All images courtesy of Independent Project Records
It is our pleasure to welcome back Bruce Licher, founder of the venerable Independent Project Records (IPR), along with new collaborator, Jeffrey Clark, to discuss all things Independent Project Records & Press.
Bruce Licher founded IPR in 1980 to release his music on vinyl records, leveraging his own distinctive letterpress printed designs. As a guitarist for influential bands like Savage Republic and Scenic, Licher’s musical output is characterized by singular sounds and unusual tunings. This unique blend of aural and visual art established IPR’s catalog and made its sleeve design—which has earned Licher Grammy nominations—as distinctive as those of labels like 4AD and Factory Records. Licher continues to create both music and design from his base in the Eastern Sierras, his legacy recently chronicled in the book Savage Impressions: An Aesthetic Expedition Through The Archives of Independent Project Records & Press, P22 Type Foundry, 2020).
Now, Licher has teamed up with long-time musician and artist Jeffrey Clark to guide IPR into its next era. Clark has deep roots in the California alternative music scene, notably as the lead vocalist and songwriter for Shiva Burlesque, a group whose music was praised for its mystical, poetic sensibility. Clark has a personal history with the label, as IPR released his debut solo record, Sheer Golden Hooks, in 1996. Beyond music, Clark is a recognized figure in the independent film world, where he owns the Onyx Theatre and co-founded the highly-regarded Nevada City Film Festival.
Their combined experience—Licher’s unparalleled aesthetic and musical innovation alongside Clark’s deep artistic sensibility and curatorial direction—promises an exciting new chapter for Independent Project Records. The label is set to benefit from their collaboration, re-releasing expanded gems from the IPR archives alongside new and previously unreleased recordings.
Much appreciation to Josh Mills at It’s Alive! Media for the coordination and to Bruce and Jeff for their time.
In remembrance of Jeffrey Runnings 1963 – 2025.
James Broscheid: So, before we jump in, I wanted to talk a little bit about Jeff Runnings and his legacy with Independent Project Records (IPR). His passing is still a terrible shock. Could you provide your recollections of him and just how special his work was (and is) for the label with For Against and as a solo artist with his posthumous second LP out now on IPR?
Bruce Licher: He had not had his cancer diagnosis when we first started talking about releasing his solo album ‘Piqued’. Although I knew that he had been struggling with some health issues and had been in and out of the hospital a few times last year. You know, it was tough just realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to see his album come out. Although he was able to see the designs. I sent him designs and he was able to hear the mastered version of the album. He was really pleased with how all the recordings came out, including the bonus tracks from the 80s. He found the original, it was either a four-track or eight-track master, I can’t remember which offhand, but we were able to send that to Larry Crane, the editor of TapeOp magazine and he created new mixes for us that I think sound fantastic. Jeff was really happy with them as well. There’s a lot of history with Jeff and the label because he was always a fan first. He sent us fan mail. Of any artist that I ever had on the label, he sent me the most pieces of mail! He would always be handwriting out these notes, usually on the back of flyers for For Against gigs. He was really friendly. Obviously, he had issues with certain people and trouble with some of his bandmates and all of that. For Against music was one of those things where it took me a few listens before I really got it, but then once you got it, it just stuck with you.
And there are some amazing songs that I remember the first time I heard them. I thought, “Yeah, it’s okay. It’s nice”, and then I’d listen to it repeatedly. Eventually I thought, “Whoa!” Some subtle melodies, subtle things going on musically. I wish I could have been able to support what he was doing the entire time he was doing it. There was a period of time there where I just wasn’t able to do that because I didn’t have the finances. So, I just tried to support him and what he did as much as I could. I was grateful to be able to work on some designs for some of his releases that I didn’t put out. It’s interesting, because I have to say that the shift he took with his music and his band in the early 90s, where all the sudden it was like For Against could have been on Creation (Records)!
Still, my favorite is that three song EP, ‘Don’t Do Me Any Favors’ (IPR, 1993), and then the ‘Aperture’ album (IPR / Rainbow Quartz International, 1993), is still my favorite period of the band. I love the stuff he did with Harry (Dingman, guitar) and Greg (Hill, drums) early on, obviously, that was brilliant material. What I really love the most of what he did was that early second period of the band, particularly. The songs where he is on guitar and it was a four-piece band. He had somebody else playing bass for a period of time (Jeff Gaskins), and then that didn’t last long, but I just like the fullness of that material. So yeah, I think that ‘Don’t Do Me Any Favors’ EP, and maybe one or two other songs from ‘Aperture.’
JB: If I’m not mistaken, I think ‘Echelons’ (1987) was the very first IPR album I purchased. Way back in the day, and then being a fan of music, you obviously start digging into the label to look for other records. Eventually meeting you and getting turned on to a lot more stuff, I learned quickly that IPR is a very unique label. For Against was just one of those bands I instantly fell in love with, but you’re right, even ‘December’ (IPR, 1988). It took a few lessons, but once I got hooked, that was it.
Cover art for ‘Echelons’ by For Against
BL: Yeah, exactly. It’s interesting trying to describe the music on the label because it’s not like a label where everything is just one genre of music. It’s a reflection of, as I put it, my peculiar taste.
JB: That’s what’s funny. Reading other people’s writing about the label and saying, “I really like a lot of what’s on that label, but there’s some stuff that I don’t really care for, but there’s that one band that’s really great.” And then everybody would name a different band!
