Arts & Entertainment
‘We Got to Dream Really Big’: Chicago Record Label Numero Group Celebrates 22 Years of Making Old Music New Again
Numero Group Factory Outlet store, 2533 S. Troy Street, in Little Village in 2019. (Leland Meiner / Numero Group)
Working out of a small two-flat on Marshall Boulevard in Little Village, Ken Shipley remembers the early days of starting the record label Numero Group with fellow co-founders Rob Sevier and Tom Lunt.
“Nobody was looking at us, nobody was paying any attention to what we were doing at all, and as a result, we got to dream really big,” Shipley said.
(Courtesy of Mike Leopardo / Numero Group)
In those years since its founding, the archival record label has expanded its music catalog, built an online and streaming presence and opened up a brick-and-mortar record store located at 2533 S. Troy St. in Little Village. The label also has offices in Los Angeles and London.
Now, Numero Group is celebrating 22 years with an anniversary show this month at Metro.
Born in Chicago, Numero Group pays homage to the practice of music discovery while aiming to give new life to music that may have previously flown under the radar. For more than two decades, the label has reissued music and chronicled the stories of artists across a wide range of genres.
Shipley describes the label as a “universe of ideas and different sounds and eras.”
The label has bolstered the music and helped elevate the careers of — to name a few — the slowcore indie rock band Duster, ambient multi-instrumentalist Laraaji, Chicago South Side’s own Pastor T.L. Barrett, post-hardcore band Unwound and Chicago soul singer Syl Johnson.
Shipley said he hopes Numero Group can help introduce music to a younger generation of fans, and perhaps, more generations to come. The label has more than 20,000 songs in its catalog, according to its website.
“We’re trying to figure it out every day, how do we get this music to last 100 years or 150 years?” Shipley said. “Is there a song like Penny & the Quarters’ ‘You and Me’ that can be, like, one of the greatest songs of all time and it was almost lost to history?”
(Courtesy of Mike Leopardo / Numero Group)
In the music streaming era, the label has gained a following on Spotify, where it curates playlists featuring music from throughout its catalog. The label also distributes music through physical formats such as vinyl records, boxsets, CDs and cassettes.
Members of Numero Group’s team search for music various ways, including, but not limited to record shows, auctions, record stores, YouTube and following different DJs, according to Shipley.
“Another way is we buy up old studios and record labels,” Shipley said. “We might not know most of the contents of it when we acquire it and we say, ‘Hey, we gotta get into this, sort through it and figure out what is interesting about it.’”
Numero Group’s upcoming anniversary show at Metro on April 19 will feature performances by emo band Everyone Asked About You, indie rock singer-songwriter Julie Doiron and punk band Clikatat Ikatowi.
On the day of the show, Numero Group will host a pop-up record shop at the Metro store from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The pop-up will feature classic, new and unreleased records, limited edition merch, signings and meet-and-greets, according to the label.
Contact Eunice Alpasan: [email protected]
