CandyRat Records | |
---|---|
Founded | 2005 |
Founder | Rob Poland |
Genre | Fingerstyle, Percussive fingerstyle |
Country of origin | United States |
Location | Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin [1] |
Official website | candyrat |
CandyRat Records (also stylized as CANdYRAT) is an independent American record label and online music store located in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. [1] They primarily represent instrumental guitar artists, with a focus on acoustic guitar, but include electronic music, alternative rock, singer-songwriter, and progressive rock, with musicians coming from many countries. [2] [3]
Rob Poland founded the label in 2004, first signing fingerstyle guitar talent Don Ross, [4] followed by Andy McKee, [5] [6] Antoine Dufour, and three other artists before officially opening in 2005. [7] CandyRat Records has been called the "biggest acoustical guitar label in the world", [8] and the two-handed tapping technique of playing the guitar to produce bass, rhythm, melody and harmony, which is practised by many of its artists, has become known as the CandyRat style. [9] The label gained fame after videos on its official YouTube page, 'rpoland', gained viral success. [10] Recording sessions are filmed and uploaded, contributing to the success of the albums. [11] [12] As of November 2014, the most popular video on the channel, a live recording of Andy Mckee's "Drifting", [13] garnered over 50 million views. [14] [15] Their YouTube channel has over a half-million subscribers and almost four-hundred million views. [16]
CandyRat Guitar Night Tour features CandyRat Records' guitar virtuosos traveling the U.S. and the world. [9] [17] [18] [19] [20] For 2017, Antoine Dufour and Ian Ethan Case toured. [21] CandyRat is also a festival partner for the Wilson Center Guitar Competition & Festival, with Rob Poland and the CandyRat headliners as some of the judges for the fingerstyle competition. [22] [23]
CandyRat Records had over 50 signed and independent artists as of August 2017. [24]
Bonnie Leigh McKee is an American singer and songwriter. Her debut album, Trouble, was released in 2004 by Reprise Records. After underperforming McKee was dropped by her label and took a musical hiatus before establishing herself as a songwriter. She has written 10 singles that have reached number one in either the United States or the United Kingdom, which have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide combined. In 2013, McKee made a return to music with many singles, including "American Girl". She independently released an EP, Bombastic (2015).
Donald James Ross is a Canadian fingerstyle guitarist. He was the first person to win the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship twice. His album Huron Street reached the top ten on the Billboard New-age chart.
Matthew Santos is an American rock and folk singer-songwriter, musician and painter. His music was used in a series of two radio ads for American Family Insurance. He became well known for his collaboration with Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco on the single "Superstar". He was signed to Lupe Fiasco's 1st & 15th Entertainment record label, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records.
The harp guitar is a guitar-based stringed instrument generally defined as a "guitar, in any of its accepted forms, with any number of additional unstopped strings that can accommodate individual plucking." The word "harp" is used in reference to its harp-like unstopped open strings. A harp guitar must have at least one unfretted string lying off the main fretboard, typically played as an open string.
Joseph Leonard Bonamassa is an American blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter. He started his career at age twelve, when he opened for B.B. King. Since 2000, Bonamassa has released fifteen solo albums through his independent record label J&R Adventures, of which eleven have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Blues chart.
Ethan Thomas Robert Johns is an English record producer, engineer, mixer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Johns has worked with artists including Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Paul McCartney, Ray LaMontagne, Tom Jones, Kaiser Chiefs, Rufus Wainwright, The Boxer Rebellion, Crowded House, Turin Brakes, Lauren Hoffman, The Vaccines, Laura Marling, The Staves, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. In 2012, he won the Brit Award for Best British Producer.
Antoine Dufour is a Canadian acoustic guitarist currently signed to CandyRat Records.
Andy McKee is an American fingerstyle guitar player who has released six studio albums, two extended plays, and one live album to date. A number of YouTube videos featuring McKee's highly-technical guitar performances have achieved viral fame, garnering hundreds of million of views collectively.
Emma Kate Dean is an Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Brisbane, Queensland. She has performed in solo shows and her Emma Dean Band as well as with the Kate Miller-Heidke Band (2003–2006). The Emma Dean Band was formed in 2005 with Emma's brother, Tony Dean on drums, Dane Pollock on guitar, John Turnbull on bass guitar and Rachel Meredith on cello.
