Dan Schlissel

In 2018, during the label's first visit to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Schlissel registered a Scottish tartan with the National Records of Scotland in the name of Stand Up! Records. Designed by Edinburgh kiltmaker Gordon Nicolson, the tartan blends the colors red, black, and tan (from Shepard Fairey's Stand Up! Records logo), blue (from the Israeli flag, symbolizing Schlissel's Jewish heritage), and silver-grey (for-ismist Recordings' 25th anniversary).

From 2012 to 2015, Stand Up! hosted the annual Akumal Comedy Festival in Mexico, a nonprofit event held in Tulum, Playa del Carmen, and Akumal which raised money for the Mexican Red Cross. The festival featured comics performing in both English and Spanish. Headliners included Darryl Lenox, Maggie Faris, and Derek Sheen. The festival was co-founded by Schlissel and Twin Cities comic Gus Lynch, who also acted in the films Saving Silverman, North Country, and I Spy. Lynch died after an accidental fall in Akumal in 2014; the final festival was held in his honor.

Dan Schlissel is a record producer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and founder of the record labels Stand Up! Records, which specializes in comedy, and -ismist Recordings, which focused on punk and alternative rock from Nebraska and nearby Midwestern states. Schlissel won a Grammy as producer of Lewis Black's 2006 album The Carnegie Hall Performance, and was nominated for his work on Black's two Grammy-nominated albums, Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues and Anticipation. He is known for his work with Black and other comics including Doug Stanhope, Maria Bamford, Marc Maron, and Mitch Hedberg, and helping release the debut record of Iowa metal band Slipknot.

Also for Comedy Central Records, Schlissel was the recording engineer on Mitch Hedberg's last album, Mitch All Together, which was recorded live in 2003 in Minneapolis, and produced Hannibal Buress' Animal Furnace and Ryan Stout's Touché. He was also recording engineer on Mitch Fatel's Miniskirts and Muffins, Dan Cummins' Revenge is Near, and Nick DiPaolo's Funny How?, and edited Ben Roy's I Got Demons.

Stand Up! has released more than 200 comedy albums and videos since its founding in 2000, including albums by Black, Stanhope, Patton Oswalt, Greg Proops, David Cross, Maria Bamford, Hannibal Buress, Judy Gold, the Sklar Brothers, and Eddie Pepitone.

Even after Lewis Black moved to the larger Comedy Central Records label, he continued to work with Schlissel, who produced or edited four more Black albums in the mid-2000s, Rules of Enragement, Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues, The Carnegie Hall Performance, and Anticipation. Of these, Carnegie Hall won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, while Luther Burbank and Anticipation were both nominated in that category. Stand Up! also released the vinyl editions of Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues and Rules of Enragement.

Schlissel recorded Black's The White Album in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1999, with John Machnik, who would be his production partner for many years. Released on -ismist, the album was an immediate success, eventually selling around 60,000 copies, more than the entire previous -ismist catalog combined. The label would go on to release several other comedy albums, including two by Doug Stanhope, Sicko and Something to Take the Edge Off, and Jimmy Shubert's Animal Instincts, while Schlissel launched a new label, Stand Up! Records, in 2000. By 2002, -ismist had effectively closed down and been replaced by Stand Up! Records.

Slipknot later moved on to major label Roadrunner Records, and Schlissel became disillusioned with running a music label; he moved to Minneapolis in 1998 to take a job at a software company. He considered folding -ismist, but instead found new focus after convincing Lewis Black to work with him after meeting the comedian after a show.

In 1992, inspired by the success of indie music labels such as Sub Pop, he founded the label which would eventually become -ismist Recordings, at first basing the business out of his dorm room. Over the 1990s, -ismist released nearly 80 albums and singles by Midwestern bands including Killdozer, Season to Risk, and House of Large Sizes, beginning with Nebraska indie-rock bands including Such Sweet Thunder. Schlissel, via -ismist, also distributed other Midwestern indie labels and organized two music festivals in 1996 and 1997. Schlissel helped then-unknown Iowa metal band Slipknot release its first album, Mate.Feed.Kill.Repeat, which it had originally self-pressed. Schlissel and -ismist distributed the last third of the 1,000-copy run of the album, and helped the band get its first significant notice from music critics and radio airplay.

In 1982, his family moved to Kearney, Nebraska, where he spent his teenage years. In 1988, he enrolled at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics.