RidingEasy Records Founder Daniel Hall Talks About The Benefits Of Streaming, Discovering Incredible Unknown Bands, And Why Young Artists Need To Cozy Up With Professionals
RidingEasy Records, based in Southern California, specializes in the heavy, proto-metal sounds that dominated the post-hippy/pre-punk era. Classic bands like Budgie, Buffalo, and Sir Lord Baltimore would have felt right at home. But that doesn’t make the label throwback or retro. Despite that aesthetic, it features a roster of contemporary artists like Blackwater Holylight, Warish, and Monolord, and pushes the envelope with bands like the afrobeat-meets-Sabbath juggernaut, Here Lies Man. Daniel Hall, a music industry insider and long-time vinyl collector, founded the label almost on a whim, when he discovered the then-unknown Swedish band, Salem’s Pot, and collaborated with them on a vinyl release of their first album.
Since then, Hall has signed over two dozen bands, released exclusive, cassette-only reissues of classic metal albums from the Nuclear Blast and Earache catalogs, and launched—in collaboration with Lance Barresi, from Permanent Records in Los Angeles—the Brown Acid series, a 10-volume-and-growing compilation series of virtually unknown gems from incredible, ‘70s-era, heavy bands that never managed to get signed.
Hall started the label in 2013, under the original moniker of Easy Rider Records—adapted from the deep Hendrix cut, “Ezy Rider”—until the motorcycle magazine, Easy Riders, opted to enforce their trademark.
“They stuck their lawyers on me and we came to an agreement,” Hall says. “It was very amicable. They took care of what I spent out of pocket—which wasn’t much money, it was about $500—and they said, ‘Change your name, change your logo, and it can’t be called Easy Rider.’ I said, ‘Can it be called Riding Easy?’ They said that that was totally cool. We signed pieces of paper that they would never bother me again, and that’s how that went down. The best part was, nobody gave a shit.”
Hall knows his business, and we had a great talk discussing the label’s founding, his embrace of streaming, launching the Brown Acid series, and why, if a band wants to be successful, they’re better off signing a deal and working with professionals.
What’s your background?
I was born and raised in Southern California—I was born right outside of Pasadena—I am 43 years old, and I was a fan of music from a very young age. My mom had me when she was 19. Growing up, I was in the house with her five brothers—who are more like older brothers than uncles to me—and three of the five of them played instruments. In high school, I was already promoting backyard parties and stuff, and then sneaking onto college campuses and seeing shows. Claremont Colleges was about a 15 minute car ride from where I lived. Claremont Colleges is a private school, and they had budgets, and brought in so many sick bands. That’s where I met older kids who were already doing internships, and at 16, I made up my mind that I was going to work for Rick Rubin. At 17, I lied about my age, and in 1994 I got an internship at American Recordings [Rubin’s label, founded in 1988 and originally called, Def American]. That is where it seriously started. I was awakened to how the music business works, things not to do, things to do, and that whet my appetite for a lot of different things. At the same time, I had been growing my record collection to obscene levels, and especially in the last half of the ‘90s, when the CD was king. LPs that were worth a lot of money were literally showing up in trash cans. It was the golden age. Vinyl wasn’t cool, but I was really into it, and it got to a point where I had so many records I had to get two turntables to keep the party going. I got good at DJ-ing and one thing led to the next, and I was doing a lot of that.
Where did you go to college?
I went to Cal State Northridge. There were two reasons I went to college: I had to check it off for mom and dad, but the real reason was that it qualified me to continue to do internships at bigger companies, because they’re not going to take a kid off the street.
Did you continue to DJ, too?
Yes, and because of my DJ work, I was getting hired for a lot of corporate events. That led to meeting heads of marketing, who needed consultants on investing money on music. That consulting turned into me freelancing for a company called Beyond Marketing, which was a company out of Irvine California, and they were the agency of record for all things creative for the car brand, Scion. From 2008 to 2015, I oversaw Scion’s music program. Riding Easy Records launched in 2013. There was a lot of stuff coming across my desk that I couldn’t work with on my day job. It was either too small, or the content was not something a major corporation would sign off on. As things wound down, the last thing I got pushed through was the Slayer car. I got Toyota to build a custom car with a pentagram on the hood, and I am very proud of that.
