Soon Ballance and McCaughan had to move out of the bedroom and into an office in a house, sharing walls with a real estate company and a rare book trader. They hired their first staff and linked up a production and distribution deal with Chicago's Touch and Go label. This would help them get records into stores. "When it got to the point where we had two people working for us I was like, 'Whoa, this is getting serious.' I didn't know this was going to happen," says Ballance. "We've never been much for goals."
The sound of artists on Merge began diverging from pop-punk as the label grew. Lambchop's orchestral country, the Squirrel Nut Zippers' hot jazz and Labradford's space rock all found a place at Merge's table. Today, the staff of six handles the work of 20-plus bands. For a pair in a band that once wrote a song about working at a 24-hour Kinkos ("Slack Motherfucker") being bosses and signing paychecks is awkward.
Chris Lombardi (left) and Gerard Cosloy lead Matador into its tenth year.
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"It really sucks. I don't like it," says Ballance. "It's weird because it was never our intention to have to manage other people and have to hire people and fire people, give them raises or not give them raises. You don't think about that [when you start out]. It's not that many people, but it's more than I ever wanted to be the boss of."
The demands of the label have grown while Superchunk has become a perennial indie rock favorite. Ballance admits that co-running the label and being in a successful band are both full-time jobs.
"They are, it's hard. I feel like I have to neglect both of them in order to do the other. When I'm at home I go to the Merge office every day, eight hours a day," she says. "The last thing I want to do is go home and work some more, play bass, practice playing or write songs. So basically, I have to do one or the other when the need arises. It's like crisis management. It sucks. I would prefer to do something really well."
But being in Superchunk and touring helps the label find and keep bands. Because it is artist-run, it's artist-friendly. Currently the label doesn't even use contracts. Instead it carefully chooses bands, some of whom 'Chunk finds while on the road.
"That's where being in the band kind of comes in handy," says Ballance. "It's a matter of working with bands that have a similar mindset, where the goal is to put out records that you like and be able to do them the way you want, not necessarily spending a lot of money on them, with a realistic goal in mind."
Realism plays a strong role in how Merge does business. Ten years in, it still didn't have a business plan, still didn't do anything very differently, according to Ballance, except spend more on advertising. And like Matador, Merge is changing with its owners.
When asked what Merge will do in the next decade, Ballance starts her answer, stops and laughs. "I was going to say, 'Stay on top of what people are actually interested in buying,'" she says. "But the way Mac and I work is, we'll just keep putting out records that are what we're into listening to. Probably what that means is that it will be appealing to people in our age group."
Something that both Matador and Merge have done from the beginning. By using their ears and not detailed marketing plans Lombardi, Cosloy, McCaughan and Ballance have stayed true to the reasons they started, even if the music has changed.
