How I Built This with Guy Raz - Merge Records: Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

As college students in the late 1980s, Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan launched two projects that came to define their trajectories as entrepreneurs: the "punky but poppy" band Chunk, and the scrappy record label, Merge. For decades, the partners juggled the demands of managing their own band while negotiating record deals and recording dates for other indie artists. But the two worlds also collided in happy ways: touring in their own band was a great way for Mac and Laura to discover new talent, and they also learned that musicians tend to trust a label more if its founders play in a band. Today, Chunk is still going strong as Superchunk, and Merge has morphed into one of the most influential labels in indie music, with bands like The Mountain Goats, Spoon, and Arcade Fire. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.ca. Hey, really quick before we start the show, a lot of you have lots of questions about how I built this. Like, how do you pick guests or where do you record the show?

Or how can I get in touch with Howard Schultz? Spoiler alert on that one. We can't help you. But we can try and answer any questions you might have about the show, our work, or even me. If you'd like to submit a question, please visit gairoz.com and fill out the form. And we'll answer some of your questions right here on the show in the coming weeks. Again, that's g-u-I-R-A-Z.com. One of my roommates, her dad worked for Budweiser.

And they had made these bass guitars that were Budweiser themed. It said Budweiser on the bass? Yes. It was like, you know, it looked like a can of Budweiser. I have no memory of that. And then somehow it turned into Mac teaching me how to play bass. And I think that was all a ploy, because I did have a boyfriend at the time. He wasn't teaching you how to play bass, apparently.

From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz. show today how two indie rockers launched a record label, named it after a road sign, and grew merge into one of the most influential names in independent music. Building a successful business basically means being able to make smart bets, right? Especially if you're in the business of venture capital. The business is basically betting. You invest millions of dollars in a lot of promising starting startups, knowing that most of them will falter or fail outright. But you're betting that

every now and then, you will invest in a winner, a business that maybe five or 10 years down the road will have a liquidity event, which is a polite way of saying that a few people are going to make lots of money. Anyway, one of the things that struck me when I was doing research for today's show is that an indie record label, or any record label, really, is sort of Sort of like a VC fund. Just like a VC fund, the label takes a chance on a lot of maybes with the hope of eventually hitting a winner. In this case, a band that will sell hundreds of thousands of albums

and make a ton of money for themselves and, of course, for the label. But unlike many VC funds, most indie record labels don't start with lots of cash to invest. They are almost by definition small and scrappy, with an artistic vision that, at least in the beginning, may be more important than making a lot of money. And this, basically, is where Laura Balance and Mack McCann began when they started the indie label merge in 1989. Laura and Mack were musicians themselves. They were part of the band's Superchunk. And in fact, playing and touring and being immersed in the indie scene in the late 1980s

was one of the things that inspired them to start their own label. In the early years, income from Superchunk basically helped Laura and Mac keep Merge from going bankrupt, and that income allowed them to make a lot of small bets on lesser-known indie artists. Until eventually, in the early 2000s, one of their bets paid off with the massively successful band Arcade Fire. But the story of Merge is also the story of the rise of indie rock in the 1990s. the label became hugely influential and helped to introduce bands like Spoon, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Magnetic Fields, and many others to music fans around the world. And all of this happened because of the creativity and also the tension between Laura and Mack, who are professional partners today, but at one point were also romantic partners. The two of them met in Chapel Hill, North Carolina when they were both college students.

And before that, Laura spent her high school years in Raleigh and Atlanta. It was the early 1980s, and she was already following the punk music scene and going to lots of clubs. We started going to shows at the Metroplex, which was a punk rock club that we were able to go to as underage kids. I think most of us, if we saw our kids going to that place now, we would be really scared. Yeah. It was in this abandoned warehouse part of town, you know? Yeah. It was pretty dodgy.

What do you remember about the music that attracted you to it? I mean, you know, from everything I've read about you, you're self-described introvert, you're quiet, you're shy, you get anxious being in front of people. And then there's this really intense, often loud, angry, explosive music that you were listening to. Can you connect the dots for me on that? I guess because of my personality and because of things that had happened in my youth, I felt different. I felt like an outsider. And being introduced to the punk rock community, I felt like I had found all the other not normal people, you know? Like I had found a place to be where it was okay to not be normal.

Yeah. And the music was an expression of that too. You sort of, you describe yourself as like an outsider and like, you know, the kind of kids who would be called freaks or, you know, right, or weirdos. Today, it's funny. It's hard to find a teenager without blue hair or, right, or who looks like what would be described as different in the 70s and 80s. Were you that kind of kid? Like, were you, did you dress differently than other kids and did you wear your hair differently than other kids? Yes.

What did you look like? I did. Well, at one point, I had like calico hair. I sort of settled into having black hair and teasing it up and crimping it. And back then also, like, it was harder to, like, whatever you wanted to look like, you had to assemble it yourself. You had to make it happen. You couldn't just go to Hot Topic and buy it. People put safety pins in their clothing.

Yeah. Or, like, for some reason, I would, you know. even, like, put egg whites in my hair to make it more, like, stiff. Yeah. As opposed to going and buying some aquanette. And would you, if somebody saw you when you were 16 or 17, would they say, oh, there's Laura. She's a goth.

Yes. That's what they would say. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I went to high school, especially at first, walking down the hall, and there would be these girls who, you know, to make fun of me, they would. act like they were scared and jump out of the way and against the lockers.

Like they had to get out of my way because I was a monster walking down the hall. And I would just kind of, you know, pretend that I didn't notice because I didn't know what else to do. Yeah. All right. I want to turn to you, Mack. As a kid, did you get into music pretty early or did it happen later when you were a teenager? I was into it pretty early just in the sense that my dad, was really into listening to music and had a record player and records, you know, when you would get into my dad's car, much to my mom's chagrin, the radio would be set to, like, blasting. So when you started the car, I remember the, you know, the radio be on really loud. And, you know, at that time, the radio that we were listening to was, I guess what you would now call classic rock at the time it was just rock.

Yeah, because it was contemporary. But yeah, so I knew that my dad was, even though from looking at him, you wouldn't necessarily know it. He was really into rock and roll. And you say that looking at him, you wouldn't know it because he was a lawyer, right? Right. So he just looked, I mean, he didn't look rock and roll, I guess he would say. But yeah, so Exxon on Main Street was a record that we listened to a lot. Wow.

And my dad was a big Led Zeppelin fan as well. Yeah. One time I asked him why he didn't have any Beatles records, and he said they weren't heavy enough. But yeah, I was really into The Who, but also ACDC was probably my favorite band, I guess I would say, at that time. When do you remember your kind of taste in music veering more toward the kind of things that Laura was listening to, like hardcore and punk? Did that happen when you were a teenager? I think I was probably more like, so Laura was in high school in Raleigh, I was in Durham, and I met people at school who were both into The Who and, you know, Led Zeppelin and ACDC, but they were also listened to the college radio stations. And so finding out about that is what kind of exposed me to other kinds of music. I read a story about how, I guess when you were in your, like in your early teens, you went to.

to like see a couple of hardcore bands playing at a coffee house. And that was sort of a moment where it blew your mind because it was live music and it was loud music that kind of got you thinking about maybe starting your own band. Is that, is that right? Is that true? Yeah, I saw a flyer for a show at the Duke Coffee House, which is an all-ages place on campus at Duke. And the flyer is for a band called The Ugly Americans. and also a band called the band with no name. And the band with no name was super weird. I don't even know if you would call it punk really. I think it was just more odd. Like thrashing, just shouting, like DIY. It was more like, I feel like it was noise and maybe like a Casio or a drum machine or something.

I don't know. It was strange. And then the ugly Americans played, and that was kind of more what I knew to be like punk. But yeah, so that was at the Duke Coffee House. And punk shows were usually all ages, unlike shows at the clubs where you would hear a song on the radio by a band, like on college radio, and you'd be like, oh, this band, you know, the rain parade, they're playing at the cat's cradle. And you'd be really into it and then realize, like, you couldn't go to that show because it was drinking age only. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So you're getting into the live music scene. And I guess around this time, you're also starting to play guitar. Right. And so by the time you graduate high school, you're playing. a few bands and you and this guy named Jonathan Newman, I guess you start a band together called the slush puppies. Mm-hmm.

And was it fair to describe, like, the bands that you were playing in were they, how would you describe the sound, sort of like New Wave? You described like a New Wave cover band. I would say like New Wave and then Slush Puppies were like a little more punky. Got it. But also, you know, there was this kind of music that at the time you would have, a lot of A lot of bands fell under the broad umbrella of, like, college rock or something, you know? Right, right.

And so, like, our guitars were distorted and everything, but we weren't playing a million miles an hour. It was more punk along the lines of, like, the Buzzcocks or something like that. I mean, you must have been a pretty good student in high school. You went to Columbia for college in New York. Yeah. I mean, I did fine in some classes and not great in other classes. And really, going to New York City was the thing that I was the most excited. I mean, being in New York between 1985 and 1990, it was like a really good time to be in New York, both for, like, New York music as well as the fact that I was living in a place where every band played no matter where they were from.

I guess after a year in at Columbia, you decided to take a year off and go come back to North Carolina and you moved to Chapel Hill. Was there a reason why you did that? Well, I ended up taking a year off after two years at Columbia. It was originally because as much as I loved New York, I also missed being in North Carolina and being able to play music because playing music was what was difficult about being in New York. You know, you can't just have a band playing in your dorm room or your apartment like you can in Chapel Hill or whatever. And I did have a couple times of like taking my amp and my guitar on the subway downtown. to a practice space and it's just like that was that was a drag so then i had a year off which was awesome because it was you know living in north carolina playing music working at kinkos and

pizza place and record store and just doing different things just doing different things yeah and i guess that was that's how you and laura met right because she was going to college at chapel hill and and both of you were working at the pizza place? Yeah. Pepper's Pizza. And you were at a UNC, Laura, right? And Mac was this guy that you met there. And, I mean, did he make an impression on you from the beginning?

What do you remember? What's your recollection of when you first met him? So there's this thing where the Raleigh scene and the Chapel Hill scene were kind of, they were separate. it and there was some sort of rivalry, which I picked up on. The kids in Raleigh seemed like more serious and more into the kind of like more menacing side of punk rock or something. And the Chapel Hill kids seemed to be more goofy. Like Raleigh was more hardcore to me and Chapel Hill was more like poppy punk. And I met Mack, Jonathan Newman, and Gray Brown. I guess around the same time. And to me, they were this sort of unit.

I was in a band with Jonathan and Gray was my friend that we had also gone to high school with us. Yeah. They, you know, we're always cracking jokes and being silly. And my impression was that was that Mac was one of these three funny guys. Got it. I mean, we say we met at Peppers, but we were both going to the same like concerts and shows at clubs and stuff like that. And Laura made an impression because she was so goth. Like when you say so goth, like goth like an Edward gory character like like that goth not that goth you know you know black hair makeup chains all the accoutreement right yes i had the accoutrement but i have to say i did tone it down a bit because i decided that it wasn't worth all the trouble raleigh wasn't ready got it got it um and did you guys

become friends right away no not necessarily not right away i feel like you know we got to be friends when we were working at peppers together at the same time. Right, yeah. It's like trial by fire. You know, it brings you closer together of working at a place like peppers. Yeah. Meantime, Mac, from what I understand,

during that year, when you came back to Chapel Hill in the middle of your time in college, you and Jonathan, your friend Jonathan, got back to kind of recording music for the slush puppies or really kind of took it seriously. And you actually got a gig opening for Fugazi, which anyone who knows anything about like hardcore punk, American punk, knows that band, knows Ian Mackay, classic DC hardcore band. He was a big deal.

And you guys got to open for him at the Cats Cradle. That's kind of a legendary club, right, in Chapel Hill, right? Cats Cradle. It is, and it's been in a few different locations, but the Cats Cradle has been around for over 50 years now in different locations. And, yeah, I mean, the most exciting thing about being in a band like Slush Puppies was who you got to open for, you know. There's a lot of local bands and everyone's trying to get to open for the cool bands who came through on tour, you know, whether that was Fugazi or the Volcano Sons or whoever was, whoever was going to be. So this was going to be their third show ever. So, I mean, I was excited about being able to set that show up at the Cats Cradle and being able to open that show.

Of course, it was very exciting. So, yeah, that was a big deal playing with them. And I guess around this time, Mac, you were playing a bunch of different bands. And there was one project that you started to actually kind of plant the seeds for merge records, I guess, where what? You thought, hey, let's put out a record with a bunch of other bands, like a limited number of records and just sell them ourselves. How did that come about? What's the story? So the band Slush Puppies we talked about

And another band I was in called Wax with 2Ws And three other local bands We put out a box set of seven and singles And this was something that was kind of masterminded By the bass player in Wax, Wayne Taylor He talked about it like Oh yeah, like I know how this I know how we do this

Like we get this the place that we get records pressed A local printing place called Barefoot Press can make the sleeves for us or make some booklets to go in the boxes. And our friends who are in a silk screen company, Tannis Root, Bill and Barbara, they can silk screen the front of this box set that's going to be this compilation of all these singles of local bands. That was kind of the idea, like a snapshot of the scene, the local North Carolina music scene at that time.

And the way that it came about was really a community effort, too. All those different businesses that Mac just... mentioned, you know, they were part of the community. And I think all the bands pitched in in various ways, too, in labor and cash to have the records pressed. It was just doable. I mean, I think it was mysterious to me before then how that all happened. But that's kind of how we learned, you know. Right. And some time, at some point, I guess in sort of 1988, the two of you start dating. What do you Remember, how did it happen? I mean, you guys had worked at the pizza place together and presumably became friends and then became boyfriend-girlfriend.

And we started playing music around that time, too, I think. I think it started with one of my roommates, her dad worked for Budweiser. And they had made these bass guitars that were Budweiser themed. And she had gotten one and didn't know how to play it. She had never played an instrument. It said Budweiser on the base? Yes, it did. It was like, you know, it looked like a can of Budweiser.

I have no memory of that. That's hilarious. And she wanted Mack to come over and teach her how to play bass. And he was like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, we need a bass player. Maybe, you know, I'll come over and, you know, teach you how to play bass. And then somehow it turned into him teaching me how to play bass. And I think that was all a ploy, because I did have a boyfriend at the time. But my boyfriend was in Raleigh.

He wasn't teaching you how to play bass, apparently. So you were teaching Laura how to play bass, and that's – because you didn't play any instruments before that, right, Laura? No. It was kind of so we could have a band with Jonathan. Right. You thought Laura would be great in a band, and so you were like, I'll teach you bass. Yeah, Jonathan had drums.

I played guitar, and we needed a bass player. Right. But I think that was just a way for us to start dating, really, because we would hang out more because we were playing in a band together. And it sort of evolved that way. Mack, you then, okay, so you go back to finish out your time at Columbia. How did you and Laura, I mean, Laura, were you going up to visit? Mack, were you coming back down to Chapel Hill all the time? Because you start what would become a six-year relationship, right?

Yeah, I mean, I came home on vacation and New York was a pretty common trip for anyone from North Carolina to make in terms of going to see bands up there or whatever. Like it didn't feel like that big of a deal. So there's a lot of travel back and forth. All right. Meantime, you're going back to college and playing a bunch of bands and you and Laura are dating. And from what I understand at some point, maybe it was like, like, like, you. between your junior and senior year and college. So I guess this would be like the summer of 1989.

You start another band called Chunk with Laura. Is that how you remember it? Yeah, that sounds right. That summer, Chunk was the band that we started that summer with Chuck Garrison and Jack McCook. And this is after the drummer in the band, right, who actually his name was Chuck. But he somehow inspired the name, Chunk, for the band. Apparently, he was listed in the phone book as Chunk Garrison. Right.

Yeah, they had, it was a misprint. It was a misprint, so that's how that name, where that name came from. Right. So he inspires the name, Chunk. And here's my question for you, Mac. Every time you formed a new band, in your mind, was it like, this is going to be the band that's going to make it? Or was it just, like, this is fun. Let's just do a band.

It was much more the latter. I don't think I ever had the idea like trying to quote unquote make it in the music business or whatever. You know what I mean? It was just more like, hey, like we all live within five blocks of each other. We might as well have a band. And so what did you think you were going to do when you graduated from college? I honestly just didn't know. I mean, I think that I probably thought I was going to like work in a record store or something like that. Right. I didn't have a grand plan. You were the lead singer and lead guitarist, right? And Laura, you were bass guitarist. Yes. How would you describe the sound of what was then called chunk before it would become super chunk?

But how would you describe the sound? I would say punky. But poppy also. Like people at the time compared us to the buzzcocks. But it was also sort of college rock at the same time. Yeah, we did a Shangri-Laws cover on the B-side. So there's definitely pop. happening. All right. So you guys formed this band and that summer you took a road trip to Seattle.

And in Seattle, from what I understand, you guys actually went to the subpop offices to meet with Bruce Pavan and Jonathan Poneman who've been on the show before. Did you guys go there for any specific reason thinking maybe you could sign your band to their label? Like, why did you go visit subpop? Well, one of my friends from school, Aubrey, Summers, was friends with them just from growing up, I guess, from high school or something like that. And so it wasn't like, oh, you can get your band time. It was just more like, we're fans of Mud Honey and Sub Pop. And she's like, oh, I can, I know those guys. I can, we can go see their office. It wasn't like really a business proposition that was just like, we're fans. It was just like, let's go check it out.

Yeah, this is going to be cool. Yeah, it's just fun. And did you meet them? I think we did meet them I think we did I just don't remember but I do remember thinking like oh this is cool

but it's also like just it looks like an office yeah it was not exotic it was exotic because it was sub pop and we were in Seattle which was wild but it was also very normal

I mean you had this band called chunk but what like how did the idea come about to start a record label how did that conversation even start was it on that road trip it was on that road trip

it was on that road trip. Yeah. Mac brought up the idea of starting a record label, that we should start a record label and we should put out our own records, you know, do seven inches and stuff. And it sounded pretty casual and, like, fun. And we knew, you know, we knew it was possible, you know, the veil of mystery had been removed from the idea of making records.

Because Mac, a couple of previously, had already been involved in pressing, vinyl records and it was just a thousand records, but still, you kind of knew that it wasn't this scary thing, that it was possible to actually make records and sell them. Yeah, yeah, and to actually do it in a sort of casual way. Because when that group of artists in Raleigh made that box set, none of them were trying to start a record label. There wasn't a lot of promotion done. There was no marketing done.

It was just, we're making this. Do you want to buy it? That seemed like something that wasn't intimidating and something that we could do. If I had thought that it was going to turn into what it is now, or that that was the goal, I would have said, no, I don't want to do that. That sounds like too much work. No way. When we come back in just a moment, how Laura and Mack juggle the demands of launching a new record label

while managing a band and their own relationship. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the summer of 1989, and Mack and Laura are back in North Carolina after a road trip to Seattle. And this turns out to be a pretty eventful year, because not only have they started a band called Chunk, they've also decided to start their own record label. Do the idea of starting a label come out of frustration with major labels or with the fact that none of your bands were signed? No, it had nothing to do with that.

No, it was more, it wasn't a reaction to something that we didn't have. It was more like, wouldn't this be cool? Like, I think in other words, like, it didn't even have to really be discussed like, oh, it'll be like this kind of label, not like that kind of label. It was just like we knew what we were into. For instance, like we had just gone to see the subpop offices and just being able to make something of our own that was both like what subpop would do, but not subpop, but our own thing.

You know what I'm saying? Right. And we know all these bands. Maybe they'll let us put out a seven inch with their music on it. And plus Mac, was in a million bands. Right. So there was plenty there that we could put out.

But you weren't thinking about this as like a business. You were thinking about this as a fun thing to do. Yeah, more like a, I don't know if art project is the right word, but more of an artistic endeavor rather than a business endeavor. Right. By the way, how did you come up with a merge, merge records? Well, we were on a road trip. And you saw a sign that's a thing.

said merge? Yes, yes. We were driving along trying to name it. And I found myself just looking around going, antelope, yield, merge, and merge seemed okay. I mean, really, naming anything is terrible. It's hard. And when you first name it, it has the meaning of the word. And then over time, it loses the meaning of the word and becomes just a word.

It's the same with naming your band. anything you say for a name for your band sounds really stupid until you've lived with it for a while. Yeah. And whenever we have to explain how we named Merge, it's sort of embarrassing to me because it's so just straightforward. Well, could have been Antelope Records.

Here we are. What, I mean, you guys had a band because I know that later that summer in 1989, you actually recorded some songs, your first few songs you recorded at a studio. But what did having a label mean? The label that you had would be in charge of, like, getting the record pressed and getting

artwork made and then getting it to record stores. Is that what the role of the label would be? Yeah. And having helped assemble those box sets, something else that really appealed to me was the sort of craft aspect of it. The idea of making these objects and putting them together and designing them really appealed to me. I had always liked making things and having seven inches made, which is more of what I was thinking about than starting a record label.

We would get to decide what they were going to look like and then put them together. And that appealed to me. But did it, if in fact it was about just distributing and printing and doing all the stuff for chunk, why did you even need to create a label? It wasn't just going to be for chunk. It was going to be... For other bands. You were going to help other bands out.

I got you. Right. Like other bands in our community and also max other bands. Right. And I think that to answer your question, like why have a label, right not just be like,

here's a chunk record. To me, the idea of the label wasn't the mechanism, the place that like does the printing and the manufacturing and the distribution, blah, blah, though it was that in reality also, I thought of a label as the kind of aesthetic umbrella

of like a certain group of artists. In other words, like when I thought of record labels, I thought of 4 AD or subpop or Discord or Teen Beat Records. Like they each had their own kind of voice, even though there was different bands within those families. You know what I mean? So to me, the idea of the label, it was more like, here's a, like I said, like a voice or like here's an umbrella that means something when you see that name.

I think it also helps when you're trying to sell the object when you're calling record stores or calling distributors if you aren't calling saying, I want to sell you a seven inch by my band chunk. Right. It was different if you were advocating on behalf of somebody else. Right. So I'm going to. calling from Merge Records. Yeah. We have this great band. Yes. We happen to be in the band, but you don't need to know that.

Yeah. That makes sense. So you record, you know, you record some tracks. You've got the label going. By the way, out of curiosity, did you form like, I mean, you're still in college, both of you. Did you form like an LLC? Did you, I know, Mack, I mean, I'm just projecting here, but your dad was a lawyer. Did he help you guys, like, set up the business?

Did you do any of that? Not right. way. It was just, you just called it Merge Records and it kind of lived in, I don't know, your apartment, Laura, or your dorm room or something? Yeah. Yeah, I was living with some other women in a house and Merge Records was in my bedroom on a shelf. And it wasn't too long before Max Dad figured out what we were up to and was like,

you guys need to incorporate. Incorporate. Yes, exactly. I suggest you're an S-Corp. Oh, really? So that's how it happened. He kind of gave you some advice on what to do and how to set it up. Yeah, I mean, he basically did it. And then it's like, here, sign the papers.

And I guess you were going to start simply just producing singles and like cassettes. But even to do that, I mean, did you have any money, any startup money? We borrowed money from friends and family almost on like a per release basis. Like our friend Lydia, I think, lend us like $500 or something, maybe for our first single or something. And by the way, what would $500 buy you? Like how many copies of the single that you could then sell? I don't know. Maybe that would pay for printing the sleeves or something.

I can't remember exactly. I mean, things were cheaper back then. I think that it may have been enough to press 500 records. Yeah, they cost less than a dollar each. And sometimes like the band would chip in money to press the record and then we would pay them back. So any money that we had was like profit, the small amount of profit after paying someone back for helping us press the record. Meantime, you put out, for chunk, you put out some music on this label merge that you have. And this is complicated because I read that in like early 1990, you signed a deal, a record deal with a record deal with a,

a record label called Matador, which went on to, you know, release huge bands and become a really successful label in and of itself. You sign a three-record deal, the band Chunk does, with Matador records. So it's a little complicated. Can you kind of break that down for me and help me understand why you would do that if you already had your own record label? Well, with Merge, we were doing tapes and then vinyl seven inches. So the idea of putting out, a full-length album, it just requires a lot more money and possibly know-how and other things, too. So Matador was interested in signing Chunk to do albums. And if you remember, at that time, if you did a album, you'd have to make a vinyl LP and a compact disc and a cassette. Yeah. So you're manufacturing a lot of stuff. It's expensive.

It's expensive. and so the idea of chunk signing to Matador was more like a parallel track of, okay, we can keep doing stuff on merge to singles and then our band will be able to kind of take this step up in terms of being able to put out a full-length album. And right around the time you signed to Matador, you also had changed the name of the band

from Chunk to Superchunk, right? Mm-hmm. Yes. And do you remember, What the dollar amount was when you signed with Matador? Was it tens of thousands of dollars? Was it thousands of dollars? Hundreds of thousands?

Several thousand. Okay. So it was like three, four, five thousand bucks. We'll pay you this advance. We'll cover the costs of the record and the distribution. And then, you know, once we hit this amount of money, you'll get a percentage of royalties. It was like that. Yeah.

Like it was a small deal. Right. I mean, we knew how to do things cheaply. Yeah. And we knew how to work fast in terms of recording as a band and work in a local studio. We weren't trying to, like, we didn't think of this as, oh, now we're in the big leagues. We just thought of like, oh, we get to do kind of what we would do anyway. Here's where I wonder.

You graduate from Columbia. You go back to Chapel Hill. Your full-time job now, Mac, is super trunk and merge. And I think, Laura, at that point, you still had another year of college left. But what I'm trying to figure out is, like, how do the economics of this work, right? Because, yeah, I mean, Supertrunk was, you know, was gaining sort of a cult following on college campuses. And, you know, you were touring. But you were never in the billboard charts, right?

You never had, like, mass. You were never selling, like, hundreds of thousands of copies of your records. But in those early days, were the economics such that you could actually live off? of what you were making from Superchunk? No. No. The economics of that were that we had day jobs. What did you do?

