How Vince Barreras manages the vinyl pressing floor at Studio 4 and still finds time to run Abandon Everything Records

On a good day, Studio 4 Vinyl in Coatesville, PA, presses 4,500 records. Pressing floor manager Vince Barreras knows every machine in the 20,000 square foot facility, which is remarkable considering that five years ago he could barely use a screwdriver. Today he runs the pressing operation by day and his own record label, Abandon Everything Records, by night. It is a job that barely exists anymore, and he got it because of a tweet.

In 2018, Barreras was a communications major at Temple University when he saw Philadelphia music standout Will Yip announce a guest lecture on Twitter. Yip would be speaking in an audio mixing class taught by longtime professor and Studio 4 owner Phil Nicolo. For Barreras, Yip represented a career trajectory worth chasing: Studio 4 intern turned in-demand audio engineer and co-owner of Doom Bar, a metal bar in the Eraserhood neighborhood.

“I got a dumb early train, like 5:30. I had no clue where this room was. It was the recording Studio G down in the basement, so I’m asking a bunch of people where it is,” Barreras recounts. “I’m sitting down in a chair and I’m super anxious and I look over and I see Will.”

After the lecture, he struck up a conversation with Yip. “I was like 20 minutes late to class.”

Yip spoke highly about the professor, Ruffhouse Records co-founder, Studio 4 Recording owner, and Temple alum Phil Nicolo. This inspired Barreras to pursue an audio recording route in his major. His last semester at Temple, he signed up for that same audio mixing class, but the professor needed to be subbed out due to surgery. Nicolo took over.

“I was like, ‘Yo, this is a sign,'” Barreras said. “Pretty much after class, almost at the end of the Zoom call, he makes a passing comment about starting a vinyl pressing plant and he was like, ‘Oh you guys need jobs? You guys need an internship or something?'”

Temple’s campus was locked down due to COVID during his last semester, so Nicolo’s class was largely virtual. Barreras stuck around after the Zoom and initiated a back and forth over email. Nicolo shared more details about the unfinished vinyl pressing plant in Nottingham, PA and invited Barreras out early in 2021 to check it out. The rest is history.

“One of the things that I love about this place — we’re a small company. Everybody gets a living wage here, and it’s not cheap to do that,” Barreras says about Studio 4 Vinyl. “We’re kind of a hybrid pressing plant. We do major label work, but we’ll also do Philly bands that want 100 pressed. Without the major label work literally keeping the lights on, we can’t do other people’s records. It’s about capacity and what kind of pressing plant you want to be.”

Barreras remembers the move from Nottingham to Coatesville earlier this year. Studio 4 went from approximately 4,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet. The pressing staff consists of eight people on rotating schedules. In total, fewer than 20 people run Studio 4 Vinyl day in and day out — including delivering 55-pound bags of plastic pellets and shipping out boxes of records.

On a high-end day with relatively uncomplicated variants, the plant presses 4,500 records. “I think one of the big reasons we’ve been so successful is the people we have around us — mechanics and techs. These people are geniuses,” Barreras says. “Ashley is our production manager. She’s the person you’re going to talk to day to day. Ashley does the job of 20 people. It’s wild.”

Barreras is an expert on just about anything you can imagine at the plant. It didn’t start that way, he jokes that he could barely use a screwdriver. Today he knows the machines well. “Over the years I’ve learned because you have to be a mechanic too.”

“It sounds dramatic, but this job kind of saved my life. This job gave me purpose. I didn’t know what I was gonna do after college, but I’m doing the thing that I love every single day. It’s been four, going on five years of working here,” Barreras reflects.

Barreras picked up photography in early 2020, learning the ins and outs while renting gear from Temple University. He shot dozens of bands before COVID lockdown. When things opened back up and the Nottingham plant was getting off the ground, Barreras moved to South Philly from the suburbs. He quickly sought out opportunities to volunteer and give back, settling on Savage Sisters, a substance addiction and recovery group in Kensington.

Savage Sisters threw a benefit concert in early 2022 that Barreras photographed. It was also his first interaction with Philly band Flatwaves. He formed a close relationship with the band, which led him to establish his own label, Abandon Everything Records, in August 2022. He put out Flatwaves’ first album, Numbra, that October.

