Leisure King Records goes to work.

Byline: LEWIS TAYLOR The Register-Guard

EXCEPT FOR starting a restaurant, or maybe playing a pickup game of Russian roulette, few ventures are as prone to failure as launching an independent record label.

"It's a bit like opening a burger restaurant next to a McDonald's," admits Scott McLean, founder of Eugene's latest start-up, Leisure King Records.

Despite the risks, McLean and his wife, Annabelle Garcia McLean, are jumping into the murky waters of record label ownership - headfirst.

Garcia McLean is seeding the new label using royalty money she inherited from her father - the late Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia. Officially, Leisure King will launch next month with the release of "In Socks Mode," the debut album from the Visible Men, a Eugene pop duo.

"The only thing that made me feel a little bit better about taking the money ... is feeding it back to the poor guys who are sitting in their houses eating ramen and writing the most beautiful music that's never going to be heard," Garcia McLean says. "They deserve a shot just like the next guy."

More surprising than the fact that a significant portion of Garcia McLean's money comes from the sale of Cherry Garcia ice cream is the notion that Leisure King's starting roster of local musicians doesn't have a single jam band or Grateful Dead-inspired act.

Along with the Visible Men, the lineup has pop-rock singer Dan Jones; pop-folk artist Tom Heinl is expected to sign on.

In case you hadn't guessed by now, pop music is a strong focus for the label.

"I'm just an absolute pop junkie," McLean says. "I don't really care if it's R&B pop or punk pop or Top 40 pop. Is it a good song that's got a good hook that can be played with?"

These days, anyone with a personal computer and a CD burner can start a record label, and there is no shortage of single-act, boutique labels in town. But McLean and his wife are attempting something more substantial.

It's still too early to tell what direction Leisure King will take - one artist could break out, all three could go big, or maybe none of the CDs will sell - but both say they are strongly committed to doing whatever it takes. They plan to invest about $50,000 in their first three artists, and hope to release an additional three albums a year after that.

If there's an insurance policy for the label, McLean says, it's the fact that the focus is on making good records rather than making big money. Even if an artist doesn't take off, Garcia McLean says, at least they've given local musicians chances to make the albums of their dreams.

"To start with, I think I'm looking for music that I like. That's gotta be the starting point for sure," McLean says. "World domination would be great, but you can't go into this business expecting to make millions of dollars.

`That's not how we want to do it."

Even with a limited budget, Leisure King has managed to assemble a team of experienced music insiders, and it's done so without leaving Lane County. The label has hired a full-time office manager and a part-time publicist, and all three of the albums will be recorded at Gung-Ho Studio, where sound engineer Bill Barnett is overseeing the recording and mixing.

The CDs will be mastered at Sony Disc Manufacturing in Springfield.

"What they're doing right is wanting primarily to make a great record that the artist and the label can really be proud of," Barnett says. "I think that's a good start, as opposed to looking first at who they're going to sell it to and how they're going to sell it.

`While the art-before-commerce approach may not guarantee commercial success, neither does the other way. ... At least you succeed or fail on your own terms."

Leisure King's financial agreements with the musicians on its roster are still being worked out, but they're shaping up to be fairly artist-friendly.

The label picks up the cost of recording and production, and the artist pays back the costs as the record sells. After roughly half of the production costs have been paid, the artists begin receiving royalties on the sale of the record.

McLean, a drummer who has played in a number of local bands, learned about the other side of music production while attending the Art Institute of Seattle. After earning an associate's degree in music business and sound recording, he returned to Eugene and joined up with the Tejano punk-rock band Los Mex Pistols del Norte.

After leaving the Mex Pistols, McLean began to get serious about fulfilling his dream of starting a label. Initially, he planned to set up the infrastructure before signing any artists. But after he met with Dustin Lanker of the Visible Men, the project went into overdrive.

"We sat around and just kind of talked about what their vision was and what they wanted to do with their music," McLean says. "And I kind of explained to him what we wanted to do, which was to start this up and record some great music.

`At that point, we agreed pretty much on the spot to do a project."

From the perspective of artists, Leisure King's offer is a hard one to refuse. Not only is the label picking up the tab and paying a higher percentage in royalties than many other indie labels, but McLean and Garcia McLean are mindful of the need for chemistry between artist and label.

