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Wilco, shown here performing at the Pines Theater in Northampton during 2007, has created its own record label with headquarters at Eastworks in Easthampton.

EASTHAMPTON - Wilco, the Chicago-based indie rock band, has enough worldwide acclaim from peers, fans and the music industry to start a new record label anywhere it wants. Turns out the Grammy Award-winning band has settled on Easthampton as a key site for its foray into recording independence.

After 15 years with major labels under the Warner Music Group., Wilco has formed dBpm Records, which stands for "Decibels per Minute." The label will feature all future Wilco recordings and will be run by the band's longtime manager Tony Margherita with headquarters in the Eastworks Building on Pleasant Street. ANTI-Records in Los Angeles will provide distribution and other services for all dBpm Records releases, according to Wilco's announcement Wednesday.

"This is an idea we've discussed for years," said Jeff Tweedy, the band's leader, in a statement. "We really like doing things ourselves, so having our own label feels pretty natural to me. And, to be working with ANTI- a label that has its roots in a label that was started by a punk rock guy to sell his own records seems like a perfect fit for us."

Margherita, who runs a management company out of the Eastworks Building, described Wilco's independent streak as "well-documented and nothing new."

"This is the culmination of what we've been working towards for the last 15 years," Margherita said in a statement released by the band. "As we reached the end of our last deal, it felt like it was time for a change and the one thing we were certain we did NOT want to do was to sign another traditional recording agreement."

He added: "Our discussions with ANTI-, coming on the back of a great experience working with them on the Mavis Staples record, led us to thinking we might be able to come up with something quite different from the norm that could potentially be better for us and, frankly, a lot more interesting. And that's exactly what happened...."

The business will not be the first record label in Easthampton; it will join Ecstatic Peace!, an established record label owned and run by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Andrew Kesin of Florence, which has operated out of the Eastworks Building and had partnered with Universal Records for years. Another independent record label, SpiritHouse Records, was formerly based in the Eastworks Building and is now doing business as SpiritHouse Music in Northampton.

"I think it's cool," said artist Luke Cavagnac who has a studio in the Eastworks Building and is a member of local garage rock band The Claudia Malibu. He called Wilco "a good band," and said: "They like to do a little experimenting. They're not a straight-ahead rock band."

Wilco parted ways with Nonesuch Records in 2010 and earlier worked with Reprise Records, a label co-founded in 1961 by Frank Sinatra. In an interview last year with Billboard.com, Tweedy discussed the band's migration towards further independence.

"It doesn't make sense for us to pay somebody three-quarters of the pie for a lot of the things we've been doing ourselves," he told the online music publication.

He noted the band had been doing much of its publicity, promotion and marketing in-house for quite some time.

Since its formation in 1994, Wilco has released seven studio albums, a live double album and several collaborations involving such artists as The Minus 5 and Billy Bragg. Among the band's more notable albums are Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002), which Rolling Stone Magazine dubbed the number 3 album of the decade, and A Ghost is Born (2004) for which Wilco won two Grammy Awards, including Best Alternative Music Album. The band's last studio album, Wilco (The Album), was released in 2009 and the group is currently working in its recording studio, known as The Loft, in Chicago.

Despite its Windy City roots, Wilco is no stranger to the Valley.

"They have, for many, many years, played through this area," said Deb Bernardini, Wilco's publicist in Easthampton. "They really know the area and like it a lot. They are very, very well received here."

Last year, the band staged its inaugural Solid Sound Festival at Mass MoCA in North Adams; the multi-day arts and music festival will return there June 24-26 of this year. The band, along with its Easthampton-based management company, Tony Margherita Management, also co-sponsored a Northampton Little League team last year called TMM/Wilco.

Easthampton Mayor Michael A. Tautznik said he was pleased to learn the group will operate its record business in this former New England mill town.

"It's good news, I hadn't heard," Tautznik said Thursday. "It goes along with all the rest of the arts here."

Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.