There's been precious little good news about the record industry in recent years, which makes the story of local label Merge Records all the more heartwarming. The label is marking its 20-year anniversary this month with a series of events, some of which you can read about in a feature in Sunday's paper.

Even though Merge has made Billboard's top-10 more than once, it's still a small business where networking counts for something. Ivan Howard of Merge act Rosebuds recalls how his band wound up signed to Merge, via an interaction with co-owner Mac McCaughan.

"I had sent them a demo and got back the standard form letter: 'Thanks for your submission, we'll listen when we get a chance,'" says Howard. "Then Mac was looking for a band to open for a Portastatic show and said he liked the EP he had at the office, and he asked who was putting it out. 'I, uh, sent it to you to put out -- I hope,' I said. 'Let me talk to Laura [Ballance] and see what she thinks,' he said. That was all it took.

"Everything is what you make of it, and Merge allows bands to make their own way," Howard adds. "That can be good or bad, it all comes down to the choices you make. But they just support what you do, which can spoil you -- the fact that somebody actually believes in what you do and not just the money."

There's plenty more where that came from in the feature in Sunday's paper. Also, WUNC-TV is running a feature on Merge on its "North Carolina Now" program, Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. And you can take a listen to this recent NPR feature, or preview the upcoming Merge history book. 

ADDENDUM: Here's that WUNC-TV feature. 

So this week's James Taylor tour won't be the only get-out-the-vote shows happening here this election season. Coming to UNC-Chapel Hill's Graham Terrace (adjacent to Morehead Planetarium on campus) is a Nov. 1 lineup that offers up a superb slice of local music:

The dB's
Superchunk acoustic (which might be a first)
Ivan Rosebud
Megafaun
I Was Totally Destroying It
Bowerbirds
Greg Humphreys
Regina Hexaphone
Portastatic

It gets going at the rather non-rock-'n'-roll time of 9 a.m., and it's free -- they're even throwing in coffee and doughnuts.

UPDATE: Billy Bragg, who is playing in Durham that night, has been added to the lineup. 

Back in the early 1990s, Mac McCaughan was a guy in a band who ran a small record label on the side. He's still got a band, Portastatic (and occasionally Superchunk). But that once-small label takes up a lot more time. By now, Merge Records is one of the most reputable record companies in America, working with some of the biggest names in the indie-rock universe. So steering that ship is a full-time job for McCaughan and Merge co-founder Laura Ballance.

"Laura and I have different things we do with Merge," McCaughan says. "For myself, a lot of it is making decisions, answering questions on the phone, e-mail -- like most jobs, you know. It also involves conceptualizing things. We don't tend to do things too far in advance, there's no five-year plan. But we do have to look into the future: What do we want next year to look like? Who's working on records now? Who will be done when and how do we space them out? What do we want to do that's bigger than individual releases?"

One of those larger projects is a 20-year-anniversary box set drawn from Merge's catalog, curated by a wide range of friends and peers including David Byrne, author Jonathan Lethem, comedian Zach Galifianakis and chef David Chang. Meantime, Portastatic will play Saturday in Raleigh, opening for Magnetic Fields.

For more, see this interview with McCaughan.