David Penn Solender
Next year David Penn Solender will be enrolled in Southern New Hampshire University's business program; for the past year and a half, however, Solender has been managing his own business, the small record label John Wilkes Booth Records (JWB), which he began in 2008 with his then-business partner, Nick Moulten.
Last year, Solender was trapped in Savannah, Georgia after his parents relocated, and he began the label because he "wasn't in a band at the time and was feeling cut off from the greater punk music scene." When Solender left Manchester, New Hampshire the band IAMJAPAN in which he played was effectually dissolved, and with little access to the music he loves in Savannah, beginning the label was a therapeutic decision. With Moulten in Manchester, Solender was able to coordinate with the Portsmouth band, Billy Raygun, whose album was JWB's first release in February 2009.
Just before JWB's second release in July for the band What Happened?, Moulten quit doing the label actively, but still contributes artwork and assists in other ways when needed. Solender was left traversing the hard plains of DIY business on his own. The difficulty, he says, is not so much in getting records made, but "making sure people know the record exists." Solender admits, "I'm not a master at promoting stuff like this, because it's something I struggle with each time I release a record", but he tries to "trade/wholesale [his] records to other labels, distros, and record stores in an attempt to make albums he releases more available. The Internet is a helpful tool as social networks like Myspace and Facebook, or forums like the Pop Punk Bored, provide places to post bulletins, and Solender also sends his records to be reviewed by "various zines like Razorcake, Maximumrocknroll, and Jersey Beat."
In terms of Solender's aesthetic goals for the label, he primarily aims to release vinyl records, as he is a self-described "vinyl nerd", and he also focuses on releasing pop punk albums. The upcoming release I'll Leave this Behind by Blockhead "may or may not be described as pop punk, depending on who you're asking", but Solender says it exemplifies the sort of music he set out to release when he began the label. He adds, "I certainly am not opposed to releasing records that fall outside of the genre of pop punk, but you won't find any metal or grindcore on John Wilkes Booth."
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