Tom Rothrock reignites spark of Beck’s record label Bong Load Records

Vegas Voices is a weekly question-and-answer series featuring notable Las Vegans.

His ears are obscured beneath tendrils of long, silver-flecked hair streaming from a bohemian-looking cowboy hat, but they’re working. Always working.

Tom Rothrock’s sitting in a downtown sandwich shop on a Monday afternoon when “Stand By Me” comes on the radio.

“You hear that guiro and go, ‘OK, I gotta write a song with that in it,” he says, referencing the tune’s signature percussive instrument. “Anything can set you off.”

“You can close your eyes and you won’t see, right?” he continues, sometimes pausing for a beat to collect his thoughts, which he tends to deliver with care. “You can close your mouth and you won’t taste. But you can never turn your ears off. Even when you’re sleeping you’re decoding stuff in the room. Something falls over in your flat, and it becomes part of your dream, maybe.”

Rothrock’s workaholic ear, and finely-honed artistic sensibilities, have catalyzed a long, decorated career as a producer, songwriter, label owner and musician. In the early ’90s, Rothrock founded Bong Load Records, the label that put out the first releases from Beck, who Rothrock discovered. From there, Rothrock produced such acclaimed singer-songwriters as Elliott Smith, Badly Drawn Boy, James Blunt and plenty of others, while Bong Load put out records by the likes of Fu Manchu, L7, R.L. Burnside and others.

In the early aughts, Rothrock put Bong Load on the back burner as he focused on his producing career and releasing albums of his own. But in March, he got a place here in order to relaunch Bong Load this past summer with a series of vinyl reissues, establishing Vegas as the new home base for the label.

With the help of longtime friend and former 12 Volt Sex guitarist Michael Stratton, Rothrock has partnered with 11th Street Records, which will serve as the hub of the label of sorts, getting Bong Load back in action with a clutch of releases, including the latest record from Killers bassist Mark Stoermer.

We caught up with Rothrock to get the story behind Bong Load’s return and more.

Review-Journal: What ultimately made you decide to do the relaunch of Bong Load Records here in Vegas?

Rothrock: It became a serious/running joke with Michael Stratton and myself about getting a place in Las Vegas. It’s like a 15-year dialog of him ribbing me like, ‘C’mon, get it together.’ Last November I came here and visited downtown again, was at 11th Street Records, looking at the record shop, looking at the studio, and that’s when I realized, like, ‘Wow, the ecosystem, the infrastructure here in the community is such that it could really support the relaunch of Bong Load Records. And it was all to the right scale.

R-J: This all coincides with the 25th anniversary of the label, but I’m sure that’s not the only reason to get things going again. What was the impetus for putting your energies behind Bong Load once more?

Rothrock: The label’s always existed, the difference is that we hadn’t pressed vinyl in 15 years and I had done very, very limited releases. I thought about doing it many times over the years. I think what prevented me from doing more with the label was that during that 15-year period, I was very involved with writing, production and my own career artistically. But after 15 years of intensely working on that, I was ready to take a break from regular production and writing and I thought, ‘What should I do?’ And the last thing on my list would be putting out vinyl on Bong Load, because if it gets in the heat it warps and it’s subject to getting dinged in postage. It’s kind of like selling Easter eggs. It takes a lot of attention and time to do right. Somewhere along the line last year when I was considering it, I built up a long list of reasons why I wouldn’t do it. And then when I came to Las Vegas a year ago and went to 11th Street Records, that list started to check off.

R-J: The timing seems right with the renewed interest in vinyl.

Rothrock: It’s funny, in 2001, pre-Amazon.com, one of the things that I was really interested in was selling directly to the people who wanted the music and selling directly to record shops. Back then, the tradition was to go through a distributor and hope that everything got where it was supposed to get. Now, you can go directly to the stores and directly to the people who want the music. It’s great that everything is available digitally, and we’re not competing with that. We’re doing vinyl, hand foiled, numbered, limited editions. If you want this collectible piece of art that’s superlimited, we’ve got it. It’s really nice to make that kind of stuff. It’s affordable art. We never press the same thing twice, so if you’ve got a limited edition, that’s it. That color and that configuration will never be pressed again.

R-J: You always kind of followed your own artistic whimsy, but when Bong Load and your recording career really took off in the ’90s, was it a challenge to balance that with the demands of commercial success?

Rothrock: In any aspect of life, with success comes distractions. As distractions rose, it became really apparent that it was essential to be true to the music. You have to remember that original thing that got you excited about it — and I’m not even talking about working in the music business, I’m talking about as a kid, the first time you heard something and it turned you on, that spark. Staying true to that and protecting that is the absolute key.

That’s one thing about firing up Bong Load again, it was nice to revisit that pure spark. When Mark from The Killers sent the unmastered mixes of his album over, I put it on and it just took me right back 15 years. I heard the first four bars of the first song and I was like, ‘Yes.’ I just knew right then, ‘We’re going to press this on vinyl, and it’s going to be so cool. It’s a great record.’ It was that spark. Boom. That hadn’t happened in a while. Thanks, Mark.

Read more from Jason Bracelin at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com and follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.