Interview by Brad Balfour
While everyone thinks of Los Angeles and New York as centers of music creation, Chicago, Illinois, has been a major hub for music as well. There in the Midwest, distinctive forms of blues (greatly responsible for the future of rock and roll), and the electronic dance music of “house” developed there.
The “Great Migration” of poor black workers from the South into the North’s industrial cities brought in traditional jazz and blues music, resulting in Chicago blues and “Chicago-style” Dixieland jazz. Notable blues artists emerged such as Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Howlin’ Wolf and both Sonny Boy Williamsons; so did jazz greats such as Nat King Cole, Gene Ammons, Benny Goodman and Bud Freeman. Chicago has also been a home for great soul music. And in the early ‘30s, gospel music began to gain popularity in Chicago due to Thomas A. Dorsey‘s contributions at Pilgrim Baptist Church. Then in the ‘80s and ‘90s, heavy rock, punk and hip hop also became popular.
In the heart of Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood, Smashed Plastic’s owner Andy Weber keeps alive a music tradition — he gets vinyl records made. The Smashed Plastic pressing plant was created when local musicians and fans developed a demand for this way to get great sounds out there through the most pristine way possible — the analog format of vinyl. In the following interview, Weber explained the art of pressing albums, how he got into the business, and why vinyl has become the hip format for both artists and collectors.
Q: I used to love vinyl. whenever I opened my vinyl records I sniffed them. There’s something about opening a brand new, fresh vinyl record. Did you do that?
AW: Oh for sure. Now I get tired of the smell of vinyl.
Q: How did your love of music began, and then how your love of pressing vinyl began.
AW: My love of music… Everybody starts out as a kid just liking stuff. But then, as you grow older, you start to discover and change. Everybody listens to Top 40 in the beginning, and then all of a sudden you start getting into the different things.
I’m an old radio guy, and still do a radio show.
Q: You did college radio?
AW: I did college radio, and ran my high school radio station. We had an FM radio station in high school, and that’s where it started. I started to learn from the older guys as I was a freshman, sophomore, and then going to shows downtown. And then, I parlayed that into college radio. Then I worked in alternative professional radio for a while. And then, really the last ten years, I helped start a radio station here in town called CHIRP Radio — Chicago Independent Radio Project.
Q: It’s on radio or online?
AW: Yeah, it’s 107.1 FM, we’re a low-power FM station. We actually lobbied in DC to get the low-power FM laws changed. So we started out as a political advocacy group more than anything, a little over ten years ago. Then we went online, and we were an online station — this year will be our tenth anniversary coming up in January. Then, for the last three or four years, we’ve been on 107.1 FM on the North Side.
So that got me into this, because being a part of the local independent scene, the station is very much driven towards local music, going to shows, seeing bands and getting to know bands. I realized that there was a void here. I knew there wasn’t a pressing plant in town — there hasn’t been a plant here in 30 years. I knew that bands were having a hard time getting vinyl made. I’d go to record release shows without a record, and there would always be these horror stories of “I couldn’t get it done” or “My records got held up in Customs because they were coming over from Europe” or whatever it was.
I realized that if we could somehow get something up and running here, I thought the local independent community would just jump on it and want to be a part of it. So that’s the arc of how I’ve gotten here.
Q: You grew up in Chicago?
AW: I grew up in Downer’s Grove, a western suburb [about] 20 miles outside of the city, but a million miles away [laughs]. I grew up there, went to school at University of Nebraska, and then I’ve been living in the city now for 25, 26 years.
Q: And you live near here?
AW: I live up in North Center, Irving and Western, so about 15 or 20 minutes away. We tried to stay closer to home because all the partners live up in our neighborhood, but this building was such an amazing building.
This building is actually the original site of the Hammond Organ factory. They made all the Hammonds here from the turn of last century up until 1985, when they sold to Yamaha. So the musical history in this building alone was one of the reasons that drew us to this place. And the co-work space, too.
Q: A group of people bought this building?
AW: A real estate investor bought this building, it was like a DIY artists’ space, real grungy, and the rats probably owned most of it. Then [the current owners] bought it and started bringing in flagship businesses, like us. We have a distillery in here, there’s a Coffee Roaster, there’s a screen printer, and a brewery is going in across the hall. And then there [are] a lot of individual small artists in the building, too, There’s a band practice space and a recording studio.
