Do-it-yourselfer.

When cabaret singer Lee Lessack couldn't find a label to distribute his music, he started his own--and wound up taking on his own stable of gay and lesbian artists

Name any niche musical genre you can imagine, from lesbian punk to Mexican hip-hop, and there is a specialty record label devoted to that sound. But when Los Angeles cabaret singer Lee Lessack was looking to release his debut album in 1995, he was surprised by the absence of companies specializing in new recordings of a classic pop vocal vein. So he decided to put out the disc himself, hardly realizing that the imprint he created, LML Music, would turn into a second career.

Normally, getting music into stores can be a herculean task for an unknown. But Lessack--who came out in his late teens and has been with his boyfriend for nine years--had been getting good notices for his track "Jonathan Wesley Oliver, Jr." on the gay and lesbian songwriters set A Love Worth Fighting For. He took advantage of that momentum, making introductory phone calls to distributors. "They were having great success with the compilation," says Lessack, 38, "so I didn't have too much difficulty getting distribution."

Not long after, another local singer, Brian Lane Green, approached Lessack about putting out his album. Knowing that Green was about to hit the road in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Lessack agreed--but only if the folks selling Joseph merchandise would hawk Green's LML release.

Now performing the same chores--calculating royalties, paying licensing fees--for two artists, Lessack decided he might as well do it for more. When word got out that he was willing to help other singers put out their albums, "people came out of the woodwork," the Pennsylvania native recalls. Today, the LML Music catalog contains over 30 offerings, including Cory Jamison's critically acclaimed Hoagy Carmichael tribute, Here's to Hoagy. While LML Music's stock-in-trade remains vocal pop a la Lessack's latest, Too Marvelous for Words: The Songs of Johnny Mercer, the roster also includes gay-oriented fare like Cam Clarke's Inside Out and Family Values by Stain'd Glass.

"This label is totally artist-supported," Lessack says, explaining LML's appeal. Unlike a traditional label, LML doesn't sink big bucks into malting the records, so they don't have as much to recoup; most artists arrive with a finished album or a work in progress. "What I do is all the things most artists don't want, or have a clue how, to do: postproduction, manufacturing, marketing, distributing. And if [a title] doesn't sell, I don't make anything, but I don't lose anything except my time. And more often than not, my time pays off."

LML "creates an immediate sense of community," says Charles Cermele, an award-winning New York vocalist who distributes his album Ask Me Again via LML. "In terms of marketing and communicating to the audience, it's a brand and a place where we can educate people, so that's where they go for that [sound]. You want lyric-driven music of a particular style? Check in with LML--you're going to definitely find something you like."

"There's a lot of intra-Web site purchasing," Lessack adds. "They buy one artist they know and then see 30 other recordings--most of them in this same genre--and they're in hog heaven."

Reighley is the author of Looking for the Perfect Beat (MTV/Pocket Books).