As a small music journal, we rely heavily on the work of independent tape labels to discover and share the incredible artists that we have dedicated this site to. Whether through press lists, recommendations, artist connections, social media support or supplying physicals, these homemade labels are the often-unsung heroes of the industry. Today, the ugly hug is highlighting the work of our friends over at Toadstool Records.

Formed by Caroline Gay as a home for her ethereal instrumental project Ghost Crab, Toadstool Records has become a home to a world of other creatives, offering a supportive and inspiring place to expand on their own and create art with those with similar mindsets. With the help of Michelle Borreggine [Dreamspoiler, orbiting] and Jonathan Hom [Mystery Choir], Toadstool has cultivated a collection of artists such as Youth Large, Mystery Choir and superbluesurf, as well as a few compilation projects like Valentines for Palestine, Let’s Be Friends: A Tribute to the Beach Boys or the upcoming 777 Love Songs out on Valentine’s Day, in which all proceeds go towards Women’s Prison Association and Mutual Aid LA.

We recently got to catch up with Caro, Michelle and Jon to discuss the label, blending visual art with music, the importance of jamming and the ethos of sharing moments in music.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Shea Roney: Caro, I know that the idea of Toadstool was brought out with the release of The Garden Album under your project name Ghost Crab. What was the initial inspiration that sparked this idea to start a tape label? What was that process like and what goals did you have in mind when starting? 

Yes, that was the “Garden Album”, which was the first album that I ever put out through my Ghost Crab project. It was entirely self composed in this basement studio that I had in Bushwick that I got from this guy I found on an online art studio listing in 2021. He told me, ‘oh, Juan Wauters used to have this studio’. He built this little tree house cubby thing and there were all these Christmas lights and all this weird graffiti on the walls, it was so perfect. I got a drum kit from this guy on Craigslist and this beautiful Korg synthesizer (because Rick Wakeman from Yes uses it). It was like my little setup. I basically would just go there and jam by myself after work. Then I started hosting karaoke parties and I would invite people over, and I would use a projector, and we would sing Karaoke, and it was such a blast, and so I started inviting people over to share the studio and we would split the rent. I eventually finished the album and didn’t really know what to do, so I just put it on bandcamp. It was sort of my first quote, unquote release, but eventually I started putting out more stuff, and I was starting to figure out like, ‘okay, this is sort of the correct way to do it.’ I just wanted to put a stamp on my work, basically, and eventually bring other people into the fold. 

SR: How did Michelle and Jon come to be a part of Toadstool? 

Caro: I first want to say that Michelle makes really incredible music videos. I remember we saw each other at a film screening for a Jonas Mekas documentary she edited.

Michelle: We had known each other for a long time before that, we just hadn’t really crossed paths, I guess. That was when we both were volunteering at 8 ball, which is like an artist community slash library radio collective here in New York.

Caro: Yes, I’ve had a radio show for a long time through 8ball, but I remember I went to the screening and she was like, ‘you started a record label that’s so cool.’ I just posted about it on Instagram and I was like, ‘no one’s gonna care about this’ [laughs]. 

Michelle: No, I cared a lot! I was like, ‘Caro’s so cool, I can’t believe she came to my screening!’ I was just super pumped to talk to her because I personally have always wanted to play music, but I just never really found anyone who was down to play with someone who is not like, a musician. Caro was the first person that I met who kind of got that, and so I was really psyched to hear that she had this sketchy, weird music studio. There was this mannequin outside the door that was so creepy and the bathroom was terrible, it was deranged. But it was perfect and I felt comfortable to just play whatever. It was a very unpretentious environment which was very nice and just cool to get to experiment in there. 

Caro: Oh, and we’re also – should I say this? – We all really love Animal Collective.

Michelle: Yeah, that’s definitely it. All of my Animal Collective friends moved out of New York. I was like, ‘who even still listens to them? I feel so lame.’ But Caro still loves them, so I was like, ‘my gosh, we need to talk.’

SR: Caro and Michelle, you mostly came up in the world of visual art. How did that background expand into the way you approached making music? Jon, what is your experience with making music?

Caro: Oh yeah, I was mostly self taught. I sort of grew up playing flute and I took drum lessons when I was a little bit older. But yeah, it’s mostly just sort of experimental and improvisational stuff. I think people who have good music taste should make music. That’s why it was so exciting to hear Michelle was excited to play.

Jon: I started learning how to record stuff myself, and I took some Berklee College of Music online classes to learn production. I just loved the music that I was listening to enough to go and explore. I’m very taste driven as well, so I’m always trying to achieve a particular sound. Initially I was just trying to figure out how they made those sounds, and then I just wanted to replicate them and figure out how to make my own.

