About Us

The short version: Erik, Chris, and Scott run a Pittsburgh-based record label. Simply put, we help our friends and musicians that we love get their music into the world for free, or as cheap as possible.

The longer version---our stories:

Erik

A brief history:
I put out my first cassette, Internal Distortion, in 1995. It was for my new band, Noise. It was recorded on a 4-track in my parents basement. I had no real idea what I was doing but I was inspired by a few things. 1. I had read that Nirvana's 'In Utero' was recorded with just a few mics in a room.
2. Dave Grohl had just recorded a bunch of songs ALL BY HIMSELF and it became the 1st Foo Fighters record.
3. I met a band called UNISON. I think they hated me at some point but nonetheless what they accomplished in basements was great in my eyes.
I was in shock. You can make your own records in a simple manner!?
With nothing but Radio Shack microphones, a Yamaha 4-track and Kinkos copy machines I self-produced about 6 releases.
It was time to move into the new medium...CD's. This may sound funny but this transition was really hard for me. I didn't understand digital things in the slightest.
Chuck Veri and I had been playing together for a while and wanted to record Resent's first album, 'Fear or Faith.' We found a studio that did product jingles and commercials who agreed to record us. Chuck, Chris and other people would sit around stuffing together the 5 piece project that was that album for hours every night at out local Eat n' Park. Strangers would come help. Everyone thought it was so cool to see a small band making their own records. This is when the idea for Having a label started.

A while later we were finishing up mastering of Resent's 'missed my wrist' album and I told the engineer, Jim Huffnagel, that I was going to start a record label. The conversation went something like this...
"I'm going to make this the first release for my new record label."
"How are you going to start a record label?"
"I just did."
And with that simple statement of intention I had a record label. This may seem odd to younger people but before the internet and home recording software a project like The Atomic Family was a crazy idea.

From there we went in every direction that you could go in music.
Here's my bullet list of notable things:
*1st release, "missed my wrist" funded by Chuck and I working jobs that put our lives in anger daily.
*Erik and Chris meeting. Without Chris there would be no Atomic Family releases. He takes all of my ideas in life and makes them realities.
*creating a home studio.
*Scott joining The Family Scott was a real driving force when it was needed. Everyone needs a kick in the ass and Scott was mine. We didn't always agree but we always said I Love You before bed.
*Distributing records at The Warped tour. The people from Epitaph actually said that we were the only small label they'd seen try something like that. It was a lesson to be learned.
*Working with all of The Family bands! We met so many great people and did so much fun stuff!
*Refocusing. The Family is not a job. It's a project that people that we love are free to join in on.

I get asked often "What's The Family doing?" I didn't have an answer for a while because I felt like I was failing and things had stopped. Things have never stopped we're just working on music. Music; not playing every bar, touring, contracts, promotions or all of that other goofy stuff that gets in the way.
Keep checking in on us and I bet there's going to be new things. If not; guess what...records don't go bad! The ones we created when we were making three at a time are still worth the listen.
The Atomic Family motto has been "We're Making Records." And we still are. Enjoy them. You're Welcome

Scott

When I first met Erik Grieco, I was sitting on my porch drinking a beer at noon on a weekday. I was newly unemployed and had just moved in next door to Erik. We lived in a row of houses that would soon be dubbed the PittPunkPlex, as the occupants were all involved in the Pittsburgh music scene in some way. Anyway, we stuck up a conversation; I found out he was a musician who had just started up a record label to self release his band's first record, and he found out that I wanted to be in a band.

The rest is history. Soon, we started the band Northern Aggression together, I joined up with the label, and things started happening fast. We were bringing on new bands seemingly every month, setting up tours, putting out records, and organizing shows constantly. Eventually we had a zine, a podcast, did a few dates on Warped Tour (possibly regrettable, looking back), and began receiving a bit of media attention.

In the end, it became a bit overwhelming and we've had to take a step back. I am now working on my PhD in Massachusetts and Erik and Chris are married and have their hands full with their own lives. However, we still all make music, still love putting out records, and are proud that we have recently put out our 30th record (as of 4/1/11). I owe some of the best memories and years of my life to The Atomic Family, and I hope that you'll take a look around, download some free music, and share in the Pittsburgh music scene that provided such a great community for us.

Chris

The Atomic Family Records.

It's kind of odd sitting here and writing an "About Us" page for the Family. I mean, I never expected to still be writing these sorts of things. I never really expected the Family to go anywhere. In its infancy, the Family was an optimistic dream between two broke and nearly homeless kids who relied on stolen pizzas and 99 cent burritos to keep them from starving. That sort of beginning isn't exactly filled with promises of success and prosperity.

For a good while after I met Erik Grieco, we were more acquaintances than friends. We knew each other because we hung out at the same places and knew the same people. Despite the fact that I didn't really know him as anything more than a friend of a friend, I had come to really admire the amount of effort that he had put into building a following for Resent, his band at the time. I respected the hell out of him before we even got to be friends. Some people talk a good game, it was clear from day one that Erik actually follows through.

