photo courtesy paul beahan

Manimal Records owner Paul Beahan hasn’t released a record yet that has approached 10,000 copies sold, but his label has put out some of the most original and captivating music from Los Angeles since 2006. He is hosting the 2nd annual Manimal Festival today and tomorrow in Joshua Tree with 20 bands including Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Hecuba, Warpaint, Alexandra Hope and many more. Beahan sat down with L.A. RECORD at a French Cafe to discuss Manimal Festival, why women are currently releasing the music he finds most exciting and which KROQ artist he would sign in under a minute. Interview by Scott Schultz.

Can you define the Manimal sound for the readers?
Paul Beahan: The theme right now as far as Manimal goes is non-typical indie rock.
What do you consider ‘typical indie rock’?
Paul Beahan: I guess what I’m saying is I really try to avoid bands for the most part. I avoid the guitar-bass-drums-singer. Although there are some exceptions—like Warpaint are a total democratic band. But they’re not traditional. They all sing. I consider them like three solo artists working together in the same room. That’s kind of how it works. It’s almost like the Beatles in a weird way. Emily will sing on certain songs, Jenny will sing a song or two. Theresa sings the famous song called ‘Beetles,’ where she kind of gets going off. Overall, I’d say the Manimal sound is avoiding the sound of a band—avoiding group sounds. I’ve really been anti-band in a lot of ways, and I feel like that with the label. For example, Bat For Lashes—Natasha IS Bat For Lashes. It’s a dictatorship when it comes to what she does. It’s her, and she calls it a certain thing. Jut like Rio en Medio with Danielle. Probably the biggest bands I can handle are duos like Rainbow Arabia and Hecuba. It could change. Next year, I could totally be in love with bands. In fact, I’m going to be working with Pizza! doing an all-digital full length. It’s all their early recordings when they were called the New Motherfuckers, and then they changed their name to Pizza! We’re going to do that digital-only, and then next year we hope to have a full length on CD and LP.
Manimal is very female-centric.Is that a result of a conscious effort or is it happenstance?
Paul Beahan: I think the label is what I’m into at the moment, and I’d say over the last four or five years, females are doing very interesting things in music right now. I feel like they’ve been held back for so long, and I feel there’s been a breakthrough. They’re doing things with music that are indescribable and uncategorizable. I feel like it’s becoming a stream-of-consciousness pop songwriting, whereas for so many years it was the female rock band, the female piano-ballad singer, the female broken-hearted country singer or the R&B diva—and with this sound and approach of finding these wonderful female artists, it seems they’re really doing exactly what they want. Whether it has to do with them being female or not, I just love the energy.
What was your musical background before forming the label?
Paul Beahan: I started out playing grindcore in the hardcore scene down in San Diego during the ‘90s. I played in quite a few bands, and one band with some guys from the Locust. It was part of that West Coast grindcore/hardcore/post-punk scene. That was where I came from.
Your band roster is really non-radio friendly in today’s Clearchannel Terrestrial environment—do you reach out to satellite radio and colleges to get your bands heard?
Paul Beahan: There’s a couple of really great satellite radio shows who have been really supportive on Sirius and XM. We got some good satellite action, and of course college radio has been amazing for us. Growing up and playing in indie bands in San Diego, you knew were never going to have any kind of financial succes, I’ve always been fond of the term ‘indie gold.’ It’s an inside joke that I have. The numbers always get lower and lower. At one time ten thousand records was called indie gold, but now I’m thinking, ‘Hmm, it may be difficult selling ten thousand records, so I’ll keep indie gold to five thousand.’ A few of our artists have almost made it to that. It’s kind of cool. Radio doesn’t really reflect in sales whatsoever.
San Diego music in the ‘90s had a real DIY aesthetic with a bunch of tiny labels. How did that approach affect you a decade later when you finally started your own label?
Paul Beahan: From a direct point of view, I was living with Justin Pearson of the Locust and Swing Kids and a million bands. This was well over thirteen years ago. I was still a bit of a fuck up, and I was living in the party house downstairs, and he was living upstairs. This was a big mansion house in Golden Hills where we’d hold shows, and we all rented out rooms there. It was this massive nine-bedroom mansion. Upstairs were guys from Locust and Moving Units and all of the tough bands. Downstairs was called the Emo House. I lived with Jimmy LaValle who is now Album Leaf. We all lived in this same compound together. I remember nursing hangovers on the porch at the crack of dawn and seeing Justin Pearson taking a whole stack of records to the post office and thinking, ‘He’s got his shit together.’ I think that’s laid dormant in my mind for so long. I think after I moved to L.A. and kind of settled in and had a career going in the fashion world, I was able to take that inspiration that had always sat there from Justin and I decided to start a label. I think it’s very admirable what he did running his own label because I was such a fuck up and he was doing this at such a young age. And he’s still doing it. It doesn’t sound like anything I would put out on Manimal, but the aesthetic is still there and we’re still friends to this day and we still exchange ideas.
Why do you think that the bands in Brooklyn get so much exposure while there is a surplus of equally if not more talented bands in Los Angeles who just seem to maintain relative anonymity? Miranda Lee Richards said in a recent interview with L.A. RECORD that there were not enough local labels and local managers on the business end to supply all of the talent in Los Angeles. What’s your take on this—as the owner of one of the few labels in town?
Paul Beahan: I definitely feel that in Brooklyn and New York, there is definitely more financial and emotional support there. There is more of a European mentality toward the arts in New York compared to Los Angeles. Here it’s really a republican way of thinking, even though people here are very liberal minded. Here, they have an attitude of, ‘You’re on your own, kid!’ kind of thing. Because there are so many talented people in Los Angeles—I would say on the talent meter a hundred times more talented people than there are in New York City. It’s Los Angeles, and people come here from all over the world and all over the country to make a living off of their talent. In that sense I feel there are also a lot of people who are in the entertainment business for the wrong reasons, especially the music business. It has to be approached as a labor of love, and for me it is a complete labor of love. I’m fortunate enough to have my fashion career to support the record label, because I don’t make any money out of the record label at all. If anything, I have to go out of pocket on most of the stuff. But I don’t see it as always being that way, and I think it’s going to change. I think with DIY culture with instead of having to spend ten or twenty thousand dollars to record an indie record, we do it for free—bands do it themselves and take care of it, and we’re able to turn a profit faster because the overhead is lower. I think that in Los Angeles, we definitely need more labels. I would love it if there were four or five other labels doing what I am doing, but unfortunately, I don’t think that there is. At least I’m not aware of it—or if there are, at least there aren’t labels that are aesthetically great.
What is your job in the fashion industry?
Paul Beahan: I work as a fashion stylist. I’ve been working as a wardrobe and fashion stylist for the last ten years. That’s my background. I’ve had a nice, successful career. Around three years ago, I decided to borrow money from my styling company to start the record label. That’s how I was able to finance it all.
This is the second Manimal Festival. Why do you keep holding them in Joshua Tree? Is it a retreat from L.A. for the bands and their fans?
Paul Beahan: It’s a chance to see their favorite bands in a really uncontrolled environment, instead of going to a venue where you know you can piss in a clean bathroom and know that there’s security guards to break up any fights. I fell like this is a pure human co-existance. We’re in the middle of the desert. We do have Pappy and Harriet’s. It’s the closest sign of civilization. I feel like we can only allow a certain number of people there. It’s a really small venue. But we get them there, and how many other opportunities will they get to see Chairlift and Warpaint and Edward Sharpe in this tiny space in the middle of nowhere in this beautiful scenic background? It’s one of those things. I’m able to do it there, and the people who own Pappy and Harriet’s are super cool. They’re really supportive and they don’t charge me any money to do it which is great. It’s a chance to keep it really intimate. I don’t want more than 600 people there. I want to keep it at like 500 people. Even a couple years from now, I don’t want it to be ten thousand people—I will want to keep it at around 500. Depending on how the October show goes, we’re already talking about doing another one in May or June. We did the first one in June, but I couldn’t do it in June this year, because I was busy with a lot of releases. But now since the releases are slowing down, I’ve had a lot of energy to put into the festival. It’s like an end-of-the-year company party. It’s just fun. Last year was literally just me. I had no help at all. L.A. RECORD helped me with ads and selling tickets, but that was it. I was out of pocket—I was stage managing and running all over the place. Now I have KCRW as well as L.A. RECORD. We also have a stage manager this year. Isabelle of Hecuba’s sister Jasmine is going to be the stage manager this year—cracking the whip and making sure bands don’t run long. It will go more professionally and I’ll be able to enjoy it more and talk to people instead of running around in all directions, so I’m really looking forward to it.