“That’s how it started. Doing photos at shows, going to shows, and working with Savage Sisters — without one of those, this label doesn’t exist,” Barreras points out. “The whole community aspect is number one for me because without it you really just have nothing. Your friends and the people in your life are the most important because nobody is doing any of this alone.”

Abandon Everything Records has gone on to put out 13 vinyl releases for bands like Wax Jaw, Creepoid, DRILL, Sweepers, Cigarettes for Breakfast, New York’s Glimmer, and Flatwaves’ second album, Tell Me Secrets, which dropped in early October. “If you have disposable income to buy a record, I’m gonna make it the best fucking record you’ve ever listened to and the best record you’ve ever looked at,” he says. “To spend money to buy a record that I put out, I’m gonna write you a handwritten note. I’m gonna give you a bunch of stickers and a bunch of cool shit.”

As a label, Barreras describes his services as vinyl release prep and rollout planning — a classic undersell if you know him. Abandon Everything licenses the master recordings for each release on a lacquer disc, sends progress videos, hand delivers artist copies, refers bands to community-minded resources like Sweet Cheetah PR, and is essentially a text away.

Every couple of months, Barreras drives around to local record stores to drop off new Abandon Everything releases and restock as needed. Hopefully, he doesn’t shop. “It’s dangerous. I’m gonna drop like $200 easy,” he jokes.

Barreras’ network today spans the music industry — bands, vinyl equipment, podcasts, merch, and album cover art, which he’s very opinionated about. When materializing Abandon Everything Records, he looked to local labels for inspiration like Born Losers Records, Funeral Party Records, Creep Records, and Washington D.C.’s Discord Records. Each has held itself to a certain standard that resonates with him.

Born Losers is the blueprint for an indie label, according to Barreras. “I think they operate with super good morals. Their attention to detail when it comes to being involved and invested in the artists they work with — they really give everything they got. They’ve taken me under their wing and taught me a lot early on about how to do a label. They always made themselves available.”

He continues, “I had no concept that you’re celebrating this thing, you know? I know we wanna put it out immediately, but it’s fun to break down your release and talk about the singles and put out different things — interviews and all this cool stuff.”

Studio 4 has pressed many vinyls for Born Losers clients and Funeral Party Records, some of which Barreras had released on Abandon Everything prior, like Wax Jaw’s first EP Between the Teeth. “I love putting out a band’s first record. If I’m inspired and moved by something, I’m going to do it, and I don’t care,” he says.

Nicolo and Studio 4 as a whole have been day one supporters of Abandon Everything Records and Barreras himself. “He’s empowered me to start a label and let me experiment with different vinyl variants, as time consuming as that can be. He’s just like, dude, this is amazing. I love that you’re so into this. We’ve learned together since the beginning. I’ll never stop thanking that man.”

“With the label, it’s a labor of love, but it’s also affording me to do stuff. Looking big picture, if the label became a full time thing where I can hire friends to pack records, that would be sick. I’m not money motivated, but I’m not ashamed of making money. I think there’s a difference,” he says.

He continues, “Different labels have different business models. Mine right now is changing in ways where I’m kind of taking on more roles and offering more services. At the core, the main focus is to put out vinyl records. I’m dipping my toes into doing CDs and digital distribution, but that’s not really the sexy part of doing the label.”

By nature, Barreras is a tireless spark plug and romantic of the Philadelphia music community. He shows up for people, making sure Studio 4 and Abandon Everything clients are taken care of and seen in the production process, documenting the diverse punk scene through concert photography, and advocating for drug testing strips at merch tables, among many other things.

To oversimplify it, he’s another link in the chain holding it all together. The Philly music scene needs people like Vince Barreras.

“One of the goals for me, just as a music listener, I like to listen to a bunch of different things. Scene connecting is big for me because we all live in the same city. A lot of the times we’re neighbors and we don’t even know it. Just because I go to a punk show down in West Philly and then there’s an alternative rock or shoegaze show or any other indie thing, I wish people would go to all of the things,” Barreras says.