High Dive Records’ Jeff McCoy has big plans for his little label

When Jeff McCoy founded High Dive Records in January 2013, he had only one band and one purpose: To release the ACBs’ full-length, Little Leaves, into the world.

Mission accomplished. McCoy, along with ACBs bassist Bryan McQuire, moved on to build High Dive’s empire. It was a gradual process, but now, as the label observes its second anniversary, McCoy can celebrate with a musical family that is nine-acts strong and growing.

In addition to the ACBs, High Dive’s lineup includes Ghosty, Rev Gusto, Shy Boys, Fourth of July, Empty Moon, Bummer, the Fog, and Organized Crimes — with the latter two bands signed last month. Despite his label’s humble beginnings, McCoy isn’t thinking small. We called him to get a feel for his ideas for the new year.

The Pitch: Tell me how High Dive got its start and what your vision is for the label.

McCoy: The beauty of being in charge is that you get to do what you want to do. And that was always my point with the label. I’ve been a music critic my whole life — and a music lover — and I want to be part of creating something special and getting it out there. Ultimately, any band we sign, or record we put out, is one that I personally love. I want it to be something I’m proud of, and I like to work with bands that need some help.

I want to be a part of shining a light here locally. My overall goal is to get some of these bands noticed and heard outside of the Kansas City and Lawrence area. I’m from Kansas City originally, and I’ve seen a lot of bands move away because they can’t make it here. If I can help these guys be somewhat successful and tour and not have to move to Chicago or the coast, that’s what I want to do. The city has made a lot of strides from a cultural standpoint in the last five years, but I still think we have a lot to do as far as giving our artists and musicians a leg up in order to make Kansas City their permanent home.

Two years ago, you started with one band, the ACBs. Now you’re up to nine bands, and you’re still growing.

We’re still in infancy mode as far as the label is concerned. I had always kind of wanted to have a record label, and the ACBs’ record [Little Leaves] was the first release we put out, in January 2013. When that happened, we started talking and getting together with other people we were friends with, and we slowly put a roster together. Knowing that it was a startup venture, we tried not to grow too fast, too quick. Slowly but surely, we’ve been adding people as I find them — or they find us, I guess.

I don’t do this full time and I try not to spread myself too thin, so I try to keep it to the point where we only have one release going at a time. But we’ve had enough success here that we’ve been able to add bands to the roster, and we actually have two new acts that we’ve signed that haven’t been announced yet. There’s some stuff on the horizon.

Being a small, independent label, I can imagine that you’ve faced a lot of challenges in the process of getting off the ground.

Yeah. I think this probably goes for any startup business, but the key is trying to figure out the right way to spend your money and being smart with expenses with stuff because, obviously, the record-selling climate is vastly different than it was five, 10 and 15 years ago, and the way people consume music is completely different. So the challenge still, for us, is to put out a product and get the word out in a cost-effective manner. You’re working on really tight margins when you’re trying to get a record out. In a perfect world, you’d throw money at promoters, but we don’t have that luxury.

The thing that’s been good about our label is that most of the bands on High Dive, the members have unique talents that they basically donate to the cause — graphic design or video or whatever — and from that standpoint, it’s something of a collective. That affords us the opportunity to save money on the production side. It allows us to spend more money on promotion and touring.

The bands that you’ve signed to High Dive splinter off into their own genres and subgenres, but when I listen to them — one act after the other — I get the sense that they share a certain vibe. Is there a particular “Kansas City sound” that you’re looking to cultivate on your label? How would you define it?

I think the goal in Kansas City would be to not have a sound. I don’t want High Dive to have a sound. I like the fact that we have some different-sounding bands, that we don’t have all pop bands or all punk bands. For me, it’s just like with my record collection at home. We want diversity. There’s a perfect song for the perfect moment. For us, when we first started, we did a lot of what I’d call indie-pop records — Ghosty or the ACBs — and then recently, things have been a lot more sludgy, like with the Fog or Bummer.

I don’t know that we have a definitive sound in this city. I think there are a lot of different folks making different music, and I think that’s important — that not every band playing around town has the same sound. … I have a real hard time pinpointing what our sound is with the label or what the city’s sound is. I think good songs ring out, and we try to find them.