It all started in a small room in the back of my office with records, magazines, one-sheets, records, stickers, records, records, and more records. Friends and family helped and continue to, but there is one main thing I’ve learned by starting it from the ground and building it myself. The only things you get for free in the music business are passion and ideas. Everything else, from Soap shirts to mixing time, costs a lot and not just monetarily.
If we are all affected by everything around us, then we are part of the surroundings for everyone else. Digitone seeks to bring it home to the fans, consumers, kids (call them what you will) because that's where everything begins, in the kitchen, in the bedroom... or in this case, a small room in the back of my office.
The ultimate failure of “Do It Yourself” is that it so rarely becomes “Do It Ourselves.”
Digitone started in 2000 as a whim and became a lifestyle. There is no particular genre of music we corner other than what we know feels right. Our mission is to just release what we think is good regardless of genre or style. That is where the politics of the music business get messy. The problem with maintaining a politicized presence is that your ideals can turn to rhetoric, and rhetoric is inherently limiting and disempowering. And though Digitone seeks to encourage radicalism as an ideal, the musical output emphasizes aesthetics and innovation over any specific stance or message. Digitone and its bands comprise, not a collective, but a community; and just as a community isn't limited to one voice, it shouldn't be limited to one language.
Digitone’s not going anywhere until it goes somewhere. Bands come and go. Ideals are refined, reworded, and resought. But the music and the passion is what carries on.
Gary Gaskin
Digitone Records
Richmond, VA
