Big Loud Founders on 10th Anniversary and Going Big With Morgan Wallen

They weren’t always big, or loud, in anything other than aspirational name. There was a certain amount of chutzpah when Seth England, Craig Wiseman and Joey Moi started up the label called Big Loud Records in 2015, although any sense of hubris there was mitigated by the fact that they already had publishing and management arms operating under that moniker prior to that point. The threesome — England best known as an executive, Wiseman as a songwriter-turned-publisher, and Moi as a producer famous for Nickelback and others — reinvested a lot of the profits they’d made from previous star clients in the country space, like Florida Georgia Line, into proving they could run a label, too. True proof-of-concept took a few years, but eventually they became more than worthy of the name, turning into one of those rare independent labels that is easily mistaken for one of the majors.

Saying that Morgan Wallen is a flagship artist is an understatement; he is simply the biggest male artist in the world right now, by most standards — and certainly any having to do with the Billboard 200. But Big Loud is not a one-trick pony, with tunesmiths like Hardy and Ernest who have bubbled up out of their songwriting stable to become successful recording artists and tour headliners in their own right. The label has recently picked up superstar Miranda Lambert while also developing the likes of Stephen Wilson Jr., a critically acclaimed talent currently nominated for the CMA Awards’ best new artist trophy.

The three Big Loud founder-chiefs got on a big, loud Zoom call to discuss the rather upward trajectory of the label’s 10 years, and why the song publishing business that led up to it still informs everything they do as a record company.

There’s a question some of us might have about what level Big Loud should be considered on now. It’s the same question we might have asked about Big Machine, which exploded the way you guys have been: How “big” can you get and still be considered an independent label? Should we think of you in the same terms we think of Universal or Warner or Sony’s Nashville divisions, at some point?

Joey Moi: We’re not an independent label, we’re a pissed-off startup. That’s what I call it.

Craig Wiseman: We are absolutely and adamantly independent. In our early days, even as a publishing company, I turned down many, many, many offers in order to stay independent. We’ve remained independent. And of course there’s things we have to do — distribution deals, ancillary things. We’re very good friends with Universal staff and work with them some. But nobody owns us. Nobody finances us. Everything has been out of pocket. People ask, “How’d you start your label?” Well, we all put in money, and nobody got a paycheck from this label for frigging years. Some other guys around Nashville, their whole idea would be like, “Here’s how you start a label — first, you gimme a million dollars…” No. If you want to do an independent label, you’re like any small business, you get paid last, and so you don’t get paid at all for a long time.

Seth England: I agree with Joey, we’re a pissed-off startup. I don’t care how big we get — if we ever lose that, then we’ve lost the mission. Scott Borchetta is his own kind of entrepreneur too, and through the prime Florida Georgia Line years [when Big Loud was their publisher and/or management for nine years, while the duo recorded for Big Machine], we were helping steer that ship, and I bet I went to a thousand marketing meetings in his building. So I got such a close front-row seat. I believe the reason he was offered many times to go take the keys to the big building — you know, “Which major one would you like?” — because of his skill set and resume. But I think in his fabric, he enjoys being the chip-on-his-shoulder entrepreneur, because he gets up quicker out of bed for that, you know. And so there was lots to be learned from Scott in the early days. The only difference was, he didn’t have a publishing company, originally — but if you look now, they have one of the most competitive publishing companies in town. He just did it a little bit in reverse, but kind of got to that destination all the same. And yeah, he’s definitely a pissed-off startup.

Let’s talk for a minute just about the origins of the Big Loud name, which actually go back to the early 2000s. Before there was this multi-faceted company, there was Big Loud Shirt Publishing. So… who had the loud shirt?

Wiseman: As a songwriter, you have to name these publishing companies. I finally started my own independent company, and my wife just said, “Well, Big Loud Shirt. Everybody knows that’s you,” because I’m not afraid to wear a Hawaiian shirt. Somebody told me once, “I bet your closet looks like Walt Disney threw up in it.”

Moi: He’s under-indexing today, by the way. His collection is diabolical.

