Originally based in Utica, New York, "Cozy Home Records" is a collective of like minded people, places, and things functioning more as a street team for the unheard, rather than a practical conventional record label. ALL COZY HOME RECORDING ARTISTS ARE UNSIGNED. The sole goal is to promote the artist, for there is power in numbers-depending on who is listening at any given time. Their influences come from all over the world, but most can be found in your own backyard, no not over there, over THERE! so come and hear the hiss of a dozen lost souls dying to break free while preaching to the choir…since 1997-they've been here, where have you been?
Cozy Home was started in Utica in 1995 "To promote musical terrorism through lo-fidelity recordings of myself and my friends’ psychedelic, adolescent terror trips" by Luke Humann with the release of The Cocksuckers “demo tape". He took the name 'Cozy Home' from the cozy atmosphere of recording in his parent's basement. In 1997 he was in a band called Trashcan Acid with Paul Burnout and they needed a name that sounded legit to put on their tapes so they used the Cozy Home label. Then Rob Levy, who was previously in Bernard's Freek Star had a tape of his own material called Psi-Deffect that he wanted to put out. Soon after that came The Myoclonics and The Real Burnouts and Fun With Boxes. "The whole thing was just really natural. We were all friends, and weren’t out to make money or rip each other off." (Paul Burnout)
Initially members of the collective would all play in each other’s bands and turn up at each other’s shows. Later on they would pack up their stuff at the club at 2am and head to the famed Cozy Home studio where there would be a dozen people waiting for them drinking beer on the porch already smashed.
In an interview with the Daydream Generation in 2008 Paul said: " We were our own scene. There weren’t any other bands that were in to what we were doing. They didn’t like us. We were scary. I recall there was always grass around, mushrooms, acid, beer and we were seldomly sober."
Into the 21st century the Cozy Home began to change from the tape-only Utica collective approach featuring acts like The Real Burnouts, Fig Mints (of Your Imagination), Arthur Rules, Handwithlegs, Jenny Penny, Cashew Cook, Travel Labyrinth, and Dusty Charts, recruiting artists from further afield including Jon of the Atom (The New Wave Dirt, Dead Canaries), The Wheelies, Whoopin Cough Jonny, Tofu Delux, The Utica Flower Company, Periwinkle Periscope, and Old North, burning CDs and releasing their records as free downloads on-line.
Paul: "We were really big into tapes and we thought that was going to be our thing. It was easy for us to make the art and dub the tapes ourselves. We were like, “I’m never gonna burn fucking CD’s.” And then everything changed. Fucking boom boxes stopped being made with tape decks. Sound quality was becoming an issue. And we found ourselves in the situation where we had to learn how to burn CD’s. We were like old bastards trying to program a VCR, but eventually we got it. And then the next logical step was the internet. Tim (Schram) and Rob (Levy) helped get everything started with the cozyhomerecords.com and then the MySpace page. It was same thing as handing out our tapes at show, except the whole world could hear what we were doing, in theory. We learned that the internet was like a giant looking glass, where not only could you hear us, but we could also see you. We were never really looking for anyone though, we were too selective, and we had our group, but sometimes fate happens, and you wind up meeting the foreign version of yourself. If it didn’t happen through the internet, it probably would have happened at the bus station."
Into 2010 the Cozy Home continues to champion the little guys and girls of the music world, releasing records as free downloads. .
