Jandek on Corwood

Logic dictates that if you’re going to film a documentary you should gather as much footage as you can of your subject. But when your documentary concerns itself with an obscure singer/songwriter from Houston known only as Jandek, the footage isn’t only difficult to come by, it simply doesn’t exist. So what’s a filmmaker to do?

If you’re first-time director Chad Friedrichs or producer Paul Fehler, you purposely avoid the easy fix. Rather than track down the reclusive artist for their feature-length documentary Jandek on Corwood (now available on DVD), the duo avoided approaching him altogether.

“What’s the point of revealing a mystery that no one even knows about?” says Friedrichs. “It would be like giving the answer to a math question where people don’t really understand the initial problem. It struck us at one point that we were going to play up the mystery because that is what has made Jandek so interesting to so many people for so long.”

To say the least, the circumstances surrounding Jandek are unusual, stranger even than the harrowing, atonal, apocalyptic blues/folk he’s known for. In just over a quarter century, Jandek has recorded and released a staggering 37 albums (all on his own record label, Corwood Industries), making him one of the most prolific artists in contemporary music. Yet, until a recent surprise performance at Scotland’s Instal Festival—during which the artist oddly referred to himself not by his moniker but as “a representative from Corwood Industries”— Jandek had never played live or made a single public appearance. Even more interesting, there has been only one recorded interview of Jandek talking about his music, conducted in 1985 for the debut issue of Spin (see the DVD’s Special Features section). Outside of his music, it seems the man is but a ghost.

While some filmmakers might’ve been daunted by the sheer scarcity of information, Friedrichs and Fehler saw it as an opportunity to create a different kind of music documentary, one that investigates the ways in which fans fill in the gaps between what’s known about a particular artist and what’s left to the imagination.

“We were more interested in people’s individual responses to Jandek,” says Friedrichs. “We were more interested in how a mythology is formed, given that there is this dearth of information…This a basic psychological inquiry rather than a sociological one.”

Indeed, as Jandek on Corwood intelligently illustrates, it’s Jandek’s anonymity and the odd mystery surrounding him that has drawn his small, but intensely loyal, band of followers. In a series of candid, insightful interviews, Friedrichs and Fehler examine the curious phenomenon through the accounts and speculations of those who know Jandek best—obsessive fans, record collectors and rock journalists who’ve pored over his cryptic lyrics in hopes of shedding some light on his world. As might be imagined, each of them has his or her own interpretation of Jandek, what he’s doing and, perhaps most importantly, why he’s doing it. Many theories are debated throughout the documentary—some plausible, others ridiculously outlandish. But each attempts to provide a small piece of the complex puzzle.

As Fehler notes, “This documentary is about so much more than Jandek’s music. There are issues about the creation of art; there are issues about perception of celebrity, about creating mythologies about the unknown.”

But despite the documentary’s comprehensive portrayal, some viewers will question the conspicuous absence of the artist himself. So are there any lingering regrets about not seeking out Jandek? Not at all, says Fehler. “I think a pretty strong suit of the movie is that it’s tenuous and fragile with the mystery. It treads lightly on it, it’s very delicate with it, and I don’t think that something that would have treated it more roughly would have done justice to the subject.”