As an appendix to yesterday's post about Three Gut -- I invited Guelph native Tim Kingsbury (of the Arcade Fire) to say a few words on the label's lowering-of-the-lights. And I'm very pleased to say that he has obliged.
I moved away from Guelph, Ont. in 1997 and Three Gut Records was born within a year or two. I always felt that Three Gut and I had a lot in common and thought it sort of took my place when I left. We shared alot of the same friends, the same musical interests and it involved a lot of people I really admired. Some were close friends and some I watched from a (short) distance.
Guelph is a town of around 100,000 people, so I was always impressed that the label had that many talented people working on a single project together just because they wanted to. I hadn’t seen that much up until then, and I still don’t see it often enough.
Although I've never asked them outright, I don’t think that they aspired to sell hundreds of thousands of records. I do know that they aspired to put out their friends’ records because they believed that they deserved to be heard. They were right. As a result, the people around them paid attention.
They moved to Toronto fairly early on and people were taken with them. People came to their shows and people talked about them. My Guelph friends went on to earn a lot of respect in Toronto and across Canada. Even some attention outside of Canada. It was very exciting to watch and listen. Oddly enough, I was never very close to Lisa or Tyler (the heart of Three Gut) at the time, but I always thought they did great work and really enjoyed watching the label grow. Part of me was sad that I never got to be more involved. It was through them that Arcade Fire played our first show in Toronto at Jim Guthrie's CD release for Now More Than Ever, and I also played my first show with Arcade Fire in Montreal opening up for Royal City.
Three Gut has put out some of the most solid records of any label I know and that’s something they should be proud of.
Thanks so much, Tim. And thanks again, Three Gut.
Posted by Sean at June 15, 2005 4:32 AM
and it will begin playing. All songs are also available to download: just right-click the link and choose 'Save as...'
