The True Hollywood Story
of Hawthorne Street Records
It was a hot summers night when three friends sat around a table at Soul Vegetarian restaurant on Chicago's seedy south side. As the magnificent food was placed around the table talk quickly turned from pleasure to business. This dinner had been called not to discuss the usual topics, but was called to discuss the concept of starting a record label for people who love music and friendships.
For the previous 2 months leading up to the dinner John and Jason had been speaking with Dave from the infamous band Deadguy. Jason and John were among a select few who felt that 'Screamin' was Deadguy's best record. It was actually the sound track to 2 or 3 years of our lives and a turning point from mid 90's mosh to something more. After months of talking with Dave we agreed with him that we would release a Deadguy live CD. The only problem was that we didn't have a record label.
This brings us back to that hot summer night in Chicago and also is how the third person gets involved in the label. The third person is Iain. Iain had ran a successful label called stability records for 4 or 5 years. However, Iain had let stability run head first into a brick wall and had not been doing the label for a few years. Iain had exactly what we needed, a little bit of knowledge, and that little bit of extra push to get us going. Iain also had a few boxes of Bloodlet covers that he would donate for our first release.
After a few days of thinking of names it was between Regulator Records and Hawthorne Street Records. Hawthorne Street prevailed. It is the street that our friend Craig lived on and we spent plenty of nights there hanging out.
A record label was born.
We like to think Hawthorne Street is a little different from the average label. We don't buy into trends. We don't release music from bands because we think it will sell. We only release music that we love, and by people who love the music they create.
