Thee Sacred Souls - It's Our Love video

 

San Diego's finest, Thee Sacred Souls, released Jan 8 and already on it's 4th pressing. Out on Penrose via Daptone. 

 Heres a great article on how Penrose Recordings came about. Daptone co founder Gabe Roth moved back to Riverside, Califrornia aroudn 2010, where he grew up, and set up a studio out there, named Daptone West.

"... But with the passing of Daptone acts Jones in late 2016 and Charles Bradley a year later, Roth started spending less time in New York and more time at home. He recorded with James Hunter again in Riverside in the Life Arts Building for the 2018 release “Whatever It Takes” as well as for this year’s “Nick of Time.”  Roth eventually took over the space permanently last November.

Soul music and oldies have decades of history in Southern California. Roth noted the music’s long-running ties with Chicano and car club culture in the region.

“They were always into oldies and soul records but it was most definitely DJs and compilations and stuff, whereas all of a sudden, in these last few years, there’s been this explosion of young bands,” he said.

Slowly, Roth began to meet the acts in the souldies scene that would become the network of roots that has blossomed into the Penrose label.

“I met somebody and they’d introduce me to someone else and I’d see somebody else’s show and somebody would say ‘Oh you’ve got to check these guys out’ and next thing I know we’d found a new little family of musicians here.”

As was the case with Daptone, Penrose grew out of a network of artists who have built the imprint (literally) and have been recording music and singing background or playing instruments on each other’s songs.

Gabriel Rowland and Victor Benavides from Los Yesterdays were among the musicians involved in helping to turn the Riverside apartment space into a permanent studio.

“When Roth was building Penrose, man, it was like just like he did Daptone. It was the same thing: He got the homies together and everyone did what they could,” Benavides said, explaining that musicians were hammering, carrying drywall and putting in equipment.

Benavides said he was particularly excited about putting in glass for the recording booth in which he knew he soon would be recording music.'

Roth also plays as part of Los Yesterdays, one of the Penrose stable  - this piece from the LA Times profiles them. It also uncovers how Roth funded the new studio:

 

"... In 2012, during a particularly hectic run as a for-hire producer, a well-financed label, Concord, accepted what Roth figured would be a prohibitively expensive session rate to record its artist James Hunter. “I said, ‘I’ll do it for a bunch of money if you come to Riverside.’ I thought that would close it down right there,” he said with a laugh. (Hunter is now a Daptone recording artist.)

"With the cash infusion, Roth temporarily transformed a chunk of the 40,000 square-foot building into a live room. Built in 1909, the landmark facility has at various points been a YMCA and a Scientology center. Its owner, Bent Corydon, in fact, successfully sued the Church of Scientology in the early 1990s to claim the deed and had been living in the space."

The label launched in April last year with the simultaneous release of 5 singles, compiled as Penrose Records Vol 1.