I always joke that Manimal bands travel in packs—wherever I see one of your bands, I usually find three or four.
Paul Beahan: They’re all friends. We all share things and work with each other. It’s the idea of a co-op. That’s how it’s been working. Jon and Isabelle of Hecuba have been priceless with helping me with the label. They’ve made the label happen. Between them and Rainbow Arabia, they’ve really made the label happen in a big way. They’ve given so much of their time to help me with the label and vice versa—we help each other out. Coincidentally we all happen to be friendly if not good friends with each other so they do travel and tour in packs—kind of like a big gang in a weird way, which is cool with me. There’s not enough drama, actually. We need a little more. We need to be some incestuous stuff going on. Fortunately there hasn’t been any, as much as I try to initiate setting up people. They’re all like, ‘He’s too much like my brother. She’s too much like my sister.’ No steamy gossip or drama yet. I wish there would be, though!
How many submissions do you get in an average week, and do you look for something specific?
Paul Beahan: I have an open submission policy. I give out my P.O. Box and e-mail address. I’d say I get ten to twenty submissions a week. I look at the whole package—the whole aesthetic. Everything from the name of the artist or the band to whatever the artwork they give me. That always comes first because I don’t care what anyone says—people judge books by their covers.
Your bands even have a fashion aesthetic to them.
Paul Beahan: Bands like Hecuba or Rainbow Arabia, they all have really great aesthetics. And of course, I do get those cds in the mail where I’m like, ‘Really? OK?’
Some bands will just mail stuff to everybody.
Paul Beahan: There’s some CDs where I’m thinking, ‘Does this band even listen to what I put out?’ I even get country rock people sending their records. ‘Hey, put out my band.’ Some bad stuff.
How many shows do you go to in a typical month?
Paul Beahan: Being that I’m a father, I get to go out maybe two or three times a month, depending on what’s going on. It’s been a little bit more lately because there’s a lot that’s been going on, so I’ve been getting out once a week.
What is your child’s favorite CD?
Paul Beahan: Scott Walker. She loves Scott Walker. His early stuff. Not his new stuff—I think that would be a little to scary for her.
VOICEsVOICEs always puts me to sleep when I play it at my apartment.
Paul Beahan: Oooh, I haven’t tried that actually. I’m going to have to. She REALLY likes Hecuba. She wants to hear ‘Tom and Jerry.’ She points and says ‘Meow!’ She wants to hear Tom and Jerry over and over again, but she’s a wild child.
I met L.A. RECORD’s publisher for the first time at a Hecuba show. I remember walking in during their set and thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’ Then I saw them a couple more times and heard their CD and I really like them a lot now.
Paul Beahan: Everybody. The first time they see them everybody says, ‘What the hell is this?’ It’s weird. Hecuba is very alienating to the untrained ear. First impression is always, ‘Whoa, is this band real?’ They defintiely stand out in people’s memory. I’ve never experienced so many people that were ‘What the fuck?’ and then three months later, they’re ‘Hecuba!’ They become their favorite band. It’s really cool. And the band is aware of that, too. They’re very polarizing. A good portion of the bands that I’m really into now—the first time I heard them I was really confused, and then as time moved they became my favorites.
Have you ever put backmasking on any of your vinyl?
Paul Beahan: The lock groove? Yeah—we have two albums that do that. On the new Polyamorous Affair vinyl at the end of the Bolshevik Disco vinyl. VOICEsVOICEs will, too. They have a 30-second song between side A and side B. It’s going to be a lock groove. It’s pretty cool. We did that with Polyamorous Affair. There was a line from their first album—‘Melt you down like Cherynobl, Superpower going global.’ Eddie thought it was insane. I said, ‘Give me that line, and we’ll have it backwards.’ It’s a lock groove so you have to have a DJ turntable to hear it. It sounds like it’s German because it’s all backwards, but if you play it backwards you can hear the actual message. We just did it to screw with people a little bit. It’s true about the White Album. If you really play Revolution 9 backwards over the part where George Martin is saying, ‘Number 9,’ it does sound like he’s saying, ‘Turn me on, dead man.’ It sounds just like it.
