The Record Company: Roll With It

The Record Company needed some good news. The Los Angeles blues-rock trio had been caught in a bit of a tailspin while trying to adjust to the new normal of the post-pandemic music industry. Piling up on one side was an abundant supply of bands competing for audiences, and on the other, an even greater demand—and cost—for the necessities of the road. The Record Company were going broke just trying to survive.  

While hoping to promote their third album, 2021’s Play Loud—a record that shifted away from their roots and expanded their live ensemble to a quintet— their tour was canceled due to low ticket sales. “I saw the business around us crumbling. I saw touring starting to crumble,” bassist Alex Stiff says. “I saw the prices of tour buses doubling.”

Then, in December of 2022—a week shy of the Christmas holiday—their label, Concord Records, called to say they were rejecting their fourth album and dropping the band. Just like that, The Record Company, a Grammy-nominated group owning two No. 1 singles, widespread critical praise and a devoted, passionate fan base, no longer had a record deal.

“We got dropped by a label. That is, by far, not the worst thing on Earth. There’s a lot bigger stuff going on. And I respect the decision. I respect the honesty,” says singer and guitarist Chris Vos. “It’s up to the artist to decide what to do. Are you going to let it defeat you or are you going to dig in?” The Record Company dug in and, with a return to their origins, delivered a vindicating release, simply titled, The 4^th Album.

Even before parting ways with Concord, there had been days of reckoning for The Record Company. This was a band formed, driven and held together for over a decade by an ethos of democratic unanimity. Responsibility and accountability, success and failure—they divided and shared it all equally. With that philosophy fraying, Vos, Stiff and drummer Marc Cazorla gathered to clear the air.

“If you don’t clean out the pantry, stuff can get stinky in there,” Vos says. “We’re a family. We love each other. But there was a tough start to that meeting. We got into it about a lot of things.”

By the end, it was bear hugs all around and a renewal of purpose. Their songwriting reflected the sentiment, with Vos and Stiff channeling recent struggles and pain into narratives for new material. The musicians also wanted to return to the simplicity of a trio, stripping their arrangements down to the basics. They empowered Stiff as producer, and set up shop in the living room of his Beachwood Canyon residence, similar to the homegrown recording they’d done on the first two albums.

“We still love drums, bass and guitar,” Cazorla says. “That’s what draws us to what we do.”

Yet, the demos they made, liked and had been submitting to Concord for a potential fourth album were met with conspicuous silence for months. When the end of that tenure came, the three still believed they had something great. “That just fired up our engines,” Vos says of the split.

Their prior, and final, release with Concord, Play Loud, was perhaps their most ambitious statement of growth and experimentation—working in a top-line studio with an outside producer—but the band admits it was also an ill-timed left turn. “I think, collectively, we thought, ‘OK, we’ve done that,’” says Stiff.

Adds Vos, “It was beautiful and we loved it, but you’ve got to come home.”

***

Home is more than just a metaphor for Vos. In conversation, the son of a dairy farmer refers often to the lessons he learned in the Wisconsin dirt. He carries a heartland humility, is rarely spotted without his black hat pulled down tight to his eyebrows and speaks in a jovial Midwest tongue, routinely tossing in quotes from Bruce Springsteen, Ry Cooder and Steven Spielberg.

Vos doesn’t try to spin the reality of canceled tours and precarious finances. He says all the details of their early success— from top chart positions to social media campaigns and tour logistics—elevated their egos and clouded their original mission as artists. It’s all the more reason for the three to embrace the truth.

“We work from a very honest place. It’s exciting, and it wakes up your soul and senses when you know you’re digging into those deeper places,” Vos says. “And, really, it was Alex’s creativity that inspired me. He was writing from a really soulful place.”

For Stiff, songwriting has always been a workman’s craft—every day, 7 a.m., coffee and the notebook. When the words weren’t flowing, he chipped away at the block with beats or riffs and scrolled his phone for random notes he’d kept over the years. He, too, wanted to get back to the bare bones, especially for the home recording sessions.

“I modeled the production style off of the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty, in that you can hear that they rock, you can hear an acoustic side and you can hear a songwriting aspect,” Stiff says. “I want that music to pop out of the speakers as the guys pour out their hearts and souls.”

It was that raw, unvarnished approach—the pouring out of hearts and souls—that attracted the trio to the blues, back before they were ever a band. They bonded early on over an album John Lee Hooker made with Canned Heat, chasing that spirit during hundreds of living room jams. A dozen years later, they once again realized that the blues was the antidote they needed.

“The form of the blues is about finding a common celebration through pain,” Stiff says. “It had to be this personal. It was the only way to go.”