I was still focused on working on my monstrosity of a pet project at the time, The Grand Devious. I spent a lot of time dicking around with synthesizers and drum machines and computers and tried to make something innovative that people would actually listen to. For the most part, I failed to accomplish that. However, Erik called me up out of the blue one day while I was in the middle of a drunken game of billiards and asked me to make some contributions to the Resent record he was working on at the time, which would eventually become "Missed My Wrist." He wanted the record to be more than just a collection of songs, but rather a cohesive work of art from beginning to end. For reasons still unknown to me, he decided to take a chance and give me a whack at accomplishing that goal.

I ended up spending an ungodly amount of time with Erik after this phone call. I'd come over and we'd just work on the record, sometimes around the clock, for what seemed like months. The humorous part to this whole thing is that the record was already recorded by the time I touched it. All we were doing at this point was trying to fit the tracks together in a way that made the thing flow from beginning to end in a rather natural feeling manner. We spent weeks on this. I would estimate that I had 12 different versions of the record on my iPod before we finally made one that just worked.

Once that was done, Erik found that the pressing company needed artwork made to spec. I had a pretty basic understanding of Adobe Illustrator at the time, so I told him that we should just give it a shot and do it ourselves. In all honesty, the front cover artwork could have come out better. I think at that point in our relationship, Erik and I hadn't gotten quite comfortable enough to tell each other things like "we're doing this all wrong" and instead spent too much time trying not to insult each other and not enough time mocking each others' bad decisions. Lessons were learned, and I think that we've come to make pretty great artwork since this happened.

At some point in this whole process, we came to this realization that putting out records isn't necessarily hard if you know what you're doing. The problem is that your options typically are limited to either learning it yourself or paying somebody who already learned it. I mean, Erik and I were lucky in that between the two of us, we were able to learn all of the production aspects of sending a disc off to press, a process that normally bankrupts people. Some people just aren't lucky enough to be around people who know what they are doing.

Erik, realizing this, told me that he wanted to start a record label. I told him this was a bad idea.

"We're never going to make any money off of it, and we're going to end up hating ourselves for turning our fun hobbies into not fun jobs." I told him.

"Of course not," he replied. "Instead of focusing on making money, we just help out people we like."

I was skeptical, but intrigued. This plan could go well. This plan could also fail miserably. In the meantime, we put The Atomic Family logo on the Resent record, assigned it the catalog number TAF001, and only time would tell if there would be any more numbers assigned to records.

Time passed. Eventually there was a second TAF record released, albeit in small quantity, the self-titled Urbane Decay record. I don't even really remember where it was recorded or how it sounded. Urbane Decay was a band of our friends, including our good friend and eventual roommate Lars, our friend Brian, and if memory serves I think Erik played the drums on that thing. That record never really went anywhere and the band broke up shortly after it was released. However, the record's designation of TAF002 was a success for the family in that we made it to that ever-elusive stage of record label development where you have more than one non-compilation album. We were pretty geeked. More time passed.

Eventually, I came to live with Erik for about a year. We spent more time dicking around in our home studio than we should have, especially considering the fact that we were both effectively broke. Instead of being a responsible citizen who paid their bills on time and went to school, I spent a lot of money on booze and recording equipment. I'd love to say that this is a great way to live your life, but let's face it. It's not. On the other hand, Erik and I got a whole lot of completely unprofitable yet artistically credible work done. It was nice.

While we lived together, we met The Smut Project. Some kid hanging out at their house had ruined their day by accidentally breaking their bottle of vodka and their computer's sound card at a time when all they wanted to do was drink vodka and record. Erik, with his new shiny recording setup and nobody to record, volunteered himself and our house to record The Smut Project. I brought the vodka. We had a bit of a conversation beforehand along the lines that, should this recording project go well with The Smut Project, we'd probably keep on going. Luckily for both us and The Atomic Family as a whole, The Smut Project are the greatest people to work with on the planet. They're a bit weird, as they seem to prefer warm, cheap vodka, but they are excellent to work with. If that wasn't true, Erik and I would probably have given up by now and the family would have stopped at TAF002.

It went well. The Smut Project recordings never ended up being released until just recently, but the experience went well. Around this time Erik was also working with our good friends at Unarmed to get their record recorded in the studio of Jim Hufnagel (a damn fine person, to be certain.) Unarmed put together a really great record and soon we were up to TAF003.

By this time, we were living a rather irresponsible rock and roll lifestyle, but it was hard to hold it against us since the Family was coming along so well. Erik got a lot of our friends together and we put together the label's first comp, TAF004.

Four releases, not a goddamned dollar to show for it, and we were smiling like pigs in shit.

More releases followed. Eskimoses. Northern Aggression, shit even Zevidence put out a record with the Family. Today, we're up to 19 releases, and getting here has been amazing. We're still not making any money to speak of, but art isn't really an industry that should be entered by anybody looking to make a profit. It is, in all of its corniness, a labor of love.

As I mentioned earlier, it feels really odd that I'm still talking about the Family. It feels odd that I'm still putting together blurbs like this one to describe to people what we're all about. It seems that a label like ours, (which feels more like a loose-knit collective of people pushing in the same direction than it does a business,) has lasted this long without losing its optimistic dedication to putting quality before profit. Hell, I think all of us have sunk thousands into this thing and I'm pretty sure none of us have made anywhere close to that. We're not expecting it.

That's who we are.