Caro: My goal all along was basically wanting to make other weird friends. I secretly just wanted to make friends with people who would jam with me. Jamming with people is just such a wonderful thing to do. But it’s cool looking back because I have all these recordings on my phone of jams I’ve done with Michelle and my other old studio mates. I think everybody should jam, even if you don’t know how to play an instrument. Sometimes there can be a bit of pretension – people can be weird about it if they maybe have a lot of experience. But it’s speaking a language. Everyone can jam. Everyone should jam. It’s such a beautiful exercise.

SR: What are some of the things you learned from jamming? 

Caro: I’ve noticed it makes me feel like I can trust people. It feels like a very vulnerable thing to do. And when I’ve been able to spend time making music with people who, you know, have never made me feel like less than or just anything like that – my old studio mate Zoë [Pete Ford], at the time when I didn’t know how to play guitar, she would give me a guitar and be like, ‘here. You play the guitar.’ I’d be like, ‘oh, I don’t know how to,’ she would say, ‘it’s easy.’ Then you figure something out, just something simple, even if it’s just using one string. Basically, as long as you’re putting a bit of emotion and a little bit of groove into it, you can still do it. I’ve always loved that attitude. 

SR: Community seems to be a big component of what you do, whether in the shows and parties you curate, hosting Secrets of the Sunken Caves on 8 Ball Radio or sharing resources on your website. But one big thing you do are the compilation albums that you put together. Can you tell me about the two that you have put out and how that process from open call to final product goes down? 

Caro: It’s definitely a little chaotic, but I feel like the end result manages to look super cohesive. A lot of the inspiration from Toadstool actually comes from a lot of visual art stuff that I’ve done with photography through 8 Ball [aka 8 Ball Community], which is why I got involved in 8ball in the first place. There are all of these artists that I really admire who have done stuff through 8ball, and the guy who sort of was the dad of 8ball would put together these Xerox books maybe once a year with different photographers and different people in the community. When you look at it all together it actually told this really beautiful story of all these people who were somehow attracted to this collective. There were poems, or people would put in selfies, or just, you know, sort of whatever. 

One summer I was volunteering through Entrance on Ludlow Street in Chinatown, and they let us do whatever we wanted with the space. I helped put on this open call art show where anybody could come by – it was basically just so people could say they had been at a show at Entrance and could put it on their CV. I know how hard it is, I first moved to New York to be an artist, and it’s just so hard to get your foot in the door – to feel any sort of footing really because no one really wants to let you in. But 8 Ball was the first place that sort of let me in so I’ve always really loved that approach of ‘everybody is welcome’. 

That was sort of the idea with the compilations, too. There’s this sort of nice altruistic aspect to it. For the last two that we’ve done, we’ve had more established visual artists contribute artwork who were nice enough to donate it, like Emma Kohlemann and Matt Durkin. They’re more established, so they sort of add this element of  legitimacy to the compilations which I think is really cool. But it’s just a really exciting thing. I’ve had people email me, like one time someone submitted a song to me on Tumblr for the last comp, and they were like, ‘can you please put it under this name? I’m trans and this is the first time I’m using this name’. Just like sweet little stuff happens through it.

SR: Visual art is a huge aspect of what you guys do, especially with the music videos that Michelle makes. Can you tell me about the video for the Mystery Choir song “Reveillark”?

Michelle: So Reveillark is a Magic card, and Jon and I are both big Magic: The Gathering fans. Jon is like pro status. I’m not on his level, he kicks my ass every time we play. But I was very drawn to it, of course, because of that initially. He would post music up on bandcamp and I would be like, ‘wait, your music is so good. More people need to hear it, this is insane,’ and I sent it to Caro.  I had been doing music videos more frequently at that time, so I feel like I just had a lot more practice. I said to Jon, ‘hey, you should come out and we should shoot a video for this’, because Caro was also really into his music and wanted to do an official release and some video stuff. 

Every time I make a video, I have a notebook where I draw certain scenes that I want, and then just kind of build off of that and make something up. And because it’s a magic card, I wanted it to be a little kooky. I found this really random ruins on Long Island, and I think I was just really busy because  I usually am really good about scouting locations before we commit to shooting at them, and I really should have done that because we all got infested with ticks. It was horrifying. It was like the dead of summer, and I really should have read the reviews because everyone was like, ‘don’t come here in the summer, you’ll get lyme disease.’ I felt really bad, but I think the end result was worth it, in my opinion. I think the idea was to communicate this really playful energy.  

