Wax Trax’s first employee – where are they now?
Photos by Duane Davis
Steve Knutson, founder and owner of Audika Records and custodian of Arthur Russell’s estate, wasn’t always a big record label hotshot. If you roll back time, past his Head of Sales position at Tommy Boy Records, past his management position at Rough Trade, and even past his cover band days, you’ll find his humble beginnings at Wax Trax.
Steve graced us with a retrospective interview about Wax Trax’s start, the olden days of music, and how an “obnoxious kid” went from record store clerk to label owner.
Steve first became acquainted with Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher, the original Wax Trax founders, when he crumpled their letter.
“I was a really precocious young person and started getting really into music and collecting records. When I was 14, I used to advertise in zines for record collectors to sell or trade records,” said Steve. “I got a letter from [Jim Nash] wanting to bid on this particular record, and it was a real lowball bid and I threw the letter away. But because of that, I got a flier in the mail announcing the opening of Wax Trax.”
The 1975 flier promised records from artists such as David Bowie, Roxy Music, Sparks, New York Dolls, and Velvet Underground. “It listed basically everything that I was alive for in those days, and at the time it was still kind of underground music, and not popular in Denver at all.”
“I went to the opening day of Wax Trax on Ogden Street when I was 15 years old and it totally changed my life,” he said. “I ended up being this obnoxious kid that hung out at the store all the time, and became friends with people that I never imagined I would be friends with.”
Hanging around the store paid off. When Wax Trax moved to its current location on 13th and Washington, Jim and Dannie offered him a job. At the time, he had been working at Howard Johnson’s, a Denver restaurant. “I quit to work at Wax Trax for a dollar less because I had to be there,” said Steve. “I had to be with those people, and I had to be around the records, and all that culture.”
Jim and Dannie sold the store to Duane Davis and Dave Stidman in 1978. Before leaving, they made it clear that Steve Knutson was part of the Wax Trax package.
Like most past and present Wax Traxers, Steve played music. As a young teen, he played in a cover band called The Front. “The other people in the band were into whatever was popular at that time, like ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I hated all that fucking shit,” he said. “So we were a cover band.”
This led to his band Young Weasels, which rehearsed in the Wax Trax basement for years. They grew a sizable following, and became known as one of Denver’s most successful new-wave bands.
“[Young Weasels] existed for, I don’t know, four years, and played around town a lot and New York,” said Steve. “But nothing happened. We weren’t that great.”
Storing their equipment and having a rehearsal space was thanks to Duane and Dave, who Steve described as not only supportive of him, but the Denver music scene as a whole.
“The amazing thing about Dave and Duane is their background as social workers,” said Steve. “I kind of never considered it at the time, but they were still being social workers with all these young kids that were just misfits.”
He recounted passerby’s screaming slurs at him for wearing a Sex Pistols t-shirt, and the occasional brick through the window if people didn’t agree with its promo posters.
“It was a very us against them environment,” said Steve.
This environment fostered connections far outside of the Denver area. Steve, along with Duane and Dave and other Wax Traxers, would find music from afar, and write letters to figure out how to get the records.
A fervent search for a specific record, Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force, led him to writing a letter to the (now) famed hip-hop label Tommy Boy. After realizing existing connections in the Tommy Boy label, Steve reached out and landed a job in their mailroom.
“I hardly made any money the first few years, and it was hard, but I wanted to stick it out,” said Steve.
Through corporate osmosis, Steve rose the Tommy Boy ranks and became the Head of Sales and Distributions. For 18 years, he saw and contributed to the rise of hip-hop. During that time, Tommy Boy helped launch the music careers of Queen Latifah, Digital Underground, De La Soul, Coolio, and more.
When he left Tommy Boy, Steve worked as the General Manager of Rough Trade North America for five years. Sometime in-between, he considered starting an independent label of his own. This era coincided with the rise of file sharing, so investors shied away. But this search led him to something greater: Arthur Russell.
“I found out about this musician, Arthur Russell, who was this crazed hippie, difficult to work with genius,” he shared. “There were a couple of records that were released by Arthur that I liked a lot, but I didn’t know who Arthur Russell was, because they were recorded under pseudonyms.”
Two of these songs were “Go Bang” by Dinosaur L, and “Is It All Over My Face” by Loose Joints.
“When he died tragically from AIDS in 1992, it was the first time I really learned anything about him and his enormous archive,” he said. “I was really keen to release Arthur’s music, or at least find out about it.”
Steve used his connections to get the number of Arthur’s surviving partner, Tom Lee. They set up a meeting where Steve made the case for putting out Arthur’s work.
“Tom wanted to work with me because I was interested in Arthur’s unreleased music. I wasn’t beholden to Arthur’s past in the sense of what had already come out,” he went on. “I didn’t know any of the musicians or the people in his life, so I didn’t have any kind of baggage.”
When Tom agreed, Steve started going through hundreds of hours of Arthur Russell recordings and putting records together. He is still releasing those collections on his record label, Audika Records. In fact, he’s in the process of finishing a new record at the time of publishing.
“It’s an album of live material, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. It’s very quiet, and World Of Echo era material. I’m hoping to get it out in September or October, but I’m really happy with it,” said Steve.
When asked if we would hear it around Wax Trax once released, Steve quickly responded, “God, I hope so.”
0 comments