Sumerian’s Ash Avildsen On Supporting Artistic Expression In Music, Film, Publishing And Beyond

Ash AvildsenStorm SantosThere’s both an old-school sensibility and entirely modern energy about the way Ash Avildsen is stewarding Sumerian Records and the company’s parallel ascents in film, publishing and pop culture. As he wraps a year that includes buzz for biographical sports drama Queen of the Ring, which he wrote and directed, continued wins for artists including Poppy and Bad Omens, and the reboot of Hit Parader magazine complemented by a live event space in Nashville and a soon-to-launch video channel, the son of Oscar-winning director John Avildsen (Rocky, The Karate Kid) has a lot to say about charting his own path and why the Sumerian model of championing artistic expression is not only spawning creativity, it’s driving the company’s success. “I feel like culturally, sociologically, audiences now really do embrace fearless originality. Of course it still has to be entertaining, but I love people that have a lot of unique takes on their art but also believe they can achieve greatness and not just settle for being underground,” Avildsen says. “That’s what’s really exciting for me—not having to choose between worldwide success and having to compromise your art because it has to be sanitized to get it out there.”Avildsen has never been about sanitizing. Growing up estranged from his famous father in the suburbs of DC—the two saw each other for the first time in court when he was a young teenager taking the stand to ask for child support and eventually reconciled years later, before the elder Avildsen succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2017—he’s parlayed some tough life lessons into personal and professional acumen.“Once I started venturing into film I ended up meeting my dad and we had this incredible relationship,” he says. “Sadly I only had two years with him, but it was really a beautiful union and I’m grateful we got that time.”MORE FOR YOUThe financial support was for military high school in Virginia, the path Avildsen’s mother chose as he increasingly was hanging with older kids in local record shops and “getting in trouble.” While it started a bit rough, this chapter turned out to be a salient turning point. “There were two thing that got the older kids of leave me alone and actually become friends with me. The first one was, they had video games downstairs in the rec room, and I could beat everyone,” he says. “The other thing was, I had the best CD collection. So it was actually my curated music selection that saved my ass in school. All of a sudden, I was popular.” By senior year, the school anointed him class president even though he wasn’t an officer—a first. “I was great on the academic side, but I wasn’t on the military side because Rage Against the Machine was my favorite band and I was really against all the, you know, rank and file. So they created a new role for me, the audiovisual officer. I didn’t realize at the time that was like a prophecy,” he says. “That would be an apt title for me now.” A year at college, a stint in a band, and a resourceful turn at a temp agency led him to start booking and promoting other music acts. “I had an epiphany,” Avildsen says of working on the back end. “I basically get to be in 20 bands at once. I would finish my office busy work, and I had the internet and the Xerox machine and I’d be printing flyers for my shows and using the email server to book them. And then other bands started calling me… I started living in Venice Beach and started Sumerian Records out of my bedroom.”Today, Sumerian Records is home to about 30 acts, rooted in the metal and rock realms and equally rooted in the ethos of flyers plastered on walls, acts supporting each other on tour and off, and an independent lens on artist development and evolution Avildsen remains fiercely dedicated to. The successes are stacking up. Take Grammy-nominated band Bad Omens (“Just Pretend”), which signed to Sumerian a decade ago. “We had them from day one, when they first started. A lot of people in the industry thought this band isn’t going to go anywhere, and we really had to champion them amongst other Sumerian bands to get their first touring opportunities,” he says. “The community we had built over 10 years, it was empowering. A lot of our bands got support tours on the way up from other Sumerian bands and it was their chance to pay it forward. You look at these old tour posters and Bad Omens was the opening band for a lot of these other bands and now all of them would open for Bad Omens. It’s been a crazy role reversal.”Then there’s Poppy, who tried on different sounds at different major labels before parking at Sumerian—and becoming the first-ever solo female artist nominated for a Best Metal Performance Grammy in 2021 for her track "Bloodmoney.”“The best way to say this is I saw in her that she was a real artist, and she understood performance art. And not everyone is going to know exactly what the sounds they want to do for the long term is, especially at such a young age,” he says. “I think the big difference with the major label mentality and a lot of indie companies is, it may not happen on the first record or on the second record and there’s a willingness to try something else and pivot again. With her, it’s a real combination of her trusting she’s with the right team and us believing we have a very special artist that’s going to try different things and experiment, and we’re in the long haul with her because it’s not something you can put into a box.”The expansion into film was a natural. “I decided at a young age that once I get to a certain level of success in music I would cross over into film because I’ve always loved movies and always loved storytelling but didn’t want to feel like I was trying to emulate my dad or cash in on the last name,” Avildsen says. Feature debut American Satan, a supernatural musical thriller, came in 2017 and was based off the company’s series Paradise City. Queen of the Ring, based on the true story of legendary female wrestler Mildred Burke, came out earlier this year, and Avildsen has a slate of other projects in the works. He also has big plans for Hit Parader, the iconic music magazine known for its focus on hard rock that he purchased in 2020 and is resurrecting with a print format, live event space and on-demand video network. “People actually do like to read and we do like to hold things, and it’s nice to have options again,” he says. “Things are being taken away and disappearing in these worlds, and in the rock world specifically, can’t we just have something that is still truly from the streets.” Another case of elevating artistic expression, Avildsen recently opened Hit Parader Nashville, a club that will serve, among other things, as host of an event celebrating the magazine’s cover artist each month. The concept kicked off with a Yungblud acoustic performance in late September that the Sumerian team also captured on film. “We do want to try to do that with everyone that’s on the cover, have some special curated night where they’re at the club. I love that the business model is actually like the after parties we’d do tour when I started booking 20 years ago,” he says.Avildsen is also building an on-demand video network as a backbone of Sumerian’s Hit Parader play. “The biggest problem in the music business that could be immediately changed Is video. There should be a business model so artists and fans can get the quality level of musical cinema they deserve. And Google’s not going to do it. So for all these artists, who are not the size of Taylor Swift or Beyonce, where do they go? Hopefully to Hit Parader.”He says the company has begun licensing titles for the VOD platform, and will be creating original programming as well. For Avildsen, it’s all about connecting artistic and commercial dots in ways that don’t compromise either. “If we can find things that have a music component to help build the brand and also we can [bring in] the filmmakers and producers," he says, "it gives us a unique edge of offering to them because we can bring in other audiences and collaborations. ”