Portsmouth’s Geoff Palmer and Portland’s Kurt Baker launch their own label with new CDs

For much of the 2000s, The Guts were the most prevalent pop-punk band on the Seacoast, while The Leftovers held the same distinction in the Portland area. The two bands often found themselves sharing bills and working with the same record labels, and their members developed a strong rapport on and off the stage.

Both bands have broken up, but their front men—Geoff Palmer (a.k.a. Geoff Useless) of The Guts and Kurt Baker of The Leftovers—have remained ubiquitously active in their respective music scenes. Palmer now helms The Connection, a retro rock band based in Portsmouth, and Baker leads his own Portland-based group Kurt Baker Music, which includes Palmer on guitar. Both are members of brand new punk band Wimpy & The Medallions, led by vocalist Wimpy Rutherford, former drummer for The Queers.

With so many overlapping projects, it made sense for Palmer and Baker to merge their resources. The idea came up about a year ago while they were hanging out at Palmer’s home. Baker was griping about a deal gone sour with his former label, Oglio Records.

“I think I was venting all my frustrations to Geoff while we were just having beers and stuff at his place, and we just started talking about every experience we’ve had with record labels,” he said.

Palmer, too, had been in frustrating situations with various labels. He’s learned that turning over the rights to your music in exchange for the promise of basic services like promotion and distribution is not always advantageous.

“Then they own the rights to our albums for five or six years, and they’re not really doing anything more that what we’re able to do ourselves,” he said.

It was Palmer’s girlfriend who made the obvious suggestion: why don’t they start their own independent label? An avid record collector, Palmer came up with the name Collector’s Club Records.

The label released its first album in late July, a three-song EP by The Connection called “Comes and Goes.” They followed late last month with the release of Wimpy & The Medallion’s debut EP, “Still Headed Nowhere.” On Oct. 30, Collector’s Club will unveil a full-length album from Baker called “Brand New Beat.” All three albums are available digitally, and some will also be released on vinyl or CD.

“We’re really new to this, so it’s more about getting some understanding of the business side of things and starting small,” Baker said. “Just putting out digital releases and short-run CDs seems like the best way to ease ourselves into the whole thing.”

Eventually, Collector’s Club may branch out and release albums by other artists. For now, though, Palmer and Baker are focusing on their own projects. The label provides a sort of branding for their vintage rock ’n’ roll sound. Each band harkens back to a simpler time in rock history, with fun, catchy music that channels pop radio of the early 1960s.

“It’s really not an offensive kind of music,” Baker said. “We try to make music that makes people feel good and have a great night at a concert. That’s what it’s really all about. And for us, it’s playing that old retro kind of style, rock ’n’ roll and pop music.”

But Palmer and Baker have not abandoned their punk roots. They both grew up listening to The Queers, the local pop-punk legends who helped pioneer the genre in the 1980s. Palmer joined The Queers on bass in the late ’90s and has continued playing occasionally with founding member Wimpy Rutherford.

It was while driving home from a tour of the Midwest that Palmer and Baker came up with the idea of launching a garage rock side project with Rutherford. They decided to cut a record the way The Queers used to do it, writing all the songs in one booze-fueled night and tracking them the very next day.

“We went over to Wimpy’s house right by the beach and had a barbecue and just partied a bunch, and we wrote all the songs that are on the EP, minus one, which is a cover (Tommy James’ “Draggin’ the Line”). The next day we tracked them all, and a couple of them were done in one take,” Baker said. “We really wanted to capture that old rock ’n’ roll, unabashed spirit, just hit record and play, and it came out exactly how we envisioned it.”

The Wimpy disc is a bit grittier than the other Collector releases so far, featuring Wimpy’s snarling vocals and defiant lyrics. “I don’t care that I’m still headed nowhere,” he growls in the chorus of the title track, and the line feels sincere.

They’re now trying to build hype for their new albums, both at home and abroad. The Connection just returned from a tour of Europe, and the two have both developed followings in countries like Spain and Japan.

“To get our music out to as many people as possible is obviously our goal,” Baker said. “We are starting to build up a name, and it all makes so much sense for us to have it under the Collector’s Club name, just because you can associate all the groups that we play in together.”

In many respects, it’s an ideal time to have an independent label. It has never been easier for bands to promote and distribute music affordably online.

“The idea of getting signed to a major isn’t as realistic or appealing or whatever, but a lot more people can still hear your music without being on a big label because of the Internet. It’s such a good way to share music and find out about music,” Palmer said.

Running a label and juggling several bands while also holding day jobs is a tall order, but for these guys, it’s a labor of love.

“We all just love to do it and really care about it,” Palmer said.