The Long Game
Om Records turns 30
Hiya! In case you’re new here, Mia’s Queue is a free newsletter for humans in the loop — the people who believe taste and community matter more than ever in a tech-driven world. This letter features a person, and a label, committed to art even when it doesn’t always make economic sense. They do it because music means something at a cellular level, to all of us.
Om Records is turning 30 this weekend, and that deserves a moment. The indie label that’s home to Kaskade, Marques Wyatt, Mark Farina, Groove Armada, People Under the Stairs, and many more has been quietly outlasting everything the industry has thrown at it.
Surviving as an indie for that long is no joke. The shifts, from Napster to streaming to AI, have been dizzying, and every wave has found a new way to squeeze value out of the people actually making music. Indie life is minnow life: as soon as an artist pops, someone with a bigger checkbook usually swoops in and takes them.
“I like to describe it as everybody’s in the back seat partying and no one’s driving, so the car is crashing into stuff,” Om owner/COO Gunnar Hissam says of the wild ride, which he’s been on since 1995. I met Gunnar in 2003 when I was the Senior Managing Editor at Rhapsody. He would pitch Om artists and albums to me for our electronic genre and stations, and I always enjoyed talking to him.
That history made me think it was time to see how he’s doing, brush up on my Om facts, and get some nuggets on the art of perseverance. We caught up over Zoom ahead of the label’s free outdoor concert at Embarcadero Plaza on May 9, followed by a night party at the Great Northern. There’s another party in L.A. on May 16 at Jungle Hollywood.
Thirty years of artists, DJs, interns, reps, friends, true believers and new fans, all in one place — Gunnar’s been waiting a long time to look out and soak in that crowd.
The lure of Mushroom Jazz
Gunnar grew up wanting to be a high school teacher, then discovered music and never looked back. He did radio in college for four years, moved to San Francisco chasing a career in it, and landed at an alternative rock station in San Jose — where his first assignment was driving a Suzuki Samurai to get toilet paper for Less Than Jake’s cannon at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Around the same time, he caught a Mushroom Jazz show in Tampa, spent the whole night talking to [Om execs] Kiri Eschelle and Patty Ryan instead of watching Mark Farina play, and left with a stack of stickers and vinyl feeling like the coolest person alive. He started repping Om for free, putting up displays across Tampa, Clearwater, and St. Pete. Eventually Om built a national rep program around what he and his friends had been doing. He was hired to run it.
The scrappy rep in the city
When Gunnar moved to San Francisco, he could barely make ends meet and slept on his cousin’s couch in the Mission. He could fit the entire Om catalog in the trunk of his Honda then — it’s 800 releases today — and drove around to record stores selling Blue Boy white labels one by one: 80 Mile Beach, Soulstice, Terra Deva, the original Naked Music.
He knew something special was happening when a record store guy took a 12-inch out of his hands, put it straight on the turntable, and bought all of them on the spot. Another time, Sam LaBelle, owner of Soundworks, screamed him out of the store for not having enough copies of a specific pressing of “Remember Me.”
On 01/01/01, Om officially hired him as publicist. They said, “The money’s terrible but the perks are nice.” That was good enough.
The Kaskade connection
Ryan Raddon — Kaskade — used to work at Om as founder Chris Smith’s production assistant before he became a famous DJ. Initially he released early material on an Om Records compilation called Environments under the artist name Skylight. (Gunnar wondered if it came from Tim’s Cascade Chips, because they ate a lot of those, but the internet says it comes from a nature book and Raddon’s feeling that his style conjured waterfalls.) The crew used to go get sandwiches every day from a place called Ted’s. The Om studio was on the rooftop of the old Post Tool building on the corner of Van Ness and Duboce, and on days when it wasn’t too windy they’d lunch up there.
The power of music
Being an independent label, Gunnar says, is like being the minor leagues. As soon as you catch fire, someone with deeper pockets comes and takes your players. It’s just what happens. What kept Om going was the decision, made over and over, to just keep doing it — to believe in the work despite tough economics. “We were always in this for the right reasons,” Gunnar says. “We were always in this for the music.”
The new album
The 30th anniversary record is designed the way Om used to design nights. First half: house music, main room, banging. Second half: the upstairs loft — downtempo, hip hop, drum and bass, the loungy Om Lounge stuff. They spent over a year putting it together.
The constant
“I’m a fan, man — that’s what’s kept me around,” Gunnar says. “I’m a vinyl junkie. Music helps me calm down. It’s a constant. When the world gets too much, I come back to music. It’s always been my meditation.”
The Om starter pack
Gunnar says these are good places to start exploring the Om catalog:
A Marques Wyatt compilation (if you can find one)
Mark Farina & Derrick Carter — Live at Om (recorded Valentine’s Day, San Francisco)
People Under the Stairs — O.S.T.
J. Boogie’s Dubtronic Science — debut album
Ming & FS’s Hell’s Kitchen (for drum and bass)
Om 100 (the label’s 100th release, featuring the full roster)
Om 25th Anniversary (pandemic album; rare, but findable — the second half is essentially a greatest hits)
Om 30th Anniversary (the new one)
If you’re in San Francisco, you can RSVP for Om’s parties here. I’ll see you there!
Thank you Mia! :)
OMG, I remember the first time I heard me some Mushroom Jazz!!