Wellman starting record label

Tear yourself at the seams,
unveil what’s been buried beneath.
These walls must fall,
before wounds will start to dissolve.
Music has played a major role in Andrew Wellman’s life.
Writing lyrics like those above allowed an introverted kid to break out of his shell, and helped him work through some difficult moments.
Now he wants to help make the gift of music more accessible to people in his home town.
Wellman has been working to start his own record label, Krimson Records, and hopes to have his headquarters at the Weiler Building in downtown Portland open by the end of the month.
“I’ve been working the normal factory jobs for a while and have been struggling with it being fulfilling … I knew I had to get back in the music scene,” said Wellman, a 2004 graduate of Jay County High School. “It didn’t dawn on me until recently that a record label is what I was meant to do.”
Wellman describes his younger self as a shy kid who always bit his tongue. He especially struggled to find a way to express his feelings when his great-grandmother, Elsie Ward, was in the final moments of her life.
He says he vowed to bury his silence and never make the mistake of not sharing his feelings again.
It was with the help of his grandmother, Ruth Wellman, that he found music as that outlet.
“Everything I said was in my journal, in my writings. She finally opened me up,” said Wellman, referring to Ruth, who died in 2010, as the strongest person he has ever met. “She taught me to open myself up. Essentially that’s what developed me as a musician and found music as a way out.
“She made me what I am today.”
Wellman picked up a guitar for the first time after a cousin, Brad Wells, gave up the instrument. A self-taught musician, he loved it instantly.
He said he believes music was his calling, given that his grandfather, Richard Wellman, and his father, Ken, both played guitar, and his mother, Karen, wrote poetry.
The name of his record label also has family ties.
Wellman said he fondly remembers going to his grandparents’ house as a child and gathering with extended family to watch the Indiana University men’s basketball team play. He refers to it as a happy time in his life, when the family bond was at its strongest.
“We’d go out there and we’d have to sit on the floor because all the seats were taken,” said Wellman. “Unfortunately it doesn’t happen anymore, but … as a kid growing up in that atmosphere and all the lessons that (grandma Ruth) taught me and things she instilled upon me, Krimson is what I always think of because it was always that sea of red. Everybody had their IU shirts on.”
Wellman’s first band was Losing September, a group he formed with Jay County friends Kyle Cook and Nick Foreman about 10 years ago. He later joined Ghost of Maine, a heavy metal band, andperformed with them in the Midwest and Northeast, including in Chicago and New York.
But Wellman said he’s no longer interested in being on the road, and would instead like to use the experience he’s gotten to help other bands. He said he wants to take some of the workload off of the shoulders of the band members so they can focus on their music.
“That was the problem we always ran into playing in a band,” said Wellman. “We were so focused on the graphic design, promoting, booking our shows that we never wrote music. And that was, in turn, the downfall of it.
“I want to take that off of the bands’ list of things to do and help them succeed.”
For the bands he signs, he plans to handle all of the non-music parts of the business. And he’s got people all over the country ready to help him out.
His brother-in-law, Judd Sproba, who lives in Oregon, is assisting with the web-design aspect. Friend Geoff Jenkins, who runs Umeus Cloth in Indianapolis, will help him out with the graphic design and merchandising.
And he also has JCHS graduate Ian Shannon, who is now living in Nashville, to help him scout talent in that area of the country.
“When you’re a musician you shouldn’t have to worry about coding a web site,” said Wellman. “You shouldn’t have to worry about booking your own shows. The more time you spend doing the little knick-knack stuff the more you’re getting away from writing music, and that’s your job.”
While he has help coming from far and wide, and he’ll have to travel to find the bands he wants to work with, Wellman said it was important to him that Krimson Records be headquartered in his home town.
At his studio in the Weiler Building, located at the corner of Main and Meridian Streets, he’ll have a studio where he can bring in new bands that may not have any studio experience. He wants to help them develop not only their sound, but their song-writing as well.
In short, he wants to offer musicians in Jay County opportunities that weren’t there for him.
“The main thing I wanted to do was bring it back here ... and really develop the music scene here,” said Wellman, who also plans to offer guitar lessons.
Wellman will be structuring his record label a bit differently than most.
He said normally when bands sign, the arrangement is structured like a loan. The record label fronts the band a sum of money, which then has to be paid back with interest.
Wellman, who’ll continue to work at Performance Tool while he tries to build Krimson, will be working with the bands he signs for no up-front money. Instead, he’ll take control of the rights to the songs, recouping his money through online sales.
Once their bill is paid, the royalties would revert back to the bands. If song sales are not enough to cover the bill once the contract is up, bands can either pay the balance or Wellman can keep the rights to the royalties.
“I think doing it that way takes stuff off of their plate,” Wellman said of the bands. “It gives them cash to go on the road and book shows. I think it’s a less selfish way to do it.”
Although he hasn’t signed any bands officially yet — he’s hoping to have an announcement soon — he does already have several bands booked to use his studio space.
Wellman said for now he wants to keep his roster small, perhaps even just one band to start out, in order to make sure he’s giving that group the best chance to succeed. He also plans on starting with heavy metal because it is his area of expertise, but hopes to expand beyond that in the future.
He called the possibilities “limitless” and hopes he use his abilities in a variety of genres to pass on the impact music has had on him.
“I couldn’t imagine life without music,” Wellman said, noting that he will never stop writing his own songs. “It’s gotten me through hard times and its made me who I am and I’m a lot stronger because of it.
“Music, I think, is universal. There’s not one person who doesn’t like music, some form of it. I really want to offer that to people.
“I’m just trying to give back everything the music scene gave me.”
Those interested in booking studio time or working with Wellman can reach him at [email protected]. His web site is under construction at www.krimsonrecords.com[[In-content Ad]]