When Saskatchewan’s iconic songwriter Jason Plumb, formerly of the Juno Award-winning band the Waltons, started up SoccerMom Records in 2007, I don’t think he imagined what it would evolve into. At the time Plumb was releasing his Beauty in this World album. The label name started out as a joke and just sort of stuck.
Jason Plumb talks about the name SoccerMom Records
[listen: Jason Plumb discusses the label name]
Five years later, SoccerMom Records has expanded its roster by 500 per cent. Plumb’s role has evolved from being the sole artist to acting as its A&R guy. Every additional artist on the label plays in Plumb’s band the Willing and, in most cases, it’s their first opportunity to shine as frontmen on their own CDs. As Plumb explains, the idea “started quite innocently with me offering Dan Silljer the opportunity to do some recording and some co-writing with myself.”
Jason Plumb describes the SoccerMom Records roster
[listen: Jason Plumb walks through the roster]
Cody Gamracy has spent years quietly recording his own music and sharing it with a select group of friends. Gamracy says, “I can’t remember if it was Jason or Johnny who came back to me and said ‘This is great. When are you going to put this out? We’d really like to help you out with this.’ And I said, ‘No. I wasn’t going to put it out,’ and they said, ‘Well we’ll fix that. Here let’s help you.’”
Cody Gamracy reflects on his debut CD
[listen: Cody Gamracy reflects on his debut CD]
Gamracy also has high praise for Mike Thompson, the Willing’s drummer. Gamracy says Mike “was one of the first guys to really encourage me and really gave me a boost. It had been a solo affair recording this stuff for the most part. It was me trying to capture the band spirit as best as I could on my own … I played drums myself on the original recording and they were not very good … so Mike came in and fixed all that but also just had a lot of time and patience as far as helping me to engineer and coming with arrangement suggestions and stuff.” Plumbs says that Thompson “gets overlooked in all of this, [but] he played drums on over half of the projects.”
All of the musicians have played together for years, but their regular collaborations haven’t stopped each of them from having distinct musical voices.
“What I didn’t know, and what did shock me, was the calibre of quality that we were going to get when the records were turned in,” says Plumb. “I didn’t expect that. I knew they were great, but I didn’t think I’d be having an inferiority complex about my record versus the rest of them when it came out. Not to say that it was assumed that my record was going to be better than all of theirs, I just was hoping that it would be (laughs).”
“Sock Puppets” is Gamracy’s first single, and he says, “It just seemed to kind of hold it all together, I guess … it’s basically looking at letting go, letting go of fear or inhibitions basically, situations that I saw where people were trying so hard to fit in and all they had to do was just let go and just be themselves.”
“It’s been a personal sort of payback to these guys that have been so willing to play with me, because nobody’s getting rich doing this,” says Plumb. “And they’ve been very loyal, and we’ve done a lot of touring together, and a lot of playing together, and a lot of recording together. So on one level it was me saying ‘you guys deserve this and I know you can do it so let’s make records.’ It’s a great showcase for Saskatchewan talent. They just all happen to play in my band. It’s kind of a neat story, we thought.”
This Saturday night, April 21, all five bands are having their official CD release party at The Distrikt in Regina. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 7:30 p.m.
Related links: