Six years ago, Scott Walus had just enough money to produce a 7-inch vinyl on his new label, Cavetone Records, of his band at the time, Pat Boone’s Farm.

Despite being immersed in a digital world of MP3 files and CDs, Walus, a communication studies professor, set out to release a full-length vinyl album.

“That was in 2008 when nobody was putting out records at that point, so it was pure madness to do so,” Walus said.

To this day, the record label has released vinyl albums for several bands, such as Monte Carlos, Cedar Plank Salmon and the Down-Fi.

All of those bands as well as Walus’ current band, the Ex-Bombers, will be celebrating the anniversary of Cavetone’s first release with a free concert at 9 p.m. Friday at the Top of the Roc.

Pat Boone’s Farm will also be reuniting for the night to perform.

Although the label has been releasing records for the past six years, Cavetone existed for years before that. Previous attempts did not succeed.

“I didn’t want to have that be like the anniversary of failures, so this is much more so the anniversary of a successful release,” he said.

The challenges of releasing a vinyl record were intensified because not many people were educated on the process at that time, Walus said.

“It was (like) grasping in the dark because nobody you could call could tell you how to make a record,” he said. “That was certainly forgotten at that point.”

Other challenges included recording in the first floor of a house that flooded every now and then and the record-pressing company cutting the records wrong.

“They cut it in stereo at 33 1/3, which translates to it sounding like there’s a cotton ball on the needle of your turntable,” Walus said. “So we had to pay to have it recut.”

By 2010, Cavetone had about four bands actively producing content, but by the next year, when the label moved from Colombia, Mo. to Charleston, things began to slow down, Walus said.

Then, bands started to seek out the label.

“By 2013, more bands playing and recording,” Walus said. “We’re definitely on the upswing now.”

Despite both Walus’ previous band and his current band performing at the same show, the two groups have different sounds.

Pat Boone’s Farm was power pop, while the Ex-Bombers is a mixture of “dirt bag spy-jazz” and “beatnik punk,” Walus said.

“It’s dirt bag spy-jazz because it’s kind of dirty and seedy, and there’s old jazz influence in it because it’s just an eight-string bass and drums,” he said. “So it’s very minimal; it’s not very loud.”

He said the “beatnick punk” description came from the man who used to videotape the band’s shows saying it was like punk for people from the beatnik generation.

He said the group members of Pat Boone’s Farm disbanded not because they didn’t like one another, but because they were ready to produce different kinds of music.

“The people who really, really liked your last band should hate your new band,” Walus said “Because then you’re not doing it right; you should just keep playing in the old band if that continues.”

Stephanie Markham can be reached at 581-2812 or DENverge@gmail.com.