Do you ever click around Myspace to listen to random bands from isolated countries in Europe and Asia?
Paul Beahan: All the time. That’s how I found Aquaserge, the French group. It’s kind of how I found Corridor too. He had writen me a few times, and I kind of dismissed him as a folkie, and then one day I listened to his Myspace and got into him. I still find lots of bands on Myspace, even though Myspace has become more and more of a graveyard over the last year. It seems that they’re all European bands.
How’s the David Bowie tribute CD coming along?
Paul Beahan: It’s getting there. It’s definitely delayed. It’s probably not coming out until Spring 2010 now. We want it to be perfect. Most of the bands have submitted their songs. I can’t tell you all of the bands who are going to be on it yet. Obviously, the Manimal artists will be on there. We also have much larger bands on it like MGMT and Nine Inch Nails. We don’t know what song Nine Inch Nails is doing yet, but they are confirmed. I’m trying to convince MGMT to cover ‘Andy Warhol.’ Devendra Banhart and Megapuss did a Spanish version of ‘Sound and Vision.’ Vivian Girls do ‘John I’m Only Dancing.’ It’s a super lo-fi version, and it’s so good. I think we’re going to start leaking songs out around December or January. David Bowie’s web designer-manager guy who oversees all his personal management is in contact with me every week. We talk about it. Bowie is completely aware of this, and totally supportive and cool with it.
Do you see Manimal doing soundtrack work at some point?
Paul Beahan: I hope so. I’m not really close with any music supervisors from any motion picture companies. We started submitting a lot of our stuff to licensing companies who work with music supervisors. I know Natasha from Bat For Lashes is looking to do more soundtrack work, and I’m sure Hecuba will definitely—it’s just a matter of time. VOICEsVOICEs could. Hopefully we’ll get some good action going on, but as for right now, no.
Any chance of Manimal releasing comedy records?
Paul Beahan: This is a funny story about how the label got started. I’ve never told anyone before. As a stylist, I got hired to work with Bill Maher on his television show Real Time With Bill Maher for HBO. He turned out to be a difficult dude to work with. For some reason, he wouldn’t let us do a fitting for him, so the job only lasted three weeks and I got fired. But the money I made from that is how I paid for my first release. I got like $5,000 with my severance, and I used that to put out the Chapin Sisters-Winter Flowers picture disc. The records were finished, and I had to pay for it. I was stressing out for money. I thought, ‘I’ll do this job,’ but I knew I was going to get fired because one episode the suit was too big and one episode the suit was too tight. He kept complaining about shit and eventually I got fired and I got my severance check and I thought, ‘Well, this is going to start my record company.’ Technically HBO paid for Manimal Records.
Do you look as Bat For Lashes as the first graduate of Manimal? And how does it feel to see one of your first bands succeed on such a wide scale?
Paul Beahan: EMI picked her up about two weeks after we put out the record in 2007. We knew it was going to be big, but she’s definitely become the figurehead of the label even though now she’s not with the label. We’re still aesthetically working together. We have the catalogue, and she has a label She Bear, which we are in talks about maybe Manimal distributing her label. It would be her label manufactured and overseen by me. That will be something for 2010 for sure. I actually first discovered Bat For Lashes while I was in my bathroom reading a copy of the Arthur Lee Memorial edition of Mojo. I saw a picture of her and I was blown away. Manimal Vinyl—it all started on the toilet. I looked them up and contacted their manager Dick O’Dell. When I wrote him they had just been talking about how she would be able to find an American label to put her record out. At the same exact time that I was contacting her that e-mail came through. She had done a few solo dates opening for Devendra, but she didn’t really have any awareness over here yet. I still have a stack of Mojos next to my toilet.
We’ve discussed how being a small label, you understand that for bands to become widely circulated they have to ultimately make the jump to a larger label. Do you approach bands with a two or three year window in mind?
