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STAT E R
At left: Record label founder Brandon Ebel
got his start in the studios of OSU’s KBVR
radio; now he owns his own recording
studio. Photo by Dennis Wolverton
KBVR alum makes it big in the record biz and stands by his faith
By Kevin Miller
Spend a little time with Brandon Ebel
and you drive away grateful he doesn’t
use his powers for evil.
At 37, the 1993 speech communications graduate runs his Seattle-based independent record company with a focus
and competitive fierceness worthy of its
name, Tooth & Nail Records.
Founded by Ebel shortly after he
left OSU, Tooth & Nail was a pioneer
and remains a leader in getting mainstream rock fans to accept hard-core rock
music with what Ebel calls “a Christian
backdrop.”
Persistent and demanding of himself
and others, he is credited with being the
first producer to get MTV to play a hard
rock video from a band with a Christian
orientation. These days his company
sells about 3 million CDs a year. At one
point this summer, Tooth & Nail and its
subsidiary labels had six bands on the
MTV playlists.
Ebel’s energy level borders on hyFall 2007
peractive. He pays close attention to
how he and his company are portrayed,
and he was less than thrilled with how
he was depicted in Body Piercing Saved
My Life, a recent book about the movers
and shakers in his industry. He seldom
gives interviews but made an exception
for the Stater because, as he said, “Hey
man, it’s OSU!”
As he relaxed a bit in his office in
Tooth & Nail’s stylish, functional headquarters in Seattle’s
trendy Queen Anne neighborhood, Ebel was:
— Confident, as when
describing how he was able
to succeed on the business
side in a brutally competitive
industry: “I’ve always been
relatively good at business. In junior
high I had a successful candy store at my
locker. When I was a little kid, third or
fourth grade, instead of having one lemonade stand I had four lemonade stands
and I had all my friends work at ‘em. I
put all the stands at construction sites,
so the construction workers would buy
a whole pitcher for five bucks. So I’ve always been into business.”
— Self-deprecating, as when describing his own musical talent: “I play, but
I’m not amazing. I definitely would not
sign myself.” He laughs at the thought
of having to tell himself he lacks what
it takes to be a Tooth & Nail artist. “No,
I am not good enough to be
signed by my own label.”
— Stunningly candid, as
when describing what he
learned early on about why it
was so hard to get people to
take seriously any rock music
with a Christian theme: “A
lot of times people who are
Christians will make something and
they’ll say, ‘This is Christian,’” as if that,
in and of itself, is supposed to make it a
great record, “and it’s kind of like, well,
crappy. It’s not high quality. When I
started Tooth & Nail I always wanted to
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Ebel describes how he started the company with a loan from his grandfather, whom he paid back early with interest. Photo by Dennis Wolverton
22
have high-quality music and high-qual- smile. “Several cousins are Beavers.
ity packaging, no matter what our bud- There are Beavers everywhere in my life.
get was. I feel like that’s been an edge My accountant is a Beaver. My stockbrowe’ve had over our competitors.”
ker is a Beaver. Even though I’ve been in
— And downright funny, as when Seattle for 14 years, all of my business
describing how happy he was, being an relationships are in Oregon, and that has
Oregon State alum and coming from a a lot to do with Oregon State and the refamily of Beavers, when OSU’s football lationships I made when I was there. I’m
fortunes finally turned around: “We a Beaver believer, dude.”
didn’t beat USC for what, 30 years?
Mother Linda also went to OSU, but
When we finally beat USC in 2000 I the one in Stillwater, Okla.
called my dad (Dale Ebel, ’69, pastor of
Despite the family connections,
a huge church outside Portland) and he for Ebel, the biggest draw at OSU was
was like, ‘Oh. I was there the last time KBVR, the campus broadcasting facility
we beat USC.’ That was in 1967! Think in Snell Hall.
about how long you have to lose to one
“I guess you could say KBVR was my
team for someone to graduate from col- favorite professor. I did do some pholege, conceive a child, have that child tography for the yearbook, but the main
grow up, go to that college, be out of that place I was involved was KBVR. I was
college, and then you finally beat USC a DJ. I had my own radio show, called
again. That’s crazy!”
‘Thirsty Moon River.’ Hey, I was even the
Ebel truly is from a family of Bea- school weatherman — the cheesy school
vers.
weatherman on KBVR TV.
“My dad is a Beaver, my aunt is a
“Back then we didn’t have the InBeaver, my sister’s a Beaver and my ternet, so KBVR opened my eyes to the
brother’s a Beaver,” he said with a broad diversity in music, and to how much
cool music was out there. KBVR is really
where I started getting the idea about
doing what I do. From there I knew I
wanted to run my own radio station or
start my own record label.”
Ebel was in a fraternity, Sigma Phi
Epsilon, where he helped start a Bible
study.
“I was very bold about my faith,” he
said.
He completed his class work in
three years and then did a year of radio
internships before graduating. OSU’s
emphasis on practical experience was
key to his success, he said.
“It really allowed me to learn how to
network and deal with different people,
and do many different things and have
many different skills,” he said. “When
I started Tooth & Nail, that’s what I
needed. I was the sales guy, I did the accounting, I was the marketing guy, I was
the promotions guy. I was the A & R guy.
(A & R stands for artists and repertoire,
and refers to scouting for and developing talent.) I was the photographer. I did
STAT E R
everything. So a lot of what I learned at
Oregon State translated into that. Who
cares if you have a 4-point GPA, if you
can’t function in the real world?”
Family has also played a crucial role
in Ebel’s success. As a child he saw his
father start Rolling Hills Community
Church in a West Linn, Ore., basement
and then work to grow it into one of the
largest congregations in the Portland
metropolitan area.
