Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Leib.
Hi Robert, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I started recording music with two friends–Joe Huettner and Ben Wenk– in 1999 when I was 16 years old living just outside of Gettysburg, PA. We started recording at Joe’s home in a papertown called Guernsey, which still appears on google maps, but there’s really nothing there. We had a tascam 4-track from the 1980s I got off Ebay, eventually upgrading to a new 4-track one year later because the original machine only had one working track remaining. Everything was catch as catch can with microphones, instruments, and spaces. We used whatever we could find to make and capture noises. I would say I’m glad that these early recordings exist, but I would be horrified if anyone actually listened to most of them! By 2003, we were using a digital DAW, had a few proper basic microphones, and we would commandeer the sound booth at the local high school auditorium during holidays to record larger instruments like vibraphones and tubas. The three of us would write songs specifically to record them, and most of the time, there was no thought of playing them live anywhere. The songs would be written track by track and take by take, and that’s how they existed, which is somewhat backward. We were less of a band and more of a recording company, even back then. By 2005, Joe was a senior at Berklee College of Music pursuing a songwriting degree, so we finally had access to professional equipment, spaces, and ears. We wrote and recorded an album under the name The Lamb and the Tyger, which is the first record we produced of any quality. Then, the years got in the way–I went to graduate school for Philosophy, Joe moved to Nashville, eventually playing bass for Natalie Stovall, and Ben took up a partnership in his family business, Three Springs Fruit Farm, growing apples. We made a couple dozen recordings over the next ten years when we could get together, but nothing was ever really finished in this period and around 2015, we stopped working on records. I finished by PhD and started moving around and teaching in different universities, Joe got married and moved to Nebraska, and Ben was busy expanding his family business into what became Ploughman Farm Cider. Now, in 2023, I was unfortunate and lost my professorship in North Carolina, where I had been four years, and I decided to move back to Gettysburg and start working for Ploughman. I was there about six months when I became the live music booker for Ploughman Taproom, which hosts live music four days a week. In this role, I was being inundated by local bands–dozens of inquiries a week to play the taproom–and these were bands who were writing and playing their own songs. There are over 180 venues within an hour’s drive of Gettysburg that host local music, and I still get still more inquiries than I can often handle. So, Ben and I began to think about ways we could help bolster and support this growing scene. The two of us took on a third partner, Dean Vaccher, a professional sound engineer and former studio owner who also plays in about a thousand local bands, so he knows everybody. With Dean’s professional experience and equipment, Ben’s 19th Century, six-bedroom farmhouse, and my stubborn belief that I can learn anything if I obsess over it long enough, we decided to form Guernsey Beat Records in May 2024. Joe still works closely with us in an advisory capacity from Nebraska. We were all still writing songs during the decade when we stopped making records, and we were feeding them into Ben and Dean’s band, Chuck Darwin & the Knuckle Draggers. So, we had a test run of the newly dubbed Cidernalia Studios in the fall of 2024, recording the album, Poor Man’s Rain, which we released as our first vinyl in January of this year. We quickly attracted interest for other local bands and took on about ten recording projects over the next several months, which are now starting to come to fruition. We also started releasing albums that we did not record ourselves from bands that had the means to pursue outside studio recording. We have released full albums from the Chuck Darwin & the Knuckle Draggers, The Clark McLane Band, The Willys, Matt Harrison, Dark River Darling so far this year, along with singles from Cumberland Honey, Glass Grin, Aaron Samuels, and Peter Wile. By September, we will have fifteen releases in our catalog from this first crop of bands, counting both full albums and singles. We have an additional five full length albums in process at the studio, and a roster of six new acts lined up for our second recording season, which will begin on October 1st. We always release our music digitally on Bandcamp, TouchTunes, and streaming platforms, but we let the bands decide whether they want to pursue CD and vinyl releases in addition. We have released three vinyls already, with three more on the way this fall.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The speed at which we were able to set up the studio and begin recording would make it seem like it has been a smooth road, but we have definitely stepped in a few deep potholes so far. First of all, the indie record business itself is arcane and decentralized. We knew how to make records to a degree, but virtually nothing about the business of A&R, contracts, registering our catalog, and packaging our albums–not to mention advertising, distributing, and selling them–when we formed the company. I learned much of what I know today from listening to the Other Record Labels podcast, hosted and written by Scott Orr. We still only know most things imperfectly and ‘in theory’. It seems that with every new artist and every new release, we encounter novel challenges, disagreements, and hold ups, but we are committed to learning from our mistakes and getting better each time. Personally, I also had a lot to learn about studio design, professional grade equipment, and sound processing techniques. Dean takes the lead on A&R and on the engineering some of the projects, and Ben will take the lead on artist development, arrangement, and booking studio musicians for various projects, but often, I am the point person for the recording and release processes– from contracts, to engineering, mixing, mastering, packaging. production, and distribution. There are a lot of hats to wear in a label, even when bands are not producing the masters in house. I would say that since we started, I have spent 40 hours a week on top of my regular work schedule gaining knowledge, developing workflows, and producing records. Thankfully this spring, we were able to take on a marketing director, Lauren Formosa, who is able to turn around the finished products and bring them into public view. This is really the most important part of the process for a business, but since it was the end of the line, we were dropping the ball on promotion and sales.
Besides learning the science of sound engineering and developing my ear, I would say one of the most difficult aspects of running the label so far has been artist relations. Not because our artists or artists are difficult, but because it is difficult to find balance in partnering with new artists to bring their art into the world in a way that is true to their vision, within our ability, and in keeping with what needs to be a sellable product. There is a lot of give and take in this register. I stay in close contact with artists at every step, hoping to guide them productively through a multi-step, multi-month production process, set appropriate expectations, keep spirits up, and co-develop their artistic image for an audience that makes everyone happy. I am an artist and a musician myself, and I have taught art at the university level before, but this kind of work has been different from both those experiences.
I would say the second most difficult problem is finding the audience for our releases. People around here are very supportive of live music, but they have never had a record company in this area before. So, introducing ourselves to people and helping them to understand what a label is and does– and why helping to support a local label is important– all this takes time. We have taken good steps toward these goals by running or sponsoring several local festivals a year. This year, we held the first Gettysburg ‘free week’ event in January with our Scene & Herd Fest. For five years now, Ploughman Cider has hosted two larger events–Dig My Earth Fest in June and Cidernalia in December– which we have been helping out with. And also, for the first time this year, Guernsey Beat helped with programming for the 13th Home Grown Festival, and also took over the Gettysburg Rocks festival in August, for which bands donate their time and talents to raise money to fight childhood cancer. These events have helped raise consciousness of our presence and give our potential audience a chance to see what we can do for the live music scene as well.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I have been recording music since I was 16, but I have many other creative pursuits and outlets I picked up along the way. Primarily, I would say I am an academic writer. I have a PhD in Political Philosophy from Villanova University, and since I graduated in 2016, I have published 13 articles as well as a book call “Exoanthropology: Dialogues with AI”. This book came out of my time as a beta tester for GPT-3, the forerunner to chat GPT, and the book is a series of philosophical dialogues, loosely in the style of Plato, where my interlocutor, Sophie Kermit, and I discuss all kinds of philosophical issues, including the scope and tone of coming human-AI relationships.
I worked with an open access publisher for this work, so it is available for full download for free here: https://punctumbooks.com/titles/exoanthropology-dialogues-with-ai/ .
I also maintain a website with conversations that build on from the end of the book here: https://www.exoanthropology.com/
My philosophical work in political theory is much more arcane and niche, but I am proud of that work as well, which can be found here: https://unitedlutheranseminary.academia.edu/RobertLeib
Over the years, I have also developed facility in a number of other forms of expression, including street photography, mixed media, digital image-making, image-texts, human-AI art, and, most recently, painting. I maintain a website of all these works here: https://kidsetmedia.com
Much of this art is informed by my philosophical studies in different ways. One essay that lays out these connections somewhat is a co-authored piece titled “Photographing with the Muses”, which is available here: https://www.academia.edu/126065112/Photographing_with_the_Muses
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
The record label is run by three partners– me, Ben Wenk, and Dean Vaccher. Dean has been an invaluable mentor to me through this process because he is a professional sound engineer at Maryland Public Television (WMPT), and he has also owned and run a studio in Gettysburg before. He dedicated a majority of the studio equipment to the business, computers, preamps, microphones, monitors, analog and digital processors, which have allowed us to produce high quality recordings in a home studio space. Ben Wenk dedicated space in his six bedroom farmhouse for the studio space, which has produced half a dozen albums in the past year already. He is also the owner of Ploughman Cider Taproom in Gettysburg, which hosts live music four days a week year round. This venue has been super supportive in booking our artists, as well as hosting festivals we program, like our Scene & Herd Fest in January, and our Guernsey Beat Rocks fundraiser in August. Lauren Formosa, who handles our social media presence and release announcements, is also super crucial for alerting our followers to new music. Joe Huettner is also a key element in our operation still. He advises on arrangement, mixes, and helps on the back end with cataloguing our music in online databases like Disc Cogs, and pitching our music to playlists after release.
I want to thank Dodd Edwards, who is the host for our local music podcast, The Home Grown Back Room Sessions, which wrapped its first season in May, and is gearing up to start season two in September. We produce this podcast twice a month and features full sets of local music, recorded live at the The Back Room in nearby Gardeners, PA. You can listen the entire first season, which includes episodes on a number of our roster artists, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-homegrown-back-room-sessions/id1769957056
I want to thank Gettysburg Connection, which hosts our live local music calendar, where we keep a running schedule of live music at venues within 1.5 hours of Gettysburg. Currently, we post the shows for over 180 local venues, updated weekly. The calendar is available here: https://gettysburgconnection.org/live-music-in-adams-county-pa/ .
I want to thank local photographer and artist Jim Bargas for his dedication to documenting the Gettysburg music scene in great detail: @jimbargasphotography
I want to thank Tom Dudra, local music reporter who has taken a special interest in our label, and publishes reviews of our events and releases on Gettysburg Connection. An example of Tom’s work can be found here: https://gettysburgconnection.org/music-review-chuck-darwin-the-knuckledraggers-poor-mans-rain/
I want to thank Brett, the programming director at WZBT 91.1 FM – Gettysburg College Radio for picking up The Home Grown Back Room Sessions for airplay, in a rare move that brings podcasts back to traditional radio.
I want to thank Matt Kornfeld, an FM disc jockey at WPPM 106.5 in Philadelphia. Matt runs a show called the Ultimate Mixtape on Thursday evenings. He has featured several of our artists, is super enthusiastic about our label and the scene we are creating in the PA mid-state.
And of course, I want to thank all of our artists and session musicians, who help make the recordings that are the cornerstone of Guernsey Beat Records.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://guernseybeat.bandcamp.com/
- Instagram: @guernseybeat
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560624450969
- Twitter: https://x.com/GuernseyBeat
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GuernseyBeat/featured
