Austin’s Best Label That’s Not A Label Resists Label
by Adam Schragin Feb., 2009
“We’re just not a functioning entity,” says Chris Lyons of Business
Deal Records, Austin’s scrappiest local label—or, as Lyons prefers,
“art collective.” He’s right about that, to a point: Business Deal’s
online sales have been negligible, its output is sporadic and loose,
and the overall attitude is one of laissez-faire self-deprecation.
Which raises the question: How does a so-called “non-functioning
entity” keep releasing music for 20 years and counting, and maintain
one of the most inventive continually exciting presences in Austin’s
music scene?
The genesis of Business Deal can be traced to two friends in the
Dallas area, Dirk Michener and Smokey Farris. Farris and Michener
began playing and recording in middle and high school; Farris later
connected with Lyons when he moved to Houston. When the trio first got
together, the music followed closely behind. “Dirk came down to visit
Smokey one spring break,” Lyons says. “We played music all week, and
the next thing I knew, they made a tape of it. I was like, ‘This is so
cool! Whoever thought to do this?’” Though he started as “one of
Business Deal’s first fans,” Lyons quickly became more involved,
releasing music under the Business Deal banner while recording with
Austin’s legendary faux-British ’80s new-wave-terrorists Prima Donnas
and on his own under the name Gene Defcon.
With a name like Business Deal, one might assume someone involved has
their eye on the brass ring, but few (if any) high-dollar transactions
actually take place behind closed doors. “There’s no business,” Lyon
says. “We’re really terrible at that. We don’t have a business plan.
We just make a bunch of CDs, and we never sell any. Last year we gave
an award to our biggest online seller, and it was, like, seven
copies.” Online sales are hardly the bottom line for the
label—although member Travis Catsull does have big plans for what
Lyons describes as “Business Deal 2.0.” “We’ve always had shitty
websites,” Catsull says. “So we’ve been working on one for about two
months that should help increase sales—or at least look cooler.”
Part of the group’s renewed interest in giving the often-sleepy label
a kick in the head has to do with its recent compilation, the Business
Deal Band Lotto. Starting with 33 musicians—including Business Deal
alums like Preston Dukes and a smattering of new names—nine different
bands came together by chance through a lottery system. Each group’s
choice of musical instruments was also put in fate’s hands, as was the
one subject about which each band had to write—which turned out to be
“baby fat.” The quick turnaround time and freeform nature of the
project resulted in a batch of fun, fast-moving songs, most of which
retain the goofy, amiable wit that’s become the signature of all the
label’s releases, from Lyons’ own tongue-in-cheek projects like The
Old Timerz to Yellow Fever’s first incarnation, Fart Face. While Lyons
has relinquished control of the next inevitable Band Lotto, Pat Healy
(of synth-spazzes Pataphysics) has agreed to spearhead. Lyons already
has high hopes: “Hopefully, the next one will be twice as big. We’ll
expand until the whole city is in it.” He’s also pushing for a “genre
randomizer,” which would require the bands to work within the limited
framework of disparate styles.
And if it too doesn’t sell, so what? “The whole point of the comp was
to expand our friend network,” Lyons says. “It’s almost like we’re a
virus. We can’t exist on our own, and we don’t have the resources to
be a host, so we’re going to be a virus and invade everyone else. I
feel like, if anything, Business Deal is just the name we call our
creative projects within this group of friends. My goal is always just
to expand, so we can include more people who like being creative. As
long as we can find more people like that, we’re successful.”
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