Beer and music pair well together with many breweries hosting in-house sessions as promo for both products and players. An enterprising craft brewery in Whitby is hopping up to the platter however and launching its own label record; no, not a record label, a label record.
The label on Jukebox stout from Five Paddles, is a turntable-ready 45 single pressed onto a detachable picture card which can be played on most record players. It will be available Saturday, Mar 4, 2017 on-site at the brewery. The track is “Jukebox” by indie rockers Rory Taillon and the Old Souls who will perform at the afternoon launch of the record label, sorry, label record party.
Taillon, who has played 5 Paddles often, says he was approached last year about the idea of a having one of his songs issued by Five Paddles.
“They'd heard about the technology for the label,” he says, “and wanted to give it a shot. They asked me if I was interested and I of course was on board right away.”
Five Paddles co-founder Spencer McCormack says they were inspired to create a label record by the packaging craftiness of other Ontario brewers, Beau’s and Radical Road. They knew too Highlander Brew in South River had released ‘Ox-Blood Ale’ which came with flexi-disc by Plague Vendor.
The idea of issuing a record as a label was too good to pass up by five guys who have grown their business by following their own beer gut.
“We are built around doing whatever we want,” says McCormack, “We are all brewers here at 5 Paddles and when it's your turn to brew, you brew whatever you want. If our response to ‘Wanna release a beer with a label that is a 45?’ was anything other than a high five, we'd have to wonder what the hell we are doing running a brewery.”
McCormack, Mike Bray, Ian Mills, JP Tibensky and Ed Woods began brewing what they liked three years ago in an 950 square foot industrial space in south Whitby. They had all met at a homebrewers event and take their name from the mash paddles used in the beer-brewing process. Five Paddles sold out of their three initial batches in the first four days. They have since moved to a far bigger space, almost five times the size of the original and have hired four staff. Five if you count Taillon.
“Rory is the only musician who has ever played at 5 Paddles. He was a regular at the brewery for a while and one of our employees saw him perform on Rogers and came into work and told us, you know that guy with the huge beard who loves (their signature beer) Midnight Paddler? He is amazing. We had him play at our two year anniversary party. Two songs in he covered “Dead” and “Lovely” by Tom Waits and that was it. It's rare for me to meet someone who loves Tom Waits like I love Tom Waits. You don't need to do much after that to stay in my good books but Rory is also crazy talented, his voice is huge and he is a hustler,” says McCormack.
Taillon says the song “Jukebox” is from his album It’s Not Black & White.
“It talks about drinking, but it's mostly a song written from an angry performer being heckled at a bar gig,” he says.
He’s less likely to be heckled at a bar these days as he has found a niche touring breweries instead. McCormack calls him the Official Musician of Durham Craft Breweries. His current tour includes dates at Collective Arts Brewery in Hamilton, the Second Wedge Brewery in Uxbridge and P.E.I. Brewing Co. in Charlottetown.
Although Five Paddles products are available through the LCBO Jukebox is limited to a batch of 11,000 to be sold on site. There are no plans to feature other artists on the label.
“I'd like to do more artists but, the truth is we love Rory. . . he is our guy,” says McCormack.