m only going to sign on to represent bands I truly like. I think that’s really important, because I need to be known as someone who represents stuff in which he truly believes. It’s part of being legit, and the main challenge is a) I need to pay the bills, but b)
"I’m never going to sign with someone in whose work I don’t believe. I gotta say that I’m proud of what I’ve done over the last five years."
I have an amazing roster of bands, and I’ve got to work with a lot of amazing people. I’ve been lucky, and there’s nothing I look back on in regret at having represented. That’s so important to me, because otherwise why do it at all?
Are you excited to be working with Kemado and Metalsucks.net in 2011?
Hell yeah. Both are labels with unique visions, trying to respond to the reality of what’s going on in the music industry right now, while putting out cool stuff. Kemado is looking to put out mostly vinyl and digital releasing, with no CDs for now, while Metalsucks will be mostly digital with perhaps limited CDs. Both are forward-thinking groups of people, and it’s exciting to be working with them.
Speaking of Metalsucks, what are your thoughts on these handfuls of sites—and endless smaller blogs—who have stepped up to become these massive voices in the scene with dwindling print magazines around, for better or worse? How do you think this differs from the cut-and-paste zine culture of our day?
Again, as an older person, I have a great appreciation for tangible things. I still feel there’s room for certain print magazines to survive. I think Decibel is doing quite well, and I think quality will rise above, although there HAVE been some quality magazines which have closed, like Metal Maniacs, and that doesn’t seem fair to me.
"If you do have a real quality product in print, however, I think there’s room for it, despite the fact that internet has taken over. It’s instantaneous and irresistible with a lot of power behind it."
As a reaction to that, though, older people like myself still have a great interest in print. It’s similar to the resurgence of vinyl; it’s a reaction to the fact that downloading has become so prevalent. I just think you have to make print look cooler than ever and more substantial than ever.
How did the idea of doing your weekly Precious Metal series of shows in NYC come about?
I started Precious Metal about five years ago in 2006. There’s a bar in Manhattan called Lit, which is a few blocks from me, and I’ve always known this place to be awesome ever since it first opened. I had the girl subletting a room in my apartment, who was a bartender at this place, and she told me she was doing a metal night. Now, her thing was more of a Def Leppard, Guns ‘n Roses kind of vibe, and she asked me to guest DJ, so I did, playing the more extreme stuff I enjoyed. A few weeks go by, and she ended up handing the whole thing over to me, which resulted in me turning it into what Precious Metal is now, which is a weekly thing every Monday with live bands and guest DJs. It’s no longer a Def Leppard thing; it’s a weekly series of shows with our fifth anniversary coming up in May!
How has the city welcomed and responded to Wetnurse? How’s that going?
It’s been cool, man. We’ve been a band for ten years, so we’ve seen things come and go. There’s a lot of support coming from New York right now—I think more than ever. Metalsucks just put out the NYC Sucks comp, and it’s just killer with a lot of great bands; I think testament to all the great stuff going on over here in NYC. Wetnurse has been a little out of the public eye over the past two years, but we’ve been doing a lot of writing getting our next record together, which should happen later this year.
How did you end up joining Today Is the Today?
I’ve been a fan since 1995, and I met Steve Austin in 2006 officially, and became his publicist for the Axis of Eden album. I really got to know him well, and it was a dream come true. I got a call from him about a year ago, and he asked me to be his drummer out of the blue. We’re recording a new record in March with Kurt Ballou at Godcity, and then going out on tour. I can’t wait! I’ve hardly ever been to Europe, let alone play music there!
What’s next, then? Would you ever want to start your own label, perhaps?
Right now, I’ve got a lot on my plate with Today is the Day and Wetnurse, and a lot of cool PR clients, including Black Market Activities, Kemado, Metalsucks and Vitriol Records, so right now I’m just focusing on the stuff I have going on!
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