Worked in the record store, worked at Kinko's. Did anybody ever come up to at Kinko's and say, dude, you're Mac from Superchunk? I don't think we were just well enough. I don't think we were well-known at all. I got you. But as you started to get some more airplane stuff, you know, on college stations,

could you just focus on SuperCunch? chunk or did you still have to have other jobs? We had other jobs for a long time. I think maybe after our third record came out, we were touring enough that it seemed like we could support ourselves with the proceeds from our tours. And, you know, it sort of got harder to keep a job at Kinko's because you'd be gone for six weeks or two months,

and then you'd come back and, try to get on the schedule again and then have to leave again six weeks later. Did you feel like you had to tour a lot because that was the primary source of revenue and income for you guys? Is that a factor in why you toured so much and you performed live so much? I think it was, well, if you put out a record, that was, especially back then, that was the main way to promote the record. Aside from getting it on college. radio, you had to tour. And not only were we doing it to promote the record, but because it was fun.

And it was how you connected with people. Your record No Paki for Kitty comes out. It's around the time, maybe like a month after Nevermind by Nirvana comes out, which really kind of there's an explosion and attention to small labels and, you know, all of a sudden just an explosion. and then the major record labels kind of realizing that these bands in Seattle and indie bands are, you know, potential gold mines. But around that time, I mean, you guys started to get a lot of media attention, right? Like people were saying, oh, this is the next, Supertrunk is the next breakout band.

Did you remember that attention? I remember it from the point of view of people who worked for major labels wanted to take us out to lunch type attention. but beyond that I kind of feel like we were in our own world to a certain extent and I thought Nirvana was awesome but it felt like they were kind of on another

a different level. I never felt like oh that's going to be us. In the meantime you had your own label I mean at what point was there a band that kind of came that you said who was the first band you signed you know because I mean it was built originally

for your own band but also to distribute other music. Who did you, was it mostly like Chapel Hill bands that were coming to you? Chapel Hill and Raleigh. You know, and like we weren't really signing bands. We were putting out seven inches, you know, which are one-off things, not a, not something that anybody signs a document over. And plus, like, yeah, it was all among friends. It didn't feel like we had to sign anybody.

And then in 1992, we heard. from Corey Rusk, who ran touch-and-go records, and he had noticed what we were doing with Merge, and he said that he would like to have Touch-and-Go manufacture and distribute on behalf of Merge. And they were based in Chicago, right? They were based in Chicago. And this would enable us to do full-length records. So it would save you, because you couldn't afford to do that. You guys didn't have the cash.

So they would, like, print the records and all the same. the labels and everything. And you guys would be the distributor or the... No, they would manufacture it for us and then distribute it for us. So that left us basically in the position of having to choose the bands. You were the talent spotters. Yes, and then also do the promotion. Like the trying to get people to write about it,

trying to get it on the radio, trying to get MTV to pay attention. But she wasn't paying attention to your music. No. Yeah. But I think the first band that we signed was, or didn't sign was Paul Vaux. You mean in terms of doing a full-length?

Yeah, that's the first band we did a full-length with. And they were handshake deals. We didn't do agreements. We sort of based how we dealt with bands on how Touch and Go did. You know, what Corey did was a profit split. And so we thought that seemed fair. And so that's what we did with the bands that we started working with. So initially, the band, you would sign a band,

and by signing it, you wouldn't even do a contract. It was just be like, yeah, we're going to ask you guys to commit to like three records with us. We wouldn't even say that. What would you say? We would just say, we'd love to put out an album by you guys. Would you be into that? And they'd say, yeah, and that was it. And then what did that mean?

You would finance the recording and the production of the record? I don't even remember giving Palvo in advance. We would take the masters, give them to touch and go, and they would manufacture it. I don't know. Do you remember it differently? Mac? I feel like we probably gave Palvo a couple thousand dollars to record at Duckie Studios or something. But I mean, it was more like, it wasn't like, here's a big lump of money, go do whatever. It was kind of like, how much did it cost for you to record? Okay, like, well,

here's that. But there was no commitment. There was no talk of how many records we were going to do with them. I mean, our assumption, I think to this day is that if we're doing a good job, then why wouldn't you want to do another record with us? We do use contracts now. But we were taking the handshake deal model from labels like touch and go and discord and labels on the punkier side of the industry. Now, at this point, I think around, you know, 92 or 93, the two of you split up. You are no longer together as a couple, which, you know, I mean, that's a long time to be together,

even though you were super young, but still, it's still a long time. And I imagine that was not easy. But here we are today. I mean, you know, 25 years later, more, 30 years later, still talking, the two of you, and clearly you're not together. You both have your own families and your, but your business partners. Then when you split up as a couple, you had a band together and you had a business, this merge label together.

So what did you have a conversation and say, let's go. keep this going? Yes. Was it like that mature and adult? I don't know if it was mature and adult. I don't know how mature it was. But basically it felt, I mean, I felt like what what we had built with Superchunk and Merge was larger than us at the, at this moment when we were splitting up personally, you know, like it was, it felt like it had, Merge and Superchunk both had a life of their own. in a way and like us not being together as a couple didn't have to mean that these other things had to dissolve too. When we come back in just a moment, how Laura and Mac keep their businesses together even though they have split up and how merge eventually makes a big bet on a little known

band called Arcade Fire. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1993, and Mac and Laura have just ended their romantic relationship after being together for about five years. But they are still very much together, very much partners when it comes to their record label merge and their band Superchunk. But maintaining that delicate balance is not easy. It was not. And especially like touring with somebody you just broke a little bit.

up with? Like being, yeah, it was hard. And he was the lead singer. Yeah. And singing songs that may have been connected to, I don't know, maybe not, but, you know, connected to love or relationships or feelings. And I mean, that must have been hard to be. It was hard. Yeah. I think like, yeah, I remember after Foolish came out touring for that record and being, you know, listening to him singing those songs and like, you know, being on stage and being angry and being sad and, you know, sometimes crying behind my hair, you know, like just, it was a hard time for sure. What I'm curious about is at this point, Merge is only three and a half years old and so was super drunk.

They were still new. Neither of them were making a lot of money or, but clearly you saw something in those two things that even though it was still early days and you were far, far away from becoming sustainable in any way, you saw something in merge and even in Superchunk that convinced you guys to work through your personal differences. I think a lot of that was how much it meant to other people. Like, it's a responsibility that is hard to put down, you know? Once you start doing it and you realize that other people are attached to it, it's

harder to think about just deciding to do something else. I mean, in a more selfish way, I feel like, you know, we started the band and the label. We were like doing things as fans in the sense that, well, I like the way this record label does things, or I like the way this band makes me feel when I see them live. I want to do that. And so from a selfish point of view, as opposed to like, well, I can't take this away from these fans, it was more like, we've spent a lot of time like making this thing. Why should we give it up? Yeah. So, so you're like 26, 27, you're still really young, but a really kind of mature decision. I mean, I guess maybe, I don't know. I mean, I remember when I was 26, I don't know if I would have made such a mature decision. I think I would have been like, screw you, this is done. Goodbye. But really, that's why I made. And maybe people listening are like, well, why are you so surprised about the decision they made guy?

