Molly Compton is a scene mom and mentor who founded the independent label Ur Mom Records in December 2021, using her savings and support from family. Compton is a recognizable face in the local DIY music scene: she hosts twice-monthly COVID-safe house shows for local and touring acts, either at her place or in her neighbor’s backyard; she helps new artists struggling to make their own merch; she works as a tour manager for bands traveling out of state; and she performs with a solo project that’s also called Molly Compton.
Compton studied commercial music and voice in college at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, where she learned her way around engineering and production. When she graduated in 2018, she thought she was ready to move to Nashville to learn vinyl mastering. But instead she came to Chicago, because Martin Atkins—who’d started teaching at Millikin her senior year—asked her to be his executive assistant.
Atkins, cofounder of long-running industrial supergroup Pigface, operates the Museum of Post Punk & Industrial Music out of a DIY space in Bridgeport; he also runs the label Invisible Records. Atkins has written several books about the music industry, including Tour:Smart: And Break the Band and Welcome to the Music Business. You’re F*cked! Compton worked for him for four years and still uses his museum space for merch and record making.
Today Compton works from home full-time for vinyl subscription service Vinyl Me, Please and runs Ur Mom Records out of her apartment. Her label has worked closely with nine artists in its first 17 months, and it has three acts on its roster so far: Leche Malo, A Day Without Love, and CalicoLoco.
The driving ethic of Compton’s label is that everyone deserves a good mom in their life and everyone has the capacity to care like a good mom. “When we all do that,” she says, “things get better a lot faster.”
As told to Debbie-Marie Brown
When I worked four years at Chicago’s Museum of Post Punk & Industrial Music, I did everything from packaging orders to email campaigns to a tour with Martin Atkins’s supergroup Pigface. There were about 19 rotating members in and out of the bus on that tour, going through the U.S. and Canada. Atkins is crazy. He’s insane. We had a second bus following behind full of students who were interning on the tour. You learn a lot real fast. And then during the pandemic we did, oh, gosh, at least 100 virtual events, including a couple of conferences for the Midwest Music Expo.
That was what my life was like for about four years. I did that 24/7—so many different things happening all the time. And now nothing scares me, right? Any of the things that I encounter now on a day-to-day basis, my time at the Museum of Post Punk & Industrial Music was the scariest it could have been. And I didn’t know what I was doing. So now I know what I’m doing. The sheer volume of work that it takes on a tour for a four-piece band versus 19 people—that makes, you know, a five-day DIY tour over a long weekend with CalicoLoco feel like nothing. I could do that any day.
I always knew that it was important to think ahead and give myself enough time to complete these tasks to have a release, a tour, or a show go really well. But I don’t think I understood the urgency that can come along with that until it was my everyday. There’s just so many things, like, if you don’t do it, it’s not gonna get done. Like hanging posters around the city. These posters, I have them printed. But if I don’t hang them up now, they aren’t gonna be any good to me next week. Either because of time or because of money or because of energy, I won’t be able to do this next week. So I think having that foresight is something that that job really ingrained in me.
Sometimes, in my own record company, I make more work for myself on purpose. There are things that I could outsource, but it loses the story for me. Like, there’s no story in sending your PDF off to be printed. But there is a story in me accidentally shooting the screen backwards, having to redo it, and then just printing it myself.
Martin was working at a scale where there were plenty of things we’d just send off to the printer. But when it really mattered, the priority was to have the engagement with the art. Whenever you’re running a label, you can get divorced from the art of it. You get really bogged down in the numbers or the outcomes. But it is still really very much an art to me, especially with the releases that we’re doing.
Here’s the process to make vinyl. When records are pressed, it’s done by two big metal stampers. They’re seated up, and you press them together and then that makes the record. But before you make the stamper, you cut into this big sheet of metal, 18 inches diameter, covered in this varnish called lacquer. And you cut into that lacquer—which is very, very fragile—with a slick sapphire or diamond needle on a lathe. And that cuts the information on the lacquer. And then the lacquer is put into a nickel bath and electroplated, so the nickel gathers on that. And then you peel that off, and basically you have your stamper.
There’s a lot of nuances in there that we don’t need to get into, but that’s basically the process. I was apprenticing right before I graduated to do the very first part of cutting it into the lacquer.
But then Martin—his first year at Milliken was my last year—he’s like, don’t go to Nashville, come to Chicago and be my assistant. I spent some time in Nashville. And there’s a lot of “If you aren’t working with a certain caliber of this or that, you’re still a hobbyist” or something. Which I never connected with—I think art is for everyone. Period. If you make art, you are an artist. And the city of Chicago in general has agreed with me. I think Nashville has the nicety of southern culture, and Chicago, while not always outwardly nice, is certainly much kinder. It does not matter what you do during the day—like, if you make art, you are an artist, you know? Like, no one cares. They want to see your art.