If you do nothing else, you’ve already achieved all.
I can die happy.
The first RidingEasy release was in 2013. Was that Salem’s Pot?
That is correct. I met them on the internet. They had 63 fans on Facebook. They had just put out a demo. I hit them up and asked where I could buy an LP. They said, “We can’t afford that, but we’re going to put a tape out and we’ll let you know.” When the tape went on sale, they told me, and I bought one the next day. I also sent the link to a friend of mine. He went there about two hours later, and all the tapes were sold out. I thought that was a mistake. I wrote them, and told them my buddy was trying to buy their tape, and that their site was broken. They said, “No, they all sold out. We don’t know how that happened.” That’s when a lightbulb went off in my head. I thought, “If they can sell 100 tapes that quickly, we should be able to sell a couple hundred records.” That was my thinking. I said to them, “You don’t have anyone to put your record out, and I don’t have a label, but this is what I do for a living, so why not?” We pressed 250 records. I sold 200, 50 went to the band, and all 250 sold out in the first three days.
Where were you selling them?
Instagram direct to my website. No distributer. Bang. Here you go. It was fucking incredible. The next thing I did was cassette-only releases. I used my relationships from all the money I was handing out on behalf of Scion to help get things done, too. I wasn’t bastardizing those relationships. I didn’t say, “I am going to give you money, and you’re going to do this for RidingEasy.” It was stuff that was going on from way before. But when I launched RidingEasy, a lot of people I was currently already working with—from all these different record labels—thought it was a genuinely cool thing. I asked them if I could release cassettes of some releases that made sense. Nuclear Blast opened their doors to me—they told me I could put out anything I wanted that was on tape—and I put out the Graveyard, Witchcraft, and Kadaver records.
Those were cassette releases.
Just cassette, not vinyl. But the way I looked at it was that this makes me look cool. I put out these albums that people know about—and Nuclear Blast wasn’t doing cassettes. Then I called up Earache, and they let me do Sleep’s Holy Mountain, which made a lot of noise. I wanted to create something that stood for something. My favorite label growing up in the ‘90s was Man’s Ruin Records, because of graphic artist Frank Kozik, and his visionary thing. I also had a lot of respect for Sub Pop—not that I liked the music that much—but I knew what it meant when somebody walked down the street and they had a Sub Pop shirt on. I wanted the same thing for RidingEasy. I wanted an identifiable brand. I figured, if I can start a company where we are doing a moderate amount of numbers, that will give me access to an audience that will probably support merchandise like t-shirts, patches, and other stuff, and even though you’ve never heard of any of my bands before, I could probably make a living out of this. I took a very micro-economic approach: if I can get 5,000 people to spend $100 a year with me, I’ll be set. When you look at it, I had 9,000 Instagram followers, I just had to convert them. When I looked at it in those terms, it became very manageable. I saw a pathway to get 5,000 people to spend $100 a year, and that’s how I approached it.
Did you quit your job and start doing RidingEasy full time in 2015?
Yeah, in 2015 I was done with Scion. They had been changing some things around anyway, but the label was profitable within 18 months, where I could quit my job. I didn’t have any seed money. I didn’t even spend any of my own money. It was all launched on pre-sale.
There was that much interest?
I put up Salem’s Pot and all the copies sold in the first three days. They were pre-sold out, we ordered a second pressing before the first pressing even arrived. There wasn’t anything that I lost money on for the first 23 releases. They all made money. So dude, if I have a zinger one in every 23, I can live with that.
How big is your team these days?
Just me. My wife helps out, and Dave Clifford obviously, our PR person, but most PR is outsourced anyway. I have one other person who does video edits and stuff like that, and he manages our YouTube channel. But yeah, the same guy who posts on Instagram is the same guy taking the trash out, and he’s also the same guy talking bands through process. It’s very DIY. It runs out of my house.
Are all your titles available for streaming?