But I'm just thinking out loud here. I do think it was a mature – and we've had stories on a show of couples who, you know, EO products, the founders, divorced, and they kept it going. Amazing story. Stacey's Pita Chips, you know, they had a split, but kept it going. Yeah, I think it's – I mean, it was mutual to the extent that neither of us wanted to punish the other person. Yeah. So, like, I think that maybe if there was something that had been more, like, one person was more angry about it than the other person, and that person could take it out on that person by being like, well, we're breaking up the band or something.

But, like, we didn't – there wasn't really that feeling. So why trash this thing that you've put so much into, you know? And sometimes that decision in a band can lead to a number one hit, like, don't speak by no doubt. Because she wrote about the other – someone else in the band that they split up. And then she wrote that song. And there you go, number one song. Now you know what we were really going for. It didn't work out.

But really, like, you're grinding away. You're doing a lot of touring. Here's what's interesting about that. Superchunk never became, I think I'm right to say, and you're still around, but it never became, like, hugely commercially successful. It had a huge, strong fan base, but, right, is it fair to say? Like, never became a huge commercial act, right? True.

And just to be clear, if you had only... done super chunk, just from a business perspective, could the two of you have had sustained your lives and your family's lives and paid your mortgage and your bills and all this things? Had you only done super chunk? No. I don't think so. No. But, yeah, like once we started slowing down the touring and we're able to focus more on

merge, I think that, like, it enabled merge to grow more. That's the thing, right? Because Superchunk was the band. Merge was the label. I don't know if one of those alone would have worked without the other, right? Because while you guys were touring, I imagine you would meet other bands, you know, while you were touring and playing festivals. And then probably people heard more and more about Merge records. And so there was kind of like this cycle, like this ecosystem that was formed. Like people saw you perform. Saw you perform or knew about the band and then found out about the label or knew kind of knew about the label and met you guys. And then people say, oh, you should check out, you know, talk to Mac and Laura because they've got, you know, from Supertrunk because they've got this label. Is that right? Is that how those two things were connected? Definitely. And like, we would find out about bands and then other bands that were already on merge would tell their friends about merge, as you said.

Or they would come to us and say, like, hey, my friend's got a band. And like, you might not like them, but I think they're great and send us their demos, you know. And so that's before merge was big enough to be known by, I don't know, managers or whoever, like we're finding out from people that we already trust kind of thing, you know. So here's what I'm trying to figure out. You're basically spending most of much of the 1990s touring and also simultaneously building this label while also kind of dealing with the. aftermath of your relationship. It's a lot going on. But why would a band go and work with you if they could go and work at that time,

if they could go work for a bigger label that would give them a bigger advance? When you started a band, a punk rock band or a band, it wasn't because you thought you were going to make a bunch of money and become famous. It was because you did it because it was fun. And then it turned out you wrote some good songs and you were like, oh, I think we're good enough. We should make a record. But you didn't think you were going to get on the billboard charts.

You didn't think that you were going to be able to make a living off it even. You know, it was, Superchunk was very lucky that we got to a point where we could support ourselves. Yeah. And that we reached a point where we didn't have to have day jobs. Yeah. Other than running merge once we got home, which we didn't get paid for. Right. So, like, whether a band would sign with us or not, it wasn't about money.

it was about who do I trust and who will I feel good about working with. And that changed at some point. I feel like now things are different. Yeah. But I think if there was a point you were making earlier, which is very true that, like, I think the success of both Superchunk and Merge, they're codependent. Yeah. One fed the other.

We couldn't have just started Merge by itself without Superchunk also and be where we are now. I mean, it's almost like Superchunk was like your, I mean, I hate to put in these crude terms, but today, like we talk about social media marketing, right? And so, like, Superchunk was your kind of like the publicity arm. I know it wasn't, but it sort of was because people who liked the band then learned about merge and then it created this momentum. True. And from the other side, from the, we talked a little bit about this, but from the artist's relations side, bands are more open to working with the label knowing that the people running the label are also in a band.

Right. They trust you. Yeah. Yeah, because they know that, or they hope that they're not going to get, you know, screwed by you. I should have mentioned that for most of the first decade of the 2000s, Supertrent, just took a hiatus. You just really kind of stopped the band and focused on the label. We did. And it wasn't, I mean, we couldn't have planned it.

But it did happen to coincide with Merge becoming a much busier and bigger label, which was kind of lucky timing in that sense. How did the two of you, have there been times, let's say, after you split up, right, and you're running this label, where you guys had some significant enough differences between the two of you that there was a chance that that Merge wouldn't survive it? I mean, we've definitely had disagreements, but I never felt like what's going to happen? Will there be a merge? Did disagreements ever get into shouting matches? I mean, I can't imagine either of you ever shouting because you're so soft-spoken and chilled out, but maybe this is just in the interview. I don't know.

Did you ever shout at each other? Shouting on email. Yeah, we've shouted email shouting. All caps. It's terrible. It's so loud. Like disagreeing over what? Over what kinds of things?

It's been a while. we've had one of those, I'm trying to remember what the last thing was where we were disagreeing. But, you know, for the same reasons that we broke up probably, we have difficulty communicating with each other. If I feel like I'm trying to say something and I feel like Mac is refusing to hear me, instead of figuring out a better way to say it, I turn into a lizard and I just am an angry lizard under a rock and like it's hard for me to express myself. I'm just mad. You just fume, you just silently fume?

I either silently fume or I send off some poor worded email that doesn't come across as I intended. I want to ask you about what I think is probably one of the turning points in merge, because I think it would take at least a decade before you were even barely profitable, right? but I want to ask you about a record that you released in 1998. So eight years in, nine years in, the record's called In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by the band Neutral Milk Hotel. This, for people that don't know that record, hugely influential, it became just a hugely important, like, cult record among a certain kind of music lover, you know, indie rock or whatever we call it college rock, whatever it was. but I love this record. It's a beautiful record.

I'll just be honest with everyone listening. How did you come across that record? Because it was a slow burn. It wasn't like a huge hit right away. It didn't become a cult record for many years until after it was released. How did it come to you? How did you guys get that record? Well, that was the second album that we released by Neutral Milk Hotel.

Right. So we had that relationship. But as awesome as in the airplane over the sea is, I don't remember feeling like when we got it and we heard it. I remember thinking this is awesome, but I don't remember thinking like, oh my gosh, this is so different than the last record. This is going to blow people's minds. Yeah.

