Parma native Eric Schulte is the man about town when it comes to the Cleveland independent music scene. He’s the Program Director and a DJ at WCSB, the manager of up and coming local group The Dreadful Yawns (who just signed to famed Los Angeles imprint Bomp Records), and runs his own record label and booking agency called Van Gogh Round. Eric spoke with Cool Cleveland music contributor Ben Vendetta about his many musical endeavors and his thoughts on the Cleveland independent music scene. Get out to hear Van Go Round recording artists The Twilight, a rock band with '60s mod vibe 10/30 at Capsule at 10PM.

When did you start getting into music? Who were some of the first bands that inspired you?

Me and Mike Allan from The Dreadful Yawns went to the same grade school. We kind of grew up together. For me it was Nirvana who was the first band that turned my life around. When I heard them I was all about buying records. He was always a big R.E.M. fan so we always had this thing about who was better, R.E.M. or Nirvana. Then he bought a bass and I bought a guitar and we convinced another kid to buy a set of drums and we played for a couple of years in high school. I was all big into the whole four-track cassette tape thing. We’d just record everything that we would ever play and make out tapes and pass them out to people. I was all big into Shrimper Records and their cassette releases and Lou Barlow was just a big four-track freak so that was the big thing to record everything and put it out, no matter what it is. Mike went to school for music and kept on playing and he just got really good and I got really bad so it just kind of fell apart. He went on and started playing with a bunch of other bands and because I wasn’t blessed with musical talent, I had to find out a way to get into the whole feeling involved with the music kind of thing, so I thought why not slap a name on a copy of a tape and tell people it’s a label.

The first thing I released was a compilation of four-track songs that I had posted to me on the Internet. People from England and Australia and all over the world sent me these little four-track basement tapes that they were making and I put together a compilation. Jason Lowenstein from Sebadoh gave me a song that he had recorded that he hadn’t released anywhere else so I got this all together and got 100 of them burned—I burned them myself—and printed up all the artwork before I realized that it was going to cost like $60 to ship this thing to all the people. $60 just to send a box to England and like $70 to send it to Australia. I had no way to give people copies of their own things so I just posted all the MP3s so I have all this art work for this album that never really came out. I ended up putting it out around 2000. It’s called International Lo-Fi Conspiracy and I had never heard of the International Noise Conspiracy so it was kind of original and cool to me at the time.

Was this Van Gogh Round Records even then?
It actually started off as Fretless Records but I found out there was another Fretless Records so I asked a bunch of my friends what would be a good name and the one I was going to use was Kidney Thief but it kind of sounded a little too metal. My girlfriend came up with Van Gogh Round.

When did you start DJing? Was that around this time too?
I actually applied to WCSB my freshman year because I was all about getting a radio show and they told me I was in and I went to an interview and then they never really called me for training so for like two or three years I was down at CSU and I re-applied again because I really wanted to do a radio show and I think it was 2002 when I started. At first I would just play all the records that I had and then I found they had some really cool stuff up there so I started pulling some stuff I hadn’t heard before and after a year and a half of doing that from 3-7AM, you kind of want to start doing something more so I jumped time slots and started having bands on the air.

What was your first official release on Van Gogh Round?
The first real, true release that actually got put out was The Dreadful Yawns was the Pretend EP. Mike started playing with them and I started hanging around them and became their biggest fan. They had this collection of songs they didn’t know what to do with so I put it out on my record label. They gave me the artwork and I put it out.

I know the label is on hiatus now while you’re doing the booking and management, but do you see yourself resurrecting it any time soon?
I started doing the booking thing. The whole Dreadful Yawns thing is really incestuous. I started being their manager and had no idea what I was doing and at some point I don’t think I have any idea of what I’m doing now! I was literally their biggest fan so they asked me to manage them so I started doing that and then I put out the album and that snowballed into me starting to do limited edition releases for other bands. Money’s really tight so I can’t do it now, but definitely in the future if something catches my ear and I really want to put it out, I think I’ll do it. My next album ideally would be The Dreadful Yawns just doing four-track recordings. If they do that, then I’ll start it back up.

How long have you been managing the Dreadful Yawns for now?
I think Mike Allan started in 2002 so I’ve been doing it since the winter of 2002 or spring of 2003.

What are some of the pros and cons of managing, especially when they’re your close friends?
The greatest thing is that I finally satisfied my need to be involved in something I need to do that gives me work to do that isn’t playing an instrument. If I could play an instrument, I would be in a million bands, but I can’t so those that can’t do, teach or guide. I decided to do that. It’s really a selfish reason. It’s tedious. The Dreadful Yawns are great and I love them dearly and they’re four of my best friends but some of the dynamics you get when you try to get people to work together—they can talk for a really long time and never accomplish anything. Things kind of work in reverse for them. They need someone to come in who just does it and tells him he did it afterwards. That’s my role. I do something for them and then later tell them that they have a show. They make great music. If they were left to themselves they would continue to make great music but as far as getting the music out and having other people hear it, that’s the role I see playing.

Tell me about the Yawns first tour out of Cleveland. How did that go?
It was bitchin’! I was expecting the worst and man, it worked out better than you could possibly imagine. It was great. Everyone worked together and everyone filled their role perfectly.

I enjoyed reading those tour updates on the Dreadful Yawns website.
I still have to re-do that. I didn’t do one for New York or Black Mountain yet. I’m going to do those and repost them.

I was convinced until I found out that the guy who got sick on all the Old Style was Dave Molnar!
No, no, no. Dave holds his liquor well. This was sloppy disaster on Highway 45.

You made a funny reference to Chinese food at one point too.
That was a disaster! We went to the Mall of America. Everyone wanted to go to see capitalism at its grandest. We ate at a Chinese restaurant in the food court of Mall of America. I can honestly tell you that in the whole experience in this five floor amusement park, the best thing there was a girl sitting in the food court behind us with a floss g-string that you could totally see so everyone was slopping Chinese food in their mouth, just checking out this chick’s g-string. Oh my god, it was lame. Our van couldn’t fit in the parking spots because there was a seven-foot height limit so we just had to bump through. Our merch box was bumping through these metal cylinders so we could park. It was a great tour. I would do it again forever with those guys.

What are your thoughts on the Cleveland scene over the past few years?
I think it’s great now because it has gotten to a point where I’m friends with people in all of these awesome bands. To me it’s just amazing that there are so many high quality bands just concentrated into one area. I think it’s awesome. I want to say that it’s almost a matter of time before Cleveland’s big. I want it to happen but at the same time, right now in Cleveland it’s a great place to be for music.

I know what you mean. If it becomes like Omaha, Nebraska and guys from Spin start showing up at the Five O’ Clock...
I totally hear you, so you kind of guard it and try to savor every moment of it and know that if it does happen that it couldn’t happen to a better group of people.

How did you meet The Twilight and start working with them?
I had seen them play with the Yawns a long, long time ago. Then they had the accident with their bass player and I didn’t see them for a year. It’s really rare that you go to a show and this band gets up that you’ve never heard before and you’re actually floored by them. The first time I saw them I thought, these guys are really good. I heard them play another time and walked up to them afterwards and we started talking and dropped the whole Van Gogh Round thing and asked them to play on my radio show.

It’s a great record.
They can do no wrong. They’re my pick for commercial success in Cleveland. If there’s any band that could be like Cleveland’s indie rock gem, I think it would be them, just because they’re so accessible. New Planet Trampoline is probably one of the most rocking bands I’ve ever heard in my whole life and they can rock out like nothing else. The Dreadful Yawns can do the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. Each band has their own outstanding quality.

How did you start booking bands?
The Dreadful Yawns thing didn’t work out with Corrie, so six weeks before the tour was supposed to start they needed to put something together so we were all kind of sitting a round staring at each other. I figured someone had to do it so I said I would try it. I started doing it and me and Ben [Dreadful Yawns singer/guitarist] called in every favor in the world from everybody we could possibly think of and we managed to pull off a tour. I learned two things doing that. One, that it’s probably the hardest thing to do in the world and two, it’s probably one of the most fun things in the world to do. More than anything else, we were a group of friends going on tour so it was like a vacation with four buddies. Booking as a job I find really hard to do. All the bands I’m doing stuff for right now, I think qualitatively they’re the best at what they do, which doesn’t necessarily mean that I really like them. The hardest thing is trying to sell that just doesn’t really make you fall in love and make you obsessed.

Out of booking, DJing, and putting out records, what do you like best?
Working with The Dreadful Yawns in any facet of my multi-faceted relationship with them is still to me the funnest thing. If I could make money I would be more than happy to make Dreadful Yawns my life. Not so much in a business sense—no one in the Cleveland scene is out to get rich. That’s the great thing about it. They do it for the sake of doing it. I’m not in it for the money. People need to hear them.

People get this impression of Cleveland that there’s nothing going on.
There’s plenty. My big dream is...I’ve got the Van Gogh Round thing going on with The Twilight and Expecting rain, who is the single most underrated band on earth, and The Dreadful Yawns. Then there’s the whole Davenport group, then there’s Exit Stencil and Elephant Stone. With my radio show I try to put this group of people...that’s my scene in Cleveland, that whole big circle. I think they have more talent than any group of people anywhere in America, or Montreal.

What are some of your predictions for where some of these bands and people might be next year at this time?
It*Men and The Twilight are the two bands that are going to be huge in Cleveland and the irony is that The Twilight would love to be this big rock star, national touring band. With The It*Men, the very thought of it makes Ben Gmetro [of The Volta Sound] cringe.

Ken totally wants to be a rock god.
Ken does, but if you mention The It*Men to any of the other guys, it’s always prefaced with some other gesture of contempt. That is my prediction, that this It*Men record is going to blow everything away. It’s going to be like the whole Seattle thing where some guy writes this song mocking teenage angst and everyone holds it up as a shiny example. The It*Men are going to be the new Cleveland sound. I’m totally convinced. That and Osama Bin Laden! They’ve had him in custody for months.

I’ve been saying that! October surprise.
It’s happening, dude! Make sure you put that in so everybody knows!

Check out Van Gogh Round at http://www.vangoghround.com and The Dreadful Yawns at http://www.dreadfulyawns.com or WCSB at http://www.wcsb.org

Interview by Ben Vendetta

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