Last week, I had a great conversation with Ian Harrison, General Manager of Hopeless Records, and label founder Louis Posen.

We talked about Avenged Sevenfold, All Time Low, Thrice, Book Your Own F’n Life, Fat Mike, major labels, film school, and why Bloomberg dubbed Louis “The Paul Newman of Punk Rock.”

Hopeless celebrates its 30th anniversary this year with an August 24th event at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and an October stop at the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas.

You can listen to the podcast version at Stream N’ Destroy or read the slightly edited transcript below, which has been edited for length and clarity. 

RYAN J. DOWNEY: How did you first discover music? And at what point did you realize, ‘Okay, this isn’t just something that I love. I want to participate.’

IAN HARRISON: My parents were quite musical. My dad was a guitar player who played in local bands. I grew up going to those kinds of shows at a bar on a Friday night. There was always music in the house, a lot from the ‘70s. I discovered the punk rock community in high school. It gave me a whole community I didn’t even know existed. It opened everything up to me. A lot of people in our business have similar stories. It eventually led me here.

LOUIS POSEN: I grew up with parents who were not musicians. But they were music fans, and they had one of those old mid-century turntables playing a lot of ‘50s stuff. My older brother was into KISS. I started going to shows in fifth grade. I saw The Police, The Pretenders, and my first punk show, X, at the Reseda Country Club. That was my first time experiencing stage diving, slam dancing, and mohawks. I was like, ‘Whoa, this is not The Pretenders. This is something much more intense.’ I was into much of the KROQ stuff happening in LA – British bands like Depeche Mode, The Cure, and The Smiths.

After I graduated high school, I started going to independent record stores. That’s where I found all the fanzines, like Maximum Rock N’ Roll and Flipside. I found not only underground music but, as Ian said, a community. It was about being part of something. I never thought I was going to be in the music industry. I was going to film school and then directed music videos, starting with NOFX.

I bought a book about how to run an independent label. I called Fat Mike from NOFX because he had a label. ‘How do you do this?’ He said, ‘Come up to San Francisco. I’ll introduce you to the Fat Wreck crew, and they’ll tell you how. I put out [the] Guttermouth 7” with a song called “Hopeless,” and I was off to the races.

Maximum Rock N’ Roll was so important. My two oldest friends and I have a group chat called MRR Classifieds because that’s how we found each other.

LOUIS: Maximum Rock N’ Roll put out this other magazine called Book Your Own F’n Life. I used a ton of those contacts. They had pressing plants and clubs in there. You could pretty much run any kind of music company through that magazine. No one believes me about some of the stuff that used to be that way. You could call 411 and ask for anybody’s phone number, and they would just give it to you. That was how I found Fat Mike and Green Day. I used 411 and gave them a call.

What was the atmosphere like when you were directing music videos?

LOUIS: All the early music videos I did were shot in 16mm and then transferred and edited on video. When I did the NOFX video, Epitaph Records said, ‘There aren’t really places to play punk videos. Here’s a list if you want to call.’ I became the video promotions person as well as the director. The list mainly consisted of these local channels, like local public access types, with crazy, weird shows on them. Probably 10 to 20 of them across the country played ‘alternative’ music. That’s why the third release on Hopeless is the music videos that I directed, along with the four others, on a VHS sold at record stores called Cinema Beer-té. There was a demand for people to see videos of their favorite bands. There just wasn’t a place to find them.

At what point did you need to hire people to help you?

LOUIS: The learn-as-you-go part continues after 30 years. I mean, that’s what’s fun about music; it’s different every day. Every experience is a learning experience, and that’s been happening since the beginning. I was still directing videos and in film school, and my eyesight started to get worse around 1995, and that’s when I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to start doing this full-time. And if I do it, I will need help.’

I got a handwritten letter from Darren [Edwards], a UCLA student, saying, ‘I love these records you’ve been putting out.’ That was the first hire. He was at Hopeless from around 2000 to 2003, and then it was a slow build.

We’re a first crawl, then walk, then run company. We didn’t have one big hit at the beginning, like some labels did. Our first ‘bigger’ signing was 88 Fingers Louie, who already had some history on Fat Wreck Chords. Then next was Mustard Plug, who had some history already on Moon Ska. Mustard Plug’s Evildoers Beware! It was our first album to break 100,000 in sales.

Ian started about 20 years ago. Eric [Tobin], who does A&R, and our VP of Marketing, Erin [Choi] – who began as an intern, were all hired around the same time. It was during a big point for the label, as Avenged put out City of Evil with Warner. It was maybe six months before we signed All Time Low.

My friends and I put on a show at VFW Hall in high school. We brought two bands from Chicago down: Trench Mouth, whose drummer was Fred Armisen, and Even Score, whose singer was Tony Brummel. I met Tony through the mail, writing letters back and forth through the zine world.

Victory Records was three 7”s that he was selling out of a cardboard box at that show. It’s wild to think how many of those labels that became these subcultural monoliths – Epitaph, Fat, Hopeless, Victory, Vagrant, Rise, so many we could name – many of them started as just one person who was simultaneously trying to do like four things.

LOUIS: I haven’t thought about this, but there seem to be two categories of people starting labels. I’m sure there’s more than that, but one is the musician who wants to put out their stuff and their friends’ stuff and the fan who loves all these artists who aren’t signed and wants to put them out.

‘Every other label has turned us down. Let’s put out our own records.’ That was the AFI story with Key Lime Pie Records. My buddy Geoff Kresge, their original bass player, recently posted their rejection letter from Fat Mike on Instagram. It was on Fat Wreck Chords stationary.

LOUIS: In our 30th-anniversary museum exhibit, we have the letter we used to send when someone sent us a demo tape, and it has a whole bunch of lists of things with multiple choice questions. I think we stole [the idea] from Fat Wreck Chords. One of our things on the multiple choice was: ‘This sounds like it should be on Fat Wreck Chords. Here’s their address.’

Every label, manager, or booking agent has some famous “passes.” Who are yours?

IAN: I’d love to go back to that Pierce The Veil conversation.

I knew there’d be at least one [laughs].

IAN: There are plenty. We’re a part of this big community and see these artists rise. But we don’t talk about that much at the label like, ‘Oh, we should have done this, or we should have done that.’

LOUIS: We don’t look at it like ‘we got somebody’ or ‘we didn’t get’ somebody. These are all artists we’d love to help, and if somebody else is going to help them, that’s awesome. And if we are, that’s awesome.

What did you see in Avenged Sevenfold back then?

LOUIS: We loved that they knew who they were and what their band’s vision was. It didn’t matter if that aligned with what people expected or what could make them famous. We always do best with artists who know who they are and what their vision is, and we’re amplifying that by taking our experience and relationships and bringing that to those fans and partners. It’s much harder when an artist is unsure of who they are and is looking for us or somebody else to tell them.

Many people had a different perception of who they were because they had the makeup and stage names, and people weren’t doing that in the punk scene. Sure, they love Pantera, but they came from the punk scene, the Warped Tour world. I remember seeing them play in front of like 75 people. My favorite show was at the Coconut Teaszer, a famous LA venue before it closed. They are super nice guys.

They made their first album with a punk producer, Donnell Cameron, who did a lot of Epitaph and Fat stuff. It was on a Belgian label called Good Life. We bought that record [2001’s Sounding the Seventh Trumpet] from [Good Life’s] Ed [Verhaeghe].

Now is a good time to talk about the perception of bands ‘selling out’ when they signed to major labels. I remember that being a thing in the MRR crowd with Bad Religion, The Offspring, Green Day…

LOUIS: I don’t look at it as black-and-white. I think a lot has to do with who the people are. There are good people at big companies and bad people at independent companies. There were plusses and minuses when majors in the 2000s courted our bands, and it wasn’t just happening to us. There was a frenzy around punk-related genres. Avenged wasn’t even our first one. It was Thrice, then Avenged. Thrice was more challenging for us because it was our first. We didn’t know how to handle it. Things went a lot smoother with Avenged.

We’ve always been a company where if the artist wants to partner with a major label, let’s figure out how. That’s what we did with Thrice, Avenged, and Melee.

It depends on your goals, what you want, and what kind of relationship you want. A major label will have certain opportunities. There’s less of a difference in those opportunities now. But there are still opportunities, but they come with downsides. You’re part of a big machine. There’s a lot of turnover. If you’re looking for a smaller group who understands who you are and your fans are, who is in it with you, staying up late at night, working on your stuff. They’re not dependent on radio and mainstream things, and that’s where someone, like us, independent labels are a good fit.

What did you see in Thrice?

LOUIS: It was clear from the beginning that they had an emotional connection with their fans. They had already released Identity Crisis locally on Greene Records, a record store that put out stuff. We later worked out a deal with them to re-release that and the first proper record on Hopeless, The Illusion of Safety. They were trailblazers. And it worked because the guys have something about them, a charisma.

How about All Time Low?

IAN: The first memory I have of All Time Low is you, Louis, presenting it to us in the conference room at our old little office. I don’t think we had signed a band in a while. There was something unique, a real identity, a real story, and an intangibility you don’t see everywhere. It worked a little bit better every day. It was like an overnight success to some people, but it took years.