When I left Martin, I was massively depressed. For a variety of reasons. But I wasn’t working in the music industry anymore; I was full-time at Ulta in Wicker Park. Martin likes to say, “Friends don’t let friends start record labels.” And he has a garage full of 30 years of history that he’s not turned into a museum. But at the heart of it was I just wanted somewhere to put this energy. At its core, I think everyone deserves a good mom. I love my mom—she’s one of my best friends. I wanted to be able to help artists who maybe just don’t have the time, experiences, the resources, or the skills to make something that is going to create more sustainable careers for them.
After I started Ur Mom Records, the first order of business was finding artists who were looking for physical goods, whether that be records or tapes or shirts, to just help them—to give them a little something so they can use that cash on the road or somewhere.
Ur Mom Records released a split EP by Leche Malo and Jeremy Ferrara in February 2022.
I really like to do one-of-a-kind pieces. The records that we do all have these three lines through the design, but they’re all a little different. So then the conversation at the merch table becomes, “Oh, which one would you like?” Rather than, like, “Please buy my record?”
For Pinksqueeze, I took that line art that they had for “Midday Midnight.” I did some abstract color work. And then I screen printed the same line art over all the sleeves. So they’re all just a little different. They all have a different vibe.
For all my label stuff, I do most of it in my apartment. It’s raw as hell sometimes. Literally on some of these runs, there have been paw prints from my cat stepping in wet paint. If you get one of those, that’s an extra $5 for sure. [Laughs.]
I’ve done anywhere from 20 records to 120 records for a band, and usually all made by hand in my apartment. I haven’t been cutting them myself yet—I am working my way up to getting my own lathe to be able to cut them myself. So I’ve been outsourcing that, but all of the sleeves have been handmade by me, either screen printing, collaging, or painting. Whatever I can get my hands on.
Lathe-cut records are a little different than traditional vinyl. They’re individually cut, or cut one at a time. And they’re cut out of polycarbonate, which is a different material that’s a little bit noisier sometimes. So they sound vintagey, which for me becomes a plus.
There was just a report that was put out last year saying half of the vinyl purchased was bought by people that don’t have record players. So for me, that’s funny. For independent artists and the stuff that I’m trying to do, of course, I want people to listen to it, but nine times out of ten they’re gonna stream it. And I’d much rather they take this piece that we’ve worked really hard on, hang it on the wall, and then have more people find my record company and my artists, rather than it go sit on a shelf somewhere.
I’ve been doing those individual runs. The most recent one, we just sold out. I did a ten-inch with an artist out in Philly named Brian Walker—“A Day Without Love” is his moniker. And we just put out a four-song EP on a ten-inch called Tour Is Not a Road Trip! And I screen printed the design on sandpaper, so it’s like white ink on a black sandpaper. It kind of looks like a road.
Ur Mom’s 20 lathe-cut copies of Tour Is Not a Road Trip! sold out almost immediately.
Going on the road for tour feels like that sometimes—wiping your ass with sandpaper—but you make it happen. That’s the stuff that I really like to do: take the ideas that these artists have already worked so hard on and bring some sort of physical manifestation of it. To take the story a little bit deeper, to make it a little bit more tangible.
Now that so much stuff is online, it’s so hard to make four minutes of music feel like it took you more than four minutes. Every musician can tell you it took them years to learn how to play, much less make this piece. But I think for the general consumer, it is so hard to understand that and appreciate it. But I think when there’s something that they can hold, and you have to listen to it all the way through, there’s a different reverence to that.
DIY happens all over the country, of course. But Chicago DIY is so potent. And it is so essential to the music scene—like, there would not be bars without DIY musicians. I play mandolin and guitar and a couple of other things, plus singing. DIY spaces are where I was first able to share my solo art—from people opening their homes, garages, and back porches to so many. That’s how I met so many of my friends around the country that are doing this. After lockdown, many of those spaces either weren’t around anymore, didn’t have the resources, or just weren’t safe—it arguably still isn’t very safe. But it’s been really important to me to have a DIY space that is COVID conscious. And to provide a safe space for LGBTQ+ touring musicians to come in and share their stuff and not have to pay to play, not have to make back a minimum to pay the bar staff.
This 2021 Molly Compton solo release predates the founding of Ur Mom Records by several months.
Some things that I think are important and need to be continuously invested in are communities of color in Chicago. The incredibly vast breadth of the art that is coming out of these communities is crazy. And everything that I say has been said better and more eloquently by an artist of color, I can guarantee, in Chicago. I think if you’re in an indie band, and you look like all the other indie bands that are playing right now, maybe it’s time to make sure you’re bringing the people to the table that you actually said you wanted to bring to the table in fine print.
I think those DIY spaces that are invested in, in west- and south-side communities, are kind of against all odds, and they deserve every bit of recognition and support we can give them. And wear a mask. It’s so easy to do. And it keeps more people safe and more people alive. It just does.
