Oregon Music News

Jared Mees is a busy man. He and his wife Brianne helm Tender Loving Empire, an imprint that functions as a music and arts retail store, a custom screen printing shop and a record label. On any given day Mees is a clerk, musician, label head and proprietor. But he still managed to sit down for an interview about Tender Loving Empire’s upcoming birthday celebration at the Wonder Ballroom this Saturday, June 5th. The show starts at 7pm and features Tender Loving Empire’s Jared Mees and The Grown Children, Y La Bamba, Typhoon, Finn Riggins and Boy Eats Drum Machine.

“It’s a celebration and birthday party for the store, it’s the third birthday party,” says Mees. Tender Loving Empire has been around for about five years now, “but the store is where we kind of came into the public eye a little more, and [we] want to continue to let people know that we’re here.”

They’re here in a big way. They moved into a new location May 6th, on S.W. 10th Ave. in Portland, just south of Powell’s Books. The new retail storefront is more than double the size of their old location near 18th and Lovejoy.

The shop screams DIY, Portland kitsch, with a cornucopia of handmade arts and crafts, local music and screen-printed t-shirts from more than 200 artists and contributors. In the new space, “there’s a lot more artists, more art, there’s a lot more of everything in the store.” With the extra room they’ve been able to expand their music section to fit more of their friends and display more of the label’s own music.

“The ability to have a gallery for people who walk in is really cool… We’ve never had that.” They now have a real office space upstairs from the main store space (when the bowling pin is up it means ‘don’t disturb’). In the old, smaller space, the Mees’ were “very much in the public eye. If someone came in they always had your attention right then.”

But Mees is an attentive businessman. He stops the interview at one point to answer the store’s phone. It was ringing for the second time, and Mees was nervous it was his wife Brianne. Instead, it was “some people from Brooklyn who left their copy of our compilation in the store.” They wanted to listen to it, and Mees made arrangements to get it to them.

Until now it was Mees and his wife running the shop, but they’ve finally been able to hire their first employee, giving the couple a little time and space. “Brianne and I did it for the first two years pretty much by ourselves,” with occasional interns so they could get out of the store one day a week.

“The label and the store and our screen printing, [it's] like the hydra with three heads and they all are able to go and munch something… that feeds the entire body” and keeps TLE afloat. Because of that flexibility, “we’re able to do everything in-house… we’re able to have more control over the quality… The only drawback is that it’s just so much work.”

“It’s definitely intense, especially the last three months have been just like working all the time, dawn-to-dusk… It starts to get a little daunting.”

But all that energy is paying off. In the last few years Mees has managed to expand his thriving empire while curating a label with some of Portland’s finest bands (TLE’s Typhoon and Hosannas were Willamette Week’s #2 and #4 Best New Bands of 2010), all while fronting his own acclaimed project, Jared Mees and The Grown Children.

Mees is passionate about spreading the TLE message, but for him it’s more about creating a community than promoting individual bands. All Mees wanted, “when we started TLE [was to] have a community that was vibrant, and that was made of people who wanted to promote other people’s stuff and not just their own.”

He recognizes the contradiction, because the idea of promotion is to, “tell people about what you’re doing, [so that] they’ll know what you’re doing and buy whatever you have.” Individually that’s important. But it’s just as important to, “tell people about what else is going on around you that makes what you’re doing actually viable.”

He firmly believes that “the only way that somebody’s going to look at your music is if you’re telling people to look at other people’s music… you can’t make a community by just talking about yourself.”

Which is why TLE’s birthday party is so important.

“We want people who are Typhoon fans to come and see Finn Riggins. Maybe they haven’t seen them and they’re playing right before [Typhoon]. Or we want people to see new stuff that they haven’t seen [or heard] before. And we want it to be a great time.”

Joining the label’s bands for the event are friends Yeah Great Fine and The Denoument, a band Mees hopes to sign “[if they] will finish their record.” They’re connected with bands in California and Maryland and are “trying to branch out but know we do the best at local, community-based work.”

The TLE birthday is an event Mees wants to be more than your average concert. “We’re gonna have Tarot Card readings, and cake, and [an] octopus shaped piñata. All sorts of other stuff that creates… adds to the whole experience, you know?” Something more than, “one little intimate experience with one band.”

“There’s so many shows, or just events that are just… I mean not bad, but you can’t make every show ‘pop’ and amazing and huge. This is one big blowout that you can have as a reference point in your summer.” It is also a chance to, “have everybody here, every band that we have, so they’re more familiar with everything, and we can actually sell some records [laughs].”

TLE is growing. “It may seem kind of rudimentary” that the future of TLE is stable right now. But, “it’s never like 100% stable, but it’s a lot more stable than it’s ever been.” They have foot traffic now, a bigger music section, and a roster that’s solidified. For them it’s the “small victory” of coming a long ways and not getting “swallowed up by the recession.” They want to be sustainable in the traditional sense: “Sustainability being that it pays for itself, [and is] a self-perpetuating business [where] we actually are making money, and actually can do good things for the community.”

“We’re really thankful that Portland has supported us so much. That’s what it comes down to. People have continued to buy stuff, all the way through the recession. And people have supported us through the record label or going to shows, through having their stuff custom screen printed with us. I feel like they have given to us as much as we have to them. I mean we’re not a non-profit, but it sure seemed like it for a while there.”

Tender Loving Empire’s all-ages birthday party is Friday, June 5th at the Wonder Ballroom, 7pm, doors 6pm, $7.