PARK LIFE: Chris Watson (bottom left) with members of The Teeth, Dr. Dog, Capitol Years, National Eye, Mike Visser, Sabrina Koerber, two neighbor kids, a chicken and a pony. Photo By: Ryan Collerd

The song is "Catch," an oft-overlooked gem from The Cure's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Stripped down to acoustic notes and Visser's quiet voice, a hidden, sweet simplicity is revealed. Heads turn from the bar, poke in to the stage area and bob.

• Listen to Park The Van's Taster label sampler NOW!
• Listen to The Capitol Years' brand new Dance Away The Terror NOW!
• Listen to National Eye's Roomful of Lions NOW!

In the back of the room is a stocky guy chain-smoking Camels. That's Chris Watson, and if you look close, you'll notice some scattered strands of gray peppering his dark black Beatles bowl cut. He's got plenty of reason to be graying at 27, but we'll get to that. Presently his attention is on the stage.

Visser, who's moved on from Robert Smith to a selection of originals, is the newest addition to Watson's label, Park the Van Records. He's also an old friend and a key player in the label's genesis. It was his excited phone call in 2004 that turned Watson on to his first signees, Dr. Dog, and everything snowballed from there.

This night at The Khyber is something of an informal showcase for Park the Van; coming up next are the Iggy Pop chops of Boston's Carter Tanton, followed by an acoustic performance by The Teeth's Aaron MoDavis. Short of Tanton, the artists on the roster are based in the Philadelphia area, and after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina last summer, so is Park the Van. Operating out of Watson's secluded woodsy home in Schwenksville, the label has spent its first year growing into an ever-broader umbrella for local artists — harnessing a musical community so tight-knit that bringing it together was almost effortless.

Watson had already worked in many facets of the industry. He started at the Sublime-touting SoCal label Skunk Records, moved on to tour managing for Cornerstone RAS' flagship rock act Frank Jordan — Visser's old band — and then label managed another California imprint, Modesto's Devil in the Woods.

Tour managing was where Watson made the most connections, including Philly's Raccoon, who became fast friends with Frank Jordan. Visser remembers the aftermath of a gig with them in Omaha, Neb., in 2002: while post-show revelry carried on, he initially escaped to the van to catch some sleep, but ended up staying up till dawn swapping songs with bassist Toby Leaman.

"That planted the seeds, and that was always in the back of my mind," Visser says. "I just remember those guys being so fucking cool."

Raccoon split in 2004. Leaman and McMicken had already been jamming on the side, and simply turned it into their next full-on project. Visser caught a show.

"It was such a sincere, tight, entertaining thing I hadn't seen in such a long time," he recalls. "The bassline, the guitar lines, the singing. At that point I was so jaded, I was all, 'Fuck this bullshit.' And I saw them and thought 'Wow. This is real. This is really fucking good.'"

Watson promptly got a phone call in the middle of the night.

"It was Mike, he was excited and he said, 'I just saw Dr. Dog, they're one of the greatest live bands I've ever seen,'" Watson says. "I knew Raccoon was great, so I was curious to hear them."

Watson received their self-released disc, Easy Beat, in the mail, dug it and wanted to release it. But not on Devil in the Woods — they're too indie-centric. "Dr. Dog was extremely special," Watson says. "It needed its own space."

That space was to be National Parking. Living in New Orleans at the time with then-girlfriend, now-fiancee Sabrina Koerber, Watson started the label with Devil in the Woods owner Michael Cloward. But the partners ran into operational difficulties and parted ways. Watson explains it vaguely enough — "He couldn't hack it, he's a family man and [the label] wasn't doing it at the time" — but says Cloward remains a friend.

On his own, he rechristened the label Park the Van and reissued an early release by British band Junkbox, and an Of Montreal 7-inch. Then the Philly bands began climbing aboard.

McMicken recommended his colleagues in the theatrical brother-band The Teeth. Watson courted the MoDavises, Aaron and Peter, through a series of phone calls, and put out their Carry the Wood EP — another reissued self-release — in summer of 2005. From there, then-Dr. Dog guitarist Andrew Jones recommended psych-rock combo National Eye, who presented Watson with their finished recordings for Roomful of Lions (released this year).

As his roster built, so did the label's establishment in the Big Easy. "Everything was there. I felt I could really start to do things the way I want to do things," Watson recalls. "If a band was coming in, I could call a venue and say, 'Hey, can The Teeth play with Of Montreal?' and they'd say, 'Yeah, no sweat.'"

Park the Van had just started to get comfortable, when one of the biggest natural disasters in U.S. history buried Watson's second-floor home office in a foot and a half of floodwater.

"We knew this gigantic storm was coming so we decided to drive to Corpus Christi, Texas, where my parents live," Watson says. "It was usually just a nine-hour drive, but it took us 16 hours because of the gridlock. There were times where we were stuck on the freeway 'cause of an accident, or somebody's car was stalled, so everybody just got out of their car and started talking. 'So where are you going?' It was a really surreal experience."