But definitely, like, exceeded my expectations of, you know, what it would sell. Sure, because it's not like when you hear a neutral milk hotel, you think, like, well, this is going to be some popular music. You know, it's like a very unique thing that that, band is doing everyone in it you know has is doing something interesting whether it's Julian playing the saw I mean the drumming is wild the horns you know yeah but what's interesting about that record is as you said it was kind of a slow burn and the band did not tour for that much longer after that record came out and they split up and then they split up and then that's kind of

when the record grew in people's minds and in the public perception that record still was on many lists, one of the best albums in the 90s, I'm assuming that must have been the first time that a merge record got that much attention. I mean, I think that, you know, this was definitely talked about in a different way, and it was kind of funny to me that it was spoken of with some sort of mystery, because in our experience, they were also just like a band stopping at Taco Bell on tour. You know what I mean? Like, they were people.

They weren't ghosts, you know. Yeah. I'm curious about your selection process, right? I mean, how did you guys and how do you make decisions? I mean, do you just listen to thousands and thousands and thousands of demos over the years? And if you like one, that's how you'd pick. I mean, what's your criteria? That's part of it.

Like, I mean, that's a big part of it. You just listen to it. And you try to figure out what sticks with you. and what's different and interesting. And also, I think, you know, it helps a lot if they're nice people. Like, that is a big part of it, too, for us. And did you, I mean, as you sort of got better and better known in that first decade, were you just being inundated with demos?

Yes, a ton of demos, tapes, and CDs. I mean, the good thing is you can often tell within 30 seconds or so, whether this is going to be something that you're into or not, you know, sometimes without even listening to it from the way that's being presented to you, you can tell. So you're not literally listening to thousands and thousands of entire demos. But there's a lot to go through and you don't want to miss something that could be amazing, you know. Is there something that ever came to you that you guys did miss and then somebody else picked it up and then you heard it? And you're like, oh my God, we missed this. Well, there's certainly things that we wanted to put out that we didn't get to.

Though I do know that after we put out the first Arcade Fire album, more than one booking agent called and said, you know, I could have booked that band. I had that CD sitting in a stack of demos on my desk, and I just never listened to it. This is the next, I think, hugely pivotal moment for the label. You released Arcade Fire's funeral. That band would go on to become your best-selling band on the label.

How did you guys even get connected? with Arcade Fire. Because, I mean, not only do they become a hugely commercially successful, and they won Grammys and Record of the Year and Album the Year and all this stuff, like hugely on lists of best albums of all time, how did they come across your radar? The best way for any demo to get to us is for it to be handed to us by someone we know. And over the years of touring, of course, we met a lot of people.

One of them was this guy, Howard Billerman. He sent us a demo of the Arcade Fire. He said, they came to record in his recording studio. And, you know, he was like, I think they're really good. And you need to check them out. And the CD sat on Mac's desk for a while, and you listened to it. It sat on my desk for a while, and I listened to it. And the CD wouldn't play.

Didn't work. I didn't remember that part. It was like a DVD or something weird. Like, ugh. And I was like, Howard's demo. I can't listen to it. Okay, I'll send you another one. Like he sent him another disc.

So we finally got a disc that we could play. And it was so good and so I was into it to the point where I would play it for other people and be like, is this really good or is it just reminding me of things that I think are good? You know, like, I loved it. You know, it went around the office and everybody, liked it, but we're always, we make decisions very slowly. This is something that has always been sort of a, we try not to rush into working with the band. And in this case, it took us so long to make up our minds that when we finally reached out to the band, apparently they were on the

verge of signing a contract with a Canadian label. And they got out of it and wound up on merge. How'd you convince them to sign with you? Well, I guess, you know, at that point, merge had enough of a reputation that it was a more attractive choice than the one they were about to go with. I have to imagine that that record and then their subsequent records really helped grow merge, you know, by an order of magnitude, right? It's sort of like, I think of like Bloomsbury Publishing, that it was a small publishing house in London and they signed an obscure writer named J.K. Rowling in like 1997 or something,

you know, like 10 years after it was founded. And then, of course, Blune Spray publishing became enormous because Harry Potter became that series, you know, it's like the Bible. It's sold. Is, it was Arcade Fire sort of like that for Merge? I think so.

Yeah. I mean, we had to grow in order to do what we needed to do to support that record. Yeah. Because it just took off. Yeah, like we had to grow really fast to keep up with that record. And like, yet again, we had, we, you know, we were like, okay, I think this is going to, this record's going to be really, it's going to do really well.

It's going to sell at least 4,000 copies. And for a first record by a new band, that would be really good. And they also, I mean, the album art for that record involved some elaborate foil stamping. And it involved multiple steps in which the, you know, the printing place would have to let this one part dry before they then do the next part. Otherwise, they'd stick to each other and like, you know, come, the stuff would peel off.

So it was expensive? It was expensive and slow. And so when the record came out and people started buying it, we didn't have any more. And we couldn't make them fast enough. And we kept, like, you know, ordering more. And then by the time we got those,

those were already sold out, and we'd have to do it again and again. Wow. Which I would say is like a terrible feeling for us, not being able to keep up with a record that people want to buy. Yeah, I mean, how to, can you explain? And maybe there's no explanation. Maybe it's just fate or whatever. But how does that happen? I mean, this record, their first record funeral, certified gold in the U.S.,

which means it sold more than half a million copies. Double plan them in Canada, plan them in the U.K. why this record? I mean, obviously it's an amazing album, but still you need people to notice it and to talk about it. It's just some things kind of take off. I think it's a combination of how good that band was live

makes people talk about them and makes them tell other people about them. Right. And then hearing those songs on record and they're as good as the band is live, it's an awesome combination. I remember when that band did their first, like, real U.S. tour, they were opening for unicorns, I think.

And they came through Chapel Hill. They had a day off, and we got them a show in a tiny club in Chapel Hill called the Cave. It's underground. It holds maybe like 50 people or something like that. And that was the first time we had seen them live. And they just blew everyone away. And you could just see, like, wow, like this is – we're blown away, but this is going to blow everyone away. And I remember getting emails from people we knew around the country the first time they would come through town.

I remember Britt from Spoon emailing the day after they played in Austin for the first time saying, like, I just saw Arcade Fire and I simultaneously feel like I want to quit music and, like, I want to start a new band. So, like, they were just making a huge impact on whoever saw them. And I feel like that's one of the most powerful ways to communicate with people. I mean, they have sold millions of records. I think funeral probably close to a million and definitely suburbs. more than a million. I mean, just to put this in perspective, I mean, that's a lot of money.

I mean, that's tens of millions of dollars in record sales. I mean, you guys said you weren't prepared for it. Like, I know that you weren't thinking in terms of money and business, but, I mean, it was like a lottery ticket in some ways, right?

