Breakfast Records: The Bristol record label showing that it really can be done
It’s the early afternoon, the very start of the day, when Breakfast Records are celebrating their tenth birthday at Lost and Grounded Brewers, and bands and fans alike are funnelling in. At this point, I’m enjoying a pint while ‘off the record’, something that feels less definitive when you’ve been a part of the Bristol music scene for the decade this plucky record label has been active.
Because the line between on and off record can feel blurred when you’re both a music fan and journalist. When Breakfast co-founder Josh Jarman arrives and sits with me for a catch-up, I’m not yet asking how Breakfast is, for the record. I’m settling in with a pint, we’re chatting about how many biscuits we eat while working from home and how the hell Breakfast has been going for ten years when 2016 feels like yesterday.
Within that conversation comes an unforgettable moment, when the wider questioning purpose of why I am here briefly falls away. After a few questions and congratulatory remarks about Breakfast Records, he tells me that it is now near enough a full time operation.
I feel a fuzzy sense of pride, because I am learning in real time that success, despite its crippling feeling of elusiveness, can actually happen for those who deserve it, and so when he tells me of his own, I congratulate him as if he’s won the lottery. It’s funny how the music industry has warped our expectations into marvelling at someone simply getting out what they’ve put in.
But by every metric, Breakfast Records have experienced success by their tenth year. Financially, yes, they can sustain themselves as an independent label, which in the modern landscape of music is like landing on a gold mine. But within that, it’s afforded them a level of artistic focus that often comes at the cost of genuine financial longevity. Simply put, they’ve struck a careful balance of authentic success that’s self-sufficient and artistic, something rarely seen these days of shortcut fame and vapid exposure.
But they’ve put in 10,000 hours in. Not only are founders Jarman and Dan Anthony spinning every possible label plate, from pressing to management to promotion, but they are also members of their own band, Langkamer. Four albums in and nearly a 1000 sofas surfed, they’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly of the modern music industry and made a ton of friends along the way. The latter, as corny as it may sound to you, is the bedrock of the success they experience today.
“I think that’s something that gets forgotten by a lot of people starting out in music,” Jarman tells me. Now we are officially on the record, as he continues, “It’s such a small thing. The music scene is so small and tight-knit; if you can build a community around you, it’s just amazing. It’s just a network of people you can rely on. Like go out and chat to people who were at the gig and then all of a sudden, you’ve made a friend in a new city, and maybe you can sleep on their floor next time, whatever it is.”
A profound thought, when told to me by someone I now consider a friend on those very same values. This is one of a handful of conversations I’ve had with Dan and Josh over the years. First meeting at gigs where I would steal precious from them to help figure out my own career, to time now being something we share, where we can all proudly celebrate what their label has done for this great musical city and how there is hope for us all yet.
It’s interesting, however, because as we talk about this city, it’s clear that it doesn’t need saving. As Jarman rightly points out, “It just always feels like there’s been something here. Whether or not the spotlight has been on it nationally or internationally, dating back to the old punk and reggae movements in the 70s. Just as far as I can tell, it’s just always been a bit of a hotbed.”
Bristol has never been short of culture or creativity, and so setting out to launch an independent label in 2016 wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. Yet ten years on, they’ve carved themselves a definitive niche in the community, spearheading a new movement that’s put Bristol back into ‘in’ status.
It’s not necessarily a sound so much as an attitude, though. Their roster showcases a string of bands who are all different in their own way: for example, Mumble Tide are as different to The Cindy’s as Zach Thompson is from Getdown Services. But with the yellow fish logo adorned on their chest, they’re all inherently linked to the same ideal of a label that has become a bedrock of this city’s renaissance: independence.
It’s a word you’ll hear often on our streets, from music to art to hospitality. It’s the only way to live. Being caught with a Gail’s pain au chocolat in hand is considered high treason within the city limits, for the quiet support of those visible to you is deeply ingrained in the community’s culture. The artists Breakfast have chosen, and the way in which they have chosen to back them has resulted in a label that captures that feeling.
They haven’t spent ten years as a faceless entity, churning out replicas of a golden age of Bristol. No, they’ve spent a decade putting on shows for an accessible cost with artists who feel the same pinch we do. They’re in the crowd with us, on the merch tables or behind the bar, making the entire experience as open and available to the everyman as possible, which is becoming an increasingly difficult task these days.