Wiseman: I’ve got one over here I’ll put on in a second. Sorry, I was working out in the yard. When we came up with that, we were still so broke, my wife — who had worked in marketing and advertising — did that logo, as well as doing the first FGL logo that they used for probably three years. Because that’s how much of a startup we were. … I was so happy the day that Blake Shelton showed up at one of our No. 1 parties and said, “Man, when I’m in a pitch meeting, I look over at this stack and I want to see that CD with that big red shirt on it. I know that’s where the good songs are.” Me and Seth were kind of pumping each other, like, “There we go, we got a little brand recognition!” Then, when it was time for a label, the name was already known in town, and everything just morphed down to Big Loud.

England: In my naïve country wisdom, as I later made lots of friends in New York and L.A., especially in the hip-hop space, I’d walk into studios and they’d say, “Oh, Big Loud. That’s the coolest name I’ve ever heard.” And I’m like, what do you mean? They said, “Isn’t that named after weed?” [“Loud” happens to be slang for a type of cannabis.] And I was like, “No, no, it’s named after Craig.” But the whole time they thought we were just that culturally relevant. So I said, “Hey, I’ll take it.”

So Big Loud — or Big Loud Shirt — was not chosen because you were thinking of how good it’d look in headlines.

Wiseman: Oh God, no. One of my publishing companies was called Mrs. Lumpkin’s Poodle. I came up with that just because I thought it’d be funny to have Connie Bradley say that every year at the ASCAP Awards.

Even with the label being as huge as it is, there’s something about the song publishing part of it all that feels especially personal for you. What is the mentality at the core of it?

Wiseman: Really, it started off with me and Seth. I fired all the grownups, and Seth was an intern pulling weeds. It was a publishing company and we had a couple of really great songwriters, and Seth took over one and I took over another one, and we were getting all the big cuts, with people like Jason Aldean. But basically a publishing company is all about quality of songs and loving on people. Because it’s such an intimate relationship. As a publisher, you’re the manager, too — you’re the everything. I can’t think of how many kids whose first suits I bought for them through the years, including maybe even Seth. You’re in the trenches with ’em. And invariably that ethos followed us into being a label. And that’s kind of our secret sauce. It’s a publishing approach to being a label.

All these labels that you hear about — the Sonys and the Warner Brothers and Universals — they have publishing companies too. But you’d be surprised how not connected they are to their publishing companies. Whereas, like right now, we’re trying to move to a building where we can get everybody back under one roof. We got so big we had to scatter out. But as a record label with a publishing philosophy, if we get an act, the main thing isn’t we wanna put out a record on ’em. We want to get ’em writing and get ’em in development. Write better shit than anybody, always, at all times.

England: I think all of us, if we carried business cards, the first title listed would be “publisher.”

What is the division of labor? Is it pretty distinct between the three of you or do you all have hands in everything?

Moi: For me, early on, when I first came to Nashville, I think I met a 23-year-old Seth, and I was probably 33 at the time. I realized immediately that obviously we had a good partner dynamic going. My failures in the past were when I’d partner with people who occupied the same corner of the room as me. I loved that the key indicator was that we were all gonna occupy different corners of the room and depend on each other and not try and be each other. It was clear even when Seth was 23 that he had a skillset that I did not possess and that I needed, and I had the same for him, and Craig had a skillset I did not possess that I needed. I watch partnerships where the streams cross and somebody tries to be somebody else, and that’s when they start to fall apart. We’ve always had just a real natural, organic respect for each other’s space and hold each other’s skill set in high value and lean on them and empower them equally.

Wiseman: The main thing I did as a publisher was, I was just the guy who was still showing up to write songs every day. These young kids would show up and they were like, “You’re rich. You don’t have to come in here every day.” It’s like, to be good at this shit, you just gotta do it every day. And it turns out that was the biggest contribution I could make was just to be the songwriter guy. But yeah, obviously, I had started off as a publishing company that I was running to where my blood pressure got to 5,000, and Seth came along during a horrible, horrible time, when I was firing all the adults, and even at that point I was kind of like, “Seth might be my guy to run this stuff and to be that connector.” And we no sooner got our legs under us than we’re getting all these cuts. We got like nine No. 1s in a year and God knows how many cuts from all these major artists.

And we’re going, “We still have all these songs left over. Why don’t we go find a band? Let’s go get a van and a trailer and get ’em on the road and just get a fan base.” Right about that time is when Joey came along, and Joey was like, “Well, man, we’ve been up in Vancouver birthing these rock bands. We could totally do this shit.” And then Seth immediately connected the dots and figured out how to get Joey on the team. There was an act that had lost their producer, which meant all of our songs were gonna go away. Seth figured out a way to get in there, like, “Let’s insert Joey to cut that. It’ll save our songs on the project.” So Seth immediately showed that thing of being connected on business stuff, calling Joe Galante and goingforward with a rock ‘n’ roll producer from frigging Canada who’s gonna cut this record. And Seth figured out how to smooth all that crap out. And we kept all of our songs on there, and Joey cut “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” on Jake Owen, which ended up being like the song of the year. And we were off to the races. [That track was ASCAP’s song of the year for 2012 and was ultimately cited by Country Aircheck as the most-played country song of the 2010s.]

England: Before us, Joey had attempted joint-venture record labels, but I think he would now say he realized he was missing a toolbox of songs and songwriters that expedited and helped his process and even hopefully made the music a lot better. When he came in, we realized, “Damn, that’s the guy we’ve been waiting on.” And initially we were trying to lure Joey to a publishing deal, whicih he had never signed — correct, Joey? — to that point.

Moi: Right. I was terrified.

England: Joey had trust issues through the roof, and so I was for a couple years working through those. I was at South by Southwest, still chasing him down, trying to get him to be our publishing client. It was down to three publishers. Ron Perry [then president of Songs Music Publishing, before joining Columbia] was there, and Rich Christina [then senior VP of Sony/ATV Publishing, now Warner Chappell] — and then little young me, who had Craig Wiseman’s personal checkbook. Naturally I got to go third, but I got to overhear the other guys and how much money they were approved for. I had never heard of that much! I thought, “Man, I’m sunk.” … I reminded him I didn’t get a turn, and we walk up to the back of the Four Seasons, and and I’m realizing, I gotta shoot a big shot here. And I said, “Listen, I can’t compete with that money, so we’ll do a publishing deal that’s not about the money necessarily, but in exchange, I want to start a record label with you.” No sooner did I finish that statement than he leapt up out of his chair and put his hand out: “Shake on it.” We represented something who believed in him more than just advancing a mountain of royalties.

Trying to win Joey over caused me to have to think differently. Then we started dreaming it out and writing it out. He would be the one in the studio and the time with them on their couch; I’d handle a lot of business stuff and connecting. And that goes to not just the music. There’s been times when, if my role is to hold an artist accountable or challenge them on something, maybe I’m texting Craig on the side, alerting him: “Hey, I had to kind of square off with somebody today. If you catch him, give him a hug in the hallway” — because he gives the best hugs in the building. It’s the realization of the partners that we’ve gotta balance each other, even in how we communicate to the clients. We’ve had better moments than others. Nobody’s perfect, but truthfully, that’s what’s kept us together. Because you are really not going to find this, at least from my experience, anywhere else.

After you expanded from being a publishing and management company to having Big Loud Records in 2015, your first country airplay No. 1 was with Chris Lane’s “Fix” in August 2016. Did you feel like you’d started to really make it, as a label, then, even though Morgan was kind of still a year from bubbling up?

Moi: When we had that first No. 1, we already had made the jump to get a promo team, but that put us into: “Let’s get an SVP of marketing.” It was all kind of guerrilla warfare. Everyone was a Swiss Army knife. We were outsourcing some things. But as soon as that landed on that one, I was confident that we were gonna be able to repeat it.

Wiseman: We knew we could go three to four years without anything really popping, and we were willing to go the distance. In 2018, we started to panic less. Here come all these investment people wanting to own half of it going in, and it was all that shit that I tried to avoid as a publishing company. It was like, “We can’t do that.” So I put some of [his own] money in the checking account, as we all did. Nobody was getting a paycheck, and we decided to (further) commit. We started off in 2015 as nothing but subtraction, and by 2018, it’s like, “Hey man, there’s starting to be some addition over here. Proof of concept is starting to happen.” Joey said, “We’re really doing this,” and we had that (slogan) put onto a T-shirt.

Moi: I think we had probably one signing [after Lane] that didn’t land for us, and then out of nowhere, Morgan Wallen walks in our door and plays songs for Seth and I in my studio and our jaws hit the floor. We’re like, is this happening in real time right now? We had literally talked about the style of voice we want and type of artists we want, and he just miraculously roamed in off the street, and it was like, holy crap, he’s got everything.

What were the earliest days with Morgan like?

England: We took a development approach with Morgan, even. We knew we wanted to work with him, trying to work through some paperwork, but told him to go ahead and come in and write some songs. Craig, I think, was his first write in the building, with Jamie Moore, correct?

Wiseman: Yeah. So he was sleeping on a buddy’s couch and borrowed a truck to come to the writing session.I would write with all of our young artists, because our most notable writers would be like, “No, I’m writing with other hit songwriters, to make money!” So I would take the bullet and be like, “I’m gonna go write with this young kid.” We wrote “Chasin’ You.” That second verse is something I wrote that actually breaks that fourth wall: “I’m in Nashville and now I’m on the radio and I haven’t given up. I’m still chasing you on the radio.” I put that in there as I was sitting there thinking, “Holy shit, this kid’s gonna be a star.”

At that point, we had done Florida Georgia Line [for publishing and management]; we had found them, broken them. “Cruise” happened in 2011, and Joey did FGL, really showing off his production chops with frigging amazing, jaw-dropping shit. That first FGL album still is state-of-the-art. Then they parted ways from us and that was very, very hard for us — and then they quickly parted ways with each other. That was tough, man. So right in the middle of all these other things that were cool for us was a very big “Oh shit.” That in itself was also like, well, welcome to being a record label, man. Like, damn, you gotta take a punch in the gut like that and keep rolling. So that added a lot of gravitas, right in the middle of good things going on.

So you’d had some experience with having a tiger by the tail, but also losing the tiger. So when it came around again on that kind of level for you, it must have been satisfying to know that, first, Morgan’s one guy, so he can’t break up the act.

Wiseman: Oh, Morgan’s been a piece of cake, man. Walk in the park.

Aside from how translatable his charisma has proven to millions of fans, what sets Morgan apart from even other good experiences you’ve had?

Moi: One of Morgan’s best skills, aside from being an entertainer, is he has an amazing ability to nurture and empower the songwriting community around him. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed anyone any better at that than him. There’s a lot of great collaborators that he’s been able to inspire and empower, and he’s brought a lot of really young gunslingers with him that have really helped him with that. To me that (songwriting) is the nucleus, and we’re just trying to be as close to the nucleus as we can, and push it in the right direction and use it for our advantage.

England: Another superpower Morgan has is, he’s such a self-starter. We don’t have to call him to say, “Hey, are you ready to make some music?” Right now we’re two or three weeks done with his tour, and our text thread this morning was Morgan excited to get going; he’s written eight or 10 things.

Moi: I got a terrifying text message from him: “Man, I think I’m ready to start cutting more songs.” It has been like four months [since “I’m the Problem” came out].

And who is it among you that’s saying a 37-song album sounds like a good idea?

England: You know why this one was 37? Because he recorded 60. And that’s with Joey; I can’t believe Joey’s not looking 10 years older, just because of the hours. He recorded 60 because he wrote 150, 200.

Moi: We cut 60 and had 50 where we actually had a mix on it. Usually I know if it’s not gonna make the record because he’ll sound less inspired when he is singing it, and I’m going, “You don’t want to sing this every night, do you?” He is like, “Nah, I don’t want that,” then we’ll move on from the song. But we cut 60 and got through 50 where he felt inspired to sing them and I was somewhere along the way in a mix on it. We had a whiteboard and were mercilessly hacking songs off to make sure the 37 were the cream of the crop.

England: We have a couple wrestling matches over the last couple titles.

Moi: And he’ll usually give us one. He’s like, “Okay, let’s do that one.” … That’s a very rare quality to see in a primary artist like that, that he can self-A&R with other people and still really drive the standard on his own music. … I’ve been doing this 25 years now, and that’s a really rare quality that I might have seen maybe two, three times.

England: His 30-plus song efforts started with “Dangerous,” just because he was hyper-creating. We never set out to do a big volume as a strategy. It only came by him sitting in the boardroom with Joey and I and going, “Man, I’m up to 18 songs, what am I gonna do?” I recall a Drake album that had like 30 at the time because he just had a burst of creativity. I was like, “Well, man, just make the music, make it honestly, and we’ll figure this out.” But it wasn’t based off some trite strategy.

I’m proud that he has scaled where he has — he deserves it. To sit front row and watch the human being deal with that … we all know he had some speed bumps and some moments of maturity and growth of the last few years. But this year it is been his best year we’ve ever seen him. It’s almost like it’s never over in terms of battling with that duality. But man, I just love being around him. He’s a great dad. He has a fitness club he puts together with some songwriter buddies. He’s just really a good friend to people. And, actually, if anything, what he struggles with is just not being that public face. If he ever feels superficial, he just won’t do it. He just is really a very, very normal guy —  which is funny, to know him behind the scenes as a human, and then to see him go on stage and become this larger-than-life character. He is great at that, but he’s only that for a few nights a year.

Wiseman: Really, there’s no ego there. But try to tell people that there’s no diva in Morgan Wallen at all…

You have Stephen Wilson Jr. up for the CMAs for best new artist and really breaking now, having a career as a developing star after years when he “only” thought of himself as a songwriter, and you probably did too. Then there are people on your roster like Hardy and Ernest who have had almost dual existences as artists and writers for other people, without always giving up one for the other.

Moi: We’ve had multiple artists that were like, “I’m a songwriter, I’m a songwriter, I’m a songwriter,” and then eventually, six, eight, 10 years into it, they start quietly collecting songs and say, “Well, if I was an artist, I would probably cut this”… A lot of times they need those years to go sing hundreds and hundreds of demos and find their voice and find the character, find out who they’re gonna be, and that was the case with Stephen.

Back when I first started coming to Nashville, we were all obsessed with his voice back then, when he was just a songwriter figuring stuff out. So when our new A&R guy, Nate Yetton, came on and revealed that Stephen had gone and made a 22-song record, we were just like, “Wait, what? He’s an artist now? This is incredible.” So to see the record take off and do what it’s doing is pretty magical. He is one of the sweetest guys we’ve ever met; he’s insanely humble. Anytime you start talking to him about his career, he kind of wilts into a little shell and gets so uncomfortable when you talk about how awesome he’s doing, and that makes it even more fun. You’re seeing an insanely organic fan base kind of come in and stay. I think he’s got Dave Matthews potential — he can go on and just release music and be huge forever.

England: We have signed tons of people that were once songwriters only, in their mind, and slowly became artists. And I think if there’s anybody out there who would be the ones to do that a lot, it would be us three, because we’re song guys. You can have the perfectly shaped people, most beautiful people, but if they don’t have a hit record that’s got some personality, and you know, that transcending feeling, it really doesn’t matter. We’ve all seen so many cases where the unlikely artist has that transcendent piece of music, and, at least for my money, that’s the one I most often bet on to work itself out. Sometimes it takes a little longer for those types, but that’s kind of cool, you know?

Hardy and Ernest are the ultimate examples of what Wilson also represents, as writers who took their time in establishing themselves on the front line.

Moi: Hardy and Ernest are two other amazing cases of kids that weren’t artists that were hyper creators that came in and found the brotherhood. Morgan’s taken ’em all on tour. Hardy’s taken Ern on tour. They all write each other’s records. It’s just another testament to nurturing that creative environment and letting those guys go in there and cook. 

England: We have a staff lunch here in the record label building, and sure enough, our songwriters in sweatpants start coming through and filling up their plates, and they’re on staff too. More times than not, the supernatural happens because of it. They end up becoming often best friends. You know, Morgan and Ernest met in the hallway of Big Loud, and they sat down for an hour and realized they played against each other in high school in two back-to-back state championship games. Now they’re creatively inseparable, and that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t create that environment much like Motown, A&M and others.

Hardy and Ernest have their own imprints through Big Loud where they sign people, and now, though she didn’t rise up with you, obviously, Miranda Lambert has joined them in that.

England: Miranda strongly deserves to be in that Big Loud short list of duality creators. She has become our partner in Big Loud Texas and has truly become our good friend. And Jon Randall, her partner in that, is an icon, a brother and an equal new friend like we are to Miranda. … People ask what she’s like, and I’m like, she’s like my favorite old high school buddy that I hang out with. She’s doing a lot of cool things with Big Loud Texas. And Ella Langley just dropped a hit record and a half called “Choosing Texas,” with Miranda as her co-writer and producer. A lot of people know how big a career she’s had, but her God-given talent in the writing room and production, not to mention her ability to mentor people with her experiences and make ’em feel like she’s actually on their side and not a suit, is second to none. There’s no one more Big Loud than her. 

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Variety spoke with some of these leading lights of Big Loud’s roster about their experience with the label and its heads. Here’s some of what they had to say:

Hardy: “Big Loud is the only label in town that I wanted to do a deal with. From the very beginning, Big Loud has been about the ‘song,’ and as a songwriter, I agree with that mentality to my core. Big Loud has given me full creative freedom all seven years of my artist career, and I’m so thankful for that. They truly let the artist be the artist… I’m incredibly thankful for all of the hard work this label has put into the Hardy brand and I truly stand on the shoulders of all the great people that work at this label.”

Ernest: “I wouldn’t be where I am today without the support and master minds of Seth and Craig. Joey, too. Countless hours spent soaking in everything I could during the early days at Big Loud. Being a fly on the wall and seeing the way they pieced this whole thing together and navigated through all kinds of life at the same time. 

“Craig is who I wanna be when I grow up.  Someone who knows that none of this happens without songs first… and with Seth being the maverick he is, he has allowed me to grow in ways I never knew possible. We now have launched my record label, DeVille Records, together as well as my publishing company, ERN’s Cadillac Music. He is a great friend and mentor to me and I cherish our relationship. At the end of the day, I couldn’t be around a better group of leaders to soak in as much as I can. Lucky me.”

Miranda Lambert: “It’s a team full of dreamers and doers. I’ve known Craig for a while now as we’ve written a few songs together over the years, and I have always admired his charisma and love for music. Seth is very passionate and really cares about the art. Joey has become a fast friend. He’s incredibly smart, and it’s fun to pick his brain about the creative side.

“When the opportunity for Big Loud Texas came about, I was interested and excited because it was an opportunity to work and dream alongside my longtime best friend Jon Randall and our pal Brendon Anthony. We get the benefit of having our family at Big Loud with us every step of the way. I work with the team as both an artist and as a label partner at Big Loud Texas… They dream big. Texas-sized, as a matter of fact.”

Stephen Wilson Jr.: “I’m not like some obvious genre artist, and they really tend to adopt those kind of genre rejects of Nashville and really kind of nurture them. They know how to kind of cross all the genres. I kind of call what I do Death Cab for Country, jokingly. But a big reason why I went with Big Loud was because they are a country label too, and I really wanted to start with country first, because I knew this was going to be the hardest mountain for me to climb.

“I love that they’re willing to shake things up and kind of move the goalposts around the field and stretch the membrane of what is possible in this genre. I like being another perhaps experiment of theirs, to see if we can do this, and I don’t think we could have a better army of people trying to accomplish what we’re actually trying to accomplish.”

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Back to the three principals…

Who’s an example of someone you’ve recently reached out to, beyond these marquee names?

Moi: A fresh name to add, that just came out of nowhere to us, is Brad Schultz from Cage the Elephant — he fits the exact description Seth just gave of Miranda, Hardy and Ernest as well. You can’t get him out of a recording studio. He knows every single new band out there; he’s already working with them before he even tells you he’s working with them. He is in there making music, doesn’t ask for any money, doesn’t take points in anything. He’s just a chronic entrepreneur and artist developer, and on the rock side out here in Santa Monica, we’ve done a joint venture with him. When you see it, you’re like, wow, he’s already doing 90% of the hard work already for free, and he doesn’t even know about the infrastructure that we can put around him. And that’s been something that, again, just like Texas and the Hardy and Ern projects, is really starting to yield fruit for us.

What led to wanting to branch off Big Loud Rock?

Moi: Seth and I both felt over time that we were kind of hitting a wall in the artist development space and had an opportunity at the rock label to kind of redefine what a development label looks like and what the development mechanisms are. So we came out here and have kind of rebuilt a more modern-looking record company designed specifically for rock, that needs to have a heavy emphasis on modern audience impressions, not based off of traditional audience impressions, which are radio and music videos, but really heavy-handed in the online space and content space and paid media space.

Wiseman: I went out to Santa Monica for several days and checked it out and it was breathtaking. The Santa Monica stuff feels like us in 2015. Santa Monica is gonna end up being R&D even for stuff we do back here in Nashville, I think. Let’s not forget, Joey’s one of the best rock producers of all time. We didn’t necessarily see this a few years ago, but boy, it’s perfect timing that we’re gonna get back to this and let him rip and run that.

I have to say, when I was a kid, I was a bar drummer, and I loved rock ‘n’ roll. And things changed and if fell out of favor. But if Big Loud could help get rock ‘n’ roll back to where it needs to be, where it’s placed on the center of the mantle, I’d have checked every box I’ve ever wanted to.

Moi: That’s the final boss. “Make rock cool again” is conquering the final boss in the video game.

You’ve partnered with Republic and Universal on things but you emphasize your independence. Is that the best of both worlds for you?

England: Best of both worlds — I think that’s exactly how we seee it. From our infancy, up until about four or five years ago, we were with Stem; they were like a white-label service where we self-distributed with some of their assistance, but we didn’t have many of the attributes and bells and whistles you can access in a major system.

By the way, just from an entrepreneurial side of things, shout-out to Clive Calder and Jive Records and Zomba. I, as a nerdy student of the game, found there was something to be learned about his strategy as an entrepreneur when it comes to his distribution deals and global distribution deals. I’ve never had a chance to ask him these questions, but from when you read the story, it was an all-for-one goal.

And yes, we did partner on a couple things early with Republic — Morgan, Lily Rose,Dylan Gossett— but all of that was kind of “let’s date before we marry,” of sorts. But when we do go all-in, we all win the same things. We all benefit from this all-in mentality. So yes, we have the best. We are still our own budgets. We just distribute to those pipes and request help when needed. And they’ve been great partners. I’ve known the Lipmans the longest; on Florida Georgia Line, they worked their pop crossover records. So, just as a manager, I’d had a lot of experience and time spent in that building. For the reason you stated, that’s why it’s a good situation for us at the moment.

How willing would you be willing to let go of the reins a little, if you had to, to expand even bigger?

Wiseman: The last several years, various people have tried to buy us, invest us with us — I mean, the masters of the universe in New York and music people in L.A., and then a lot of these venture capital people, just the frigging prince-of-darkness dudes. All these people would get around us and talk to us before we’d eventually show ’em the door. But they were all going, “Man, what’s really wild about you guys is you guys actually like each other.” I’m proud of that, though it makes me shake my head about whatever other configurations out there that have left them thinking people don’t.

This is the 10-year anniversary for the label, but Seth and I have been working with Joey going back to 2011, so this (three-way partnership) has worked for 15 years. We’ve drank a lot of Fireball shots together. We’ve made a lot of money, too — and a lot of times, that will reveal fractions. But we’re still good and we’re still fired up about shit, and we still like each other. It turns out people are watching us, and I’m happy they are, and I hope they see that part of it too.

England: I know each of us individually have had various opportunities thrown at us. People assume this might be be something easy to leave and we’re using this for the next one. But I think at least for me, the realization is, no, this is the journey. We get to build a brand together. We get to remain that pissed-off startup. Not to sound cheesy, but I mean it: Here’s to another 10, and let’s walk in and see where it goes.

Moi: This is it for me. This is all I’m doing.