Trekky grows without settling

It's 11:00 on a Saturday morning and Will Hackney, co-founder of Chapel Hill's Trekky Records is seated casually behind a card table as a few stragglers rummage through the remains of a yard sale that he has been overseeing for several hours. For the moment, I'm one of those latecomers, too attached to a summer morning of sleep to go out and search for the perfect bookshelf.

And although this has been going on since just after 7:00 a.m., there are still various household appliances, speakers, cassette tapes and the old white school bus that the label converted to run on biodiesel holding racks of clothes, most of which are priced at $1.

The merchandise is spread across the gravel driveway of the large home off of Highway 54 that currently serves as Trekky's home base. There is an office, recording studio, screen printing workshop and a sprawling backyard that has served as the setting for more than its fair share of press photos.

"There's a ton of different branches of the music industry. And generally we don't have the money to order stuff, and so every time something new comes up, we just learn how to do it," Hackney said.

"Ideally, I would love to have a label empire that really can do every part of the process. So we can really do it on our own terms."

These are ambitious words for someone who began the label with Martin Anderson when the two were still in middle school as a way to put out the records of their projects, as well as those of their friends.

"We started just making hand- made CD-Rs and stuff," Hackney said. "It was a really cheap operation, but we stuck with it through high school and all the good high-school bands that were there, we put out their records and then when we graduated high school, we just kind of kept on with the same people we had known."

All of the hard work has paid off as the label has transitioned from what Hackney called "sort of a joke," into a full-time job for both he and Anderson.

As the label moves forward, Hackney said he hopes to tighten the bonds of what he has always seen as an artist collective than a record label.

"We started this thing to be part of a musical movement. We aren't business people; none of us went to business school. The business part is the part that we sort of reluctantly do," Hackney said. But at the moment, business is good.

The label has a distribution deal through Redeye Distribution that makes its records available across the country.

And one of the label's artists, The Physics of Meaning, will release a record in the coming weeks that will receive national attention thanks to guest appearances from St. Vincent and John Vanderslice, as well as a PR push headed by Force Field PR, the firm responsible for propelling fellow Triangle residents The Bowerbirds into the spotlight.

All that from an artist they discovered in much the same way as every one else on the label.

"Daniel (Hart of Physics of Meaning) booked Martin and I's band when were like, 15, I think. We've known him since then."

Those friendships are what Hackney sees as the label's biggest asset.

"We always just wanted to have our jobs be something that would let us work with our best friends and people we know really well," Hackney said. "If there's a Trekky show we want it to feel more like old friends just hanging out."

That's certainly the case this morning, as members of Trekky's bands come out to drop off more merchandise and exchange high fives and hugs, augmenting the sale that, much like Trekky itself, started early and continues to grow.

Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu