Looking Back on Higher Step Records

News 4U—the Evansville, Indiana arts and entertainment magazine for which I once interned in college—ran a piece in this month's issue on Higher Step Records, the label to which my bands, the National Biscuit Company and Three Hit Combo, were once "signed." Each band released one album on the label, and the two discs sold a total of 700 copies (or so). Mat Martin (a.k.a. Sam Lowry) penned the News 4U article. Here's a taste:

It wasn’t long before we started putting out the records of our friend’s bands like the Mullets, Three Hit Combo, the Toddlers, Nice Guys Finish Last, djcarcar, and many more. Some of them broke even. Some of them made the bands a little money. Some of them were so artistically nuanced and ahead of their time that no one bought them.

If permanence in this world is measured by the effect you’ve had on other human beings, then we have achieved that. Our friends who wrote great songs and were in great bands, but didn’t have the money to release their own album; we gave them a chance to put their art out into the world. The kid who discovers punk rock via his older brother’s Mullets albums and then starts his own band. We were a part of that. And if permanence is measured by the number of albums in used CD stores and landfills across this great land, than we’ve probably achieved it that way too.