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Live For details of upcoming shows visit our pages on: Summer 2011 Deadslackstring is currently in the process of booking tours for Peter Delaney and Robert Sarazin Blake in May/June 2011. Find us on facebook Summer 2009
WORLD’S MOST MYSTERIOUS MUSICIAN PLAYS NORTHERN IRELAND Texan enigma Jandek has released more than 50 albums and amassed a worldwide cult following, all the while refusing to make even the slightest concession towards the mainstream. Indeed, his dedication in releasing his work is only matched by his determination to reject all of the accepted rules for actually maintaining a career as a musician. Paying for and distributing all of his releases out of his own pocket on his Houston-based record label Corwood Industries, since 1978 Jandek has plied a once heard never forgotten kind of stark, desiccated blues with lyrics so bleak Leonard Cohen looks like The Saturdays in comparison (sample song titles include They Told Me I Was A Fool, Janitor’s Dead and There’s No Door). His entire catalogue consists of full-length albums – no singles on any format – and he only started producing CDs in the mid-90s. Don’t even bother looking for him on iTunes. He’s never revealed any details of his past, refuses all interview requests, the few photos he’s issued are grainy polaroids several years if not decades old by the time of release and he still won’t tell anyone his real name. He didn’t play any concerts until 2004, when he made a sudden and unannounced appearance at the bottom of the bill at a Scottish arts festival, leaving the crowd wondering: “Who’s that guy doing all the Jandek songs?” only to realise after the fact that it was the man himself. Over the past five years he’s performed the occasional sporadic gig, but it is only now, more than three decades into his career, that he is going on his first tour – which consists, in its entirety, of four July dates in Northern Ireland. Kicking off in Larne on July 19th, the tour takes in Bangor and Belfast before coming to a halt in Londonderry on July 22nd and is organised in conjunction with two local independent record labels, Five Minute Association and Dead Slack String Recordings. As the owner of Dead Slack String, James Rider, explains, for him the tour represents ‘an unmissable opportunity to showcase one the world’s finest outsider folk artists in venues he would never be expected to play’. “News of the tour has already come out on the internet, and looking at the reaction of people on messageboards across the world finding out that Jandek is playing in Larne, for example, is pretty special,” says James. “These are venues and towns that often get missed on musicians’ usual routes, so it’s good to be able to bring someone as unusual as Jandek to Northern Ireland. Basically, we’re trying to take an offbeat musician off the beaten track. “We hope that Jandek will be able to play a few interesting gigs and that those who come – whether they come from abroad, which is quite likely given his following, or live locally – will see a really engaging, passionate and individual performer who makes the perfect antidote to a world of production-line performers and identikit musicians. “This is the first time he’s played in Northern Ireland, it’s the first time he’s ever done a full tour anywhere, and there’s a good chance he may never tour again, so it genuinely is a once in a lifetime opportunity.” Jandek plays The Olderfleet Bar, Larne (July 19th, £7); The Black Boat, Bangor (July 20th, £5); The Black Box, Belfast (July 21st, £10); and Sandinos, Londonderry (July 22nd, £7). |
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