Company (band)

The Brooklyn-based band Company consists of three songwriters and a dynamic drummer. They perform folk- and country-based songs with punk and psychedelic rock energy to create a sound that defies ready categories.

Company’s members met at Bard College, where they collaborated in a variety of punk groups and folk ensembles. After moving to Brooklyn, they formed the band in 2001 as a way of weaving together these distinct musical threads, reworking their acoustically conceived songs and adding improvisational elements and post-punk dynamics to the mix. The resulting songs range from punk-country ballads to intimate folkish mediations to psychedelic epics, but the lyric always remains the focus; the vocal commands the foreground while lush harmonies, psych-inflected guitars, and David Janik's powerful rhythms, drive it forward.

Years of modest but consistent shows in small venues like the now-defunct Nine-C Lounge in Manhattan's East Village and the intimate Pete's Candy Store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, earned Company a small but loyal following. In this early period, they recorded two studio albums, which remain unreleased, as well as a live album captured at an early Nine-C show. In 2004, they self-released their third record, Hills (recorded by former Oakley Hall drummer Will Dyar). Next, they recorded their fourth, Parallel Time, at the rural Kentucky studio of Paul Oldham, and Oneida's Brah Records picked it up for release in October 2005. Their second CD on Brah, Old Baby, released in February 2008, was produced by Kid Millions of Oneida. In the 2000s, Company could often be found sharing a billing with their label-mates Oakley Hall (another Nine-C alumnus), Oneida, Home, and Dirty Faces.

In 2014, a single from their self-released album Over the Mountain entitled "Poisonous Spider" was used in TV show The Vampire Diaries in the episode "No Exit," which aired on February 27, 2014. Company went on to release its first LP on its own Papasan Recordings in August 2014.