COLUMBIA — If the resurgence in popularity of the vinyl record took you by surprise, wait until you hear about the cassette revival.
There was a time in the 1980s when dubbed cassettes were the linchpin of DIY musicians with no label to help them and no money to record a full album. In fact, Metallica, one of the biggest bands on Earth, initially gained attention through a widely circulated cassette called “No Life 'Til Leather” that was essentially a dry run for its debut album, “Kill 'Em All.”
As the CD rose to prominence, the cassette eventually faded from view. But when the pandemic supply chain issues slowed down vinyl production, the cassette was waiting in the wings for a comeback. In the past few years, artists like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish have released cassette versions of their albums, and the French company RTM Industries has produced more than 2 million miles of tape in the last couple of years.
But in the indie community, cassettes never really went away. In fact, there’s a thriving cassette-only record label in Columbia called Caveman Tapes.
Keegan Johnson (left) and Jacob West run Caveman Tapes in Columbia, an outfit that produces cassette tapes for local music projects. Aaron Muhammad/Special to The Post and Courier
Run by local musicians Jacob West and Keegan Johnson, the label has done “runs” of cassettes for a variety of local and regional bands like Stagbriar, Dear Blanca, Curly Blue and West’s own musical project Twin Toasters. The musical styles tend to be guitar-heavy genres, but there’s still a great deal of variety from artist to artist. Over the last two years, Caveman Tapes has put out cassettes by nine different artists, with No. 10 on the way.
Not bad for a couple of dudes who became friends while working at New Brookland Tavern.
“We both have super weird music interests,” Johnson said.
And West added: “It was weird to meet somebody in this town who had a massive tape collection as well.”
West and Johnson began hanging out together and listening to music, and their choice of format was almost always cassette.
“I think it's super cool that cassettes are an analog medium,” West said, “and it's one of the last analog mediums where pretty much anyone can learn to do basic stuff on their own. You can really take anything you like and put it on a tape, and it's relatively cost-effective and it works pretty well.”
West finally found an outlet for his passion by helping the Upstate rockers Curly Blue create a cassette release, and he quickly realized he was going to need help.
Jacob West (left) and Keegan Johnson run Caveman Tapes in Columbia, an outfit that produces cassette tapes for local music projects. Aaron Muhammad/Special to The Post and Courier
“I realized that it was too much work to do with just one person, because we follow a very DIY kind of sentiment with it," West said. "We do everything by hand and don't really cut any corners. So when I started, I said, ‘Hey, Keegan, please help me here.' And it worked.”
The duo’s process is simple: Purchase high-quality blank tapes in bulk (typically from manufacturers in Canada), dub the band’s music onto the tape, add album art and then create a small quantity of tapes (the highest order they’ve done is for 125 cassettes), give most to the band to sell at shows and keep a small portion for the label to sell to recoup expenses. It’s a process West and Johnson learned simply by following other cassette-based labels.
For West, Caveman Tapes gives musicians a chance to document their sound and pass it along to fans, just like in the old DIY days back in the '80s.
“There are a lot of bands, specifically in Columbia, where you'll listen to the best live music you've ever heard, and you go to the merch table then find that there's no physical format to purchase it,” he said. “I think this is a really great opportunity to be able to do things on your own in an affordable way and do something a little bit different, because it gives people a new experience and gets them appreciating an analog medium again. And it works. It sounds great.”