BL: There you go. Case in point. And you know, it’s one of those situations where I’m still just trying to share music that I think is special or, in some cases, that I want to see a record of. When I started the label, it was mostly, “Hey, I just want to put my own music out”, but then there were bands that I really loved in the L.A. scene. They were struggling to get records out and Human Hands, was the first band I put out that I wasn’t involved with. They were one of my favorite bands to go see in the clubs. And then they broke up, and I thought, “My God, you guys have two albums worth of great material that never got released,” and so I said, “I want a record of you guys!” So that was when I approached them because I’d gotten to know a couple of the band members, and I asked if they had any tapes of their music. That’s how we ended up putting that retrospective together of the double album with a bonus single (Self-titled, 1982). It was all the decent enough recordings of their songs that I wanted to put onto a record so that I could have one! That was kind of the idea. That’s still the case in some instances and of course, now with Jeff involved with the label, he brings his taste to it. It is fortunate we both pretty much agree on most everything that we’re each bringing to the label at this point.
JB: Jeff, as someone who was active in California’s alternative music scene back in the 80s, what is your perspective on IPR’s legacy and its continued relevance today?
Jeffrey Clark: Well, it’s really a unique label for a number of reasons. One of the things that we had when we just began thinking about what we were going to do was, Bruce had this back catalog, and there were a number of artists that he’d already worked with over the years, and many of those groups and artists are viable now. People, like I said, now would be interested in a lot of that music, I think. A lot of it just didn’t get its due back in the day or was just ready to be re-listened to again. So, there’s that.
The legacy, part of it, is pretty clear. We talked about newer artists that we wanted to bring in that fit in some fashion with that legacy; the sound, the vibe, and the philosophy almost of why you’re doing what you’re doing. So, what makes it relevant now, I guess, well, again, I think it might just be the times, to some degree. And I wouldn’t want to understate also that part of that legacy is Bruce’s contribution to graphic design and the quality of the music and the records themselves; the releases themselves. So that’s one of the things that we worked on, thought about in an era when a lot of music doesn’t come out in any other format but digitally.
JB: That’s pretty important (Bruce agrees). When you combine that vision of what the label is with, obviously, the artwork being just as important. Bruce, when looking back, how do you feel the label has stayed true to that initial concept of distinct music and art, and how has it evolved beyond that, if at all?
BL: You know, in a way it’s always been a struggle because I want to make these beautiful art packages, but they’re expensive. If we were really going to be trying to sell them for what they should be sold for, we’d have to price them three or four times as high as they are. And then, of course, we wouldn’t sell nearly as many, so it’s this weird balance of how we make this work from a commercial sense. Even now that we’ve got the financing to keep doing it, it’s still a struggle. We’re always thinking, “What’s the price point that we need to put these at?” We need to make sure that we’re not losing too much money and get them out to people, make them affordable so that people will buy them. It’s tricky because everything’s a lot more expensive now than it used to be in the industry. Part of it has changed rapidly from what it was.
Bruce Licher
JB: Looking at it from that standpoint, do you have to constantly assess the materials you use to generate the artwork, and substitute materials to shave costs down a little bit?
BL: At this point, we’re not. I mean, Jeff and I are happy to see beautiful art being made. I think the tricky thing is, is that I pretty much set the label aside for almost 20 years, and there were a couple of releases that came out in that time frame, but I pretty much wasn’t doing it, and it was during that entire period where the everything was going digital. Sales of physical product were dropping substantially and so we still are of the mindset that it’s okay we’re not pressing as many as we used to back in the day, but at the same time, I still kind of think there should be enough people out there who will want this and be happy to pay for it. Yet we still struggle with sales.
We still have a lot of product in the warehouse and so, that’s one of the things that we’re doing this year. With the blessing of our distributor, we’re starting to reach out directly to a lot of independent stores that haven’t necessarily had access, or in some cases, didn’t even know that our releases were coming out. People who’ve been long time fans of the label, who are running record stores or buying for record stores going, “Oh my God, I had no idea that you guys had started up again and you’ve done all these releases and wow, we love Wu! We want that Woo record!” It seems like it’s harder in a way to get word out nowadays, of course. It’s always been a challenge, but we’re doing our best.
At the same time, there are a lot of people that specifically go to vinyl releases and physical releases of music. And it’s a niche, but that’s what we always were; a niche. Not by choice, but just that’s how it works out. We’re sticking to our guns a bit; this is what we do, and people seem to like it. I think the legacy is the quality of the design work, the presentation, the attention and care that goes into every release at every level.
JC: The legacy of what Bruce has done in that regard kind of speaks for itself, I think. One of the things that did come up around that same time that Bruce and I reconnected was the big coffee table book of Bruce’s work (‘Savage Impressions: An Aesthetic Expedition Through the Archives of Independent Project Records & Press’, P22 Type Foundry – JB). It isn’t necessarily specifically about IPR, but obviously a lot of it does connect with the label. It’s a real honor to see my own album in that book; that’s what helps create the legacy is the quality of the work. And so that’s kind of what it means when you’re looking back, but it’s obviously something we’ve wanted to maintain in this next iteration of the label. Let’s make sure that the quality is high; sound, vision, the whole thing.
BL: Well, and one of the things for me, up to the point where Jeff and I connected, it was a little harder to get the label up and running again. Everything that I’d done was just my personal taste. I questioned, “Would I want to buy a record of this band?” I have fairly eclectic tastes (James agrees), but at the same time, I’m also always looking for something that’s real, in the sense that it’s not just somebody jumping on a bandwagon or wanting to be a star or whatever. It’s something where there’s some real expression, personal expression to the music and creativity in terms of how that music is put together and constructed. Those are all the things that I am looking for.
There have been other instances in the past where I was trying to get a bigger distribution deal for the label because I thought that there would be a wider audience. I never really thought I would partner with anybody, but it wasn’t until Jeff came along and suggested this, and I realized that he shared a lot of the same perspectives in terms of the music and the heart. That’s the same thing with The Big Takeover and Jack Rabid and what he’s always done, looking for music with heart.
Yes, we look for music with heart, but also there’s this creative aspect of, “Okay, we’re going to try something a little different.” Maybe it’s not right in the commercial zone, but there’s something interesting going on here, and we want to help document that and bring it out. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Jeff was the perfect partner just because he brings this creative flow as well. The artists that he has brought in for us to work with all fit. They all make sense.
‘Telephone Free Landslide Victory’ cover art. Camper Van Beethoven, 1985
JC: I got to do a little A&R work there which is kind of fun! But yeah, Bruce does have a very eclectic and broad taste, and I think I do too. There’s a Venn diagram where our tastes connect for sure! It’s a big place where they’re very similar and part of that also is I think we both listen. If Bruce says, “Here’s something I would really like to work with, what do you think?” I think he knows I really listen to that and vice versa.
JB: What prompted the launch into this new chapter of IPR in the first place?
BL: Well, it was once the book had come out, I’m trying to remember exactly the sequence of events, I reconnected with Jeff in late 2019 and it was after the ‘Desolation Center’ film. I guess it was while ‘Desolation Center’ was doing a film festival run, and Jeff was involved with the Nevada City Film Festival in Nevada City, California. He ended up booking the film for the festival. Stuart Swezey (American filmmaker, event organizer, and publisher) couldn’t make it to the screening so he asked me if I would go and represent the film. So, I did that and that was how I reconnected with Jeff. I remember us spending a lot of time talking when I was there.
He was going through his old Shiva Burlesque tapes, wanting to do some reissues of the Shiva Burlesque material. I think he already started thinking about the Torn Boys material as well. And I think in the back of his mind, he was thinking he’d love to do a record label. Then the book came out in February of 2020, and I sent him a copy. We just started talking after that and he was like, “Hey Bruce, how would you like to get a label going? I’d like to partner with you on this!” So, we started discussing how that would work, what that would look like and how we would structure it. It took most of 2020 to get all that sorted out and around that same time, I was approached by James (Agren, founder), at Darla Records about distribution. He said, “Hey, you should get your label going again and we’ll distribute it.” So that was another catalyst to just say, “Okay, we’ve already got somebody else to distribute it. Jeff wants to partner with me on this. We’ve got the financing to do it, and let’s just go for it.”
JB: Wow, it’s crazy how everything just lined up like that!
BL: Yeah, it all came together.
JB: Jeff, I wanted to ask about your background in music and film and how you got involved with IPR. Obviously, you worked with Shiva Burlesque, Torn Boys, and as a solo artist. What drew you to collaborate with Bruce and become involved with the relaunch of IPR?
JC: Well, because our history goes way back. I guess I got introduced to Bruce maybe a couple of years after Grant Lee Phillips and I moved to Los Angeles. In the original version of Shiva Burlesque, our first bass player was a guy named Rich Evac (Rich Robinson), who played in the band Psi Com (featuring Perry Ferrell of Jane’s Addiction – JB). He and his then partner Mariska (Leyssius) were engaged in the downtown and Hollywood scenes there, which Grant and I didn’t have much of a clue about when we first moved to LA. We just were kind of flailing a bit to be honest, trying to find other musicians that were kind of into what we were doing.
So yeah, I met Bruce through that conduit, and then he put out our first record (self-titled, 1987) for the Nate Starkman (& Son) label, and I worked with him on my solo album, ‘Sheer Golden Hooks’, (IPR, 1996). Bruce is a unique person and a person with a lot of integrity. Like Bruce said, I work with a film festival in Nevada City, California, which is where I moved after I left LA, and so one of my duties there is to look at a lot of films that come through that are being submitted for the festival, and one of these films was this movie called ‘Desolation Center.’ I don’t know if you’re familiar with that film, James?
JB: I am, yeah.
JC: So that film, I didn’t have any idea what it was or anything about it, but it just came across my desk, and I was watching it here on my laptop, and I saw there was a photo of Rich (Evac) early on the film, and Stuart Swezey is talking, (I know Stuart very well), so I asked myself, “What is this movie?” And then I see Bruce in the film, and I go, “Wow, these are my people here!” So, obviously we wanted to screen it, I mean, it’s a great film anyway, but I wanted to screen it. We screened it at the Nevada City Film Festival, and I invited Bruce to come up and do a Q&A for that.
So, Bruce stayed at my house when he did the Q&A, came up to Northern California, and that was a lot of fun, and we just kind of hung out. I love music, and it just kind of occurred to me that now’s a good time for a collaboration. I knew younger people around Nevada City and other places that I sort of hang out with and I know a lot of younger people are interested in vinyl releases now. A lot of younger people are interested in music from that era, I found. I feel like there’s a kind of authenticity to the music that was made in the 80s and into the 90s. I don’t want to compare, but I’m just saying that there is a contingent of younger people who connect with that music, and something about it.
So those things put together, plus seeing Bruce, I suggested maybe we could … not that the label ever completely went away, but I just felt like maybe we could revive it, or put some new energy into it. So that was the connecting point. That film, ‘Desolation Center’, that’s how I reconnected with Bruce.
Shiva Burlesque
JB: I wasn’t sure if revitalization was a proper word, because IPR has always been active to some degree.
JC: Exactly.
BL: So, it’s interesting for me because there was a point in the early 2000s where I did need to set it aside, because I just didn’t have the resources to do what I really wanted to do, and it wasn’t making me money, so I needed to focus on my design and printing business.
Then there were a few opportunities that came up to do releases, like the Springhouse release (‘Land Falls’, 1991), and video from Jim McKay (for “Layers”), and then a few years later there was a fellow in the Phoenix area who was a big Red Temple Spirits fan, and he wanted to put some money into making that three-disc reissue set (self-titled on IRP, 2013). So just a couple of projects kind of helped keep things going. Once Jeff asked me if I could invest in partnering with him and get the label moving again.
JC: Yeah, it’s not like I was looking to get into the record business or anything, but it was just that Bruce and my connection to that world that we were all involved with in Los Angeles back in the 80s.
JB: Yeah, and one thing you mentioned about first coming out to Los Angeles and ‘Desolation Center’, which I didn’t know, and having talked with Bruce, one thing I didn’t realize was the heavy police presence in LA at the time. It seemed like LA venues and people who were not run-of-the-mill, “ordinary citizens” were basically run out of town, and that’s the impetus that got Stuart and Desolation Center going in the first place. That just speaks to how unique that movement was back then. If you can’t play venues downtown, then you’re going to find a place to play in the desert or on a boat, etc.
JC: Yeah, that was Stuart’s impetus or one of the reasons behind it, and I wasn’t there for that, obviously. Grant and I got to town sort of near the end of the ‘Desolation Center’ era, but yeah, you know, that’s kind of one of those things in society in general, maybe, when that avenue of live performance closes off, people who are energetic and have something to say will find another way to do it. Who knows, we may be approaching those times again.
JB: For me personally, just to get off topic here a little bit, is the resurgence of the genre of shoegaze these days. (Both agree) But to Bruce’s point, I start to see a lot of regurgitation now. Shoegaze is great and all that, but what do you bring to it that makes it unique? And that’s something I think can go back to what IPR does and what you both are striving for. Yeah, it must have heart, and there are awesome design packages that go with it, each release is different and can standalone. You don’t have a lot of artists that sound the same, if any two artists on IPR that sound the same at all. Every music project you guys have worked on has been unique, right? Nothing sounds the same.
JC: It’s interesting that we can make it work that way. You think about it because to say, “Well, none of them sound the same” and yet there is something coherent about the way it comes out. It’s tricky. It’s not something we have meetings about or anything. It just is that way.
I guess that’s our strength. It’s sort of like we’ve both been around the planet long enough where we’ve listened to a lot of music more or less the same age, grew up listening to a lot of the same stuff, were in the same scene, made music around the same time, played shows together, all that kind of stuff. So, there is an affinity for sure. But it’s funny because one of the things about Shiva Burlesque for sure was you could take any two songs and there is something that holds them together, but we were often trying to do different things with each song. Each song was its own little world.
It made us maybe more eclectic than people could digest to some degree. Not that that ever worried us that much, but I’m just saying there is a trick to be able to be eclectic, and yet there’s some thread that connects it all. I think we’re doing that with IPR, and I think the label is managing that.
Cover art for Springhouse’s debut LP ‘Land Falls’
BL: I was just thinking, James, I should send you a link to listen to ‘The Well,’ our upcoming IPR label sampler because it’s so eclectic and it goes from ambient to pop to hardcore punk rock. One of the people that Jeff brought to our team is Camilla Aisa who lives in Italy, and she does a lot of writing for magazines like Shindig in the UK. She’s our European publicist and she also does a lot of writing for us.
She’s writing liner notes and so I asked her to create a little essay for ‘The Well’ and I think she really nailed it how it’s such an eclectic range of styles and yet it all works together. So I’ll forward you what she wrote as well. It’s a two-disc set so that tells you how many songs there are! It’s about 40. The second disc has longer experimental pieces. That’s kind of the idea. We started off with just a single disc and then I started coming up with more stuff. I said, “You know what, let’s just make it two discs and just make that second disc be really wild and experimental.” Then it ended up sort of balancing out.
JB: I look forward to hearing that! Jeff, I remember meeting Bruce back in what, 2001, 2002, something like that. Speaking of Bruce’s eclectic taste, I remember him turning me on to some releases on IPR, and I remember hearing nothing anywhere close to what Bruce was sharing with me from the label. It was so weird, so out there, I don’t know how to describe it. This is some of the best stuff I’ve ever heard. It ran the gamut of styles and genres, and I think the label is staying true to that still to this day.
JC: Yeah, I agree.
BL: But it’s interesting because I remember some people saying, I think this was in a review where somebody was saying, IPR is one of those labels where people often will say there’s a wide range of music on there and they’ve got some really great stuff but then every person would name something completely different. All these people don’t all agree on what the best stuff is.
JB: Bruce, I know we have talked about it in the past, how the concept of an album should be looked at as a piece of fine art. Can you elaborate on that idea and how it informed the early decisions and aesthetic of IPR?
BL: I was an art student when I started doing the label and my own music. I learned a lot of different techniques. The major was called Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Arts. I remember taking some silk-screening classes that were all about creating a silk screen print that you would then frame and put on the wall. I thought, “Well, this is fun. It’s a neat process, but I don’t want to just make art to go on the wall. I want to make art that you can find in the real world in a sense.” I got to the point where I loved records and music. I was always going down to the Rhino Records store in Westwood from UCLA and spending time poking through the bins, and I just thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to be poking through the vinyl bins and find a piece of art?” That was the idea in a sense at the beginning, and so with the first releases I was always trying to find something unique or something different conceptually and artistic that I could do with the records.
I wanted to make them something more than just another record in the bins. So, like with the ‘Project 197’ record (IPR, 1980), I did the silk-screening across the center label area. I had those records pressed with no paper labels on them. So, it was just a black center in the sleeve with the hole in the middle, and so I just screamed across the center of that, and I had a photograph that was positive. A positive image on the white and then it turned into a negative image on the black. So, you slide the record out, and then you put it back in, and it was just a fun conceptual thing to do. The second release was the ‘Bridge’ seven inch (IPR, 1980), which were recordings that my friend Dan Voznick (Afterimage, Tunneltones), and I did in the subterranean utility tunnels at UCLA. I’d gotten permission to go down there and shoot a film and while I was down in these tunnels shooting a film, I thought, “We should bring our guitars and amps down here and see what it sounds like!” We did that; Dan had a little boombox, and so he recorded everything that we did in the tunnels there. After we were done, I listened to it and I thought, “Let’s make a record of this because I had so much fun making the first one.” I wanted to do something artistic with it, and I managed to get them to loan me a blueprint of one of the tunnels. I Xerox-ed it, and then Dan’s dad had a blueprinting machine at his office; his dad did some sort of engineering, and so I made this little insert, and we copied them off on the blueprinting machine. We had little miniature blueprints of each one of the tunnels that I had put our credits on for the record.
Then the third one (‘Them Rhythm Quails EP’ by Them Rhythm Ants, 1981), was an experiment where I tried Xerox-ing the labels. Not realizing that the heat of the record pressing would cause the toner of the Xerox machine to stick to the pressing plates. It was kind of a mess. That one wasn’t too exciting, and it was then that I discovered letterpress printing.
JB: And (Savage Republic’s) ‘Tragic Figures’ (IPR, 1982) was the first letterpress cover?
Cover art for ‘Tragic Figures’ by Savage Republic
BL: Yes, it was. So, basically, I had done the first three 7-inch releases, and during that time, I started working on the band that became Savage Republic, and when we started recording our music, we thought, “Everybody’s doing singles nowadays, we should do an album. It’ll stand out more!” I started thinking I needed to find an artistic way to make a record album jacket. I’d been working at UCLA extension as a courier, so that was the extension for night classes; evening and weekend classes for extended education. As an employee of the UCLA extension, you could take one class for free every semester. I saw in the catalog that they had a class in offset lithography, and I thought I should learn that to be able to make my record jacket that way. I signed up for that class, and I went to it, and there weren’t enough people who signed up for it, so they had to cancel the class. The teacher said, “By the way, we’re teaching this letterpress class that starts next week at the Women’s Graphic Center. You could sign up for that.” I was like, “I have no idea what letterpress is but sure, why not?” I signed up for that class and went to it and a light bulb went off. This could really work. One of the things that I liked about it was that you’re creating a handmade object, but you can do large quantities of it easily. Silk screen was slow and messy, and if you wanted to do a thousand album covers in silk screen, it would be a bear. I didn’t want to do that. So, I came to the realization that you could go into production and still have something that looked handmade and beautiful. That was the ticket and I never looked back.
JB: What were/are some of the challenges? Obviously, the reward is in the artwork, the ultimate product, but what were the initial challenges you went through to implement that type of printing method for a full LP run?
BL: Well, when I first took the class, a project was to create a postcard. You could do whatever you want for a postcard. So, I made a postcard announcing the album that I was working on. It was a small press, and I realized I couldn’t really print an album cover on that, but they had this big flatbed press that nobody was using and I looked at it and I thought the bed size on it is 18” by 24”, that’s the perfect size for a record album jacket. So, I asked the teacher if I took the class a second time, would she teach me how to use the big press. She said sure. So, I took the class a second time and she taught me how the press worked, and I thought, “Okay, I’m printing my album jacket on this machine!” I had another job in a computer room at Hughes Helicopters that my mother got for me in the evenings. Every time you’d open up a box of computer paper, there would be this piece of chipboard on top so that when you sliced open the box, you didn’t slice into the computer paper – you’d cut into the chipboard. I thought I could do something with it and so I had this little stack of chipboard that were maybe 10 inches by 12 inches or something like that. That’s what I use to make that first postcard. And So, I thought I would do my album cover on chipboard. I was able to find a paper supplier and bought bundles of chipboard to basically figure out how to do it. Then, of course, I had to have somebody fabricate them and when I was in college, one of my art instructors, this is obviously all pre-internet, said something that stuck with me. For you, as an artist, the best thing you can get for your studio as a reference source is a set of Yellow Pages for the entire Los Angeles area. I took that to heart and went out and got about 10 or 12 different Yellow Pages for all the different sections of L.A. County.
So basically, if I needed something, I would just look it up in the Yellow Pages. I need album cover fabrication? Lookup album covers! You know, there were still enough people doing record album jackets in the early 80s that there was a section in the Yellow Pages. Record album covers. So, I called one of them up, and I said, “I’m printing my own album jackets. Would you fabricate them for me?” and they said sure. So, there’s a place out in Burbank called Modern Album that did album jackets for all the major labels and a lot of indie labels. I would bring my stacks of letterpress printed chipboard to them. They told me what size I needed to make it so that it would run through their machine, and that was what I printed. They would run them through and turn them into album jackets for me.
JB: Are those kinds of resources still available?
BL: You know, there are still places making album jackets and whether they would fabricate something from the outside, that’s up to them. Since we restarted the label, we have approached a couple of those companies to see about die cutting and fabricating. Some of them are more open to it than others, but we’ve managed to find a die cutter. The album jackets that we’re making now are just one piece that don’t fold and glue but just wrap around with the flaps. We have somebody that does that. We either send them blank stock to die cut or a printed piece, and they’ll die cut. And they can also fabricate our special edition CD jackets for us.
Licher performing second from left
JB: Nice. So Jeff, earlier you had mentioned your work in the Nevada City Film Festival, that obviously shows your appreciation for artistic endeavor and independent artists in film and I wanted to ask, how do you see that experience on the film side in forming your role and helping shape the future of IPR, if at all?
JC: That’s an interesting question. Well, I mean, one connecting point would be that these were both very DIY-type experiences and with a similar history. I moved to Nevada City and it’s just a little village in the Sierra foothills. There was a little art house movie theater there that was about to close. Film was really important to me, it always was when I was a student at Berkeley in those days I used to go down to Shattuck Avenue, there were like three different theaters where I could see European art films from the 50s and 60s and 70s that I had not been able to absorb as a kid growing up in the suburbs of Stockton! So you know it’s one of those things, it changes your life, it changes the way you think about reality and so I loved this little art house that was going to go out of business, it was pretty funky but for some reason I decided, well what if I bought it? It would cost nothing, I mean literally nothing, I think it was like $4,000 to buy everything in this little movie theater. The owner was just getting out. I don’t even know if it was worth that to be honest.
I had to replace the projector but anyway, I bought this little, tiny movie theater that had 50 seats and out of that this film festival developed. So, back in June we had our 25th Anniversary. 2001 was the first one, and it kind of just evolved over the years into you know it’s a fairly well known and respected movie theater film festival now on that circuit of regional film festivals and I’ll say I can see similarities in that I know that the people who make films at this level. The level that they’re doing it – it’s a labor of love at every step and there’s similar things to music. They’ll come to these festivals; they’ll sleep on couches to show their film they’ll mortgage their home to do it sometimes. It’s actually a much more expensive venture to make a film. It’s astonishing when you think of what people will do to make a film at that level and so it’s just a connecting point to artists at that really essential level. They’re doing this because they have to do it, “I have something to say, and I have to say it and I’ll do whatever it takes to do that.” That kept me connected to film over the years. There are probably other things about it but I would say just in general besides the fact that I did connect to Bruce directly through seeing ‘Desolation Center’ so there’s that and also I made a film in the past couple years. I produced a film about a guy I knew from Stockton where I grew up who was the original drummer in Pavement (‘Louder Than You Think: A Lo-Fi History of Gary Young & Pavement’, Hwy 99 Filmworks, 2023).
Jeffrey Clark
JB: That was my next question, so nice lead in!
JC: (Laughs) I brought the soundtrack for that film to IPR which I don’t know if we’ve announced that yet or whatever, but we’re going to be releasing a soundtrack album from that film.
BL: Yeah, it’s in production right now.
JC: It’s an eclectic album because it’s everywhere from instrumental cues to hardcore rock and electronic type of instrumental stuff.
JB: So that’s Gary Young (1953 – 2023) you’re referring to right?
JC: Yeah, Gary Young, exactly.
JB: He wasn’t in Pavement too long.
JC: No, three years I guess maybe. Well, 89 was really when Gary met Steve Malkmus and Scott Kannberg and then he continued in the band until ‘93 I think. So really just 3 and a half or 4 years but that’s essentially when they made ‘Perfect Sound Forever’ (Drag City, 1991), ‘Slanted and Enchanted’ (Matador_/_Big Cat, 1992), and ‘Slay Tracks’ (‘Slay Tracks: 1933 – 1969’, Treble Kicker, 1989), so all that stuff, that’s Gary. It’s an essential period for who they were and what they are today. As the film explains, they got some notice to a large degree because of Gary when they played live because he was such a character and so different from everybody else, he kind of stood out.
The other thing about it was again, if you see the film, this is why I wanted to make the film because it’s not necessarily about Pavement, it’s about that to some extent but it’s really about serendipity and how things happen that you don’t expect. These guys were 19 or 20 years old when they came in to record ‘Slay Tracks’ with Gary. Gary was already 40! He was a rock guy, his favorite bands were Yes and King Crimson and he’s a big Captain Beefheart guy. His studio was completely homemade and kind of a mess to be honest. Gary had substance problems, so when they went in to make this record – four or five songs – they just went in to record with guitars Malkmus and Spiral Stairs (Scott Kannberg) and Gary said, “Well, you should have drums on this, that’s dumb to not have drums. I’m here, I’m a drummer, I’ll play drums!”
So that’s how he started and that came to be ‘Slay Tracks.’ When they recorded it, a big thing about Pavement at that time, along with a couple of artists back then, was a lo-fi sound. To some degree it was partly accidental because they were in a studio where Gary was, “It’s not like you’re working with George Martin in here or something!” You know what I mean? It’s a chaotic thing going on partly deliberate, partly because they’re working with Gary in this home studio in Stockton. So anyway, that’s kind of what the movie’s about and they obviously went on to become much bigger after Gary was out of the band, but I don’t think they would have even existed without him. That’s my conclusion, I don’t think there would have been a Pavement at all if Gary hadn’t started with them.
JB: I did see Pavement back in the mid 90’s and one thing I must thank them for, outside of their performing, was turning me on to a trio out of Australia called The Dirty Three who put out some wild, instrumental performances. Their live show was tremendous.
JC: Yeah, I remember the Dirty Three. That’s all a big part of it, too, because again, you know, Malkmus and the others had grown up in the late 70s, 80s, and so that was their thing. They’re more influenced by these post-punk bands from New Zealand and stuff like that, which Gary knew nothing about, didn’t care about, and didn’t really have any interest in those things. They started opening for Sonic Youth and stuff like that. He had no idea who Sonic Youth was! It meant nothing to him to say, “Okay, well, so what?” That was part of his appeal in a way. The film is streaming now on some of these other platforms.
JB: What’s the guiding principle in selecting artists released on the label?
BL: In most instances, I have to love the music. Some of it I love more than others. Sometimes I’ve done a few projects because they were friends of mine or people that I knew. And other times it’s just one of those things where you find some creative people who are doing something that you really like and want to support. If it makes sense to create, let’s make the records available through the label. When IPR started out, it was more of a L.A. underground-centric label. Then I think towards the mid and late 80s, I started going out above and beyond L.A.