LOUIS: I pinch myself every morning that I get to do this for a living. It’s amazing. I never take it for granted. And it’s awesome to watch it repeatedly, going to a show of one of our newer artists, where there are under 100 people, and several years later, 5000 people are singing along to every word. And we know everything that went into that [with the artists, managers, agents, and label]. Part of putting the 30th-anniversary exhibit together was the opportunity to revisit and remember people who were part of a project. It is really a team sport.

Was there an archival person at Hopeless that made it easier to gather this stuff?

IAN: I wish someone were more like that. Over time, we found tons of stuff. But diving through 30 years of history, emails, and old video clips was a real journey. I just found a video of Alex [Gaskarth] from All Time Low apologizing profusely to his fans on YouTube after we got them on MTV’s TRL. It was a huge problem then, a big deal we had to address with the fan base. I found an old mouse pad that Louis and the original crew would send to record stores—all sorts of fun little promo items.

For whatever ‘evil’ MTV’s TRL may have inflicted on the world, it hugely impacted My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Avenged Sevenfold, and All Time Low. There was a time in every Puritan punk’s life when they didn’t know how to find things. Maybe TRL was their gateway.

IAN: It’s very important for our community. I think of all those fans who are now into deeper artists that are much smaller, but maybe the first thing they heard was All Time Low on MTV 15 earlier.

LOUIS: It’s always a tricky balance. Your fans have gotten you to where you are, and you must be sure you respect and honor them and are good to them. But at the same time, if you want to grow as an artist, you also want to be able to reach more than your current fans. There’s that balance you have to strike; some do it well, and some have a hard time.

I was in high school when Metallica’s Black Album and Nirvana’s Nevermind were released. Suddenly, the popular kids liked what I had always liked, things they once used to mock, marginalize, and alienate my friends and me. It was ‘ours,’ and now it’s theirs, too?

LOUIS: I don’t hate those artists for that. I just move on to another artist who no one else knows about. And it’s just there are different ways to handle the way you feel as a fan. And I never took a negative approach to that. I always took the ‘Okay, they want to do that. That’s cool. I’m just not into going to an arena to see them. I’ll just move on to the next band that will play at The Troubadour.’

Bloomberg called you ‘The Paul Newman of Punk Rock.’

LOUIS: I think they’re saying that because of the Sub City philanthropic work that we do. It’s part of the fabric of our company to raise awareness and funds for causes that are important to our artists and their fans. Paul Newman, of course, is known for his Newman’s Own brand, which had a charitable component to it: the popcorn, salad dressing, and whatever else they sold. I think a percentage goes to charity.

What drove that?

LOUIS: I wish there were one thing that I could say. ‘Hey, I was walking down the street, somebody ran into me, I hit my head, and all of a sudden, this light bulb went off!’ It wasn’t a big moment. [I was] raised in a family where making the world a better place is a big part of who you are as a human being. It’s a part of the punk community. What attracted me [to punk] was not just great music. It was the idea that together, we could do something positive. Our artists wanted to do things but maybe didn’t know the best pathways to get them done; they have a team at Hopeless that cares about the community.

What is the same, and what has maybe changed about what Hopeless looks for in an artist?

IAN: I think it’s largely the same. It’s looking for that individuality, that identity, that comfort with themselves as an artist. I don’t know that we articulated it that well back then. We had an instinct for it, and the artists that broke through were primarily those artists. But now we talk much more intentionally about that and the idea that the label is a home for artists looking to create something unique. We’re here to facilitate that. In the first ten years of the label, Hopeless had a strong identity, very rooted in one part of the punk community. The community ties us all together. Maybe the community is widened, diversified, and opened in amazing ways. Things look and feel slightly different, but at the fundamental level, it’s artists trying to create something special.

LOUIS: I think it’s the opposite problem that we originally had. It was hard to crack the tastemaker. You had to get past the gatekeeper. You were trying to get a few opportunities. Now, there are too many opportunities. Which are the right opportunities, and how do you build on them?

IAN: Now, it’s more about incremental opportunities. How do you grow a career? None of these things externally are going to do it for you. It’s more about what this project means. How is it resonating? Mostly, what we work on now is helping the artist create things and then spreading them around. Rather than trying to convince one person at a company to play something. We do an amount of that, too, for sure, but we spend most of our time working on the project, which I think is great,

The bands you’ve chosen are similar because their fans are incredibly dedicated. If you have the right kind of fan, that person is worth ten casual fans.

LOUIS: It’s something unique about our community, and I think it’s a big reason we all love being part of it. #