“I think we’ve ended up with a bit of an anomaly on our hands, to be fortunate enough to be doing it for a living”
Joshua Jarman
Getdown Services might be selling out back-to-back nights at Bristol Beacon, but they’ll never forget the community that made it happen. In fact, they’re still a part of it. More often than not, they’re asking fans to reach out if ticket prices are too high and offering help where they can, or they’re selling merch at the lowest possible cost to help both themselves and the fans. They’ve become the poster boys of Bristol, a city that puts community and kindness first, by being a band that does the exact same without hesitation.
“It’s such an amazing success story because they did all that stuff,” Jarman explains. “They were playing to nobody. They were going to cities where they played to three people, and they’d sleep in the car after the show. Famously, they once played to just a dog and a man, and the man was facing the other way.”
The man and his dog are nowhere to be seen now, just like Jarman and Anthony, who are happy with the thankless anonymity of their role as Breakfast co-founders. But at this Bristol Brewery, where fans and bands rub shoulders, you don’t have to look far to find people offering up the praise they deserve.
“They’ve never been steered away by making money or making business, or looking to jump on trends; it has always been in the music,” Mumble Tide tells me when we catch up about the label, “They really believe in the bands that they take on and are doing it for the right reasons. They steer the ship based on what they like…what they actually like. I don’t think they would take on anything that they didn’t really feel themselves as exciting.”
It’s a genuine understanding that comes from the top, based on experience. Burgeoning artists are faced with a mountain of bureaucracy if they want to get started now. Playing gigs run hand in hand with content creation and the demand for followers, which in turn gets converted into clicks, sales, blah blah blah. It all gets very unsexy very quickly, and suddenly the thrill of being the rockstar you dreamed of wears off.
While Jarman and Anthony aren’t promising sex, drugs and rock and roll, there is a genuine pledge to ensure artistry is always the focus. The idea that, if you put the work into your own music, both in the studio and on stage, they will give you all of the support with all of the soul-crushing nonsense that seems to be a prerequisite today.
It’s an honesty that seems contradictory to success these days. More often than not, doing things for the right reasons leaves you empty-handed, with only passion to keep you going. “I think we’ve ended up with a bit of an anomaly on our hands, to be fortunate enough to be doing it for a living,” Jarman concedes, in that light.
But Anthony is willing to give themselves some credit, which, despite the evident success of Breakfast, still feels somewhat rare between the pair. “It’s a weird one because I think one thing that has helped us is doing so many different things,” he explains.
Adding, “We’ve been so DIY, we didn’t really know anything, but we started putting on shows, then we made merch and all the different bits, whether that’s assembling our own cassette tapes or pressing vinyl. So I think between us, we do have a good amount of knowledge on every part of the process, even though it can be overwhelming at times.”
Given the spirit that runs through Bristol, asking about money feels a little bit salacious. For a minute, I feel like there’s a life for me somewhere in a recruitment office, ringing a bell after doing a deal. But we bypass any capitalist sparkles in my eyes and get to the crux of the subject, which is, for all the morality that people in music are expected to work for, there has to come a point where a living is made to give yourself the time to put the required effort in.
“I don’t know that we necessarily deserved to make any money,” Jarman modestly admits. But why? Is that really what we have done to the music industry today? Made people who have genuinely worked hard for a decade question their right to profit from it?
Ultimately, it comes back to a cultural motivation to stay true to themselves. Through their growing success, Breakfast Records has had a peek behind the commercial curtain and realised the world is a much better place on this side of it. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be rewarded for it or that they shouldn’t have a chance to funnel it back into a scene that’s making genuine stars of the industry.
Proudly, Anthony admits that the money does have its benefits. But rather predictably, those benefits aren’t personal but communal, and focused through the music, “We can give better advances to bands, and it does feel good when you go like some of these really good at writing music, and you can go, ‘Hey, here’s a bunch of money to just go to the studio’.”
By constantly giving back for years on end, Breakfast have finally afforded themselves a chance to put something aside for themselves and go full throttle at the label. A label which never brazenly looked beyond its immediate community but is now quietly shaping the country. Sometimes that’s the tipping point of every bad industry story, where success topples the very moral foundation on which something has been built. Genuinely, I feel no fear of that happening here, nor within the bands who are successful within the label.
As I leave the premises of another independent Bristol business that’s hosting an independent Bristol label, I’m now officially off the record. The lines between the two feel more blurred than when I entered: interviews became conversations, and acquaintances became friends. Days of reassurance feel increasingly hard to come by in this industry, yet I leave Breakfast’s tenth birthday party drunk on that warm feeling.
