At the heart of central Iowa is the town of Ames, a thriving suburban community that in more ways than one looks like any other traditional midwestern small town. It has a historic Main Street, lined with barbershops and family owned restaurants and cafés; it has a library, a marble-floored city hall, grassy parks where the children go to play and quiet little neighborhoods shaded by giant oak trees.

Behind all of its suburban quaintness, however, Ames is also home to a wildly successful local music scene. But this music is not like the music of other small midwestern communities. It’s not a group of old men who gather in a church to play conservative country-gospel on beat-up guitars and harmonicas. It’s not a karaoke machine tucked away in the corner of some lonely bowling alley.

It’s a tightly knit community of deeply passionate musicians, playing packed bar room shows and impromptu gigs in dark, sweaty basements of neighborhood houses. It’s a local music scene that looks a lot like the music scenes of nearby big cities like Minneapolis and Chicago — cutting edge, youthful, and always eager for something new. Ames’ music scene even has its own record label.

Maximum Ames Records, the local record label that began just four years ago as nothing more than a name on the back of an album, was started by two Iowa native musicians and friends, Nate Logsdon and Chris Ford. The record label was originally meant to be the driving force behind the music releases of four local bands, including Logsdon’s and Ford’s own bands — Mumfords and Christopher the Conquered, respectively.

Logsdon, the lead singer of Mumfords, had used the name Maximum Ames as a pseudo music label on his first album, ‘Post Mortem — EP.’

“I realized when we put out our first album, I was just like, whoa… A label is just a label that you put on a record. Literally, it is just a label,” Logsdon said.

In 2009, shortly after the release of their first album, Logsdon and his band were gearing up to release their second full-length album, ‘Triple Trinities.’ Logsdon and Ford started casually tossing around the idea of starting a real record label. The two met weekly to talk business, and through a mutual love for vinyl, both knew that they wanted to put out their records in a vinyl-only format.

“…The more we talked we realized that we were pretty much talking about starting a label,” Logsdon said. “We already had this name; Maximum Ames. That’s when Maximum Ames Records, the all-Iowa, all-vinyl record label was born.”

After releasing Mumfords’ ‘Triple Trinities’ in 2011, Logsdon and Ford began expanding the label by branching out into other musicians and starting new projects. The fifth band added to their label, Blues Pills, marked the beginning of the label’s outward search for new and exciting musicians to collaborate with.

“A lot of our projects are connected directly to us in some way. You know, like, it could be a good friend of ours or somebody that works for the label,” Ford said. “But I think a big step for us was going into people that we didn’t directly know.”

Despite the fact that Maximum Ames Records represents bands, sets up events and helps with the release of albums, Ford said that it isn’t what a typical record label is considered to be.

“We aren’t signing contracts with bands to develop them and work with them for years or for multiple album releases. Its simply one release at a time,” Ford said. “No body is making any money or anything. Its just people doing house shows and being supportive and being positive, and its just about building a good community that cares about Ames.”

With no official office and no established recording studio, Maximum Ames Records’ home base is, essentially, wherever the music lives and wherever the bands perform. The bands record albums at various locations spread throughout the Des Moines and Ames areas, and all albums released are limited to vinyl and are pressed only in the U.S. — a tenet that Maximum Ames Records proudly lives by and calls their “one rule.”

“I don’t think vinyl is going away anytime soon. And all of us who are involved in the project care it about it enough that we’re not just going to let it die on the wayside. It’s very much something that I see a big future in,” said Caleb Swank, director of the Iowa Music Store, the pop-up merchandising shop of Maximum Ames Records. “It’s a beautiful medium as a piece of art. You have larger artwork, you have good high-fidelity audio, it’s all very high quality and I don’t see the demand for that going away.”

“There’s a huge comeback in vinyl. You know how people talk about how people don’t buy music anymore? People are always complaining about that. Actually, while digital sales and CD sales have gone down in the past few years, vinyl sales have gone up,” Logsdon added.

The record label is set to put out their twelfth album this June. Ford said that they have released all 12 albums with the money needed for just one album.

One of Maximum Ames Records’ crowning achievements is the Maximum Ames Music Festival — a four-day music fest built upon the idea of celebrating the rich and diverse culture of Iowa music and art. A Google search for ‘Ames IA music’ brings up the Maximum Ames Music Festival’s official webpage as the first result.

The festival, alongside the Iowa Music Store, launched summer 2011. The festival’s second year, in 2012, featured over 130 bands performing at 23 different venues around Ames.

“We had people come from 16 different states to come for the music festival. And there were a good number of people that have never been to the Midwest before. They came for the music festival,” said Chris Lyng, co-director of the music festival.

Lyng said that the festival was a huge success, both with the audience and with the performers. Jeff Mangum, lead singer of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, a figurehead of the national indie-music scene, told Lyng that the festival was one of the best shows he’s ever played.

“That’s definitely what Ames brings. That’s an Ames thing — you go to a show, you’re a part of it. You’re doing something together and sharing an experience together,” Lyng said.

Maximum Ames is currently planning their third festival for this year, and Logsdon said that it will be “bigger and better than ever.”

The passionate and creative minds behind Maximum Ames all believe one thing — that Ames is an awesome place to be, and that the Ames music community is one of the best in the country. Community, in the grand scheme of things, is what the whole label has always been about. Rather than to butt heads over competing record sales, to seek popularity or to defend a reputation, Maximum Ames Records wants to foster a sense of connectedness and growth within the Iowa community of artists.

“We see Maximum Ames as part of the local movement. We are identifying music by community and not by genre. We are trying to identify and build and promote a culture that is based on a micro-scale,” Ford said. “We think there’s a lot of benefits to that, and so we’re just trying to do our best to support businesses that are as close to us as possible.”

After a lively and spirited Mumfords performance in an Iowa City theatre, Logsdon, shirtless and dripping with sweat, looked at the audience before walking off stage and said:

“One city. One state. One frame of mind. One heart. And that is Iowa.”