It's easy to forget that people like the men behind Northplatte Records live the same lives in the same places as everyone else. That the music they make is created in some quaint little house with a sofa on the porch. Unassuming. Nondescript. Normal.
Of the four active artists on the label, only one works on music full time. One is working toward a Ph.D. Three are still in high school.
But, really, there's nothing average about any of them. All of them are noticeably passionate, disarmingly sincere and jarringly talented.
Provo-based Northplatte Records was started "nonchalantly" as a hobby project, a half-joke by musicians Joshua James and McKay Stevens three or four years ago. The two had forged a friendship based on their mutual love for both skateboarding and music and saw a record label as a potential vehicle for both themselves and others.
"We just do it because we like it," James said. "We like to make music, and we like to make other people's music hopefully better. Not to say it wasn't good before, but maybe to help out other musicians that we like."
Stevens said Northplatte started "super small," and was a somewhat casual venture that originally featured only James, Stevens and other side projects they dabbled in. Eventually came success, and the success brought changes.
"Basically everything transpired from Joshua's career getting a huge boost," Stevens said. "It (the label) had small momentum and then once his career took off …"
"It was just easier," James chimed in, finishing Stevens' sentence. "There were more avenues and those connections led to bigger stuff."
The "bigger stuff" was James gaining national attention by touring with major artists like David Gray and The Swell Season. And that created the opportunity to add other artists to the label.
They don't go seeking artists, though, they just pay attention to who is "on the scene."
"When you're on the scene, you just see everybody and it's the stuff that we like," Stevens said. "It's not like we go look. You see enough shows and you just go, 'Man, we really like their music.' "
In addition to James' solo career and Stevens' project, called The Vibrant Sound, the label has two other active artists, soloist Isaac Russell, known as RuRu, and the three-man band Desert Noises. James and Stevens produce the music, working with these artists to help their music progress, a process they find less difficult than developing their own work.
"I think it's easier when it's not you," James said. "For me, I produce my own stuff and it's sometimes hard because you're so attached to your own songs that it's hard to step back from how you were initially playing it. … When it's somebody else's stuff, you're not as attached to it and you can just say: 'No, it doesn't sound as good.' "
In addition to greater objectivity, Stevens said the production process also brings a great sense of accomplishment.
"I think the most rewarding thing is getting the demo songs in their infant stage and they're super rough and then … six months down the road, it's mastered, (there's) artwork and everything and it's, like, this is something that was nothing at first and now it's a product and it's a great artistic endeavor," he said.
The boys behind Desert Noises, brothers Kyle and Trevor Henderson and Riley Johnson, can attest to the importance of the production process and the way it has helped them grow as a band.
"Josh James helps so much," Johnson said. "Since we were so new, he took whatever we had played, even stuff we had only jammed before and a couple of songs that were not really even full songs, and he worked with us."
"Ever since then we've written songs that are more developed," Kyle Henderson added.
Overall, the label comes across as a team effort. There's a sense of it almost being a family outfit, the musical equivalent of a Ma and Pa corner store. Not that it's nostalgic, but it's homegrown and tight-knit. James and Stevens enlist the help of various friends to take photos, create artwork and play extra instruments when needed.
"Most labels that are bigger than ours have a staff that does all different things, but with Joshua and I, it's just us … Joshua does all the posters and things for shows and whatever," Stevens said. "And we have a couple friends. … All along the way, there are people we outsource to do things, but it's like we have to be the creative mind behind it and the productive mind behind it and we just have to do the little things."
Stevens describes the label as largely a "regional presence," but there is hope for growth. And all of the musicians are almost disarmingly humble when it comes to what they've done as artists. Russell, aka RuRu, despite the reception of his prodigiously mature album, admits he still doesn't grasp his burgeoning success.
"I never really was that fond of my voice or anything," he said. "It's still not that much of a reality. I make music for fun and I guess people like it, so it works out."
And perhaps that's the point, to keep the music first and the response second. Sitting with James and Stevens, one senses that they are not only not knowledgeable and experienced, but still driven by a pure love for creating music.
"All of my friends were raised to believe you had to … go to school and get an education and go be whatever — a doctor, a scientist or whatever. And it's just not true," James said. "It's great that people do that, but it just wasn't for me. And I'm just really thankful, first off, to be able to play music that I write and then help other people write their music and get their music out."
E-mail: emorgan@desnews.com