Ken Kadonaga started the Boulder-based Adventure Records in 2001 as a way to promote local musicians, visual artists and charities. Since then, the label has released five compilations under the title Cuvée (a wine term meaning blend or special lot), featuring bands such as DeVotchKa, the Motet, Cabaret Diosa and Hot IQs. Adventure's newest disc, Cuvée 6, adds to the imprint's legacy with an eclectic assortment of seventeen acts including Carbon Choir, Six Months to Live, Sonnenblume, Trace Bundy, Paper Bird, Hawks of Paradise and Hello Kavita. We spoke with Kadonaga about the new disc and why he started the label.
Westword: Are a lot of the songs on Cuvée 6 unreleased?
Details
Adventure Records CD Release, with Sonnenblume, Deadbubbles, Carbon Choir and Ramaya Soskin, 8 p.m. Saturday, February 27, hi-dive, 7 South Broadway, $10 (includes CD), 720-570-4500.
Ken Kadonaga: There are quite a few unreleased tracks on there. We're just trying to get some of the latest tracks from the folks. A lot of folks don't want to make CDs anymore, so they just post things online, giving it away free for the most part. I can't blame them. They just want to get more exposure, essentially.
What we're trying to do is select a good variety of bands. And it's not genre-specific. It's primarily indie rock and pop, but there are also going to be some folk tracks, some reggae tracks on there as well. It's a good variety; we have a ton of talent out here in this area. We're trying to get more exposure for all the bands. I'm glad that in the area, especially in Denver, there's a lot of support for the indie bands.
Why did you start the label?
I used to go to a lot of nightclubs and see some bands that had a lot of talent but just weren't getting the exposure they needed because they didn't have the resources to do it. To make a CD is pretty expensive, but now with a lot of stuff on the Internet, the cost has gone down quite a bit. When you go to the record store, for instance, you might not see anything with them out there. It's often hard to find a good band without word of mouth or going to the clubs yourself.
My interest was to kind of help the musicians out. I'm really big into culture and art and music and all that type of stuff. All the CDs will feature local artists as well. By the way, the last CD that we had, the artist Hart Lipton, who was an aspiring young artist — he passed away last week. That was tragic. That was really unfortunate. At the show, we're going to try to raise some funds for the September School. They want to build an art room for him as a memorial.
