At What Comes After The Blues, Secretly Group Celebrates Its Three-Decade Journey To The Forefront Of Indie Music

On Saturday night, at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington, Indiana, Secretly Group, a label group encompassing Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar, and Secretly Canadian, celebrated its 30th birthday. The event, titled "What Comes After The Blues: Secretly 30," brought together around 600 people, including longtime employees, former associates, artists, and locals.

The weekend's festivities included readings, parties, and four shows that traced the label's past, present, and future. The event began with a tribute to the label's origins, featuring early bands that helped establish Secretly's sound. The evening's highlight was a performance by Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co., a group formed by early Secretly artists, paying homage to Jason Molina's work.

The Swanson brothers and Van Arman, the founders of Secretly Group, reflected on the label's roots and its significance to its identity and success. They emphasized the label's low-cost, low-pressure early days in Bloomington, which allowed them to experiment and build their distribution system. The founders agreed that Bloomington's unique position in the music industry landscape gave Secretly a distinct perspective and contributed to their growth.

The decade of the 2010s, they noted, was a transformative period for Secretly, marked by the launch of Justin Vernon's mainstream crossover success with Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago."