We Are Busy Bodies: How Eric Warner Built The Label You Wish Was Yours
Posted February 12, 2010 3:25 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The accomplishments of Eric Warner and We Are Busy Bodies – the record label and management company he officially launched five years ago – are enough to make any credibility-starved music industry wannabe drool uncontrollably.
Releases from Japanther, DD/MM/YYYY, The Death Set, Cuff The Duke, Meligrove Band, METZ, By Divine Right and several others not to mention booking early Canadian forays for everyone from Grizzly Bear and Matt & Kim to Dirty Projectors (seems like Warner had a hand in the whole Brooklyn surge) his catalogue sheet reads like a who’s who of the art rock underworld.
Watch Eric and some of his bands speak/play for themselves!
But Warner, who at 26 estimates he’s personally booked about 80 tours and released 20 records (with five more to come in 2010), acts like anything but an indie-ustry snob.
Instead he’s extremely soft-spoken and down to earth, always eager to discuss his passion for music, if a little shy when it comes to letting it seem like more than it is.
“I only put out records for my friends,” Warner tells me one Saturday afternoon at The Garrison.
White vinyl for dd/mm/yyyy’s Black Square
“It’s not as if bands send me demos and have me put out records for them … I’m going to put something out because I want to put it out.”
But wait. Warner’s efforts are hardly as self-serving as that quotation might make them sound.
The Meligrove Band plays The Horseshoe/February 2010
After all we’re talking about someone who started putting on shows at 15 years old, admits he had no early aspirations for a career in music and lights up when talking about his label springboarding many of his friends’ acts onto greater things.
“A lot of the bands have moved on to bigger labels, which is really exciting,” Warner admits. I look at my label as a platform … it’s worked out so far.”
Certainly.
So is Eric Warner rich? If so it’s not from music, unless we’re talking about the undeniable wealth of contacts and credibility he’s amassed in Toronto and beyond.
dd/mm/yyyy at The Horseshoe/NXNE 2009
And while there are many who toil in the same musical earth he does, many who fight for the same scraps in today’s industry landscape, the story of Warner and We Are Busy Bodies is interesting because of it’s strict adherence to a lack of pretension and DIY ethos that many trump but few can actually claim to live.
But WABB does.
Japanther’s Ian Vanek at DeLeon White Gallery/2009
“It all just kind of came naturally from one event to the next,” Warner explains.
“When I started I didn’t know how to book a show, I didn’t know how to put out a record, I discovered ways by asking people and I discovered ways by doing it and failing, but it’s allowed the bands I work with to travel around the world and play to people in different countries, something some may not have ever thought possible.”
Which segues nicely into perhaps the most interesting aspect of Warner’s imprint: the overwhelming importance it places on establishing connections between the fan, the listener and the artist, as though they were all one, which in a perfect space would be ideal.
The Meligrove Band’s 2006 album Planets Conspire on vinyl
It’s an abstract approach, but one most of the industry would do well to work towards grasping.
“Right now everything I’m doing is vinyl and digital only, because a lot of the things I do are limited edition, on odd colours of vinyl and just very specialized.
“I think it’s important, for me at least, with everything I put out, to keep it very personal.”
Which is exactly what great music is supposed to be.
Eric Warner with his records at The Garrison
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