Jandek

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Jandek
Jandek, as depicted on the cover of Six and Six (1981)
Jandek, as depicted on the cover of Six and Six (1981)
Background information
Birth name Sterling Richard Smith (?)
Born October 26, 1945 (?)
Origin Houston, Texas(?)
Genre(s) Outsider music
Instrument(s) guitar, bass, keyboards, harmonica, piano, drums, organ, accordion, vocals
Years active 1978—present
Label(s) Corwood Industries
Website Guide To Jandek (unofficial)

Jandek is the assumed name of an outsider musician who operates in or around Houston, Texas. Since 1978, Jandek has self-released 49 albums of unusual, often emotionally dissolute folk and blues songs without ever granting more than the occasional interview or providing any biographical information. Jandek often plays a highly idiosyncratic and frequently atonal form of folk and blues music, often using an open and unconventional chord structure. Jandek's music is unique, but his lyrics closely mirror the country blues and folk traditions of Eastern Texas.


Contents

[edit] Identity

Only a handful of people claim to have contacted Jandek, whose steadfast anonymity is legendary. Without any conventional attempts at promotion, he releases albums through his own record label Corwood Industries, which is addressed at a Houston post office box. Fans can write to Corwood for a typewritten catalogue and order Jandek’s albums, usually at inexpensive prices. Jandek’s work has been available on vinyl, compact disc and DVD. Many of his albums feature pictures of the same man (seen above) at various ages; although it seemed likely, it was not until Jandek's live debut in 2004 that it became certain that the person depicted on the album covers was the principal performer.

Jandek's real name is almost certainly Sterling Richard Smith; a review of Ready for the House in OP magazine, the first ever national press given to Jandek, refers to the artist as Sterling Smith,[1], checks written to Corwood come back endorsed by Smith, and Smith is listed as the claimant in the copyright records for Jandek's albums at the Library of Congress. Despite this evidence, Corwood never uses the name in connection with Jandek, and in turn many of Jandek's fans respectfully maintain this separation. He is widely believed to live in the area of Houston, Texas, as this is the location of the post office box (No. 15375) which has been used by Corwood from the beginning. There is also a telephone number for Corwood Industries listed in the phone book for the area, a number that Corwood happens to share with "Sterling Smith Corp".

[edit] Personal history

The manually typed discography of Jandek, as provided by Corwood
The manually typed discography of Jandek, as provided by Corwood

Smith has kept his personal history an almost absolute secret, revealing only one story about his pre-Corwood years: he wrote seven novels but burned them upon rejection from New York publishers.[2] Aside from that anecdote, nothing is known about his life. He is rumored to have grown up, or at least spent time in Providence, Rhode Island. This suggestion is not baseless - a handful of Jandek songs mention either the state itself or the Rhode Island town of Point Judith. It has also been suggested that he is well traveled, as several album sleeves depict locations that have been formally identified as being outside the US. This, however, presumes that all pictures that do not depict Smith were taken by him.

In his one of his only two known interviews (given in 1985 to John Trubee for SPIN Magazine, Jandek mentions that he was working at that time as a machinist.[3]

[edit] Music

Jandek's first album, Ready for the House, though obviously a solo work, was originally credited to a band called the Units. As explained in an interview in the first issue of Spin, Smith was forced to change the name by an identically named Californian group already in possession of a copyright. All reissues of this first album and all subsequent Corwood releases have been credited to "Jandek". Smith's initial use of a plural band name (and Corwood's curious tendency to refer to Jandek as "a representative from Corwood Industries") has led some fans to suggest that the reclusive artist intended his oeuvre to be perceived as the work of an anonymous collective rather than that of a single man. Indeed, though roughly two-thirds of his records are solo affairs, the other third have variably featured female vocalists, different male vocalists, bass guitar, electric guitar, drums, and accordion. These contributions are usually credited to outside collaborators, but in the Spin interview as well as a letter to DJ Irwin Chusid the artist admitted to having overdubbed parts himself on occasion, such as on the album The Rocks Crumble. At any rate, no proper credits list has ever appeared on an album, but song titles have included "Nancy Sings" and "John Plays Drums", though, curiously, those pieces turn out to be two different versions of the same song.

One early theory suggested that all the music was recorded in a single, feverish, possibly manic phase and that after 19 albums the releases would stop. This appeared, for a moment, as if it might have some validity - the 21st album, Lost Cause, finished with a sidelong piece called "The Electric End", a crazed instrumental featuring shouted vocals. Instead, this seems to have marked the end of the "first band phase." Then the 22nd album arrived and returned to the acoustic and vocal sound that is found on most of the first six Corwood albums (often referred to as "the first acoustic phase"). This continued unabated for seven albums until, in 1999, The Beginning was released, which featured a side-long work of instrumental piano. This ushered in the most controversial period of albums in Corwood's history - three albums of unaccompanied voice. Seemingly recorded on a voice-activated tape recorder, these "spoken word songs" ran up to half an hour in length and taxed even the most devoted followers. After these albums, though, the direction changed again and Jandek returned to a voice and guitar (with occasional harmonica) mixture, though things were different. The guitar was often electric and the voice was decidedly older than that on the previous albums. Further albums have continued the solo approach, though the instrument used has occasionally been a fretless bass, and the songs have stretched progressively longer and the lyrics have become even more personal, to some degree recalling the minimalist monologues of Samuel Beckett. Though Corwood still releases albums like this (the most recent is The Ruins Of Adventure), they are now alternated with releases of the live band shows, which are remarkably different and feature unusually tight playing.

Some of Jandek's allure stems from his small but devoted fan base that includes Sonic Youth, Kurt Cobain, Bill Callahan, Mike Watt, John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, Low, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes and K Records founder Calvin Johnson. In the '80s and '90s most fans stumbled into the world of Jandek after hearing his music on college radio or freeform stations like WFMU, but as the twenty-first century approached Jandek was just as likely to catch fans through the internet. An "unofficial Jandek website" was founded by Seth Tisue in 1997. tisue.net/jandek It includes complete descriptions of each album and concert and the archives of the Jandek Discussion List.

[edit] In the media

Jandek has given only two phone interviews in his entire career, the first conducted by fellow outsider artist John Trubee, for the aforementioned Spin article in 1985. In it, he admitted to having had musical training earlier in life, and refuted an OP magazine reviewer praising "May he never tune his guitar!" by stating that he did indeed tune his guitar, albeit usually to open tunings of his own devising. The Spin article was Jandek's first major press; as the '80s drew to a close, the magazine proclaimed him to be one of the Most Important Artists of the 1980s in a special end-of-decade issue. Outsider music expert Irwin Chusid conducted the second and brought quite a bit of attention to Jandek by including an account of his own dealings with Corwood Industries in his book Songs In The Key of Z: The Curious World of Outsider Music, the accompanying album featuring a track from Ready for the House after Jandek called him in response to Chusid's request for information. Texas Monthly reporter Katy Vine tracked down the "Corwood Representative" and gave an account of her experiences in the August 1999 issue. At Jandek's request Vine kept his name and address a secret.

In 2004 Unicorn Stencil Productions released the first documentary on Jandek, entitled Jandek on Corwood. It was directed by Chad Freidrichs, and produced by Freidrichs and Paul Fehler. Amongst the extras on the DVD release of the documentary is the entire unedited tape of the John Trubee-conducted Spin interview. No one from Corwood Industries is represented on screen, but the label did suggest several people to be interviewed for the movie, including music critics Phil Milstein and Gary Pig Gold, and Katy Vine. Corwood's recommendation of Vine for the documentary is seen as essentially endorsing the contents and confirming the authenticity of the Texas Monthly interview. In October of the same year Jandek stunned the alternative music scene by playing live for what was probably the first time (see live performances section below for details).

In September 2006, author Danen Jobe announced the completion and publication of the first part of his Corwood-sanctioned novel Niagra Blues, released through Scottish publishers Single Cell Press (www.singlecellpress.co.uk). The book, representing Jobe's imagination of a possible biography of the artist, is almost entirely fictional; its protagonist shares with Jandek only his stage name, song catalog, and a few other facts.

There have been a handful of live shows each year, and Corwood intends to release all of them on CD in addition to its studio albums. In fact, Corwood puts out more Jandek product now than ever in its history, releasing five albums in 2005 alone. Summer 2006 saw the release of the first Corwood DVD, a video version of Glasgow Sunday, Jandek's first live performance.

