Today we’d like to introduce you to Melody Thomas.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m psyched to have my baby, Familiar Face Records, featured! This question is a little scary!! But I think it’s important to know that one of my earliest and favorite childhood memories involves me blasting my CD copy of Mary Mary’s self-titled album on the living room stereo and dancing to it around the house. I grew up in a musical home and was encouraged to collect physical media pretty early on. Loving music and always wanting to surround myself with it is a consistent thread to my story. Fast forward to 2022. Somehow, social media led me to Tyty. I think it was posts around a Community Market (Tyty is also a visual artist). And that’s how I initially learned about them and their music. After hearing “Butterfly Curse” by Tyty for the first time, I immediately knew it had to exist on cassette. I also knew I wanted to be a part of facilitating its existence. That’s when I started dreaming about running my own cassette label here in Atlanta, and it quickly became my reality: Familiar Face Records. And Tyty was Familiar Face’s 3rd release!!!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think one of the biggest challenges I’ve had to overcome with Familiar Face Records has been self-doubt. The music industry is still largely run by men; this includes the faces behind music labels. So breaking into a male-dominated field that leans into gatekeeper tendencies continues to be one of my greatest challenges. Then, on the flip side of that same coin, I am incredibly lucky to have the support of people like Ryan Myers (of Rope Bridge Records), Carl Janes (of Innerspace), Graham Tavel (of Mirror Mirror Recordings), etc.! So I think just simply believing in Familiar Face Records and taking a chance on a massive dream of mine was a significant challenge and continues to present itself in unique ways.
As you know, we’re big fans of Familiar Face Records. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I run Familiar Face Records; apart from community support, I am a one-woman-team. This means that I am responsible for A&R, pitching to bands, dubbing and duplicating cassettes, printing J-cards, promoting releases, booking release shows, mailing orders, and the list goes on! This list is not unique to DIY music labels, but maybe it will help shed light on some of the work that goes into running a music label. It’s also worth mentioning that Familiar Face is a music label that exclusively releases cassettes and specializes in noise-adjacent, leftfield music. My label lives for the experimental, the bizarre, the noise!!! And while you might think this is a given, I gotta say that running Familiar Face Records is a DREAM COME TRUE; I do it because I believe in music more than most things, and I love the community it can create!
What makes you happy?
Another kinda scary question!! Happiness is such an elusive thing! But in an attempt to not sound too trite, being happier more often means taking my passions more seriously. I wholeheartedly believe in music — listening to it, collecting it, seeing it live, sharing it. Running a label is the materialization of me taking some of my passions seriously, and it tends to produce Big Happiness. This doesn’t mean I don’t experience self-doubt or existential dread (LOL), but we’re rockin and rollin in the free world, baby!
Contact Info:
- Website: familiarfacerecords.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/familiarfacerecords
Image Credits
Personal photo taken by Sarah Beth Tomberlin All other photos taken by Melody Thomas of Familiar Face Records
