The Wake

Shane Vader and Clara Salyer engage in the proudest of high school band traditions for their weekly meetings: the Taco Bell run. Over what may well be the most questionable of foodstuffs, the two discuss life, music and, most importantly, their record label: the recently established Afternoon Records subsidiary Personal Best Records (and yes, they are aware of the irony of their acronym relative to their age).

Personal Best Records was the brainchild of Ian Anderson, who founded local indie label Afternoon Records while he was still in high school. Vader and Salyer had been friends with Anderson for several years, and the two seemed to be a natural fit for the new business venture. “The hope here is that with a little push from Afternoon, they can have the tools and resources that I wish that I had when I was their age…to get their label off the ground,” Anderson says.

Vader and Salyer’s bands (brainy rock outfit The Shoe Shiners and indie-popsters Total Babe, respectively), along with the eight piece electro-influenced We Valedictorians (Salyer’s bandmate Jordan Gatesmith’s other project) will comprise the label’s starting roster. But Vader is quick to point out that “we’re not just trying to release our friends’ bands here.” The owners seem to have a real interest in helping other high school and so-called underage artists, having first hand knowledge of how difficult it can be for bands that can’t rely on alcohol sales at their shows.

Personal Best was intended to be a way for Afternoon to still sign local artists as the main label moved in a national direction. Anderson emphasizes that the label will feature artists from the Twin Cities area exclusively and hopefully serve as a launching pad for relatively unknown bands by providing all of the services a larger label might offer. Afternoon has imparted Personal Best with “the philosophy of halvsies,” an arrangement in which Afternoon will match any amount of money that the band raises for it’s own record, effectively doubling the band’s resources in what can be a very costly process for young musicians. In addition, Salyer (called a “booking whiz” by Anderson) hopes to do in-house booking for all of Personal Best’s bands, while Vader, a sound-engineer who recorded the forthcoming We Valedictorians album, hopes to mix and master all of the label’s records in-house. Personal Best will also take advantage of Afternoon’s national distribution connections to put its bands’ albums in record stores across the country.

Salyer and Vader are aware of the challenge of being 17-year-old managers of a subsidiary of a label that some claim still has dues to pay in the scene, but the two are determined to take their “amazing opportunity” humbly, and plan to forego signing new groups in order to spend the next year focusing on making their three bands as successful as possible.

“We just want to make great records,” says Vader, and with the duo’s outpouring of positivity and charm, you can’t help but believe him.