"Duality of Self", a record of Jandek's performance in Toronto in September, 2006 was premiered at the SXSW Music Festival and Film Festival in March 2007. Produced by Colin Brunton, Jim Mauro, Gary Topp and "The Representative from Corwood", the two hour concert film was directed by Brunton and editor Ryan Noth, using a five camera set up.

[edit] Interpretations

Since Corwood has provided no information on its star artist, Jandek's fanbase has become fertile ground for a number interpretations of both his music and persona whose range of different theories and beliefs are impossible to sum up here. However, they tend to fall on a spectrum between the following two extremes:

  • The first, who might be called Literalists, see Jandek's persona as entirely transparent- not really a persona at all. They view his albums as a sort of musical diary, contending that the feeling in his music is too personal, guileless, and extreme in its emotions to be entirely or even (for the stalwarts) partially imagined. As a result these fans are more likely to be interested in the artist's biographical information and are more likely to believe that he is Sterling R. Smith. This stance was more popular earlier in Jandek's career.
  • The second camp, who might be called Aliteralists, take up the opposite stance: they believe that Jandek is an elaborately constructed persona bearing little to no resemblance to any specific person. For them the questions regarding Jandek's "true identity", such whether or not he is Smith, are completely irrelevant. Instead of seeing the Corwood catalogue as a diary, these fans treat it an ongoing character study of sorts, one nearly unprecedented in its depth and scope. Many of Jandek's newer fans prefer some degree of this stance.

Most fans, however, fall in the middle, and it's likely that the truth resides there as well: for its part, Corwood has stated many times that the listener's impression of Jandek's music is far more important and interesting to him than his original intent for it.

[edit] Live performances

The mystery of Jandek's identity was partially resolved in October 2004 when he performed live in Scotland, at the Instal 04 music festival in Glasgow. This was Jandek's first known live appearance and he performed with Richard Youngs (bass) and Alex Neilson (drums). The man on stage was obviously the same man who appears on the album covers. As per Corwood's stipulations, the performance was not publicized in advance, nor was it identified as it happened or at any point afterwards. David Tibet of Current 93, who had headlined the festival the previous day, advised fans not only that none of the other artists knew of the performance but also that the word "Jandek" was never used, the man who performed alongside Youngs and Neilson being identified only as "a representative of Corwood Industries" (the full text of Tibet's messages to the Jandek mailing list can be read at Seth Tisue's website, linked below).

In May 2005, however, Jandek made announced appearances at the Music Lovers’ Field Companion festival in Gateshead, England and at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Scotland again with Youngs and Neilson. The Gateshead performance was another guitar/bass/drums trio similar to the performance as Instal '04 while the Glasgow show found Jandek playing piano with Youngs on bowed contrabass and Neilson on percussion. It later transpired that, as rumoured at the time, this performance was a single song in many parts titled "The Cell". It lasted around 90 minutes and has been described as lacking the dissonance often associated with Jandek, instead being gentle and melodic with many of the piano parts resembling Erik Satie. These first shows have since been released as Glasgow Sunday, Newcastle Sunday, and Glasgow Monday.

On August 28, 2005 he performed in Austin, Texas (as scheduled) at the Scottish Rite Theatre and Temple to a sold-out audience. It was notably his first time ever to appear on stage in the US and performed with Nick Hennies (drums), Chris Cogburn (drums), and Juan Garcia (bass); this performance has been scheduled for release by Corwood under the title Austin Sunday. He also did two nights of gigs in New York City. He was scheduled to play in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 2, 2005 but the show was cancelled due to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A Chicago show was announced only two days in advance, then cancelled the next day because Hurricane Rita was approaching Houston. In October 2005, Jandek played three sets on 2 different days at Instal 2005 in Glasgow (including a collaboration with Loren Connors and a set with Youngs and Neilson) and also performed alone in London, accompanying himself with an acoustic guitar - to date, this is the only engagement the "Corwood Representative" has undertaken without additional musicians. In November, he played in Hasselt, Belgium and in Helsinki. He also performed on guitar with a full backing band on April 20, 2006 at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon, with Sam Coomes of the band Quasi on bass and Emil Amos from Grails playing drums, plus backing vocalists Liz Harris & Jessica Dennison. He returned to the UK in May to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Camber Sands as well as playing 2 sets in one night in Bristol and making a low key, short notice return to Glasgow, once again in the company of Youngs and Neilson. A further London show was cancelled without explanation.