Oh yeah, 100 percent, every single one. We’re even on TikTok. Wherever music is made available for streaming, I am a huge proponent of that. I just had this conversation with a band recently. They said, “We don’t want to be on Spotify, because you don’t make any money.” I said, “How much money are you making right now?” They said, “None.” I said, “Then what’s the problem?” I know there’s a lot of hate towards the CEO, Daniel Ek, but at the same time, don’t be mad at him. This is the consumer saying, “This is what we’re willing to pay for. We’re not paying for anything more. If it’s more than 10 bucks a month, we don’t want it.” That’s what mass market says. Fortunately, I don’t market to mass market. I market to a micro market. Again, give me 5,000 or 10,000 people who are going to keep coming back. I don’t give a fuck about the rest. I don’t need to sell 200,000 records to be happy. If we sell 5,000 records, we’re killing it. It’s great.
Does streaming drive sales or is it a completely different audience?
Here’s what I think streaming does, streaming adds awareness. It’s really easy to listen to streaming anywhere on the planet. It doesn’t matter if you’re in your car, or at the beach, or at your friends house, or wherever. You’ve got all your music with you all the time. What you don’t have with you all the time is access to your record player or your records. It’s hard to spread the word if all you do is exist on physical. At this point, physical is packaging with a soundtrack. That’s what you’re selling, because if it was just about the music, they would be fine with Spotify. They want the whole thing. They want the package.
Like the gatefold, the artwork, the big slab of vinyl.
That’s exactly right, it’s the whole experience. It’s not about the music, it’s about the packaging. That’s the reason why, with RidingEasy, I play a very heavy role with the art direction. I do that because it’s my brand, but also because we need to make sure that it’s something that somebody can’t live without. Even if it’s a record that they’re ho-hum about, if the album art work is killer, they’ll still buy it. I know that, because I am one of those people.
What’s the story with the Brown Acid series? How do you find the songs you want to release, and how do you get your hands on the masters?
Lance Barresi, from Permanent Records here in LA, and I have been friends for a long time. The record store moved here in 2010 or 2011, so they were fairly new when I started the label. Lance has multiple copies of extremely rare seven-inches—and they’re mint, brand new, haven’t even been used—he’s been tracking these guys down, buying originals, and asking them if they’ve got shit in their garage they want to sell. I said, “If you know how to get ahold of all these guys, I’ll deal with the other stuff—I already have my distribution in place—and let’s start doing compilations.” He gave me a list of 30 people he knew, who he got records from in the last year, who are still alive. I wrote the form letter for him. It is a single, one page contract. It’s super easy, and there are no frills about it. It’s basically somebody saying, “Yes, you can use my song and I know that I am going to get a statement every six months for a royalty.” And as an aside, we’ve never missed royalty for anybody.
Do you get your hands on the masters? What are you making the compilation from?
Some people have masters. Some people don’t even have a copy of the 45, but Lance does. We don’t go to a studio. We do them here at the house. I’ve got all the shit to do it, this is old hat from my DJ days. But I don’t master it here, I have someone who’s a professional mastering guy. He restores old recordings as well, that’s his gig. He goes through it, and cleans up the pops. Fortunately, because we're going direct to the source, most of those guys do have an extremely clean copy of their record. For most of these guys, it was the first thing they ever did.
Most of them are probably not in music anymore.
Hell no. None of these bands took off. If they did, we wouldn’t be able to afford to get them. That’s the whole point. Think about it, the only reason we know about all the bands we know about now, the only reason they have a fighting chance, is because of the internet. But pre-internet, unless you had legitimate funding and a record label behind you, nobody knew who you were. These bands on Brown Acid, they made their seven-inch in order to get a record deal. They pressed 300 copies, and sent them off to the record men. Most of these bands are regional, never got out of a 200 mile radius of their hometown, and then Billy Bob gets drafted, goes to Vietnam, gets his leg blown off, and the party’s over. But fortunately for us, most of these bands, for the most part, have at least one living member. We contacted all of them. The conversations that I have to go through, you have no idea… [laughs]
You just released volume 10. How many more do you have in the can?
