Cascadia Archives | RSD Black Friday

Hello folks—today I have an article about a small label in the Pacific Northwest that is reissuing some great, overlooked music from the region, committing it to vinyl for the very first time.

Before I get to that, the list for Record Store Day Black Friday was just released. The US list has 186 titles, and I’m still in the process of wrapping my head around it. You can view the whole shebang over at the Record Store Day website and start planning your shopping now. Record Store Day Black Friday takes place on, well, Black Friday, of course—Friday, November 27, the day after Thanksgiving.

Really quickly, some things have already caught my eye:

• Richard and Linda Thompson: Live 1982—Live recordings from their Shoot Out the Lights tour, when the couple’s marriage was disintegrating in real time. Rumor has it that Linda would run over and kick Richard’s shins during his guitar solos.
• Funkadelic: Live at Meadowbrook 1971—The only live recording of the early Funkadelic lineup. Released on CD in the ’90s, it's had small vinyl runs in the past and gets another one here. However, this one was remastered by Dave Gardner, who’s responsible for the excellent Funkadelic reissues, so it should sound better than ever.
• Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: Live at the Tower Philly 1975—An archival concert first released as part of the Bruce Springsteen Archives, making its debut on wax.
• Blue Mitchell: Out of the Blue—A 1959 hard bop album first released on Riverside Records. In mono, cut AAA.
• The Music Machine: The Sound of Gloves—Their “lost” album, sourced from demos that were recorded in between their 1966 and 1968 albums.
• Miles Davis: Copenhagen 1969—A live set from in between the In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew eras that hasn’t seen much in the way of a vinyl release until now.
• Donald Austin: Crazy Legs—The guitarist’s 1973 Detroit funk LP, originally released on Eastbound Records (a sublabel of Westbound). [This title is on the UK list and will also be available at indie stores in the US.]
• XTC: Besides—A collection of single B-sides. Any XTC is good XTC.

There’s a lot more in the list, and I’ll have a more thought-out preview for you in the coming days. Check out the full list at the RSD site.

Cascadia Archives keeps Pacific Northwest music alive on vinyl

The thought that has crossed the mind of every record lover at one time or another: “One of my favorite albums still hasn’t been reissued on vinyl—what would it actually take for me to start my own label and reissue it myself?” Always a fun fantasy to contemplate, it’s one that usually evaporates in less time than it takes to flip over a record.

Not for David Ballantyne. His label, Cascadia Archives, is devoted to putting important and unsung works from bands of the Pacific Northwest on vinyl, usually for the very first time. Launched in November 2025, Cascadia Archives has released discs by 764-HERO, Sunset Valley, Sons of Huns, and others, some in small runs of around 300 pressings, and others in even smaller runs of custom-made lathe cuts. By keeping the proportions at reduced sizes—smaller than even most indie pressings—Ballantyne can make these reissues available to fans while keeping overhead low and not ending up with excessive product. And the limited editions mean that the Cascadia Archives pressings become collectors’ items almost instantaneously.

“There have been bands throughout the Northwest that I’ve loved,” says Ballantyne, “and for whatever reason, they have one or two things that just aren’t out on vinyl. Or they were from that era of the ’90s when CDs were everywhere, and then when the vinyl revival happened, the bands were defunct, and labels weren’t really going back and saying, ‘Oh, now we should press this.’ So part of it’s driven by me seeing these bands that I loved and thinking, well, I just always wanted this one thing on vinyl.”

Currently based in Portland, Ballantyne grew up 50 miles south in Salem, Oregon, and was deeply embedded in that city’s small, fiercely independent music scene. In addition to performing in bands like the Widgets, he also spent 10 years working in a Salem record store, cultivating the vinyl addiction that now fuels Cascadia Archives. Also a serious film buff, Ballantyne’s first thought was of trying to reissue movie soundtracks, in batches small enough that he could afford. “And so I wrote a blind email to Sony, asking, ‘Hey, can I license The Witch soundtrack from Robert Eggers for 200 copies?’” he says. “And they were like, ‘Absolutely not. You can do a thousand.’ And I was pretty pleased even to get a reply. I remember getting them down to maybe 500 and then getting ghosted. I’m sure enough research was done on me to be like, well, there’s no website. There’s no sales point. But that process was enough for me to be, well, what the hell would I need to do?”

Wanting to keep the pressing runs small, Ballantyne pivoted from soundtracks to the indie music that was so important to him, and started putting out blind feelers to bands that he loved and seeing if they were interested. The Seattle band 764-HERO responded, and eventually all the pieces came together for Cascadia Archives to do a run of 300 copies of their 1997 EP We’re Solids, originally issued on CD by Suicide Squeeze and Up Records. The EP was recorded at the Seattle studio where Nirvana recorded Bleach—it was called John and Stu’s at the time 764-HERO were rolling tape—with legendary Seattle producer Phil Ek behind the boards. Recorded when the group was a duo of guitarist/vocalist John Atkins and drummer Polly Johnson, We’re Solids is quintessential Pacific Northwest rock, with echoes of Mudhoney, Nirvana, and Pavement and a melodic core that reverberates beneath the occasional dissonant squall.

The reissue is more than just a straight repro of the old CD. The group designed brand-new artwork for the vinyl release, and Atkins wrote a sleeve note recollecting his experience recording the EP back in 1997. It was important to Ballantyne that these new Cascadia Archives editions offer something special for fans, whether it be liner notes, additional artwork, or show flyers from the era. Going back to movies, Ballantyne was inspired by the Mondo reissues of film soundtracks, so adding additional context and unique elements was another ingredient in setting these new reissues apart.

Ballantyne also reached out to Herman Jolly, the frontman of the Portland band Sunset Valley, about reissuing that band’s 1999 full-length Boyscout Superhero, an album Ballantyne believed never got its full due. Jolly emailed him back within minutes. “He had a lot of fun ideas about how to make that record special and just really wanted to see it happen,” Ballantyne says. “And every band that’s been interested has been really congenial—glad someone’s asked them.” Originally released on Barsuk, Boyscout Superhero is a lost ’90s pop-rock gem, the kind of album whose tracks could have been played nonstop on modern-rock radio in an alternate dimension. At the band’s 30th-anniversary reunion gig in Portland in January 2026, the merch table carried vinyl copies of Boyscout Superhero for the very first time.

For these pressings, Ballantyne worked with New Orleans Record Press, who were able to meet the sweet spot of doing these small runs at an effective price point. “Most plants won’t do less than 500,” Ballantyne says. The masters were prepared by Chris Common, former drummer for These Arms Are Snakes, who used the original sources, and the lacquers were cut by New Orleans Record Press’s partners at Rare Form Mastering in Minneapolis. Once again, effort was put into the little extra details: The 764-Hero EP has a locked groove at the end of Side 2, and the Sunset Valley album includes a replica Polaroid of the album cover art signed by the band and the cover artist.

Cascadia Archives has gone to even smaller runs for certain projects. For reissues of recordings by Sons of Huns, Pretty to Look At, and Ballantyne’s former band the Widgets, lathe-cut runs of 50, 30, even 20 have been done, using a company in Toledo, Ohio, called Little Elephant. These lathe cuts are produced one at a time, using a cutting lathe that etches the groove directly into the vinyl (as opposed to the traditional technique of cutting a soft lacquer, from which the metalwork is prepared for large pressing runs).

The latest of these lathe-cut runs is being released this Saturday, October 10, at a reunion gig for the Portland hip-hop band CAC. Their 2001 debut album, Cool as Cucumbers, will be given its first vinyl release, in an ultra-limited run for fans and friends of the band. “In Portland, for a great little section of time, maybe three, four years, there were a bunch of hip-hop groups trying to make a path in a really, really rock landscape,” Ballantyne says of CAC. “So they were blazing this little trail.”

It’s all part of Ballantyne’s mission to give this music new life in this newfound vinyl renaissance. “What the label is trying to do is just be looking at moments in time in Pacific Northwest music, when cool shit was happening,” he says. “We’re so lucky that this area has had so many local bands that have been really inspired and done cool, creative things. But also in this creative ocean, it can be hard to stand out. And so part of my goal is to just shine a little light on some of these periods and say, hey, maybe you missed this cool thing. And if you were plugged into other stuff that was going on—you know, if you liked Modest Mouse, you might like 764-Hero. If you liked Built to Spill and Elliot Smith, you’re gonna like Pretty to Look At. You know, if you liked Atmosphere, you might like CAC. And it’s very personally driven. I loved these bands. I just thought this music was really good and deserves a place on the vinyl shelf.”

Cascadia Archives’ website is here, and their Bandcamp page includes links to purchase albums that have not yet sold out. CAC performs in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, October 10, at 5 pm at Chopsticks, 3390 NE Sandy (show flyer here); their album Cool as Cucumbers and other Cascadia Archives titles will be for sale. If you’d like to make a day of it, the Record Hawk record fair is happening in Portland earlier that afternoon at the Doubletree Hotel.