Pink Hat Records

PINK HAT® is a production company founded by Jacob Keplinger and Justin Siegel. The company was founded in February of 2018 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Created initially as Pink Hat Records, Keplinger and Siegel upped their ambitions and just a year later Pink Hat Records was transformed into simply PINK HAT®, housing three subsidiaries: Records, Publishing, and Studios. For a full discography timeline, visit this link.

The prominent artists on the label are typically Keplinger or Siegel-based projects, with the most well-known being Free Rock, New Threads, and Seymour Butts.

Pink Hat Records
The independent record label made its' debut with the release of the New Threads single "Body" off of their self-titled second album. With the release of the band's second album, the label became a well-known entity in Nashville and assisted in legitimizing New Threads as a project.

In May 2018, the label signed Seymour Butts and released their second album Infinity War. In the summer of 2018, it was announced that Pink Hat Records had officially absorbed Mesa Dog Records, an independent record label based in Massachusetts that had been active since 2003. This, in turn, gave PHR complete ownership of the early New Threads work, Maple Cap, Jacob Keplinger's solo projects, the debut album by Seymour Butts, both Plum Crazy LP's, and much more. The most recent headquarters for the label was PINK HAT® Boston, but with the property being sold in May 2021, the future home of PHR is unknown.

Pink Hat Publishing
Pink Hat Publishing was created in the Spring of 2017 to release the debut New Threads album, Death in the Afternoon. The tiny publishing company had the idea to grow into a fully-fledged record label in early 2018, and acted on it in February. It is little known that PHP was the origin of PINK HAT®, and the name comes from the pink hat that founder Justin Siegel frequented at the time.

Pink Hat Studios
Pink Hat Studios is the film and video branch of PINK HAT®. This subsidiary was debuted with the music video release for New Threads' "Alone, Leave Me" in January 2019. Since then, the studio has released a plethora of music videos and film projects, including 2019's Bootleg Series and 2020's Free Rock movie. 2020 also saw the release of the studio's first documentary, titled Jazz Music, which follows the making of the Seymour Butts album of the same name. In late 2020, PHS moved into the podcast arena with Gone Wild Podcast.

Releases

 * NEW THREADS, new threads (2018)
 * Infinity War, Seymour Butts (2018)
 * Take It Back, Robert California (2018)
 * Felonious Wilma, new threads (2019)
 * Threadsboro, new threads (2019)
 * Bootleg Live, Vol. 1, The Free Rock Trio (2019)
 * Free Rock, The Free Rock Trio (2020)
 * Buford, The Free Rock Trio (2020)
 * Schlitz, The Free Rock Trio (2020)
 * Downtown, Jacob Keplinger (2020)
 * Jazz Music, Seymour Butts (2020)
 * Bootleg Live, Vol. 2, The Free Rock Trio (2020)
 * Gone Wild, The Free Rock Trio (2020)
 * Hardship, Jacob Keplinger (2021)
 * New Threads is Dead, The Free Rock Trio (2021)
 * Bootleg Live, Vol. 3, The Free Rock Trio (2021)
 * Slow Emotion 2020, The Free Rock Trio (2021)
 * Northern Terrace, Free Rock (2022)

It is worth nothing that many releases are still currently in the Pink Hat Archive, a sub-section of the Records label where all of the Mesa Dog Records catalog currently lives, as well as some notable releases from recent years. Arguably the most controversial addition to the archive was New Threads' debut album Death in the Afternoon, which was added in late 2021. Keplinger has said it is unlikely that any of the Mesa Dog releases will see the light of day.

Sagas
PINK HAT®'s catalog is divided into sagas, otherwise known as phases.

Phase I - The Threadsboro Saga (2016-2019)

Phase II - The Free Rock Saga (2019-2021)

Phase III - The Northern Terrace Saga (2021-present)

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