I haven’t watched it in a while, because when I make videos I watch them like 60,000 times. So I think the idea was, because this was the first pretty big release that we were doing with tapes and everything, it was this moment of Toadstool where me and Jon and Caro were working together, and just really happy to find people who we felt like got each other in a weird way. 

SR: Running a label has a lot of moving parts and obviously can be a tiring ordeal. What keeps you going and excited about what you do, especially on the challenging days?

Caro: I feel like having something to focus on that feels productive I think is really important. I feel like it can be easy to wallow a little bit sometimes, but this label sort of gets me working. For example, I started going to a printmaking studio this past summer, trying to get back into silk screen work which I hadn’t done for a long time, but it has unlocked new friendships and also I’ve gotten better at doing silk screen work. It’s been such a nice creative outlet to have. And you know, every once in a while, when people approach me about the label, it’s so flattering. Sometimes I won’t be as excited about it, and then someone like Em [Margey] approached me to put out the Youth. Large release and it was so good. Em is just so enthusiastic and driven and really talented, and they have a really clear vision for their music project, so that was super inspiring. And Jon sent me some demos he did recently, and that was really inspiring, and to see the work that Michelle continues to do, it’s exciting having it all somehow fall under this umbrella and create this world that wouldn’t have otherwise existed.

SR: Yeah, and I’ll say, everything Toadstool has done and continues to do has been such a driving inspiration for what we do over here at the ugly hug. We just love all the stuff you’re doing and the way that you approach making and sharing art.

Michelle: Well, I think you guys are answering the question. I think it’s just like you find each other, and it’s so important to just help each other make art. That in itself is such a motivator for all of us. Just being able to meet people who you feel like get you on a cosmic level or something. It really does make life easier.

SR: What’s next for Toadstool and your individual endeavors? 

Caro: I’m working on our next Valentine’s Day compilation. I’m really, really excited about the artist that I got for this one. I also want to throw a party with DJs. I sort of have one foot in the indie rock scene and one foot in the DJ scene in New York, and they’re totally separate. But I do want to throw a party with Djs, because there’re so many incredible ones in New York who also follow a similar ethos of not being pretentious, sort of like leading with feeling, and friendship and love. I don’t know, I have to get my personal life together first, but I wan to throw more parties [laughs].

Michelle: I just moved in with my partner who I make music with, so we’ll probably start making stuff more regularly I hope. And I would love to do another video for Jon once he makes more stuff. I honestly have been knitting and crocheting so much, that’s all I do now. 

Jon: I have some demos from the past few years and I’d like to make a new record and release it on toadstool. I’m super grateful that Caro and Michelle took an interest in my record because it was just sitting on bandcamp, and maybe five of my friends had heard it. But it was like a real studio record that I was trying to make and it’s been really good to have other people to talk to who are interested in what I’m doing. 

Caro: Oh, I’m also gonna plug my own stuff. I’m pretty much done with my new Ghost Crab record. So I need another music video from Michelle, even though we’re still working on a music video from my last project.

Michelle: Oh, and wait, Caro! We have something that we’re working on!

Caro: Oh, my God! Michelle and I have a band called DreamSpoiler, [to Michelle] we have to start doing weekly meetings about this [laughs], but we’re working on an Arthur Russell cover album. We’ve shot a video for it and really cool pictures and it’s just a matter of getting our shit together, basically.

SR: For those who are looking to start their own tape label, what advice do you have for them?

Caro: I love it when people reach out to me about putting out music, but I always feel bad because there’s so much stuff I want to put it out, but I can’t put it all out. So I think, for other people who maybe want to get to be a part of another label or feel like maybe their music isn’t legitimate until they’re on a label, they should just start their own. It could really just be like a little doodle, a little logo, and that sort of makes it real. I think everybody should do it, especially if you don’t see yourself reflected in a lot of the mainstream indie world, I think even then, especially, you should start a label.

Along with this series, our friends over at Toadstool Records are offering a merch bundle giveaway! The bundle includes a bunch of stickers, cassette tapes of Love Songs & Hallucinations (2023) by Mystery Choir and Honeysuckle (2024) by Youth Large, small banner, t shirt and buttons, as well as stickers and a tote bag from the ugly hug.

To enter the giveaway, follow these easy steps below!

1. Follow both Toadstool Records and the ugly hug on Instagram.
2. Tag your music friend.
3. Comment your favorite Grateful Dead song.

The winner will be picked next Friday, February 14th (VALENTINES DAY) and will be contacted through Instagram.

All of these releases and more can be found on the Toadstool Records bandcamp page in limited quantities.

Written by Shea Roney