Q: Are there other buildings like this in Chicago?
AW: There’s some — the owner of this building is starting others. But this is kind of unique, and it was going to be a perfect spot for us to be.
Q: What’s the building called?
AW: It’s called Workshop 4200 — 4200 West Diversey is the address.
Q: Where did you get Smashed Plastics — did you ever smash a vinyl record in anger?
AW:I was writing down a bunch of names when I was trying to come up with a name for this, and I thought “Smashed Plastic” had a little bit of a punk rock sound to it.
Q: There wasn’t a band that you were in that should have been…
AW: Not at all. No, I have no musical talent whatsoever. That’s why I’ve been a radio guy, and a gatekeeper my whole life. I’ve always loved music and wanted to be a part of it. Like every 15-year-old boy, I tried to play the guitar, and I just was no good at it. So I took this path.
Q: What was your first single you owned?
AW: My first single? Part of it was I had so much hand-me-down — I’m the youngest of four, so I had so many 45 hand-me-downs. I remember the one I actually bought that I went to the music store to buy it. It was “Beat It” by Michael Jackson. I think that was right about my era.
Q: And what about the first band you saw live?
AW: The first real concert I went to, [with] a friend of mine, and his mom took us, was Rick Springfield, and Cory Hart opened up for him. That was my first big outdoor concert. I probably had been to smaller, neighborhood, festival kinds of things before that. But that’s definitely my first big concert.
Q: You commented on the state of vinyl in terms of this area. It’s interesting to hear that the blues labels, the blues guys, aren’t the ones using vinyl — they’re doing CDs. So who is using vinyl?
AW: Mostly smaller, independent labels. And when I say smaller, people who are doing anything from five to seven releases a year, all the way up to people doing 25-30 releases a year. But I will say almost everybody’s using vinyl of some sort, and that’s why the major labels jumped back in. And that’s how we’ve been able to exist.
Q: Are the majors coming to you?
AW: No, and we have no interest in the major labels. We’re a one-horse operation here, we got one small machine. It can do a lot, but a major label would destroy us. We’ve had to turn down some stuff that were larger quantity runs that we just wouldn’t be able to do because it would shut down our plant. All of a sudden we wouldn’t be able to take the independent business, and that’s really who we opened up for.
Q: How many do you usually do in a run? What are people ordering?
AW: I would say 500 is our average. We’ve done 2,000-piece jobs, we’ve done 3,000-piece jobs. We’re ramping up with staff, but we’re trying right now for 500 records a day. When we have a 500 record day, we’re good.
That’s coming off the press. It’s another day or two to get it all packaged up and ready to go. So if we can keep that 500 going, we’re doing alright and the business is doing well. We’ve done 7-800 in a day when we pushed it, because we know we have to. We’ve done where I’ll come in in the morning early, my partner will stay late, we can knock out a thousand in a day as well. And that’s where we’re working on our employees right now, to get them up and running, so then we can work in shifts. Because we know it will come early next year, we’re going to have a lot more business.
Q: Some plants are running 24 hours?
AW: Certainly, yeah. We’re one of the few plants in the country that only has one machine. I only know of one or two others.
Q: Are they still making the machines?
AW: The machines are brand new right now. There’s a company called Viral Technologies out of Toronto. They’ve almost been in the market for three years now with the machines running. They’ve been unbelievable.
We have a machine here that’s unique to any other machine in the country. We were the first one in the world to run a steamless machine so we don’t require a boiler. Every other plant in the world has a boiler room — or at least in the United States right now — and we run on hot water. So we have an on-demand hot water heater, basically, an industrial strength hot water heater that gets water up to 285 degrees in a matter of a couple of seconds. It’s a closed-loop system, it’s very environmentally friendly compared to the boiler system. So we don’t have anything going, no chemicals going back into the waste water, our water is just constantly in the tank, re-circulating.
It’s a little bit of a different process and there’s been some learning between us and the manufacturer; we guinea pig for them, and I have no complaints. The ability for us to get up and running in a regulation-heavy city like this was going to be rather difficult with a boiler room — I could never really get a straight answer. That’s how it is dealing with the city of Chicago.
I struck up a friendship with the CEO [of the manufacturer of the press] and he said, “Hey, I’m going to have this new technology and I want to offer it to you first because I know you guys are probably primed and ready for this.” And it turned out to be a godsend. We had to wait maybe an extra three months to get that going, but I still think we still got up and running faster.
Q: So you woke up one day and said, “I’m going to do a pressing plant.”
AW: I didn’t think it would actually ever really happen. It started between me and one of my partners, Matt Bradford. He lives in Omaha, actually, so he’s our CFO from a distance. But he and I have been long friends, and he had some money and he wanted to do something in the music business.
We always go to New Orleans together a few times a year, and we were down there and sitting at the bar. He was like, “So what should we do?” and I said, “Hey, I know nobody can get records made, let’s just investigate this.” We took about a year, messing around, like “Maybe we’ll do this, maybe we won’t”. Then I brought in Steve Blitnick, my other partner, and things started to take off. We met the Viral guys, knew they were making new machines, and then that really launched us
I will tell you this: through the whole time, I kept saying “This is too good of an idea. Somebody else has to be way ahead of us.”
Q: Well, Jack White [of White Stripes] has a pressing plant in Nashville.
AW: Rght. It was going on in all these other markets, things were really popping off. But I thought as long as I could beat everyone to market here in Chicago, I’m going to be okay.
Q: It’s a good city to be in for this.
AW: Certainly. I used the “Field of Dreams” mantra the whole time: “If you build it, they will come.” We didn’t do a ton of real research behind it. [I] really just thought, Okay, I knew people were making records here, I’ve known that they were making records here for the last decade. — two decades, right?
Vinyl never really went away, it just slowed down. So I thought to myself, man if we could get this up and running, really endear ourselves to the local independent scene, we’d never have to take that major label stuff. That’s really the bubble.
You can only reissue some of those records for so long. Those bands are only going to buy those for so long. And they’ve commandeered these larger pressing plants to the point where even some of our clients can’t get stuff done at the larger places anymore.
We just figured, we’ll open this thing up and hopefully the local community will jump on it. But like I said, we thought all along: we’re not that smart, somebody’s going to be ahead of us. In the end, it was us.
Q: Where does it begin? The acetate is made and then they bring that to you?
AW: Where it begins is the vinyl mastering guys. The vinyl mastering guys are the real magicians.
Q: They are at the studios or they have their own office?
AW: There are two vinyl mastering guys here in Chicago. Not every town has a vinyl mastering guy, we’re lucky enough to have two.
Q: Is that also for CDs as well?
AW: There [are] two different kinds of mastering. There’s audio mastering for digital, for CD, and for post recording mastering. They’ll do that kind of stuff too. But then you have to have a lathe that cuts the lacquer, and that’s where the magic happens.
Q: They oversee cutting the acetate.
AW: It’s called lacquer, it’s a pliable substance poured on top of an aluminum plate. It’s a large lathe with a sapphire needle and that’s what cuts those grooves into the record. That’s where the magic happens. It’s either Chicago mastering or “sathe” mastering here in town, and those guys do our cutting. Then that goes off to a plating plant — that’s the only thing that doesn’t happen in the city of Chicago.
Q: So the plating is elsewhere.
AW: There’s a few of them around the country. We use RTA out of L.A. which is also a pressing plant, and those guys do great work. We’ve been so happy with them. [The vinyl masters] ship it out there within 24 hours because lacquers have to be sprayed. Then a couple of weeks later we’ll get the plates back here at the plant. So that’s how the process goes.
Everyone’s always going, “Well, how do you get the audio on there?” I’m like “That’s not what I do.” We can take clients from start to finish, but really what happens right inside these walls is we’re mimicking those molds.
Q: Who has sold the most records that you pressed?
AW: I have no idea.
Q: You don’t look at who keeps reordering?
AW: Sometimes somebody has ordered 3,000 records. I don’t know if they’ve sold them all. We’re a wholesaler, for the most part.
Q: Do you listen to them all?
AW: We have to. We listen to them the whole time, but what we’re listening for is something completely different than listening for pleasure. We’re listening to the sound forks. That’s the one thing I can control here. It’s that hiss that you hear on a record. We can make it more silent. If you think about a record in a minuscule, microscopic level, you’ve probably seen those shots.