"It feels like we're working with friends instead of working for some shyster in a suit," Lanker says.

`Basically, what it comes down to is that we believe that we do something that's really unique, and to have somebody else from an executive producer standpoint say, `I believe in your vision' - it's not like working for a record company.'

In addition to compatibility and sheer musical talent, another quality Garcia McLean looks for in the artists she signs is the ability to laugh it off.

"It's really important in the music industry to have a sense of humor," Garcia McLean says. "If you don't, you will get hurt."

Pop singer Dan Jones says his decision to sign with Leisure King boiled down to a number of factors, including the label's professionalism and its commitment to local artists. Jones also is involved in a separate project, self-producing an album with his rock band, Activator.

"I think both Scott and Annabelle are concerned with the well-being of everyone involved," Jones says.

"She's seen the hard side of rock 'n' roll life, and the loneliness of it and the difficulty of it, and he's pounded the pavement enough in a band to know what it's like. So there's a real empathy for doing it in a sane way."

Raised in the San Francisco Bay area, in Eugene and on the road with the Grateful Dead, Garcia McLean did see a good deal of music mayhem while growing up. If anything, she says, she learned a lot about how not to run a record label.

"I've seen destruction, I've seen great things happen; I've seen people eat each other alive, I've seen other people save each other," Garcia McLean says.

"It's just a huge, massive drama that I happened to be born into. I've been a witness to everything that you could possibly do wrong, and I promised not to make the same mistakes."

If there's a common thread connecting the three acts signed to Leisure King so far, it probably has more to do with artistic philosophies than musical parallels. The dark, quirky pop of the Visible Men has little in common with Jones' rootsy pop tunes, and Heinl's clever folk songs are in a category all their own. If you had to determine a common denominator, Jones says, it probably would be that each artist has an uncommon approach to making music.

"There's craftsmanship and original lyrics and intelligence and insecurity and humor," Jones says. "There's something kind of conversational about all three of these acts that's not formulaic."

There have been other successful record labels in Eugene, but most have gone under or relocated.

The Cherry Poppin' Daddies launched its own Space Age Bachelor Pad label. It was swallowed up by Mojo Records when the band signed a new record deal.

Jealous Butcher Records found a successful recipe for producing indie rock records and continues to operate in Portland.

Elemental Records, still the label of the Eugene-born hard rock band Floater, started in town in the early 1990s. It relocated to McMinnville several years ago.

Robert Wynia, one of the founders of Floater, says succeeding as a small record label in Eugene requires not only a good roster of musicians, but also the support of the local music community. Without knowing much about Leisure King, he says the label is doing at least one thing right.

"They're already clear of what is one of the biggest mistakes, which is going into it with a profit motive," Wynia says. "That's the death knell.

`It happens with bands, too. Not only is there not a lot of money to be made, but nobody is going to care about you or what you're doing if that's how you're operating. You really have to be into it for the love of it."

Cassandra Thorpe, president of Elemental, echoes Wynia's belief that owning a small record label is a labor of love.

Thorpe and her husband, Aaron, bought the label in 1999 from its founder, John Boldt. Like McLean and Garcia McLean, neither Thorpe nor her husband thought much about getting rich.

"We really loved Floater, we loved the band, we were fans of the band," says Thorpe, who also manages the group. "I made a commitment to the band, and I said that, no matter what, I was going to do this for three years.

`Now, three years is coming this September. I don't know what I'll do, but at that point, I think I'll feel free to do what I need to do."

McLean and Garcia McLean did not specify exactly how long they planned to commit to getting Leisure King off the ground. Officially, the label will launch on April 26, when Leisure King hosts a Visible Men CD release party at the McDonald Theatre. The show will feature all of the acts on the label's roster.

"If we've done this much work and had this much fun in such a short amount of time and we haven't even launched yet," McLean says, "the future looks pretty damn good."

Entertainment reporter Lewis Taylor can be reached by phone at 338-2512 and by e-mail at [e-mail].

CAPTION(S):

"It feels like we're working with friends instead of working for some shyster in a suit." - BRIAN LANKER, Visible Men