In addition to a deep faith, the Ebel
kids were instilled with a sense that it
was important to do things well.
“That’s one of the reasons why Brandon is successful today,” said his father,
Dale Ebel. “My dad and my mom gave
us a strong work ethic. No job was considered menial or minor. Every job is
valuable, and your work is valuable. That
was a basic value we taught our children
and they still live by today. They’re hard
workers. They don’t expect anything for
nothing.”
Looking back, the proud father can
see hints of what was to come for Brandon.
“He was fascinated with stereo systems and music. When Brandon was
little, maybe three to five years old,
whenever we’d go to somebody’s house
for dinner, we’d say, ‘OK now Brandon,
whatever you do, you cannot touch their
stereo system.’ I had one friend who had
an amazing stereo system. That little kid,
bless his heart, he would go in there and
the first thing when he walked into that
home, he would look for the stereo system. He would just stand there and look
at it for a long time.”
The elder Ebel is proud of the way
Brandon runs his company, proud that
he treats his employees fairly while expecting everyone to do a good job. Once,
when Brandon was little, after hearing
his father preach about how Moses led
the Israelites through their many trials
and tribulations, he posed a managerial
question.
“He wanted to know how Moses got
people to work together and do their
jobs,” he said. “He also had a lot of money questions. He’d ask me, ‘When people
Fall 2007
Tooth & Nail and its subsidiaries
have released about 450 titles.
tithe, when they put money in the basket,
you get it, right? Then what do you do
with it?’”
If father Ebel has any concern about
his son’s success, it’s that Brandon is so
intensely involved in his business.
“Brandon can work too much,” he
said. “Workaholism is not spiritual. It’s
not healthy, it’s not good from God’s
perspective, from anyone’s perspective.”
A major antidote to that has come
in the past few years, with Brandon’s
marriage to wife, Corrie, and the arrival
of two children, Josiah, now three, and
Evangeline, barely one.
“It’s helped me a lot, having kids, it’s
helped me prioritize my life,” Ebel said.
“Becoming a parent is completely amazing. For one thing, you find out how selfish you are in a lot of ways. You realize
you have to give more than you’ve ever
given.”
Ebel was footloose and single when
he graduated from OSU. He headed
for Los Angeles and briefly worked for
a couple of record companies. He became increasingly sure that if he could
produce rock albums with a faith-based
orientation, but with a standard of quality as high as, or higher than the best
mainstream hits, he could make it with
his own label.
Bursting with self-confidence, he
approached four of his father’s good
friends, wealthy members of the congregation, and asked for a start-up loan
of about $60,000. They promptly turned
him down.
Next he tried his grandpa, a retired
electrician from California, who gladly
loaned Brandon the money but also
charged him 10 percent interest. That
loan and a larger follow-up loan were
promptly paid back.
“I don’t think he ever listened to a
single record we made,” Ebel said of his
grandpa. “But when I asked him for that
loan, he just said, ‘How much do you
need?’”
His grandparents have since died,
but they were alive to see what came of
their investment. A few years ago, Brandon and his father brought Grandma
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At left: Tooth & Nail staff members kid one
another after being pulled together by the
boss for an impromptu portrait. From left:
Ebel, Brandon Day, accounting; Jeff Carver,
A&R (artists and repertoire); Annie Crandall,
marketing; Tyson Paoletti, general manager
of Tooth & Nail subsidiary BEC Recordings,
and Zaine Tarpo, webmaster/tech support.
Photos by Dennis Wolverton
Below: Art director Ryan Clark shows Ebel
some ideas for a CD cover.
Opposite page: Tooth & Nail’s official vehicle
is a MINI Cooper.
and Grandpa Ebel to Seattle see what
they had wrought.
“They put on Tooth & Nail t-shirts
and Tooth & Nail hats and they sat
around in his warehouse with thousands
of CDs and hundreds and hundreds of
shirts and stuff,” said Dale Ebel. “It was
the cutest picture. They just sat there
with tears in their eyes.”
“That was a great day,” Brandon recalled.
Success came quickly but not always easily for Tooth & Nail, and sometimes resistance came from unexpected
places. Because Ebel emphasized hard
rock and gave his bands more freedom
than other similar labels, some Christian
stores banned Tooth & Nail CDs because
they weren’t “Christian enough.” Then
there was the hurdle presented by the
secular market’s bias that anything with
a remotely Christian message couldn’t
be real rock music. Later, when the label
started to succeed, some criticized Ebel
for making money in the name of his
faith.
“It’s definitely not a nonprofit organization, “ he said. “It’s not a ministry,
it’s a company. Not every release we
put out is Christian-affiliated, but the
majority are. It’s more like a Christian
backdrop. ”
Ebel pressed past all resistance.
From the start he had a knack for finding bands that would make music that
met his artistic standards and could find
a paying audience.
Back then, such groups needed labels like Tooth & Nail to have a chance to
succeed. That’s still true, but many more
labels are on the hunt for new bands to
sign, and the competition has gotten
much tougher.
“I wanted to support Christians
to create art,” Ebel recalled. “It was not
necessarily an evangelical label or a mission-oriented label as much as it was a
label that put out good music, and had
artists that were Christians, who wanted
to support that.
“In the old days it was almost like
we allowed them to create their music,
whereas nowadays it’s more like we support them.”
Some 450 recordings after it started,
Tooth & Nail and its subsidiaries are industry winners. Ebel has partnered with
much larger EMI Records to broaden his
reach. He and his company are firmly
entrenched in the marketplace.
“The goal was to put out records that
everyone could enjoy and kind of like
prove to people that people who were
Christians could put out records that
were just as good as anyone else’s, or
better. I think we proved that.” q
Kevin Miller is editor of the Oregon Stater.
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