History

Henri on wheels

Stickman Records label history

Stickman Records was founded in late ’94 by Rolf and Jeannette Gustavus for the purpose of releasing and promoting the music of the Norwegian band Motorpsycho. We discovered a few other great bands along the way and now, years later, we can look back on a large number of releases, from a slowly but ever-increasing roster of bands. Starting out in the southern German city of Nuremberg, we moved to Hamburg at the end of the ’90s.

Two years after founding Stickman, we started up the sublabel “Sticksister Records”, which offered a forum for more pop-oriented bands. It’s been a long time since we released anything on Sticksister, and there are no current plans to do so again…but never say never!

At the very beginning of Stickman we represented several Scandinavian labels in Germany including Progress Records from Norway and Birdnest Records from Sweden. Now, after more than a decade and a half of concentrating solely on Stickman, we are once again helping out some Scandinavian (and other) friends spread the word about their labels throughout Europe. We are currently working together with Crispin Glover Records, Blues for the Red Sun, All Good Clean Records, BJK Music, all from Norway, as well as Totem Cat from France, Rock Freak Records from Germany and others. Thanks to these cooperations, you can also find such fine bands as Spidergawd, The Devil and the Almighty Blues, Needlepoint, and many more bands mentioned on this website and available through the mailorder.

In 2016, Rolf and Jeannette welcomed a third person to the Stickman team, Nick DiSalvo. Also known as the guitar player/vocalist of Elder, he works from his home office in Berlin or his laptop while on the road and takes care of most of what you see on this website as well as our digital distribution and many other duties.

From our extremely humble beginnings we’ve grown into a small yet important part of the European independent music scene, and we look forward to many more years to come. Sticky, broke and confused since 1994!