Stiff tracked the band at his house, compiling over a dozen songs for consideration. While he captured the visceral emotion and spontaneity they were looking for, Stiff thought recutting some of Cazorla’s drums in a proper studio would be better sonically. Tapes in hand, they relocated to the famed Sunset Sound, where no less than The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney once knocked out legendary recordings. They also reunited with engineer Clay Blair, who has an ear for vintage drum kits.

“The whole philosophy was to get back in the living room and do it the way we used to do it,” Cazorla says. “But then there was this feeling that we think we can beat this drum sound or at least try. With Clay, he’s an OG guy. He loves what we love. The kit this time was a 1960s Ludwig. And Sunset Sound is such a classic place. There’s something in the walls there.”

It’s natural to assume that the split with Concord was a motivating catalyst, lyrically, for some of the new repertoire. In truth, the band wrote most of the album prior to that dark December day. Two songs that emerged in the aftermath, though, suggest that The Record Company was ready to move on, but not forget.

***

At sunset, Stiff summoned up a new bass riff for “Roll With It,” a song that hadn’t yet coalesced the way they’d wanted. Cazorla and Vos fell into a jumping rockabilly groove behind him, and the live jam became the keeper.  

The verses read like an autobiography of the band, straight from Stiff’s collection of cellphone notes. Vos belts out, “You made it once/ Can you do it again?/ Now, they pay you to get another win/ Find inspiration out of the sky/ They’ll bring you back down if you don’t get it right.” with Stiff and Cazorla charging in stride.

“That’s the song that took two years to write in an hour,” says Stiff. “Life gets everybody down, but you’ve got to roll with it.”

The pandemic was hard on the trio. Working together in close proximity had been a pillar of the band’s creative process. Zoom sessions were never a worthy substitute.

Yet, the three remained optimistic. The Play Loud single, “How High,” hit No. 3 on the charts, and found its way onto NFL broadcasts, including the Super Bowl. Yet, when the tour faltered, anxiety and doubt crept in, particularly for Cazorla.

“For a little bit there—especially when you’re stuck at home for two years because of COVID and then you get back out and see how weird it is, with people not showing up for a second—I started thinking, are we going to be another one of those bands that was around for a little while, and people liked them, and then they say, ‘What the hell happened to those guys? Where are they?’ the drummer says. “As a unified front, we said, it’s going to take a lot more than this to get us out of the game.”

To be clear, The Record Company is still not exactly sure what happened to their relationship with Concord. They note that executives who championed the group early on had left the label or had moved to new positions within the organization. “There was a feeling of not knowing who at the label we could even call,” Stiff says. “It’s hard to be angry when you don’t know the exact details.”

And while they insist there’s no bad blood, it’s easy to hear a pretty pointed message in Vos’ “You Made a Mistake,” another post-split song. “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have something to do with the label. If you pass on me, I’m going to keep going. So I hope you pass on me, wanting to watch me keep going,” Vos says. “Sometimes you have to have that self-assuredness in this business or in life.”

Even amid all of The Record Company’s existential questions and rallying-cry responses, they kept a sense of humor. The project’s title, The 4^th Album, is born from the same notion as the band’s name—so obvious, it’s funny. And, for sure, the music still shouts, still grooves, and still gets up and gets down.

“It feels like we’re blazing our own path again,” Stiff says. “We were able to keep what some would consider a mistake in the playing because the feeling is there. That kind of thing is what got us turned on in the first place. I think that naked imperfection is what people responded to. It made them say, ‘This is going to be a fun listen.’”

On the cover is a glistening, metalwork band logo—created and donated by a fan in St. Louis—resting against a black background. It’s symbolic not only of their return to a simpler approach, but also to the three musicians’ connection to their fans, who they respect and protect. Stiff recalls a particular meeting at a Stubb’s Bar-B-Q gig in Austin.

“For me, when someone tells you in a restroom in Texas that your song did something emotionally for them—got them out of a jam or a troubled time—that is the best success,” Stiff says. “I hope every song on this album reaches people in that kind of deep way.”

For The 4^th Album, the band signed a deal with Round Hill Records. The indie label released the LP without a single change—a freedom the trio recognizes as not only refreshing, but also essential. What began with three friends jamming in a living room has come full circle.

“The task at hand is carving out your own little world in the bigger world. This is who we are and what we enjoy,” says Cazorla.

Vos opens the album with the ad-libbed declaration, “I ain’t never giving up.” Every waking minute of the day, he says, he’s grateful he gets to do this for a living. For a last word, his thoughts go back home to the Wisconsin farm.

“You want to know what grows things better than anything? The combination of dirt and crap. Whatever happened to you was probably pretty crappy—a tough situation,” Vos says. “Throw a seed in the middle of it and watch it grow. Put something healthy in it and watch what happens.”