There comes a time when every man feels the urge to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats.

—H.L. Mencken, top of the Bloodshot Records webpage

             In the mid-90s a radio production manager named Rob Miller moved from Detroit to Chicago, and met a woman named Nan Warshaw at a punk club. She was disc-jockeying that night, oddly playing country music, and he soon brought her records to play.

             “‘Have you heard this? Have you heard this?’ I’d ask her,” Miller says, laughing. “Soon, she asked, ‘Why don’t you DJ? And we started splitting it, and eventually we were like, ‘Why don’t we put out a record and save the Teen Center?’”

             Now a company appropriately called Bloodshot exists on “a bleak stretch of Irving Park”—a label on which Ryan Adams chose to release his first solo album (Heartbreaker, 2000) between major deals, and Neko Case has recorded three albums for, including last year’s acclaimed Blacklisted.

             But it’s not the success of these artists that keeps Miller as excited as he was that night when he realized how much he had in common with Warshaw. "We've had a few offers to sell our label, but I didn’t get into this to work for anyone else,” he says. "And I know enough about other labels to know that I don’t want to work for another label in this racket. Independent labels by their nature are so idiosyncratic, so reflective of the owners’ personalities—if you’re bought out by a major label they’re interested in one or two of the acts, and a lot of my favorite bands on the label are the ones selling two thousand records. Those are the ones that I deeply love, and I want to continue putting out their records. And if I sold out to another label, these would be the first bands that they would drop. They're only interested in the Ryan Adams’ and the Neko Case’s, whatever’s selling the most.”

             Bloodshot is celebrating its ten year anniversary, having released its first compilation Life Of Sin—featuring all Chicago bands including the first recordings of Robbie Fulks, the Handsome Family, the Waco Brothers, Bottle Rockets, and Freakwater—in a period of rock music history the label owners both detested, “in reaction to Stone Temple Pilots and Seven Mary Three,” Miller spits out.

             “We've got a pretty strong label identity, so from the beginning I am, for better or worse, part of the story,” he continues. “More than I’m comfortable being, but I understand its values.”

             Bloodshot had simple aspirations. “We just wanted to document what was going on in Chicago at the time in roots music,” Miller says. “For us the whole notion of a roster’s kind of fluid. Lots of different artists on different labels have contributed tracks to our compilations and things. It’s very much a friendly environment. We play poker with Touch & Go, we go out boozing a lot together. I know a lot of them really well, we trade information all the time in Chicago. It’s a very non-competitive communal atmosphere in Chicago. There’s all sorts of supportive clubs and radio stations. I mean, Seattle’s got it too, as far as I can tell....”

             Miller admits he has worries that the good times might one day be over, though. “[The cooperative spirit] is getting increasingly rare nationally—with independent record stores closing down, with radio being co-opted, and all of that.”

             I ask him if Bloodshot has struggled more than it appears. “Life as an independent label has always been harrowing, and by its definition always will be harrowing, because you’re doing music that is not MEANT for the mainstream,” he asserts. “By definition you’re existing on the fringe, and we were lucky that we had a couple of records really hit big and allowed us some measure of comfort, but it’s still non-stop trench warfare. And I don’t want to look back and say, ‘Five years ago it was so easy being an independent label,’ because it never has been. Every year presents new challenges; it never gets any easier.”

We didn’t form out of a reaction to Nashville, we formed out of a reaction to hating Stone Temple Pilots, Seven Mary Three, etc. It was against everything we hold dear about underground rock, which was being co-opted into GAP ads and was showing up on episodes of "Full House."

            Bloodshot has often skirted political controversy, such as supporting anti-death penalty causes and making it obvious how important it is to vote in this particular election.

