Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Eades.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in the “world wide web.” I’m old enough to have been tinkering on the Internet since the days of AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve. Before social media existed, people connected online by visiting actual websites and forums. I was just nerdy enough to take it to the next level and have an interest in actually making websites.
That web development hobby led to a job at an indie record label in Murfreesboro called Spongebath Records. While I worked there, I developed an intense love for supporting local music. The scene in the late 90s in Murfreesboro was really something special and I loved being a part of promoting, documenting and helping out bands around town (I met Bingham Barnes at Spongebath – shoutout Grand Palace!).
Post college, post Spongebath I ended up living in Nashville and continuing to work with bands. My day job was building websites for bands like Lenny Kravitz and Snoop Dogg while my free time was spent helping local bands build a presence on the web.
After a solid decade of being steeped in Internet and helping local bands, I decided to start helping some friends actually release their own music and started yk Records (2009). The general intent was never to make a living from the label but to serve as a platform for getting music that I really loved out into the world that wouldn’t have a home otherwise. The vision has grown since then but it was a very fun place to start from and I’ve always tried to keep that kernel in mind with every release.
Around that same time, there was a website called NashvilleZine that posted anonymous news, rumors and scandalous gossip about the local rock scene. When that shut down, there was a hole in the music community to connect about various goings-on. Doug Lehmann started We Own This Town as a way to fill the hole left by NashvilleZine and start a podcast that documented the scene as well. It was far less scandalous and had an admirable goal of simply supporting the scene in general. Around the same time, the Nashville Scene launched their music blog The Nashville Cream; loosely modeled around the same NashvilleZine, keeping the anonymous posts but curbing the scandalous posts as well.
I got involved with We Own This Town around 2007 and have been steering the ship ever since. The have been various incarnations of the music blog and occasionally published podcast but it wasn’t until 2018 that the site was renovated and expanded. At that time, that site became a podcast network; bringing in additional voices to provide entertainment and documentary content from around town.
That’s a lengthy rundown of how my involvement in yk Records and We Own This Town came to be. The label is now thirteen years old and I’ve been curating things over at WOTT for about fifteen. Not a bad run!
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Running yk Records has been relatively smooth all things considered. There’s been the occasional hiccup where vinyl test pressings had to be sent back or manufacturing was extremely delayed but those are all par for the course. I don’t make any money from the undertaking but, as I said before, that was not the original goal. I’m extremely grateful to all the artists that I’ve had the good fortune to work with.
If I had to cite a struggle along the way, it would be entirely monetary. Making money from releasing music – physically or digitally – is an incredibly difficult task. Traditionally, releases might involve hiring a publicist, hiring a radio promoter, paying for some music videos, manufacturing physical versions of the record and paying for distribution. I don’t tend to embrace most of that because the return on investment is abysmal but it has happened! With so much music being available “for free” in the world, it’s a massive struggle to get noticed and even harder when you’re working on a shoestring budget.
As for We Own This Town, all of the podcasters on the network do a wonderful job of putting together their shows and promoting their individual shows but the core We Own This Town site is a solo operation run by myself as a labor of love. I can’t say that’s always been smooth because it does take a considerable amount of time, which I don’t always have. Here again, there’s never been any money generated by the site during its entire tenure and that also comes with its own stresses.
That said, in both cases it’s great to remember that it wouldn’t be a labor of love if there wasn’t actual love involved! Releasing music via the label or discovering and promoting the local music scene is still a rewarding undertaking and now being able to work with other podcasters is also a downright treat.
But yea, some income to keep the boat afloat would be wonderful.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’ve worn a lot of hats over the years but they’ve all been involved with The Internet in some form or another. As I mentioned before, I started out building websites as a teen in the somewhat nascent years of AOL and haven’t really stopped. I maintained the Spongebath Records website while in college and then worked at a wonderful design shop working for labels and agencies for over a decade. More recently, I worked for a startup that was focused on democratizing video distribution for creators and now I currently work at Vimeo being a product manager for a similar product.
I think the web has lost a little bit of its weirdness over the last twenty years as more and more standards were put in place and people’s expectations changed. It’s been a natural progression but it’s always a surprising treat when you see a truly out-of-place website these days.
I try to keep myself busy with learning new web technology and tinkering with graphic design when the opportunity presents itself. Album art for bands on yk Records is always an honor to be involved with and doing the promo marketing work for We Own This Town is certainly a treat.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
One surprising thing that people might not know about We Own This Town? Probably the fact that it’s actually been around since the early 2000s. Hah!
Other than that, I’ve been running a blog at yewknee.com for the past twenty-one years. It’s changed a lot over the years in terms of volume of output but it’s never gone completely dormant. Twenty-one years is a long time to maintain anything, especially a blog!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://yewknee.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/yewknee
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/yewknee
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yewknee
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/yewknee
- Other: https://weownthistown.net
Image Credits
We Own This Town group photo by Daniel Meigs Michael Eades photo by Eric England
