Shooting Gallery
Why Punk Rock Payroll's albums don't look like albums.
Jessica Kourkounis
ZAPPED: Frede and Misty Zimmer wield The Mighty Atlas, the new release by Kill You in the Face.
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[ record label ]
One Wednesday evening last month, in a crowded living room at 18th and McClellan, Mike Romeo put down his acoustic guitar and took a moment to explain the big blue bin full of toys.
"We came to Frede," Romeo told the audience. "And we said we want to make a fucking raygun out of plastic with a USB drive, and it's going to cost a billion dollars to do. He's like, 'You're out of your mind. We'll do it.'"
Romeo, singer-guitarist of emo-indie Philly foursome Kill You in the Face, was describing his band's latest release, The Mighty Atlas. It's a hand-painted, life-size Flash Gordon-style raygun filled with an EP's worth of digital music, downloadable videos and art, and other miscellany.
As the crowd chuckled, a blond-haired guy with a scruffy beard and a gold tooth stood toward the back of the room with his arms folded, nodding his head, smiling. This was his new house, as well as the headquarters of his record label. These were his protégés. It seems incongruous that Frede Zimmer describes his leadership of South Philly's Punk Rock Payroll with the decidedly un-punk title of CEO. It's tongue-in-cheek, sure, but it fits, since Zimmer's the guy who can get things done. Aided by his wife, Misty, and a dedicated troupe of artists and interns, he transforms his musicians' visions of creatively packaged handmade releases into a vibrant reality.
Punk Rock Payroll's first offerings were the 2006 hardbound books of story-songers The Extraordinaires, who were next on the bill at this potluck house concert. Since then, the label took a page from Flipper in releasing a 7-inch single that unfolded into a board game, and has now progressed into raygun territory.
The Kill You bandmates — including CP contributor James Saul — head up to PRPHQ's upstairs "Distro-land" office after their set concludes, where Romeo explains how arriving as an intern at the label two years ago immediately shaped his approach.
"Seeing the way things operated here, the way they went about how you present music, it sort of altered my perception," he said.
His Kill You songwriting partner, drummer Alejandro Torres, nodded in agreement. "It's more than just music, it's a tangible thing people want."
It would certainly be romantic to think of Frede Zimmer as a visionary, a guy who always dreamed of fusing music and hand-made art. In reality, Zimmer was a rowdy skate punk from Tampa who took to screenprinting by chance.
"Frede was grounded every day," remembers Dale Jiminez of Need New Body, who shared his adolescence with Zimmer in Tampa. "His parents wouldn't let him out of the house," but they'd sneak out together to skateboard, steal into swimming pools, or truck across the Everglades to catch Gorilla Biscuits gigs.
In his late 20s, Zimmer landed a job at local screenprinting shop Red Onions in Tampa's Ybor City neighborhood. "He lied and said he had screening experience," says Jiminez. "By the time they realized he didn't, it was too late, he'd charmed them to death."
The owner took Zimmer under his wing and soon, in addition to his daytime job screening apparel for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Backstreet Boys, Zimmer was pulling independent, after-hours jobs for Less than Jake and Strike Anywhere.
"I fell in love with screenprinting," Zimmer recalls. "I knew this was something I'd like to do on my own."
Having stayed in contact with Jiminez and managed merch on his band's tours, the next step seemed obvious. In April 2003, the newly married Frede and Misty Zimmer packed their belongings and headed north, staying with their old buddies Need New Body in a warehouse on 36th and Brandywine while finding their footing in their new hometown.
By 2004, the Zimmers had settled. Misty found daytime work at a UPenn coffee shop and Punk Rock Payroll was in full swing in its first incarnation as a merch business. From their two-bedroom apartment in South Philly, Frede printed T-shirts for Hella, pressed buttons for Man Man and hand-screened covers for all of Need New Body's UFO LPs. "They made the most out of an ultra-small space and an ultra-small budget," says Jiminez, who describes the Zimmers' work for NNB as "an endeavor which till this day I'm sure most of us have taken for granted."
That winter, a chance encounter with the denizens of South Philly's now-extinct Athenaeum arts space caused the Payroll umbrella to expand further. "We just made a really good decision to go to a show one night," says Misty. "It all came from that." Having received a last-minute rush order for buttons from Jay Purdy and Matt Gibson, the Zimmers walked to Benna's coffee shop to deliver the merch and watch the duo perform as the future Extraordinaires. Both were blown away; Misty by their highly literate punk-folk story songs and Frede by the masterful presence of vocal harmonies and the conspicuous absence of merch he wasn't dropping off himself.
"I could not accept the fact that I could not take anything home with me," he recalls. A few hours later, he e-mailed Purdy. He wanted to put together a compilation CD of his clients, including The Extraordinares. Purdy countered with an idea of his own. A piano-driven indie opera called Ribbons of War. A CD released as a book. "There was no longer any hope for the compilation," says Zimmer.
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The Extraordinaires' releases were successful for two reasons: one, a sturdy, stylish hardcover design template by Misty, who made blank journals to sell at Art for the Cash Poor. Two, because the band pitched in weeks of assembly-line work to put it together. "That's what Frede is really good at," says Purdy. "If you have an idea, he will make it real, but financially feasible. The whole backbone of the books is doing all the work ourselves, which is a fun part of the process."
The same holds true for Kill You in the Face, which joined the fold in 2008 when Romeo was interning at Punk Rock Payroll as The Extraordinaires' publicist and booking agent. "I said 'raygun' and he said, 'That's prog as hell,'" laughs Romeo. Zimmer spent hours looking for deals on USB drives, calculating ways to save ounces of resin per gun by setting plastic Easter eggs inside the sculpture. Again, his goal was maximum output, minimum cost.
Zimmer longs for the days when music was tied to the physical world. So the Battle of the Vans board game 7-inch splits tracks between the two bands on his roster, and includes plastic die and playing pieces. Lux Perpetua, a side project of The Extraordinaires' Justin Wolf, will release a "CD-holding sculpture" titled Hehbehbehdehbehbehdeh. Zimmer hopes to release a project in 2010 by "a pretty popular band that's trying to get away from their major label situation."
"I feel like I've met so many people — and I'm one of them, I think — who talk a lot," says Purdy. "With Frede, he's probably in the top 1 percent of people who says 'I'm going to do this.' And he not only does it, he knocks it out of the park."
Zimmer says inspiration goes both ways. "We're lucky enough to work with a bunch of geniuses. Yeah, those guys are crazy. And I love them. We keep each other going."
The Extraordinaires, Fri., June 19, 8 p.m., $10, with Kill You in the Face, Buffalo Stance and Brown Mushroom, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 866-468-7619, r5productions.com.
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