Q: The needle is on the grooves, and the grooves are vibrating.
AW: We can only affect the bottom so it’s how smooth you can make that record is what we can control. So that’s what we’re listening for while we’re here.
I do take most of the records home and I will spend Friday nights, sometimes late night, listening to stuff — as a fan, because that’s a totally different listening process. And sometimes I’ll wait weeks, too. Because if it’s a record I’ve been messing with a lot here at the plant, I’ve just got to stay away from it.
Q: If you’ve been listening to a metal record, it’s going to be different from listening to a roots record.
AW: We’ve done them all, from jazz to spoken word as well as classical — different kinds of stuff. The heavy metal record will hide a lot of any mistakes we might make, but that jazz record, you’re going to hear it in those quiet points.
Q: You didn’t ruin your ears listening to too many records?
AW: I adopted the earplugs at live shows a long time ago so my ears are doing alright.
Q: What are you listening to?
AW: The funny thing is, I listen to records three or four or five months before they come out. There’s a local band right now called Mint Mile releasing a double for their first full-length. That’s one I’ve been loving. I took the test pressing home and I’m going, “Oh, this is staying here.” I’m really enjoying it. And local label Bloodshot’s 25th anniversary record is one I’ve been listening to that a lot as well.
Q: What’s Bloodshot’s biggest band?
AW: Bloodshot made their money 25 years ago on releasing Ryan Adams’ first record. But then over the years the Waco Brothers, a local band here in town, so that’s one of their big bands. They’re in this defiant country roots sound that is unique to Chicago in some ways. They’ve just managed to capture it the last 25 years.
Q: What music do you feel suit vinyl best?
AW: It works for anything because the reason why vinyl sounds better than digital is because there is something actually physical happening here. You can hear a record with the needle on it with no amplification, right? That needle is actually running over bumps that are telling it electronically to make music. It’s an instrument in and of itself. You know that if you DJed in clubs over the years. So that is why it suits absolutely every music. Are there some better than others? Yeah, sure.
Digital DJ-ing is not real. Most people would agree that if you’re not DJ-ing with vinyl, are you really DJ-ing at all?
Q: You can do digital DJ-ing, and I understand why it’s become an artist’s mode because they do push into their own improvisations but it’s not the same thing. They should be recording those in vinyl.
AW: If you think about it, it never really went away, it was always around. What has happened is it’s changed. It’s never going to become — at least I don’t think — the main vehicle for music to be sold, like it was in the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, into the ‘80s. But what it’s become — and that’s where we come in — is that it’s become more of a craft thing. The same people who are buying the vinyl right now are the same ones who spend $12 on a four-pack of beer. It’s that idea of I want something a little bit more than just Spotify in the background. I want to sit down and enjoy a record.
Q: I get worried about the ears of the millennials because they don’t know what it sounds like in any kind of environment other than their iPhone, or their car playing through a Spotify or an MP3.
AW: Millennials are the ones fueling this revolution in many ways. It comes from knowing that their parents had it. I always say fidelity is on our side. And if somebody actually sits down and listens to it, they’re going to be a convert pretty quickly.
Q: You don’t want people to lose touch with using that analog instrumentation. Vinyl is the natural equivalent to that.
AW: You’re seeing it on the recording studio side now. People are recording back to analog tape. There are people going full analog all across the board. I can’t speak to what’s going on in that end of the business, but I hear it’s happening.
Q: How many vinyl records do you have?
AW: I’m not a massive collector. I’m probably in the five to 600 range. I definitely went away for a minute like everybody else did for a while. I was a CD collector, I was an early adopter of digital. But I never quit buying vinyl. I especially ponied up when used vinyl can be bought for three or four dollars a record. It’s still a hard swallow to pay $20 for a used record.
Q: I’d find boxes of them on the street in New York.
AW: You still can occasionally, and then you come across a gem. Let’s put it this way: since we’ve been working here, my record collection has been growing exponentially.
Q: What’s your gem?
AW: My personal favorite record of all time is the original Stone Roses‘ self-titled record that I bought in England when I was 17 years old. I don’t know if it’s worth anything; it’s worth a lot to me. I got to go over there when I was 17, and all I did was go to record stores and buy stuff.