Jandek performed twice in September 2006. The first show, in Toronto, was performed at a renovated circus rehearsal space and continued the semi-classical/jazzy aspects of Glasgow Monday, this time using a unique lineup of cymbals, double bass and a guitar played more for sound patterns than melody. The artist himself played the Korg keyboards again (as he had in Manhattan), and the performance was one extended piece. By contrast, three days later he played a high-amped rock set with bassist Josh Abrams and Tortoise drummer/producer John McEntire that featured lyrics recounting a prison stay. Jandek played a show in Seattle, Washington at On the Boards on October 27 with the same lineup as the Portland performance earlier that year, and he ended 2006 with a concert in Indianapolis on December 9 in a church sanctuary attached to the Harrison Center for the Arts. That show included a female vocalist who also played viola and sang lead on a few tracks and a flute player, a first.

Reeds were experimented with more in Atlanta and Richmond, Virginia. At the former, he returned to piano, but was backed by violin, percussion and bass clarinet. At one point the group played a lengthy free-jazz song, with the Corwood Representative literally attacking the piano before slowing down, performing a song, and then returning to the free jazz. Richmond returned to a bluesier sound, but added saxophone. There were also props at this show representing a living room and featuring items from Corwood covers (a mannequin, a guitar case, a gaudy couch, etc). Jandek performed at the 2007 SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas on March 17 to a sold-out audience of 500 at Central Presbyterian Church.

[edit] Concerts

  1. 17 Oct 2004, Instal Music Festival, The Arches, Glasgow, Scotland
  2. 22 May 2005, Music Lovers Field Companion Festival, The Sage, Gateshead, England
  3. 23 May 2005, Centre for Comtemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland
  4. 28 Aug 2005, Scottish Rite Theatre, Austin, Texas, United States
  5. 06 Sep 2005, Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan, New York, New York, United States
  6. 07 Sep 2005, ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn, New York, New York, United States (7:30 pm show)
  7. 07 Sep 2005, ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn, New York, New York, United States (9:00 pm show)
  8. 14 Oct 2005, Instal Music Festival, The Arches, Glasgow, Scotland
  9. 16 Oct 2005, Instal Music Festival, The Arches, Glasgow, Scotland (first set)
  10. 16 Oct 2005, Instal Music Festival, The Arches, Glasgow, Scotland (second set)
  11. 18 Oct 2005, Upset the Rhythm, Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, London, England
  12. 12 Nov 2005, Kunstencentrum Belgie, Hasselt, Belgium
  13. 19 Nov 2005, Avanto Festival, Helsinki, Finland
  14. 10 Mar 2006, Live Oaks Friends Meeting House, Houston, Texas (not as Jandek, but as a guest with Loren Connors and Alan Licht)
  15. 20 Apr 2006, Jackpot Records/Clinton St. Video Film Festival, Hollywood Theatre, Portland, Oregon, United States
  16. 15 May 2006, All Tomorrow's Parties, Camber Sands, England
  17. 17 May 2006, The Cube Microplex, Bristol, England (7:30 PM)
  18. 17 May 2006, The Cube Microplex, Bristol, England (9:00 PM)
  19. 18 May 2006, Mono, Glasgow, Scotland
  20. 17 Sep 2006, Centre of Gravity, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  21. 20 Sep 2006, The Empty Bottle, Chicago, Illinois, United States
  22. 27 Oct 2006, On The Boards, Seattle, Washington, United States
  23. 09 Dec 2006, Harrison Center for the Arts, Indianapolis, IN, United States
  24. 17 Feb 2007, Academy of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, United States
  25. 11 Mar 2007, Firehouse Theatre, Richmond, VA, United States
  26. 17 Mar 2007, Central Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas, United States
  27. 14 Apr 2007, Tonic, Manhattan, New York, New York, United States

[edit] Discography

see Category:Jandek albums

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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