In Texas, they watched the storm hit on television, and initially weren't too worried. "Nothing bad happened at first. A few things fell down, that kind of stuff. But then the levees broke." Watson and Koerber lived in Lakeview, struck when Lake Pontchartrain flooded the town.

Most of the label's effects were lost: paperwork, account statements, boxes of CDs by all his artists, posters, pins, buttons, his car. Replaceable losses, but losses all the same.

Only Of Montreal's Microuniversity 7-inch survived. It had recently been pressed and arrived from the manufacturer days before the storm; Watson stored the boxes in the top shelf of a closet. When he later recovered the records and shipped them out to mail order customers, the vinyl still stank of the mold that blanketed their apartment — the "fuckin' foul toxic mold" all of New Orleans reeked of after the waters receded. "I hope to God I didn't get anybody sick by sending them an Of Montreal single," he says, with a hint of nervous laughter.

Watson says his biggest loss was the close network that had formed, not just with venue connections, but the larger group of young, motivated people working in the New Orleans music scene: friends at radio stations, editors at Antigravity magazine.

"We just felt we had some really cool shit happening and then, when the storm hit, we lost all that," he said. "It was like we were a jawbreaker that was smashed by a hammer and scattered across the country. To this day most of the people I knew in New Orleans live somewhere else."

After six weeks, Watson and Koerber returned to their apartment. Koerber had been offered a graphic design job with a music video distribution firm in Oaks, Pa., so they flew into New Orleans, loaded up a rental car with whatever books, photos and belongings weren't damaged and drove north to resettle in the Philadelphia 'burbs.

It was good for the bands, too. "As a touring band, you're trying to break out of your own market," says Aaron MoDavis. "Chris had helped us out a lot with people in New Orleans [and] on the West Coast. ... In a weird way Katrina messed with that. They had to readjust. Now, he still has all those connections, but he's up here." (Park the Van has partners helping with label matters from California: Zach Fischel, Kevin Taylor and Matt Sweet.)

Beyond the business end of things — stuff Watson says "most bands probably don't want to do" — the relocation also gave his bands incentive to continue cheerleading for one other. And a scene to build on.

National Eye turned Watson on to Philly rock veterans The Capitol Years last winter; Shai Halpern and company put out their fourth album, the excellent Dance Away the Terror, on Park the Van this Tuesday and will celebrate it with a record release show at Johnny Brenda's on Saturday.

The camaraderie extends to National Eye and the Capitol Years' fall tour. Each band has members on leave for an assortment of reasons, but rather than stay at home, they're teaming up and sharing members. National Eye's Will Baggott will play bass during the Capitol Years' set, while Halpern will sit in on drums for National Eye.

Baggott calls it a "Park the Van revue." Halpern says he hopes the tour will reach the point where both bands will be able to play a few songs as one act each night.

City-centricity certainly isn't uncommon in record labels — see Sub Pop Records in Seattle, K Records in Portland and Saddle Creek in Omaha. "It's not anything new that a label starts within a city and gets a name for themselves through that city's bands, but it's been a while since we had a label like that in Philadelphia," says Cap Years drummer Kyle Lloyd. Not since File 13 Records departed for Chicago in 2002.

"The fact The Teeth don't have two huge albums is absurd," adds Dr. Dog guitarist Frank McElroy, a very vocal local booster. "It's ridiculous. But before, there was nobody around to put that shit out." Park the Van will give The Teeth their first national release in April of next year.

"Because there aren't that many opportunities to get signed, there aren't that many opportunities to blow up. It's not going to happen," he says. "So you have all these bands here who are just really fucking good, who do it just to do it."

But McMicken doesn't think Park the Van's appeal comes from a conceptual "let's be a label to represent Philadelphia" level.

"In a lot of ways it's so tangible," he says. "'Here's a great band, they happen to be from Philly. There's another great band, they happen to be from Philly.' And if you're a label, that's what you want, and if you're a label coming from Philly at this point in time, you don't have to look any further."

Sitting on a swing, dragging from a Camel, Watson is stoked not just for the new Capitol Years LP, but for a solid schedule ahead of him. The Teeth record is on the horizon, along with Visser's first solo project which — to hear him describe it — sounds ambitious in all the best ways. Dr. Dog's next full-length comes out in February. Instead of reissuing self-releases as it did in the beginning, Park the Van has now begun ushering its artists through the recording and touring processes, giving them space and freedom, not holding them to anything more stringent than a two-album deal. It's exciting, and Watson says he's in a much better position on his porch in Schwenksville than he was in his apartment in New Orleans.

"It took a good six months to get to this point," Watson says. "But the last five and a half months have been amazing ... much more has happened in that time than has happened in the history of Park the Van."

And that's just year one, laughs McMicken: "I feel like a label could work for 15 years in this city right now just unfolding numerous amounts of stuff."

(j_vettese@citypaper.net)