A Record Label is Born - Robb Nansel Info

Robb Nansel, owner of Saddle Creek, grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, attending school at St. Pius and Creighton Prep high school. Robb and his friends joined together to form several bands. Robb himself played in "Commander Venus" with several of his buddies including Conor Oberst and Tim Kasher. Other early bands included "Norman Bailer" and "Slow Down Virginia." By the mid 90's, the young musicians noticed that they had a lot of good music on their hands. At that point they decided that they should start releasing their own material rather than trying to get it put on other labels. After a brief name change they settled on Saddle Creek and Robb began releasing albums from bands such as "Bright Eyes," "The Faint" and "Cursive." After heavy touring it didn't take long for sales to follow. Many of the groups started playing together in a variety of combinations that eventually spawned new bands such as "The Good Life," "Desaparecidos," and "Mayday." Today Saddle Creek stands in the national spotlight, as media from across the country and around the world have praised the young artists from Omaha.

Robb described what it took to get Saddle Creek rolling..."It was really just a learning experience. It still is to this day. We just started calling distributors to see who would take our records. They'd take a couple here and a couple there, and never really sold 'em. And if they did we never really got paid. As the bands started to tour the country, eventually just with enough persistance people start to take notice. I think it was the release of 'Cursive's' second album 'The Storms of Early Summer' and 'Bright Eyes' 'Letting Off the Happiness'. We released those at the same time and it was kind of like people actually cared at that time, and it was very few people, but a few people cared. I kind of made a decision at that point that we were really going to try to do this. And I think I'd graduated from Lincoln and brought the label back to Omaha. I was doing graphic arts stuff for a local company here in town and trying to run the label at the same time. I was working second shift there, and so I'd work on the label before I went to work, and then come home and work on it more. And then, it just got to be really where I couldn't handle it. Magazines were calling me at work. The work load was too much for me to take. So then I just went and quit the job. Probably shouldn't have, you know if I was going to make a logical decision at the time, but just did it anyway, and it worked out I guess. It was still a couple years after that, that it was really just me in my apartment trying to resemble a record label."

Robb is no longer playing in bands, but he is keeping quite busy helping his friends make and sell their music. He isn't sure about the label's next goal, but having moved the Saddle Creek office out of his apartment and into an actual business space he's been told by friends that he's a much happier person.