This is happening. Thanks to the years-long efforts of local KMSU radio hosts Tim Lind and Shelley Pierce, the most mysterious persona in all of contemporary music is performing in Mankato on Oct. 20. (Tickets go on pre-sale at midnight on Tuesday. Visit www.mnsu.edu/music/ for more information.)
His name is Jandek, or Sterling Smith, or just “The Representative from Corwood Industries.” To some, he’s a pioneer, a musical trailblazer, maybe even a genius. To others, he’s impenetrable, iridescent and insubstantial.
But to all, he is elusive.
Jandek has granted only two known interviews, and none in the last two decades. Since his emergence in 1978, he has self-released more than 60 albums through a label called Corwood Industries. Corwood maintains a Houston post office box number where fans can write to request catalogs and purchase CDs.
His music alternates between deeply poetic, melodic folk and blues, haunting instrumentals and cacophonous mixtures of banging, wailing and electrified instruments. One album features stunning piano work. In the early 2000s, three of his releases were nothing but spoken-word songs with no accompaniment. Some releases are sparse and quiet; others are loud, electric and crazed.
After decades of unbending reclusivity, Jandek played his first live show in 2004 in Glasgow, Scotland. Since then, he’s played a handful of live shows each year around the world Ñ Belfast, Manhattan, London, San Francisco, Montreal and Helsinki, to name a few.
So, why Mankato?
That’s a question even Lind can’t answer.
“I don’t know why,” he said, adding that he knows of groups that have tried to lure the musician to the Twin Cities, but without any luck. “We were just daydreaming about the musical equivalent of a Bigfoot sighting.”
But if anyone could pull it off, it’s Lind and Pierce, co-hosts of KMSU’s Shufflefunction morning show. The pair have a reputation for alluring some of the most enigmatic, and reclusive, musical acts to Mankato. When the group convinced Legendary Stardust Cowboy and the Fleshtones to Mankato in 2010, Lind said it was the fruition of an “unobtainable goal.”
Luring Jandek, he said, didn’t even seem possible. But Shufflefunction continued to stay in contact over the years.
“Dear Corwood,” they would write before offering him a Shufflefunction T-shirt, or inviting him to write the theme song for their show. During the duo’s famous 24-hour pledge drive, they invited him to call in during their standard “Jandek’s Sounds of Insomnia” segment.
Jandek always politely declined, sending them a batch of CDs instead and all the while maintaining his personal distance.
Earlier this year, Lind and Pierce asked him to play in Mankato on a whim. They were shocked when he accepted.
“It’s crazy to even think it’s happening,” Lind said.
As for the music, Lind himself admits he was turned off when he started listening. But further exploration, he said, has yielded a musician of profound depth and variety who is improvisational, unpredictable and indefinable.
Lind and Pierce host an occasional study group (next meeting is today) to learn more about the musician who leaves his fans nothing but the music.
“There is a lot going on,” Lind said. “Way more than a casual, first judgment might present.”
Currents
August 23, 2012
The 'Bigfoot' concert: Music's most mysterious man coming to Mankato
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