Merge relives 20 years of noise

In the music industry, 20 years is like an epoch. With trends entering and exiting America’s consciousness at the speed of the sounds leaving  its speakers, artists and institutions often get left behind.

But somehow, in the midst of a fickle industry and the ever-changing landscape of local and national scenes, Durham’s Merge Records has not just survived its 20th year,  it has done so at the peak of its powers.

And to document its ascent from local anonymity to national fame, Merge and Algonquin Books are releasing “Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records.”

To promote the book, Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan, co-founders of Merge and members of the band Superchunk, will be at Bull’s Head Bookshop to play a few songs and share some passages.

The book documents Merge from its infancy in 1989, when Ballance’s bedroom served as her office. The label began as a way to sell cassette tapes for Superchunk, the then up-and-coming punk band.

“I had no idea it would last more than three months,” Ballance said. “It was something that Mac and I started when we were still in college, and I expected it to be something we did for fun for a little while before we moved on to whatever one does when one graduates.”

With the addition of Polvo in the early ’90s, the fledgling label had aligned itself with two of the most progressive and influential bands in the emerging Chapel Hill scene.

“For a long time Merge was pretty much regarded as Superchunk’s label,” Ballance said.

“Once we had other bands on the label that got a significant amount of press and attention from people we felt like, ‘Yes, we have a real label here.’”

It soon became clear that the two had a knack for finding artists who would benefit and diversify their label.

“There’s no genre-specific thing that we go for. It’s just music that Mac and I like,” Ballance said. This instinctual process has helped Merge sign such successes as Neutral Milk Hotel and Arcade Fire.

A look inside the newly released book shows aged photographs of Ballance with crimped jet-black hair and a cigarette alongside McCaughan’s hand-drawn chord charts and letters.

The writing process allowed co-author John Cook to discover the complexities and history behind music and artists in the Triangle on regular visits to Chapel Hill.

While he had expected a group of tight-knit musicians, he also found that the area’s musical history included a few feuds. During the early ’90s, the local scene was poised to put the area’s music on the map.

When Ballance split with Raleigh-based rock musician Scott Williams and began dating McCaughan, Raleigh and Chapel Hill had a new rivalry and two new kings of the rock scene.

“The facts are true, but looking back people laugh about saying that Scott Williams was the king of the Raleigh scene and Mac became the king of the Chapel Hill scene,” Cook said.

He found that the story might be more folklore than fact. “It was surprising to me that there was this kind of antagonism and then after that surprise, I was sort of surprised that the antagonism wasn’t real.”

And in the face of a changing industry and the ever-shifting nature of its own musical community, the co-founders of Merge have managed to maintain their growth with a simple philosophy.

“It’s always been one step at a time,” Ballance said. “Ten years ago we never aimed to be where we are now.”

“I think that’s been key to our survival. We don’t push ourselves too hard and overspend in an effort to get there.”


Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.