JB: What factors contributed to looking beyond the L.A. basin and how did you manage to maintain __IPR_’s_ unique identity striking out elsewhere?
BL: Well, a lot of it was just that, as the label was releasing more things, and releases were getting out there, I would start getting demo tapes in the mail. There were a lot of magazines and fanzines back then that would have lists of labels with addresses, so Independent Project would end up getting on some of these lists. People who had bands that were trying to get signed would send demo tapes to everybody on those lists. They wouldn’t even pay attention to what the label is about.
So, there’s a period of time where I was getting maybe half a dozen or more demo tapes a week. I didn’t have time to listen to everything, but I would try to, and it was amazing how many things I received that people obviously had no idea what the label was all about! But every once in a while, there would be a gem in there.
JB: Can you give us an example?
BL: Abecedarians was a group that sent me an unsolicited demo tape out of the blue. It took me over a month to finally get around to listening to it and I was spellbound when I did. That was another group that I wish I was in a better position to work with originally. One thing led to another, and they ended up getting signed to Caroline Records. It was only after they’d broken up, I had started the archive series, and I went back to them and asked them if I could put out their demos. I remember Chris Manecke (guitar/keyboards/vocals), rummaged around in his closet and pulled out two boxes, put them in my hands and said, “Here, do whatever you want.”
Cover art for ‘The Other Side of the Fence’ by Abecedarians, 1990
JB: That’s another band that IPR turned me on to. My God, they were great.
BL: Yeah, and interesting enough, it was because of that connection with Abecedarians and Caroline Records that Jack (Rabid) sent me the first Springhouse demo and I wanted to do something with it. I ended up sharing it with Keith Wood, who was the A&R guy at Caroline at the time, and he fell in love with it. It made more sense for them to work with the band than me because they could offer a lot more in terms of support.
JB: Are the days of demos over, or do you still get them?
BL: I’m actually starting to get them again now. It took a little while. I do still occasionally get cassettes. Usually, people will send Soundcloud links or whatever. I usually don’t really get around to listening to those for one reason or another. A couple weeks ago, I got two packages in one day from people sending CDs of their music and one of them was from somebody who was a big fan of the label and Red Temple Spirits, and he sent in one of his bands from the ’80s called Primitive Romance. He self-released it and wanted to share it. And the other one was this band called Cassidian from Costa Mesa. He writes for a magazine called Razorcake (catering to DIY punk rock), and he happened to be coming through Bishop last year and stopped in and bought a few things. So, he sent me a package with a CD, seven inch and cassette tape. The CD so far is pretty good. I don’t know if they’re somebody that’s appropriate to sign for IPR, we already have so many things on our plate. It’s hard to add anything else to it at this point.
JB: Did the ‘Tape Excavation’ release have anything to do with the reactivation of IPR in 2020?
BL: The original ‘Tape Excavation’ on vinyl was created as a bonus album for the deluxe edition of the “Savage Impressions” book. That was sort of the idea. I had been working with Rich Keigler on the book for a couple of years and then he started thinking, “You know, we should do a sampler album that could be an audio version of the book in a way”, and so that was the original idea. I thought we should press some extra copies so if somebody can’t afford the book, at least they could buy the record, and so that originally came out that way. And that was prior to me starting to discuss with Jeff the idea of relaunching the label. It was just that ‘Tape Excavation’ was another opportunity to put some of my music onto a record. So that’s how that came together. After we restarted the label, we were looking for other projects to fit into the schedule, and I thought, “Why don’t we do an expanded CD version of it?” And so that’s how that CD version came about. I found a few more cool things that people would not have heard before.
We’re also planning for our 45th Anniversary event coming up on November 5th and 6th. We really wanted to make it an unforgettable, historic moment for the label & scene, and the lineup we’ve curated is honestly a dream. The centerpieces are some incredibly rare appearances: we have the legendary David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) performing live, and we’ve managed to reunite Shiva Burlesque – bringing together Jeff and Grant-Lee Phillips for a truly special night. What’s perhaps even crazier is that we’ll have Patrik Mata’s seminal Goth/Punk group, Kommunity FK, celebrating their 47th Anniversary and playing their first show in six years. We’re also focused on honoring these incredibly unique groups, like bringing New York-based dream pop group Springhouse out for their first West Coast performances in over 30 years. On top of that, I will be collaborating with Henry Frayne’s instrumental group, Lanterna, for a one-night-only set where I’ll be adding my own guitar melodies. We’ll also feature emerging talents like our latest signing, Driveway Ceiling, the brilliant dancer and sound artist, Alison Clancy, plus film projections and exclusive merchandise. It’s a huge undertaking, but it speaks volumes about the history and the future of our community, with even more exciting performances still to be announced.
JB: That is great news! So, I’ll ask you both, again, I don’t want to use revitalization, but what do you both envision for this new chapter of IPR and beyond? Do you look much towards the future even?
BL: That’s a good question. I think very little about the future. I think in the sense that we have such a very large wish list, and we have projects that are coming up and we start talking and some others may come and go, and then they may come back! We have one project that Jeff is bringing in that was really promising and then it fell away because of some interpersonal issues with the people involved. Now it looks like it may come back! We’ll see. I think that there’s a lot of really interesting bands out there. Either that or they barely got any attention the first time around, and we think that they’re doing or did something really special.
JB: With you now based in the Eastern Sierras up in Bishop, has that change of location from your days in Sedona influenced your work for both the label and your personal artistic endeavors at all?
