Checkered Past Records is an American

indie music Independent music (also commonly known as indie music, or simply indie) is a broad style of music characterized by creative freedoms, low-budgets, and a do-it-yourself approach to music creation, which originated from the liberties afforded by in ...

record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...

established in May 1997 in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

History

The label was founded in May 1997 by

Bloodshot Records Bloodshot Records is an independent record label based in Chicago, Illinois, which specializes in alternative country music. History Bloodshot Records was founded in 1994 by Nan Warshaw, Rob Miller, and Eric Babcock, who knew each other from ...

co-founder Eric Babcock, Yvonne Jones, and Larry Lipson. Babcock met Jones through their shared love of the Texas-based band Killbilly, and ran Checkered Past out of Jones' and her husband's house in Irving Park. Babcock's stated motivation for starting the label stemmed in part from his desire to release "more traditional and rootsy-sounding" music by relatively little-known artists. It was also influenced by Bloodshot's refusal to release "The Neighborhood is Changing", the debut album by Tom House. He has also recalled that while he was working at Bloodshot, he was looking through dozens of albums by such artists, and was surprised that they hadn't been released locally yet. So he decided to start his own label to do so himself, starting with Tom House's album ''The Neighborhood Is Changing''. In 1999, Babcock founded the

Nashville Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

-based Catamount Records, and, as of 2004, had since left Checkered Past to run it.

Artists

Artists which have released albums on Checkered Past include, but are not limited to: * Ass Ponys * The Great Crusades * Johnny Dowd * Lonesome Bob * Paul Burch *

Red Star Belgrade Fudbalski klub Crvena zvezda ( sr-cyrl, Фудбалски клуб Црвена звезда, lit=Red Star Football Club), commonly referred to as Crvena zvezda () and colloquially referred to as Red Star Belgrade in anglophone media, is a ...

* The Silos *

Souled American Souled American is an American alternative country band from Chicago that was active mostly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The band started in 1986 with a quartet of musicians from Illinois. The initial lineup consisted of rhythm guitar/sin ...

* Spanic Boys * Tom House * Tommy Womack

References

{{Authority control American independent record labels Record labels established in 1997 1997 establishments in Illinois American country music record labels