Paul Beahan: I’m completely open to them moving to a bigger label. There’s no weirdness when they do go to a bigger label. It just kind of happens. I feel like first impression, I never think of that obviously. With Warpaint it’s different—we went into that knowing they were going to be going with a bigger label. Now I can openly say that both Hecuba and Rainbow Arabia have been getting looked at by bigger labels. There’s even been offers to distribute Manimal through a large major label. I just wait for it to happen. I could easily imagine VOICEsVOICEs getting signed to Warp. As of right now, the biggest thing we’re concentrating on is getting the Manimal release out—getting that done properly and whatever happens happens. If they go with a larger label, that’s great. If they stay with me and put out another record, hopefully they’ll be able to make a decent royalty with Manimal.
Manimal had eight releases this year. How many do you have scheduled for 2010?
Paul Beahan: Definitely a bit less than I did in 2009. We overdid it a bit this year. In 2010, we’re hoping five or six. I’ve been a little overwhelmed this year.
Is Hancock Park your retreat from Echo Park and Silverlake?
Paul Beahan: When I first moved to L.A., I lived in Los Feliz. Then I moved out to this area in 2002, and I didn’t plan on staying this long, but I stayed out here and it has been a bit of a retreat. I can walk around here early in the morning in my pajamas and not be embarrassed by running into somebody I know. Mentally, I feel like I should live on the east side, but I like it here. I feel more like an outsider.
What is it like working with a European distributor?
Paul Beahan: With Cargo, they were already buying my items through my old American distributor. I told them I was parting with my American distributor and wanted to go exclusive with a U.K. deal because I really wanted to expand overseas. First thing they told me was I really needed to get someone to run the label over in U.K. and it just so happened that the guy who was managing Hecuba was looking to do that for me, and we just opened up our office in London about a month ago in the East End. Matthew Hammond—he’s my label manager over there. He’s wonderful. He’s also a booking agent over there—he books tours over in Europe and the U.K. He’s defintinely become the open artery for Manimal’s success in the U.K. and Europe. He’s working directly with Cargo. He’s my right-hand man.
Are there any bands that have been embraced by the mainstream that you like?
Paul Beahan: MGMT. If they weren’t signed when I saw them the first time, I would have definitely signed them within 20 seconds. I just became friends with their manager, and he told me that they have reached over a million sales now. It’s incredible to think that a duo of musicians like MGMT can have that kind of chart success. To me, they’re in the same ballpark as Hecuba. MGMT could aesthetically be a Manimal band. There’s not many Billboard-charting bands that I can say that about. It’s something to look up to. I’m very excited for their success. If they can do it, I know a band like Rainbow Arabia could definitely be a Top Ten act. Or M.I.A. She has a top-ten Album in the U.S., which is absurd and inspiring. And you still have the country artists, and the hip-hop artists in the Top Ten, but then you get bands like these sneaking in there, and it’s really inspiring. It gives me hope that if they could do it, one of the Manimal bands will be able to do it.
Have you ever been in a sensory-deprivation tank?
Paul Beahan: I actually had a friend help me do that once in a saltwater pool. Floating for hours. It was like being born all over again. It was somewhere out in the desert and that was right about the time that I started the label.
You should bring all the bands out and submerge them one at a time in a tank before sending them on stage.
Paul Beahan: That’s a really good idea. We could film it. It would be the sensory deprivation sessions. We could float them for hours and then make them go right into a recording session and let them improvise. I’m definitely down for experimentation like that—absolutely.
Is there any final message you’d like to get out to the L.A. RECORD readers?
Paul Beahan: I’d like to give a word out to all of the musicians and artists who are reading this to keep doing what they’re doing and keep sending me your music. Whether they hear back from me or other labels or not, don’t give up. It’s becoming a less profitable venture, but the world without interesting music will be a boring place.

MANIMAL FESTIVAL WITH ALEXANDRA HOPE, HECUBA, RAINBOW ARABIA, AMANDA JO WILLIAMS, VOICESVOICES, CORRIDOR AND MANY MORE ON SAT., OCT. 3, AND SUN., OCT. 4, AT PAPPY AND HARRIET’S, 53688 PIONEERTOWN RD., PIONEERTOWN. 6 PM / $30 FOR ONE DAY / $50 FOR WEEKEND / ALL AGES. MANIMALVINYL.COM.