By Cannon Deringer and Nathan Stagliano
Photography by Sydney Grove
Athens based label, Kindercore Records, recently celebrated their 30 year anniversary with EXPO2026, a three day event featuring legacy acts from the label alongside a new generation of Athens musicians. On the second day of the event, we had the opportunity to sit down with founders Ryan Lewis and Dan Geller in the green room of the 40 Watt Club to discuss the history of the label and EXPO2026.
Nathan: What led to the creation of Kindercore?
Ryan: Dan and I were at a show, which we remember as a Butterglory show, but have since realized that Cat Power was also on the bill. It was 96’, all of our friends were there and all of our friends were in bands and we looked around and thought “man we should really do something, there is something happening here”. Kincaid had just recorded a 7-inch and we were getting it pressed, so we made up a fake record label name just to make it seem legit. While it was being pressed we kept having problems with the pressing, and it wound up taking so long we ended up having the idea of Kindercore. We assembled and put out our first cassette compilation before the 7 inch came out. We made 100 cassettes and featured bands like Olivia Tremor Control, Joe Christmas, Kincaid, Elf Power, and tons of other bands. It sold out in a week at Wuxtry, and we were like, “ok, we should keep doing this”.
Dan: And then we were stuck.
Cannon: Can you talk about the inception and early years of the label?
Dan: Right now I work at UGA, and I teach professors how to start a business. I always tell this story of me and Ryan sitting on the couch playing videogames and we got our first order from a distributor, and we looked at each other like oh sh*t, now we own a company.
Ryan: When we got the order, the distributor asked for our fax number, and we replied saying that our fax was f**ked up, and immediately went to Best Buy to buy a fax machine so they could sent us the order. We put on our first festival in 1997, which was a two day birthday party that featured Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, and all these amazing bands. That went amazing, so the next year we put on a three day festival, then we moved to New York 1998 for a while and signed/licensed bands from other countries like France, England, Norway, and Sweden. We had moved up to New York in order to try to get better distribution and stuff. We found all of that, and realized that Athens was still our home, New York was way too expensive, and it’s obnoxiously hard to be in a band in New York, especially trying to carry all of your equipment on the subway. We moved back in 2000 and had Expo 2000, the predecessor to this. Everything sort of built from there, and then fell apart, tragically too. When we moved to New York, streaming music was just starting. With streaming, all labels and record stores fell apart, in the midst of that in 2003-2004 Kindercore went out of business because some people stole the business from us. A crazy story for another day, but Dan and I were on tour and these guys forged our names on contracts and turned our phones off. I read in a print issue of Billboard while I was on tour that I had been fired from my own record label. That was a wild ride. After that we started Kindercore Vinyl and now we’re back here to celebrate.
Dan: The story continues with me going to court and suing those guys and got the label back. The label now is sort of a caretaker label that holds the catalog, so the catalog is still available to everyone.
Ryan: The first and second rounds of Kindercore Vinyl both had these long, drawn out, bad endings. To be able to come back now and have a party and bring everyone back to town has been really nice. It’s been very nice to see everyone, tons of people that haven’t been in the same room as each other in decades.
Dan: It’s a family reunion!
Ryan: It’s also really cool with bands like Honeypuppy, Viv and the Things, Dog Person, and Critter Fritter, we have these young bands that people are like “holy sh*t these kids are great”. It’s very gratifying to be able to do all that.
Nathan: Why do you think it’s important to celebrate newer bands, and not just the legacy Kindercore acts?
Ryan: To me, the most important thing about Kindercore is sharing music with people, and connecting bands with each other. For me, the idea of doing the B stage came out from wanting to book more bands, I couldn’t have the show I wanted with only 5 bands each day. Because of that, we were able to get reunions with bands like Grape Soda, which wouldn’t have worked under different circumstances.
Cannon: What has it been like to see the change in the Athens music scene since the inception of Kindercore?
Dan: I have a theory about the music scene in Athens. When I got here as an undergrad, it was the first year of the Hope Fund. This was in the mid to late-90s, post REM. There were a bunch of poor kids who were going to UGA and had the time to start bands because they didn’t have to worry about their grade point average. As time went on, and more students received Hope/Zell Miller it took time away from students being able to start bands because everyone is worried about their grade point average. I feel like there’s been a contraction; there used to be a joke that everyone in Athens is in 100 bands, and every drummer in Athens is in 500 bands. It felt that way, everyone you met was in a band. That’s what you did because you didn’t have to focus on your grades.
Ryan: The other economic reality of the scholarship is that rich people from Atlanta could suddenly send their kids to school in Athens for free, and the leftover money that would’ve been spent on tuition went into expensive apartment complexes.
Dan: The scholarships have been a wonderful thing though; it made the quality of education at UGA go up tremendously.
Nathan: When y’all started Kindercore, did y’all have any idea it would be something people cared about 30 years later, and what’s it been like building something people care about.
Ryan: We didn’t think it would be anything originally. We could only think about what was going on next week, I think that’s why we put out so many records. I was looking back at our catalog, and in that first year or two we put out so many records. That’s why I think it worked, it just sort of built. The elephant 6 thing was happening at the same time, both of us were playing off of each other, and that heightened the popularity of Athens.
Dan: Another thing, going back to the scene question, everyone toured back then. All the bands were always on tour, you were an Athens band but you were playing nationally. A lot of the same clubs are still there on the road which is awesome.
Ryan: The room that we’re in right now [40 Watt] is the same floor that’s been here forever, going back to the 1930s. This was the Potters House Thrift Store that the B52s and Pylon bought their crazy 50s ballgowns. It feels really great now [to be having the event].
Dan: and really stressful.
Ryan: Monday, I’m not going to be running a record label, thank god. Kindercore was probably the best and worst thing I’ve ever done. Some of the best times of my life have been with the label.
Cannon: What keeps both of you coming back to Athens?
Ryan: I just can’t leave it, I moved to New York for a couple years but there’s nothing really like Athens. There’s a lot of things in Athens I dislike, like the traffic is insane now, even with the high rises and all of that stuff, there’s still magic here. The fact that the 40 Watt still exists and this building has been here for almost 100 years is awesome. Nirvana played here.
Dan: Smashing Pumpkins too!
Ryan: It’s great. Being able to see everybody, people that moved away and came back for this event, it’s really special.
Nathan: How did the planning for this event go?
Ryan: We have a friend named Brent Walburn who runs a podcast called In Loving Recollection. It’s a great podcast, he does it about records he loves and interviews the bands. He did one with Kicaid about our album Super Hawaii. Last fall he sent me a text saying “Expo 2026?”, and I was like “now I have to do this”. I told myself I won’t do this if I can’t get the right bands. Everyone said yes, and so here we are!
Directly after Ryan responded to our question, they were rushed out of the room to sound check for Kincaid.
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