Ruination Record Co., a Label Supporting More Than Music
Ruination Record Co., founded by Andrew Stocker, Dan Knishkowy and Sam Cantor, announced So Many Singing Vol. 2— the second installment in their compilation series in support of immigrant rights on November 4th. With songs by fifty different artists, the compilation is an effort to raise awareness and support of organizations working both locally and globally. Artists participating include Barrie, Lala Lala, Katie Von Schleicher, Alena Spanger (Tiny Hazard), Annie Hart, Hovvdy, Johanna Samuels, Odetta Hartman, and V.V. Lightbody, among others. All proceeds will go to the International Refugee Assistance Program, an institution that organizes law students and lawyers to develop and enforce a set of legal and human rights to refugees and displaced persons.
Below, Andrew and Dan talk how both Ruination and So Many Singing came to be.
Dan and Andrew Photographed by Christopher Bernabeo
POND: How did you meet?
Andrew Stocker: Ruination Record Co. (RRC) is myself, Dan Knishkowy, and our friend Sam Cantor who lives in Chicago. We all grew up together in Connecticut and started playing music with each other in middle school. The three of us have been close friends and collaborators for about 15 years.
POND: How did the label start?
Andrew: We started RRC mainly as a vehicle to support and release music from our friends in NYC as well as our own musical projects. There’s a rich community of artists who are creating important work with little or no opportunities to find support from labels or other infrastructure. We’re a small but full service label with a focus on limited edition physical components like LPs, 7”s, and cassettes.
POND: How did the compilation come to be?
Andrew: I think Dan had the original germ of the idea. In the aftermath of the 2016 election I think we all felt like we were grasping at straws trying to combat the daily radical policy shifts we were experiencing.
Dan: Sam and I were actually on tour together the week of the election, due to some very ill advised planning. We spent a lot of time that week thinking of ways to tap into the musical communities we’re surrounded by and leverage some of that in a more meaningful way.
Andrew: We started an open dialogue between the three of us and expressed our desire to utilize our privilege (we’re three white dudes from Connecticut so it doesn’t really get more privileged than that) and place in this artistic community to help those that need it. We began working on So Many Singing Vol.1 right around when the current administration’s initial travel ban went into effect, so we decided to donate proceeds to the International Refugee Assistance Project and throw a release show in Brooklyn to raise money for Make The Road NY. The original compilation came out in July 2017 both digitally and as a double cassette pressed in-house, and featured 48 artists (Half Waif, LVL UP, Hand Habits, Wilder Maker, Cassandra Jenkins, Lightning Bug, Will Stratton, Pavo Pavo to name a few). We were expecting to do something a little more traditional, maybe 20 tracks. But as soon as we started reaching out to artists for contributions the response was so fervent that we felt like we just wanted to get as much material as possible.
Dan: We took the name “So Many Singing” from a Will Oldham song. There’s a lyric— “I cannot rest with so many singing”— and taking that to heart in a couple of ways, it felt natural to keep this project going. In addition to raising money for the IRAP and Make the Road NYC again, we’ll also be throwing a show in Chicago this time, raising money for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Although I don’t think donating is exhaustive of the kind of action we can or should be taking, it’s a start for us as a label— there are also artists on the compilation who are heavily involved in community organizing, and I hope we can take some direction from them going forward.
POND: How did you select the artists?
Andrew: The artists on SMS1&2 are friends and other artists we admire. We have some sort of personal connection with almost every artist on either volume which feels nice for us. Participating artists have expressed to us that being a part of SMS feels like a big family and I think that comes through in some regard. That feeling extends past the music, our friend Benedict Kupstas (Field Guides) did the artwork and layout, and our friend Michael Downing, who plays in Sam’s project Minor Moon, did all the mastering. That familial aspect is almost as important to us as the actual charity work. We don’t really go into the process with an idea of what kind of music or which artists we want to highlight. For the most part we try to keep it pretty organic. The only thing I really keep actively in mind during the process is trying to gather different artists from different parts of the country and different backgrounds. We want the music to have a healthy amount of variance, nothing too homogenous. When we do the initial outreach to artists we were generally asking for stuff that would end up on the cutting room floor. Album demos, instrumental tracks, live tracks, general ephemera, stuff like that. The nature of the work we’re asking for generally gives the project a nice lo-fi and ethereal flavor.
POND: What’s next for Ruination?
Andrew: So Many Singing Vol. 2 is out December 6th 2019. All proceeds from the compilation will go to the IRAP, while proceeds from our release shows December 8th at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn (with Alena Spanger, Zooey Celeste, Onlyness, and a few others), and December 13th at the Hideout in Chicago (with Liam Kazar and Minor Moon) will go to the corresponding local charities. Since we’ve announced SMS2 a lot of artists have reached out to us about getting involved in the next volume. Anyone who wants to get involved can email us at ruinationrecords@gmail.com. Beyond SMS we’ve got some other stuff coming down the pipe in 2020 from some artists we’re really excited about!