Matters of the Bittersweet is the first solo acoustic album by singer Matthew Santos. Released in November 2007 under Candy Rat Records, the album features addition of four songs where he is joined by band members Robert Tucker on 'Humming'burd' and Aviva Jaye on vocals and clarinet on three songs; 'Unnamable', 'Daughter of the Sun', and 'Drop a Coin'. The video recordings off "Matters of the Bittersweet" are among the top rated videos on YouTube.
Jordan O'Connor is a Canadian musician, composer and audio engineer. He is signed to Candyrat Records and also works through his own production company The Breath and is composer-in-residence for the avant-garde music ensemble Euphonia.
David Roland Cook is an American rock singer-songwriter. Cook rose to fame after winning the seventh season of American Idol in 2008.
Icon for Hire is an American rock band from Decatur, Illinois. Formed in 2007, the band's current lineup consists of singer Ariel Bloomer and lead guitarist Shawn Jump. They released two EPs independently before signing to Tooth & Nail Records, through which they released their first two albums: Scripted in 2011 and Icon for Hire on October 15, 2013. Their third album, You Can't Kill Us, was independently released on November 25, 2016. Their fourth album, Amorphous, was released on February 19, 2021, also independently. Their fifth independent studio album, The Reckoning, was released on September 30, 2022.
Ryan Spendlove is an English singer-songwriter, born in Gawthorpe, West Yorkshire, signed to the American-based record label CandyRat Records. He was the former singer and guitarist of The Blueskins who had international success. Since going solo after their split in 2008, Spendlove has performed extensively in the UK and the US and recorded two studio albums.
MacBriare Samuel Lanyon DeMarco is a Canadian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer. He has released six full-length studio albums: his debut, 2 (2012), Salad Days (2014), This Old Dog (2017), Here Comes the Cowboy (2019), Five Easy Hot Dogs (2023), and One Wayne G (2023). He additionally released the mini-albums Rock and Roll Night Club in 2012 and Another One in 2015. His style of music has been described as "blue wave" and "slacker rock", or, by DeMarco himself, "jizz jazz".
Mike Dawes is an English fingerstyle guitar player known for composing, arranging, and performing multiple parts simultaneously on the guitar.
Milky Chance is a German rock band originating in Kassel. It consists of vocalist and guitarist Clemens Rehbein, bassist and percussionist Philipp Dausch, and their band members, Antonio Greger and Sebastian Schmidt.
Against The Current is an American rock band from Poughkeepsie, New York, formed in 2011. As of 2023, the band consists of lead vocalist Chrissy Costanza, guitarist Dan Gow, and drummer Will Ferri. The band quickly gained a sizeable online following after posting covers of various popular songs on YouTube. They even played Warped Tour in 2016.
I Still Do is the twentieth solo studio album by English musician Eric Clapton. It was released through the independent Bushbranch Records/Surfdog Records label. The album is a combination of new material written by Clapton and classic songs, contemporary tunes, and influences interpreted in his own style.
Marcin Patrzałek, known mononymously as Marcin, is a Polish percussive fingerstyle guitarist, composer, and producer. He is known for combining fingerstyle, percussive guitar techniques with modern electronic and orchestral production. He first gained popularity in 2015 after winning the ninth edition of Polish talent show Must Be The Music, the prize for which was 100,000 Polish złoty and an additional 100,000 złoty for promotion of his music on Polish radio station RMF FM. After local success, he went on to release his debut record HUSH, the release of which was accompanied by singles including Patrzalek's percussive arrangement of Isaac Albéniz's "Asturias"; the video of the arrangement was released through fingerstyle label CandyRat Records. In subsequent years, Patrzałek's popularity grew rapidly beyond Polish borders due to multiple viral releases online. His videos were posted and discussed by notable publishers such as Rolling Stone, Metal Hammer, Classic FM, Guitar World, Billboard as well as independently. Patrzalek's performances have amassed over 150 million views online, the main contributors to this number being his solo acoustic guitar arrangements of major classical pieces such as Moonlight Sonata or Beethoven's 5th Symphony, as well as popular music, rock arrangements, and original compositions.