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Bloodshot Records
Bloodshot Records is an independent record label based in Chicago, Illinois, which specializes in alternative country music.
Bloodshot Records was founded in 1994 by Nan Warshaw, Rob Miller, and Eric Babcock, who knew each other from jobs in the music industry and from being active in what was then a burgeoning underground country-roots music scene.
Warshaw had been promoting, booking, and managing bands for years and also worked as a publicist for the band Killbilly, which released a record on Flying Fish Records, where Babcock worked. She was well known around Chicago as a punk raconteur. Her reputation was confirmed when Kurt Cobain's diaries were posthumously published in 2002 included this mention: "Call Nan Warshaw" appears on his to-do list.
Miller moved to Chicago in 1991 from Ann Arbor, Michigan where he helped to produce shows for a local promoter and DJed on a local radio station. He met Warshaw in 1993 at the Crash Palace, a local punk bar where Warshaw was a DJ spinning country records on Wednesday nights (which shortly after was renamed to Delilah's, and in 2025 still exists under that name).
While having drinks at a bar, Warshaw, Miller, and Babcock made a wish-list on a cocktail napkin of unheralded Chicago bands and musicians they loved — who all had a thread of old school country running through their music. That cocktail napkin list became 17 songs from 16 bands recorded for a self-funded first release in 1994 under the Bloodshot Records label titled For A Life of Sin: A Compilation of Insurgent Chicago Country. The album included artists such as The Bottle Rockets, Freakwater, The Handsome Family, and Robbie Fulks, as well as The Sundowners, a country music trio that started in the 1950s. The record was self-distributed and sold on consignment in stores and, selling out its initial pressing of 1,000 copies. The success of the record left funds to do another compilation.
Bloodshot Records was initially run out of Warshaw's apartment in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago and later the business moved into her basement. In 1997 Kelly Hogan, singer and Bloodshot Records artist, was the first paid employee, working as the label's publicist. In 1999, the label moved to its current location on West Irving Park Road. Both Warshaw and Miller worked supplemental jobs to keep afloat. Miller was a carpenter painting houses and Warshaw was doing publicity work.
Following the compilation format of the initial album release, Bloodshot organized record release shows in multiple cities with four or five bands on each night's line-up. The shows drew press coverage for the new label and the bands/artists, which for some was their first recording and opportunity to play multiple-band shows.
A year later, in 1995, the label released their second compilation album Hell Bent: Insurgent Country Volume 2. The album included bands from all over the country, and Bloodshot continued to put on events showcasing the bands involved with the making of the record. Although well received by critics, Bloodshot had very tight financial constraints, and worked under the model of not starting a new project until the prior project had paid for itself. Also challenging was establishing Bloodshot's brand, a mixture of country, punk, and folk that had no precedent. The name of the music genre was a point of contention, with some grouping the unique, hard-to-classify singer-songwriter music under the alternative country and some grouping it under the Americana label.
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Bloodshot Records
Bloodshot Records is an independent record label based in Chicago, Illinois, which specializes in alternative country music.
Bloodshot Records was founded in 1994 by Nan Warshaw, Rob Miller, and Eric Babcock, who knew each other from jobs in the music industry and from being active in what was then a burgeoning underground country-roots music scene.
Warshaw had been promoting, booking, and managing bands for years and also worked as a publicist for the band Killbilly, which released a record on Flying Fish Records, where Babcock worked. She was well known around Chicago as a punk raconteur. Her reputation was confirmed when Kurt Cobain's diaries were posthumously published in 2002 included this mention: "Call Nan Warshaw" appears on his to-do list.
Miller moved to Chicago in 1991 from Ann Arbor, Michigan where he helped to produce shows for a local promoter and DJed on a local radio station. He met Warshaw in 1993 at the Crash Palace, a local punk bar where Warshaw was a DJ spinning country records on Wednesday nights (which shortly after was renamed to Delilah's, and in 2025 still exists under that name).
While having drinks at a bar, Warshaw, Miller, and Babcock made a wish-list on a cocktail napkin of unheralded Chicago bands and musicians they loved — who all had a thread of old school country running through their music. That cocktail napkin list became 17 songs from 16 bands recorded for a self-funded first release in 1994 under the Bloodshot Records label titled For A Life of Sin: A Compilation of Insurgent Chicago Country. The album included artists such as The Bottle Rockets, Freakwater, The Handsome Family, and Robbie Fulks, as well as The Sundowners, a country music trio that started in the 1950s. The record was self-distributed and sold on consignment in stores and, selling out its initial pressing of 1,000 copies. The success of the record left funds to do another compilation.
Bloodshot Records was initially run out of Warshaw's apartment in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago and later the business moved into her basement. In 1997 Kelly Hogan, singer and Bloodshot Records artist, was the first paid employee, working as the label's publicist. In 1999, the label moved to its current location on West Irving Park Road. Both Warshaw and Miller worked supplemental jobs to keep afloat. Miller was a carpenter painting houses and Warshaw was doing publicity work.
Following the compilation format of the initial album release, Bloodshot organized record release shows in multiple cities with four or five bands on each night's line-up. The shows drew press coverage for the new label and the bands/artists, which for some was their first recording and opportunity to play multiple-band shows.
A year later, in 1995, the label released their second compilation album Hell Bent: Insurgent Country Volume 2. The album included bands from all over the country, and Bloodshot continued to put on events showcasing the bands involved with the making of the record. Although well received by critics, Bloodshot had very tight financial constraints, and worked under the model of not starting a new project until the prior project had paid for itself. Also challenging was establishing Bloodshot's brand, a mixture of country, punk, and folk that had no precedent. The name of the music genre was a point of contention, with some grouping the unique, hard-to-classify singer-songwriter music under the alternative country and some grouping it under the Americana label.