Music Man

By Nate Seltenrich

While many of his peers are struggling just to make it to class during their final quarter, senior Ryan Lindow is busy running a record label.

Reactivation Media Recordings, which Lindow formed with longtime friend Chris Miller in November 2001, is based in his hometown of Sacramento and aims to help talented young musicians to jumpstart their careers.

If co-managing a record label as a full-time student sounds like a daunting task, figure in a commitment to his up-and-coming and actively performing band, The Blue Letter, and you'll have an idea of just how busy Lindow really is.

"Between the label, doing school and doing a band that's in a different city, my time is stretched really thin sometimes," says Lindow.

The story of where Lindow is today goes back almost a decade to when he first started playing in bands at the age of 13. He quickly found himself surrounded by a talented and creative group of similarly-minded people.

However, as he continued through high school, Lindow began to realize that many of his friends and their bands were starting out new projects with high hopes only to have them hit the wall and fail to progress any further.

He credited this to a lack of recorded music on hard copy that would allow them to represent themselves to fans, agents and other people in the business. This was a large obstacle to further growth.

It was this conclusion that inspired Lindow to create a record label that could help foster the fledgling music careers of his friends and fellow local Sacramento-area musicians.

"That was when the idea started," says Lindow. "But it wasn't until November 2001 when I finally just went ahead and did it and got the business up and running."

Lindow found the process of starting up a small business to be fairly straightforward. In order to make his label official, he was required to apply for business licenses, fill out some forms, and pay a few fees.

"As far as the technical part of starting a business in the state of California, I was helped out a lot by my dad, because he's done that before. That's a pretty small thing though. You can pick up a book on how to start a business in this state," he says.

Lindow has found running the label to be much more of learning process than a strict step-by-step formula. He has picked up new and helpful information along the way, and continues to revise his business plan.

"I guess it's just a lot of years of observing how things work on a smaller label. I'm totally just learning as I go," says Lindow.

The label's primary responsibilities toward its bands include directing the entire recording and manufacturing processes and taking care of promotions. While Lindow says the label generally leaves booking up to the bands, he can also offer help in that area if requested.

Reactivation Media has not yet signed a distribution deal, but CDs are available for sale on the bands' Web sites, at shows, and even at a few independent record stores in Sacramento.

Lindow's band is one of two that have thus far released music on Reactivation Media Recordings. The Blue Letter's second E.P., "When Will These Barricades Fall?," was released in February 2003 and contains three songs. Described by Lindow as "experimental," the band's sound is a hard-hitting punk/metal hybrid infused with electronic and keyboard tracks that fill and layer the music.

Lead singer Dan Shebaylo's hauntingly cryptic and candid lyrics and intense screams add to The Blue Letter's stimulating effect.

The brief seven-minute recording is only a hint at what the band should be able to accomplish, and from Lindow's vantage point behind the drum kit, the future looks promising.

Reactivation Media Recordings' debut release was a self-titled, four-track E.P. by a band called The Subject of Us, which came out in May 2002.

This more straightforward, yet no less intelligent and dynamic hardcore release has already helped launch The Subject of Us into relative stardom over the last 11 months. They've received rave reviews from a number of critics and have already appeared on the cover of a local music magazine.

Although it has been helpful for the label and the bands to start out with the shorter E.P.'s, Lindow hopes to begin releasing full-length albums in upcoming months.

The next scheduled release on the label will be a singer/songwriter/band project called The Luke Fields on July 15. Lindow also has tentative plans to release as many as five more full lengths within the next eight or nine months.

Lindow won't be officially graduating with his degree in marketing until next fall, but will move back up to Sacramento this summer to devote more time to the label while working toward his final credits from home. He is also currently mulling over plans to tour this summer with his band.

"If I could go out on tour for a month with The Blue Letter, and then come back and work on the label, these are all kind of like part time things. But it's stuff that I'm really interested in, and I could do all those things. Maybe at the end of the week, it would end up as a 40-hour a week job."

More information about Reactivation Media and links to The Blue Letter and The Subject of Us websites can be accessed online at reactivationmedia.com.