             “I think our [political affiliations] have effected us in some places, and we do have a definite political bent, but for me I don’t really see a problem or delineation with mixing music and politics,” Miller insists. “Growing up, I was into the Cramps, Devo, the Clash—you listen to the Clash you don’t go, ‘Oh, this is a political song,’ it was just a part of it. And being a fan of the Mekons forever, it’s never something they consciously do, like, ‘We’re going to do a political song,’ or whatever. If Jon Langford brings us this 'death penalty’ record we don’t go, ‘Ooh, this will be our political record.’”

             Jon Langford is in the bands the Mekons (Touch & Go), and the Waco Brothers, Pine Valley Cosmonauts (who released the amazing Executioner’s Last Songs non-profit collaborations with many different singers and players), and his own superb solo work, including the recent (and to be considered a genuine roots-rock classic) All the Fame of Lofty Deeds, perhaps the first glam-punk country concept album. His enthusiastic participation with Bloodshot has been an inspiration to Miller and Warshaw since they met him.

             “When we were putting together the first compilation, trolling around for music, Jon had just moved to Chicago—and I was and am incredibly bashful around virtually everyone, but especially around people who I really admired,” Miller confesses. “He came to a bar that Nan and I were at, and I just said to her, ‘Maybe he would do a track for us,’ though she didn’t know then who he was. She brazenly went up to talk to him, and he did it, and it’s been great every since—it’s been all handshake deals."

             When I bring up the subject of country music itself, though, Miller disregards it as having much to do with Bloodshot. “I hate country music!” he insists. “Not to be glib, you know, but the first time that I heard ‘Lost Highway’ was Jason & the Nashville Scorchers' version. I got into it kind of subconsciously, through the love for roots music in bands like the Cramps, the Scorchers, the Gun Club, X, Charlie Pickett & the Eggs ... they were doing fucked up punk rock versions of what they thought was country music.

             "I don’t subscribe to this notion people often have of Bloodshot of how we have this subversive knowledge of country music and how we’re subverting Nashville, and I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on over there. And I don’t care to know.

             “Growing up in the punk scene it’s an extension of where you find your passion,” Miller continues. “That was the first music that struck a chord with me. All of that classic rock stuff in the late 70s and early 80s, when I was at the age when I should have been getting into that stuff, it didn’t interest me at all. Punk piqued my interest as a kid in the suburbs of Chicago. When I heard stuff like the Clash and the Ramones and Devo there was something in there that just spoke to me.

             “We didn’t form out of a reaction to Nashville, we formed out of a reaction to hating Stone Temple Pilots, Seven Mary Three, etc. It was against everything we hold dear about underground rock, which was being co-opted into GAP ads and was showing up on episodes of 'Full House.'"

             This all began probably when Miller met the Mekons. “They came down to my radio show in Ann Arbor on my 21st birthday. I think it was their first U.S. tour, and they played that night, and I haven’t been the same since. And afterwards, they had a huge van accident!

             “I’ve been working with rock bands for almost 20 years now, and I have never met anyone who is more giving, more honest, and more forthright than Jon Langford. My admiration for him is boundless. He’s just unbelievably nice and good. And I love his music. There is nothing worse being a production manager than working with a band that you love, and they all turn out to be assholes.

             “And on the one hand it shouldn’t matter—you should just be able to enjoy the show, enjoy the record, but working with them behind the scenes ... you know, maybe they’re having a bad night that night, and they can’t be nice or whatever, but you walk away from it all ... I’ve known Jon for ten years now, and I’ve only had one argument with him and it was largely my fault and it lasted like five minutes, seven years ago, and I still feel bad about it.”

             Though having released more than a hundred records, including much loved works by Alejandro Escovedo, Sons of the Pioneers, the Meat Purveyors, and Bobby Bare, Jr., Bloodshot currently has a small staff. Miller came to Seattle for a Jon Langford show at the Sunset Tavern at the beginning of August and sold merchandise himself as his collaborator and friend performed a long sweaty punky sexy show that may be my favorite concert of the past few years.

             “I have six people working for me,” Miller beams. “It’s been pretty steady. We don't need to be any bigger. If you don’t love this, there’s no other reason to do it.”