The Freshest Fruit Imaginable

Local musician Nathaniel Sutton started a label to put out his own stuff and now it’s branching out.

Published December 16, 2010  by Robin Schroffel in Music Preview

With two shows this weekend and a pair of new releases to go with them, fledgling local label Oak Apple Records has a lot on its plate.
“Every Oak Apple artist is going to be performing,” label founder Nathaniel Sutton says with pride.
Friday night, it’ll be Fear of Crime’s full-length in the spotlight, while on Saturday Oak Apple is unveiling the first in what Sutton envisions as a long series of compilations.
Titled Fresh Fruit Volume 1, the album features contributions from both local and international artists, meticulously curated by Sutton to cure genre-induced boredom.
“I just wanted to do something different,” he explains of his choice to include a broad spectrum of styles on the comp.  “I wanted a diverse compilation so we have some rock on there, we have some jazz aspects from Fools Tongue, and there’s some quirky rock happening with Taking Medication and there’s grunge with Making A Monster and ’90s revival-type band Zero Something. If you kind of spice it up a bit and add these different genres into the mix, it leaves you guessing what’s going to happen next on the album.”
It’s an esthetic that has also wormed its way into Sutton’s ultimate vision for his record label.
“My overall plan is, just as I did with the Fresh Fruit compilation, to try to get a roster full of different genres of bands. I would like to make each genre different, each band different and stand out,” he says.
For a project that started in early 2009 as a way to release his own sophomore album, Oak Apple Records has certainly grown: first, it stuck close to home, taking on Sutton’s other musical projects including Taking Medication and Making A Monster, along with Sutton’s sister, singer-songwriter Bailey Sutton. With the recent additions of Fear of Crime and The Shakedowns, and the compilation which includes groups from as far afield as Sweden, Oak Apple is finally beginning to ripen.
Not that an oak apple would ever actually ripen; it’s not even a fruit, just a disgusting oak-leaf mutation filled with a gooey wasp larvae centre.  But, grossness aside, the name does have a certain ring to it, which was what attracted Sutton to the term while browsing the Internet early in the label’s life.
“I was looking at different insects and one came up that said ‘oak apple gall wasp.’ I don’t know why but that name just stuck to me. Oak Apple Records, it just clicked with me,” he says.
So what’s in store for Oak Apple Records in the future? More Fresh Fruit, for one thing, but Sutton has even bigger ambitions.
“I want to make sure this stands out in history. I want to keep this series going. Right away I’ll start looking for new bands and start getting Volume 2 going in the next year, hopefully,” says Sutton. “I’m just an independent record label trying to make it. Right now I feel like I’m just a stepping stone for these bands but I want to be much more.”