There’s a hot commodity lurking amid the Baton Rouge music scene. If local bands are lucky, they’ll be brought aboard the boat of musicians locking down with the coolest label in town: Phantom Party Records.
The local label is swiftly scooping up the community’s musicians and spitting out shows all over the city.
Phantom Party Records’ compilation release show premieres Friday at the Varsity Theatre. Attendees can pick up a CD featuring tracks from all 10 of the label’s bands and get a real life dose of some of the label’s best bands including Royal Teeth, Bone Machine, He Bleeds Fireman and England in 1819. Cohen Hartman, founder of Phantom Party Records and guitarist for Bone Machine, said the label was originally founded in April 2008 but took off out of the ashes of his former band Cohen and the Ghost.
“We got a lot of notoriety as far as Baton Rouge is concerned,” he said. “We were drawing in really big crowds, touring, and Rolling Stone was about to do an article on our album. Then we broke up, and they canceled the whole thing.”
Because of the fans, contacts and media connections Hartman made with the Ghost, he said he was able to jump-start Phantom Party Records to help other bands get their sounds out to venues like The Spanish Moon.
“If you have a new band, no matter how good you were or how many people you drew, [The Spanish Moon] wouldn’t give you a chance — wouldn’t respond to e-mails or calls — because they were looking out for their business,” he said. “With the Ghost, we had proved ourselves, and I was able to book easily.”
Hartman said the label started small as an outlet to lend a helping hand to other musicians.
“[The Spanish Moon] was a big weapon for me in the beginning,” he said. “I’d be like, ‘What do we have to offer you? Well, I can get you this show at this place everybody goes where you can have really big crowds.’ Everybody was used to playing [North Gate Tavern], Here Today Gone Tomorrow and house shows, and nobody was able to get in touch with the bigger venues.”
Hartman started out with a few bands like England in 1819 and Prom Date, eventually building a powerhouse of musicians that has enabled the label to take flight.
“Ever since we became a four-man team, we’ve been booking shows nonstop,” he said. “Two years ago, right when we started, it was like, ‘All right, we have a big Phantom Party show coming up next month, and oh, there’s another one a month and a half after that.'”
Hartman said his team strategically plans shows.
“We’ve been able to have a show every weekend [or] every other weekend somewhere in town,” he said. “I don’t want to sound cocky, but it’s almost as if we’ve taken over a good bit of the scene.”
Phantom Party Records is a “label of songwriters,” according to Hartman.
“We’re pretty selective, and we take pride in that,” he said. “All of the bands on Phantom Party have one fantastic songwriter. The lyrics are very poetic, thoughtful, very artistic. We have a lot of openly artistic bands on the label.”
Jon Tillman, Phantom Party’s booking and artist relations source, said the label is not currently looking to add bands. Instead, Phantom is developing a community between the 10 bands and their fans.
“The idea is to eventually become a regional or national label,” he said. “We want to develop what we have in front of us right now, and eventually we will try to sign other bands.”
Chase Landrum, Phantom Party’s management and finance head, said the label’s ultimate goal is to build the local scene.
“We want to make this a non-cannibalistic society of musicians,” he said. “We don’t want the bands going after each other. [We want them] working together to all achieve success.”
Essentially, the label seeks to keep its sounds “unique,” Landrum said.
“We want original music,” he said. “We want to keep it strong. We want people that do something unique, something worth promoting.”
Matt Sigur, public relations head for Phantom Party Records and former Daily Reveille employee, said the label is a “resource hub.”
“We are a stepping stone for bands,” he said. “We want to provide them with things that they might need, kind of like a nonprofit organization. … We want to see the community and music scene succeed.”
Sigur said the opportunity to take part in the label was too good to pass up.
“It’s about the community, and we have to establish that,” he said. “Make some goals and push forward — it’s a lot of work. But it’s cool to see it pay off.”
 
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Contact Cathryn Core at [email protected]