Record Responsibly

Photo courtesy of Dean Engle

It was a hot summer day when second-year English education major Dean Engle and fourth-year psychology major Nolan Conaway sat together lamenting at Village Pizza in New Paltz. Distraught over the lack of organization among the town’s musicians, Engle said he and Conaway wanted a catalog of local artists and an establishment where bands could associate in order to be heard by a greater audience within the community. That’s when the idea hit them.

“We realized we should quit whining and just start [a label] ourselves,” said Engle. “Over the next few days we talked to artists, bought some blank tapes and set up a website.”

Together, with approximately $100, the two students formed Responsible Records and haven’t looked back since.

With a current total of six releases, which are available free to download from responsiblerecs.com, the label has rapidly started to expand.

Rhino Records, a New Paltz based vinyl and CD shop, has allowed the label to set up a permanent display of cassettes, as well as organize free shows in front of the store every couple of weeks.

“People are generally supportive,” Conaway said. “We actually had to make a bunch of extra copies of one of our old releases, Compsponsible, because so many people were interested in hearing it.”

Engle said, despite a small percentage of the town’s population actually being aware of the local music scene, he and Conaway have received a flood of positive feedback. From their first five releases alone, the students sold more than 80 tapes and have had several hundred downloads from their website.

In order to accomplish the free download service, Engle and Conaway simply set up a free account on mediafire.com, where each release is hosted and linked on the label’s official website.

Although sales have been primarily in digital format, Engle and Conaway have continued to offer cassettes of all six releases for $2 each, forgoing a disc option.

“Cassettes are a uniquely physical format,” Engle said. “CDs are just pancake-shaped USB drives at this point, so if someone wants to buy an album, we want them to have something they’ll listen to on a device besides a computer. The albums are all free to download, so CDs would be sort of redundant.”

According to Engle and Conaway, running a label representing 15 artists and bands has not been without challenges.

Conaway said managing the label while balancing a busy college schedule has kept both him and Engle incredibly busy, consuming most of their free time – at least 10 hours a week or more.

“[Engle] and I usually have to make an afternoon of producing a new release,” Conaway said. “We make about 10 to 15 copies of each tape, and when you factor in the time it takes to duplicate the tapes, create the inserts, print and cut them out and assemble them, each individual tape is going to take upwards of a half hour to make.”

Artists interested in being associated with Responsible Records must be based in the Hudson Valley. In order to maintain a diverse range of artists, Engle said no band or musician is required to play any particular genre or style – as long as they’re not jam bands.

Engle said artists attached to Responsible Records are essentially donating their music, but by being a part of a label that offers free content, they may garner fans that might have never discovered them originally.

In tune with the goal of expanding the tastes of listeners, both Conaway and Engle said they have strived to keep those interested in local music united. Last year, SUNY New Paltz graduate Theresa Hauser founded Kitty City, a place where bands still come together to perform for their peers and fans. After her departure, students like Engle and Conaway have made it their duty to keep New Paltz’s music scene growing.

“We’re just continuing a tradition that was already established,” Engle said. “Our mission is to catalog the musical output of our small town and to make hearing these incredible artists’ music as easy as possible.”