I mean, it just, like, the fact that they sold so many records obviously reflects on how good the music is, but also resulted in merge becoming more than just a small little indie label. Well, it's interesting because the way that we work, just like we were saying, like, oh, if they sell 4,000 records like that'll be a success

for a new band on their first album, we go into things trying to keep a rain on, you know, how much money we're spending because it's the band's money too, you know? Yeah. And so, for better or worse, that does put us in a position of not having to be able to. having made the 50,000 records that we could have sold from the get-go. But, you know, we also can't assume, because that would be insane, to think that the next record we put out by any band is going to be like that. So in other words, we can't just scale merge up to handle a funeral every time

because it's almost never going to be a funeral. So once that record came out and all of a sudden, you just didn't have the support to staff, what did you do? How did you cope with that? Some of what you do is you hire like independent publicist, you know, independent publicity people, you know, you hire out to contractors to do certain parts that you feel like you, you know, you find the right people and you hire them, you know, temporarily just for the project. That's a, that's a lot of it. The other thing is that when a record gets as big as our band gets as big as arcade fire, there's a percentage of people that know what label that record is on, but there's a much bigger percentage of people that don't know and don't care, like even what a record is. label is. They're just like, I love arcade fire. You know, like when something gets popular beyond what you think of as like alternative world or whatever, indie world, that's not

people who really think to look at the back of a record necessarily or even buy a record. If you were, if you wanted to make a lot of money in the, throughout most of the 20th century, you would become a newspaper publisher because you would print classified ads. It was like printing money. Like if you wanted to make a lot of money, you know, in the 50s, 60, 70s, you could start a 80s, 90s, you could start a record label, right? I mean, I mean, the guys who start Atlantic. I mean, people were making money. But if you wanted to lose a lot of money in the last 20 years, you'd start a record label.

Right? Because music went digital. People, I just went to Amoeba Records, a legendary record store in Berkeley, California. And it's just wonderful. You walk through there, and it's like there's records and there's, there's vinyl, and there's CDs. And it reminds me of when I was a kid and I'd go to Tower Records and, and, in Los Angeles, just such a, it's such a powerful feeling, but, you know, there are very few record stores compared to when I was a kid, obviously. I think, you know, I read that like in 94,

there were like a billion records shipped by 2007. It was like half of that, but by today it's probably half of that. I mean, this has not been a good time to be a record label, and somehow you guys like have been thriving. growing? What explains? I mean, people are going to Spotify. They're not buying records. They're not buying CDs. So what explains the fact that you guys are doing better than okay? There's moments where it feels like a struggle. I mean, it's definitely not as easy as it was, you know, when people were buying downloads on top of buying CDs. Which they're not doing anymore.

They're not doing anymore. But, you know, I think something else that has helped in the last seven to 10 years has been vinyl coming back. Yeah. I wonder how many of these final records are actually being listened to sometimes, but that is helping a lot to support artists and record labels and record stores. Yeah. One thing that's difficult is that even though the way people consume music means that they don't really have to pay for it so much, all the things that we do on behalf of bands

because we, our job is really to get the band's music out there to as many people as we can, make them aware of the band, get the band's music in a place where the people can hear it easily and know about the band. All that stuff still requires just as many people as it used to, if not more, on our end. Yeah. Plus, we are still making vinyl and CDs and tapes even. So all the jobs are still there for people on our end. but people don't have to pay for it on the other side. So that's what's difficult.

Now, I mean, it's interesting because in some ways, the most old-fashioned ways of promoting music are still the most successful and powerful, and touring is one of those. Because if you see a band live and they blow you away, like, that stays with you more even than if you're just like, you're in a coffee shop and you're like, I like this song, you hit Shazam and see what it is.

And, you know, you might remember to go to, check that out when you get home, you might not. But if you see a band live and they blow you away, like, you're going to support that band. When you think about the journey you've been on, right? I mean, 30 years, I think you celebrated your 30th anniversary as a band and label in 2019. Do you, could you ever imagined that 30 years later,

you know, we'd be talking about the band and the label as these really influential kind of iconic institutions. in independent music in America? No. I mean, I definitely never would have imagined that. I love what we've done, and I've enjoyed it very, very much. But sometimes I resent it. Like, sometimes I even am like, damn it.

Like, there were other things I wanted to do too. And now I don't, I haven't had time. Because this has turned out to be successful. It's been a gift, though. Yeah. Do you think that what happened with Merge and the influence it had had to do with just getting lucky, like just luckily finding the right artist? Or do you think it had to do with like the kind of the strategic, you know, and hard work approach that you guys took? Both, probably.

I think that our strategy has always been to be careful and grow slowly. And we've never had big goals on the long term. And I think that has served us well in a way because we've been cautious enough to avoid, in general, over extending ourselves. Yeah. And that has led to our longevity, I think. Mack? Yeah, I think it's a combination because, of course, luck is always involved. And you happen to run into the right person or pick up and put in a demo tape at the right time of day and it appeals to you.

certain way and you end up working with that band or whatever. But at the same time, you can build on that with doing things the right way and treating people well and doing a good job for your artists, you know. I just want to ask one more thing about the two of you because because, of course, this isn't just a story about the label or about Superchunk. It's a story about your relationship. So what do you think explains the... success of your business partnership. Like what from your perspective, like, why do you think it's worked? I mean, you were boyfriend, girlfriend, in your 20s, you split up.

And that now you guys are in your early 50. So it's, you can look back and laugh or fondly remember if there's no that connection that, that, that's gone. But, but still your business partnership and your friendship has really survived and thrived. Why? What explains it? I think probably because we, like, I'm not trying to do the business side. Right. You know, like, we're not trying to, like, I'm going to do that.

I need to do that. I need to do that. Like, we're not trying to step on each other's toes in some way. But I would say also that, you know, Mack and I are very different from each other. Like, he's got big ideas and I'm cautious. I'm the person going like, we should do this. And then she's the person saying, like, why? or I don't want to or something.

Like, I don't know. But that is kind of like the relationship, you know. Yeah. We fulfilled different parts of what the business needs to succeed. And I suspect if you had two Macs running merge, merge wouldn't have kept going. It would be awesome. That's Laura Balance and MacMacon,

founders of Merge records and members of the band Superchunk. The band was on hiatus for much of the early 2000s, But over the past 10 years, they've been back performing together live and in studio. In fact, they have a brand new single just out. It's laying behind me right now. And it's called Endless Summer. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to reach us, our email address is H-I-B-T at npr.org.

If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at How I Built This or my account at Guy Raz. You can find us on Instagram at How I Built This NPR or mine at guy.org. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arableu. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, Julia Carney, Elaine Coates, Farah Safari, Liz Metzker, and Harrison V.J. Choi. Our intern is Catherine Seifer. Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.