​​​​​Here's what Bido Lito Magazine said when they met

Defend Vinyl Records founders, Graham and Chris  back in 2021

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Smithdown Road occupies an important part of Liverpool's mythology. Long known as the student area of the city, the thoroughfare has been through bust and boom. However, despite the transient nature of many of its residents and the hardships of the businesses, the road embodies a sense of community as strong as any conurbation.

 

That community has only strengthened in recent years with a string of independent businesses bringing new life to Smithdown. Defend Vinyl was one of those start-ups when Graham Jones opened up his sunshine yellow vinyl emporium at number 150 in 2016. Around the same time, Smithdown Road Festival was going from strength to strength, animating everywhere from newly opened microbreweries in hardware shops and family run Italian restaurants, to shops like Jones's. Music bringing people together, a road united by sounds.

 

Standing in Defend Vinyl's new premises, having moved across the road to a larger space at number 395 in 2019, I'm here to speak about another new venture which the road has given birth to.

 

"Is that Lucy?" asks Chris McIntosh incredulously looking out of the record shop's glass frontage onto the rush-hour commuters. Jones grabs his phone to communicate the spooky coincidence which has just occured.

 

Ten minutes into the duo telling me their plans for Defend Vinyl Records, the friends of 20 years are excitedly singing the praises of the band Puzzle, whose record will be the second release for the soon-to-be-launched label. True to Smithdown Road's village-like connectivity and cosmic ordering, Puzzle's lead singer, Lucy Johnson, drives by while looking into the shop expectantly. The encounter typifies the environment fostered by Jones & McIntosh, who have come up through Liverpool's indie punk scene with a torch burning for a DIY mentality and the power of friendship.

 

Meeting at a Widnes music festival two decades ago while in the bands Voo and The Blind Lemons respectively, the two Liverpudlians soon struck up a bond and proceeded to be instrumental in a scene which coalesced around the storied Korova club in the early noughties. Since then, the two have played in various incarnations of each other's bands, as well as those of friends like Puzzle. But it's the music from a more recent project which has proved the catalyst for the label.

 

"It must have been going on in my head" McIntosh tells me when I ask if he'd always been party to Jone's long-held label ambitions. "The bands that me and Graham have been in and the way we've always operated has always been DIY"

 

It's a mentality which has helped write an exciting chapter in Liverpool's musical history. Bands like McIntosh's 28 Costumes played alongside buzz bands Hot Club De Paris and Elle S'Appelle who went on to release work on glamorous indie labels. But there is is unfinished business; loose ends which inevitably come with instruments being replaced by familial responsibility and careers taking over.

 

"There's loads of bands that we grew up with that are still active. Bands like Puzzle, who just finished an album which seems to have been around forever. They've never released an album (on vinyl) before” says McIntosh before Jones takes over excitedly “I’ve been bugging them to finish it. Now to be able to actually put it out, it’s so exciting”.

 

The pair tell me about receiving the mastered tracks and the artwork for the album. It’s clear that this is a project than means more than simply shifting units and balancing books.

 

Such unfinished business extends to the pairs own music too. It’s the solitary album by McIntosh’s songwriting vehicle, Silent Sleep, along with a worrying bout of ill health, which has led to the lockdown-born project. As if the last 18-months haven’t delivered enough kicks to the teeth, McIntosh was diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenia in March 2021. The rare blood disorder causes excessive bruising due to a low platelet count and landed McIntosh in hospital at the beginning of 2021. “For a short amount of time I was convinced I was actually going to die” he tells me in a conversational shift in tone “so I just wanted to make sure the album did come out on vinyl; because that was really important to me. It made me realise how fragile life is I suppose and just to do as much stuff as possible. All these things we wanted to do but never did because time just fucking disappears.”

 

The artwork that adorns the beautiful 12” that Jones proudly produces from the record shop’s storeroom is fitting. “I wanted it to look like the old photograph albums your Mum would have in the loft” McIntosh expands on the brief given to the long-time collaborator. “They used to have these mad designs on the front. Considering it’s just a photograph album of you and your family” And therein lies tales of loves and friendships from years past, preserved in crafted songwriting which earned the band a dedicated following. The track ‘On The Steps Of The Bombed Out Church’ became a veritable anthem for sentimental indie disciples.

 

After disappointments surrounding the initial digital release of ‘Stay The Night, Stay The Morning Too’ DVRLP001 provides the opportunity to right some wrongs. Osbourne’s artwork gets the canvas it deserves, the record willl have pride of place on the racks at 395 Smithdown Road and the release will get a celebratory launch at Future Yard. But what about the future of the label?

 

The Puzzle release will follow Silent Sleep in early 2022, Jone’s own band Voo have an album’s worth of material demo’ed and ready to go. An album on his own label would follow the 2013 LP ‘Songs We Used To Dance To’ and is ripe for the Defend Vinyl Records treatment. With Korova scene lynchpin Paul Rafferty (Hot Club De Paris & latterly Ancient Plastix & Doomshakalaka) on-hand with production capabilities and fellow Smithdown resident Stephen Kerrison (Tall Trees Audio Mastering) able to follow up mastering duties from ‘Stay The Night…’ it seems the obvious choice.