When a 24-year-old Mike Schulman started Slumberland Records 20 years ago in Washington, DC to put out some of his friend’s singles, his ambitions were modest. Two decades later, Slumberland has more of a presence than ever. He’s relocated to California, has a baby and a day job now, but talking to him, it’s not hard to tell that music is still high on his list of priorities. He’s still running around to record stores—now he’s surfing the internet, too—finding music that he thinks is “fantastic!,” which he says enthusiastically about each of his bands. True music lovers are lovers forever—family, jobs, changes in scenery won’t stifle that. We caught up with Schulman on the phone a few weeks back to talk about Slumberland’s 20th anniversary, where the label’s been, and where it’s headed.

Crawdaddy!: Tell me the story of how Slumberland was started.

Mike Schulman: I had a group of friends and we were all in a couple of bands together, in different combinations—maybe six or eight people who made three or four different bands. We were all pretty green. We got really excited about music in high school and college, as one does. We were all really into poppy stuff, but also the noisy stuff: The Birthday Party, the Lower East Side thing, punk rock. So we started bands because that’s what you do.

Most of us didn’t know how to play. We just banged around and gradually got the gumption to try to do it in front of people. It was all new for us. We thought that we had an interesting thing going. There weren’t that many bands in DC doing that kind of thing. We had the idea that we should document it. At the time, I worked at a record store in Silver Spring. The seven-inch thing was really happening then. There were a lot of labels—Treehouse and Sub Pop and on and on—that were doing a lot of singles. It seemed like a really natural thing to try to put some singles together. I don’t think any of us imagined it would last much more than a few records. My goal was to put out one single by each band, maybe two.

Crawdaddy!: What was the first release you put out?

Schulman: It was a compilation seven-inch—a three-song comp with Black Tambourine, Velocity Girl, and Powderburns. I was in Black Tambourine and Powderburns.

Crawdaddy!: This was all coming out at the height of DC hardcore. There was much more of a pop side to what you were doing. Why stay in DC, originally at least?

Schulman: DC hardcore was kind of into its third wave by then. This was 1989. That first wave with Government Issue was gone. The second wave of Rites of Spring was a couple years before we started. We all went to go see those bands, and I loved that stuff. I took a lot of inspiration from it. The work ethic—the idea of doing it yourself, putting on your own shows—was very inspiring. The actual musical aesthetic we were interested in was a little bit different. We ran the label out of DC for three years. I didn’t move myself and the label for musical reasons. I didn’t want to live and die my whole life in one city. I wanted to roam around a bit and see what it was like to live somewhere else. We could have stayed in DC and I’m sure things would have been fine.

It wasn’t always the smoothest sailing. Like you say, there weren’t a lot of bands or labels doing what we were doing around DC. But at that time in America, they weren’t anywhere. There weren’t many people putting out pop records. You know Homestead was putting out the Flying Nun stuff, which we felt a real kinship with, but most of the labels we really liked were all English labels.

Crawdaddy!: From the outset, you had branched outside of DC… maybe not from the very beginning, but very quickly. You released what I think is Stereolab’s first really great album, John Cage Bubblegum. How did you discover them?

Schulman: I was a fan of McCarthy—the band that Tim [Gane] was in and Laetitia [Sadier] came in towards the end. After we got a couple records out with Slumberland and the reception was—I would not call it ecstatic, but it wasn’t completely negative—the idea came to maybe keep going for longer than a few singles. Once we had that idea, we were thinking, “Well, what record should we put out? Let’s think of the bands we really love, so we can work with them.” McCarthy was up on the top of my list. So I wrote them, and as luck would have it, they had just broken up, which is kind of the Slumberland luck mojo. Tim had written me and he said, “It sounds like a great idea, we’d love to have something out in America but we’ve broken up. But we’ve got this new band, Stereolab. Here’s a tape, let me know if you’re interested.” Of course, it was fantastic. I think those records are amazing. I really love them still.

At the time when we put that stuff out, not many people in America were really familiar with them. We got some funny reviews of the record—people that didn’t have any idea how to approach it. They were so baffled. I have clippings somewhere of some extremely negative reviews of that album. They called it circus music. [Laughs]

Crawdaddy!: Do you have a favorite memory from that time?

Schulman: It would be hard to pick one. When Switched On came out, [Stereolab] was getting a lot of interest from larger indie labels and the majors. When they came over [to America] for Switched On, part of the reason was to talk to these bigger labels. I didn’t have any delusions to try to hang on to them. A lot of the other labels didn’t know that Switched On was coming out. We were all having dinner with a larger independent label and they were giving Stereolab a pretty heavy pitch to put out Switched On in America. Everyone was listening to the pitch and eating, and then at some point they pointed to me and said, “Oh well, he’s doing it. It’s out this week.” [Laughs] The big indie label guy’s face was priceless.

Crawdaddy!: You mentioned the Slumberland mojo of bands breaking up. In the ’90s, the label slowed down because a lot of the bands you were working with just weren’t making music anymore. I’d say you’ve certainly gotten a second wind. I’m curious how all of these new bands came to you.

Schulman: Yeah, it might even be a third wind really. [laughs] From between 2003 and 2006, I didn’t really do any new stuff, though I was working on some of the records that were to come out. Things sort of died down. The bands weren’t playing together. Lorelei had broken up, and the Ropers, and Henry Strauss. The bands that I knew, who I loved, were gone. I wasn’t hearing a lot of new stuff that I was super excited about. I had just changed careers and taken on this software thing, and I had to learn how to do it. It was very time consuming.