BL: It’s interesting because after we moved here, I started trying to figure out what I wanted to do musically? Scenic had stopped in the early 2000s, there were some issues with some of the band members and, and I just felt like I wanted to focus more on creating some solo recordings, which never quite happened. Then I just got involved with running my business and then it was around 2008 or 2009 that Karen (Licher) and I felt like we were ready for a change. We’d been in Sedona for 17 years, and it was time to do something different. She had always wanted to live and paint in the Eastern Sierras so we took a few trips over here, camped and looked around, and we thought, “Yeah, we could make this work!”
It took us about a year or so to kind of really do the move properly and find a space to put the print shop and then move it out here, and all of that. She wanted to go do En Plein Air painting (French for “in the open air” or painting with subjects in full view – JB), and I just thought, “I should go and do some Plein Air music”, because I had my little 12-track hard disk recorder. We had this little solar panel in a suitcase so that I could power the recorder and so I created what I started calling “Owens Valley Driving Music,” which was just going to a spot and letting the spot inspire me to create whatever it was I was going to create musically. Which just became layered guitars and effects. I did several of those pieces. I thought I was going to do a lot more, but I didn’t end up following up on that so I would say that, like with Scenic, I’m still feeling inspired by locations and landscapes. That sort of thing.
JB: I’m still upset about that move.
BL: You can let it go now, James (both laugh).
Cover art for the ‘Mutant Gifts EP’ by Alison Clancy, 2022
JB: I like to hang on to stuff Bruce (more laughter). I wanted to ask about your personal goals and vision for IPR in this new era. Particularly in terms of balancing reissues with new recordings.
BL: Well, we definitely feel like we want to be working with more current music. We just want to make sure that it makes sense for the label and that we don’t overextend ourselves. We want to find musicians and artists that we think are doing something really special. Do you get our IPR dispatch monthly email? (I do now! – JB)
If you go to the IPR website, you can either scroll to the bottom of the home page and sign up or go to the contact page and sign up, but we try to send out a monthly newsletter via email that lets people know what we’re working on. We’ve got another label sampler coming out in the fall called ‘The Well’, which is similar to the ‘Source’ CD. This one will be a double CD, and there’s a lot of interesting and surprising stuff on it, including a new band that we’re starting to work with. Some young guys from Connecticut have a band called Driveway Ceiling. They’re doing some pretty great stuff. They’ve been self-releasing their music digitally and so we are working with them to do physical album that we’re going to be releasing, most likely sometime in the fall or towards the end of the year. So, yeah, absolutely? They’re an interesting blend of influences from late 60s, pop psych like The Kinks and 90s indie rock like The Strokes.
And then Jeff brought Allison Clancy in and she’s been working on a new project. We have some new stuff for David J (David John Haskins). He went into the studio and did full band versions of some of the songs from his demo project (‘Tracks From The Attic’, 2023). He’s got this other conceptual album that he collaborated on with a couple of other people that will be coming out next year. They want to turn it into a sort of Broadway or Off-Broadway-type theatrical performance. It’s all about the artist Egon Shield (Austrian expressionist painter, 1890-1918). A lot of spoken word stuff in music; it’s pretty interesting.
JB: I thought those David J demos were good in their own right but can’t wait to hear some of those tracks with a full band.
BL: There’s still a lot of reissue projects to do. I mean, we’re in the midst of talking with Deception Bay and Fourwaycross and starting to talk with Community FK about doing some reissues of their material. Then the B People. We’ve been kind of working with B People on a retrospective for several years.
Cover art for Deception Bay, 1988
JB: Are any of them playing out consistently anymore, if at all?
BL: None of them. Patrick Mata sort of revives Community FK occasionally. He’s got a new version of it. It’s not the same as the old one, but he’s happy, which is most important.
JB: What is the enduring legacy of the label and how do you hope to build upon it in the years to come?
*BL(: You know? I’ve never really thought of a big picture or had long-term goals. In that sense, right now, I’m just trying to keep up with all the different projects that we put into motion. And there’s so many more that I would love to get to, but I just know we’re not going to have time for at least a couple of years. There’s a lot of really great music that I think deserves to be heard, and so that for me, as long as we can, keep doing this and making this music available and packaging it beautifully, we will.
JB: When you started did you ever think you’d hit 45 years?
BL: No (laughs). No idea. When started, I just wanted to make a record, and then it was, like, “Oh, that was fun, I’m going to do another one!” It was never a long-term plan.
JC: We’d like to shine a spotlight on those things and how we do it. There are also new artists we’re interested in and trying to keep that balance between old and new. There’s only so many hours in the day, so it’s always a challenge of how to really figure this part out because there is a large back catalog of music that we already have a connection to. We just worked on a deal to reissue Kommunity FK’s first album. They were a very important, early IPR band and also an important band on that scene in Los Angeles in the early ’80s. In the post-punk era.
We’ve got a big cache of music by B People as Bruce mentioned, who were another essential band from that era. So, these are things we get really excited about because those are the roots of IPR. Like Bruce just said, they didn’t necessarily get the attention that they would have gotten back in the day. But at the same time, for my own part, I also think we would like to bring in a couple of newer artists and younger people, and people that get what we’re doing or there’s that thread we were talking about earlier that connects what they do to this aesthetic that we’ve already developed or coalesced around.
How do we do that? That’s tricky, because like I said, there are only so many hours in a day. There’s a lot of stuff out there. Because we’ve been doing this now for whatever it’s been, three or four years, there’s a certain amount of gravity to the project at this point and people are coming to us more so we may have to pick and choose a few things. I guess the challenge is how to do that in a coherent and smart way. Just keep doing what we’re doing, and we’ll see if the wheels start turning a little faster! I think Bruce and I are both patient people and, like we were saying earlier, we know what we’re trying to do here. Maybe we’ll just know it when we see (or hear) it!
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