We’re halfway through. We’re sitting on at least another 10 volumes. It’s great stuff, too, and that’s the best part about it. Not every song is going to be exceptional, but I think there should be at least three or four exceptional songs on every volume, where it’s undeniable that that song’s a banger. If you like classic rock in any form, you should be able to listen to three or four of the songs on any Brown Acid release and like it. There was more to heavy rock in the ‘70s than Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, and that really means something. I love those bands, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still mind blowing to me, even this far down the line, that we continue to find things that you think, “Holy shit. How have we not heard this before?” What’s crazy is that even heavy duty cats, people who pride themselves on being rock ’n’ roll encyclopedias, consistently tell me they have only heard one song out of these 10 on a given compilation. They’re still blown away that there are new things coming out—even in 2020—that were released 50 years ago, that nobody has heard before.
Switching gears, how do you find new artists?
It’s like a relationship. I feel that if you go looking for a wife, you’re never going to find one. The best thing you can do is keep your eyes open, don’t be too thirsty, be attentive. You don’t have to open every single door, but there are certain doors that may look more attractive than others. But there is no rhyme or reason to a lot of it. I’ve signed bands from clips that I saw on Snapchat. That’s how I found Svvamp from Sweden. I used to not think that live played as big of a role in things, but it does to a degree depending on what the band wants to do. Though I’ve never put a record out because the band was great live but the record was so-so. To me, since I am a record company, if somebody makes a good record—and it’s a good record—I don’t give a shit if they can play live or not. That’s not really my business. I don’t sell live shows. I sell albums. If I think about it, most people will never see the bands that I put out on this label live.
Why not?
There are a lot of people who live in parts of the world our bands never tour to. Our biggest—our third most listened region in the world—is Brazil, and it is hard to go to Brazil to tour and break even, let alone make money.
What do you look for?
I look for something that I think is a great record, and then I talk to the people and see if we’re going to jive. You’re going to have a pretty close, intimate relationship with these people, and there has to be an element of trust. If people are constantly questioning what I am saying, then dude, why are we working together? I am not going to tell you what strings to use or how to tune your guitar, but when it comes to me breaking your band, I am going to come up with a plan, and you guys are going to follow that plan, and it’s going to work. And the ones that do, it works, and the ones that push back and the plan gets diluted, it doesn’t work. Sometimes I get a random email that I happen to open and think is great. Blackwater Holylight was one of those. The universe is going to deliver what the universe is going to deliver, and that’s what I mean, you don’t go looking for a wife. You keep your eyes open, and the right one hopefully walks through the door one time. I feel like when you go out and look, you just look thirsty, and that’s not what this is about.
Why would a young band want to be on a label? What does the label provide that they can’t do themselves?
I think there are a few things. Guidance throughout your musical career is very important, and there are a lot of people who give advice that makes zero cents. These self-proclaimed internet industry talking heads who go on Instagram with a cigar in their mouth and start spouting off all this stuff. It is the blind leading the blind. I think there is a lot of shadiness that happens within music, and usually the shady shit happens with people who aren’t as successful, because they need to figure you how to make their money somehow. I tell bands, there is nothing that I can do for you that you can’t do yourself, but what I bring to the table, is I fast track you. I’ve already figured out all the shit that you’re going to take years to figure out. On top of that, you can be as big of a Bandcamp sensation as you want, but if you want to roll with the big boys, you have to be distributed in key record stores. You need to be in Amoeba, and places like that. We’ve all heard bands and think, “That band is amazing. I can’t believe they’re not bigger.” But then you see another band, and they’re not that amazing, yet they’re way bigger. The difference is one of them had a good team and one of them didn’t. If you think you’re amazing, and you have a legitimate shot at being a professional, you can’t do it alone. If you don’t get involved with professionals early enough on, you may make a mistake that turns somebody off who could help you down the line, because you didn’t know what you were doing. And that’s it. The door is shut, and you’re old news. If you want to be professional, you work with professionals. If you want to be DIY, then do it yourself, and that’s cool.