![]() ![]() It’s not exactly a corporate juggernaut like the Vans Warped Tour, which last year piled up $8.2 million in revenue. They travel in a convoy of four buses and a semi truck, a veritable indie-rock invasion force that is playing to sold-out crowds of more than 1,000 each night. But we’re not bombing - our last royalty statement was for $90,000.”įor the Get Up Kids and the other bands, the Vagrant America Tour amounts to something of a victory lap. If we’re going to bomb, it’s better to get the cash upfront on a major. “If we keep selling records, it makes more sense financially to be on Vagrant. “All the bands on Vagrant have a better royalty rate than any other label, with the exception of Touch and Go, which splits profits fifty-fifty with its bands,” says the Get Up Kids’ Matthew Pryor, twenty-four. ![]() Vagrant has doubled its income in each of the last four years to become a company that makes several million dollars a year, the owners say. Income at the Los Angeles label is expected to at least triple. Now, Saves the Day is spearheading the nine-week, fifty-two-date Vagrant America Tour, one of the most ambitious indie package tours ever launched and also one of the most successful, with sellouts across the country.Īt a time when the megacorporations that dominate the record business are slumping - revenue is down eleven percent at Warner Music, BMG Entertainment is absorbing first-half losses of $150 million, and album sales overall have declined eight percent - Vagrant is enjoying its best year ever. Only a few days before, one of their bands, the tunefully earnest, barely-out-of-their-teens quintet Saves the Day, had debuted in the Top 100 of the Billboard album chart by selling 15,000 copies of their first album, Stay What You Are, for the label. The two friends share an incredulous laugh at the penthouse luxury that their once-modest ten-year-old label, Vagrant Records, has suddenly afforded them. “This suite - it’s not very punk rock, is it?” he says to his partner, Jon Cohen, thirty-three. ![]() Things have a tendency of always coming full circle.Rich Egan, a thirty-two-year-old Minor Threat fan in a black T-shirt and gym shoes, swings open the door to his hotel room and finds a playground deluxe enough to host a Limp Bizkit after-show party. Those bands shouldn’t have anything in common…but they somehow worked! I’m also privileged to have had the chance to work with Vagrant alumni Matt Pryor and Jim Suptic from The Get Up Kids and Josh Berwanger of The Anniversary, for their Radar State record that came out in 2019. We’re talking a label’s roster that included Rocket From the Crypt, Alkaline Trio, with Dashboard Confessional, Paul Westerberg and Koufax. I had the honor to intern at Vagrant Records from 2000-2001 for school, and while I spent most of my internship folding shirts, and drilling holes in promo CD’s, I was exposed to the exciting salad days of Vagrant. Blending punk, emo, pop punk and more into a roster of bands that on paper shouldn’t have made sense….but absolutely did. There’s no question, that Vagrant Records indirectly influenced the sound and aesthetic of what Wiretap Records has become. “If bands have influences, then indie labels do too. The compilation features songs recorded by bands including Burnt Tapes, Common Sage, Lovebreakers, Parting, Catholic Guilt, Bristol To Memory, Least, Mercy Music, Love Again, Floorbird, Talk Show Host, Taken Days, Movin In Stereo, Wolves&Wolves&Wolves&Wolves, American Television, Lost In Society, Rundown Kreeps, Avenues, Odd Robot, Tiny Stills, Tweedmouth, Elijah Newman, The Bell And The Hammer, All Hallowed, Harker, Spaceships, No Better, NTVTY, Ray Gun Solace, Paper Disguise and Dirt Money. In recognition of Vagrant Records 25th anniversary last year, an assortment of artists from the Wiretap Records and Friend Club Records rosters took to the studio to record their renditions of songs originally performed by Vagrant Records bands like The Get Up Kids, Alkaline Trio, The Anniversary, Saves The Day, Face To Face, Dashboard Confessional, Senses Fail, Thrice, Paul Westerberg, No Motiv, Alexisonfire, Balance And Composure, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The 1975, Pete Yorn and many more. Undercover On The Streets, A Vagrant Records Tribute is a 30+ track compilation that features covers from the various eras of the iconic indie label’s roster. Wiretap Records and Friend Club Records have teamed up to present the upcoming compilation Undercover On The Streets, a tribute to the bands and catalog of Vagrant Records that will be available everywhere on May 20th. ![]()
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