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July 20, 2005

12+ Questions for Narrowhouse Recordings

Over the course of the past few months, leading up to their latest CD release, I chatted up one of the Narrowhouse brains, Justin Sirois. You’ve seen his work around these and other parts. If you haven’t, you should.

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Rock Heals: What is Narrowhouse Recordings and how did you get started?

Justin: I’ve struggled with describing narrow house to people for the past year and a half. At first we [Andrew Miller and I] approached it as an “avant garde poetry record label”, but the term was too loaded and people were like, “what the hell is avant garde, anyway”. Now I just tell folks we’re a record label which produces progressive writing, some political work and some experimental poetry. Maybe approaching the label from an indie rock background might have made the whole thing seem odd, but it’s definitely interesting to treat poems the way you would a full length album.

We were definitely fly by night when we started. Anselm Berrigan agreed to record in the summer of 2003 after reading at the Washington Printmaker’s Gallery. I remember being a bit nervous about asking him to do a record because I really had no idea what I was doing. At that point we didn’t have a proper studio (not that we do now) so Andrew and I drove to New York to record the album. Fortunately, and this might sound completely insane, a friend of mine worked as an IT guy at Quad Studios in Manhattan – the infamous place where 2Pac got shot (first, nonfatal) in the lobby and where hundreds of pop stars have recorded.

We were all a bit weirded out by the whole experience, but Anselm was extremely professional while the 90 channel solid state logic SL 9000 J series did its thing. That’s probably the most ridiculous part about the experience, using one channel on a million dollar sound board for a CD of poems… if The Rza only knew. Seven hours later we had all the tracks down and we left. Legally we couldn’t credit Quad because we recorded it independently, off their clock, but the irony endures. We even found packs of Dutch Masters and unopened Playstation 2’s under the bed in one of the studio guest suites… nice!

So where's the name come from?

Narrow house is an old euphemism for a coffin. I’ve seen it used in older poems, not sure who wrote it originally… just Googled it and Dickinson popped up. It’s also Baltimore feeling/sounding. All the city row houses are narrow and the coffin imagery evokes a bit of (the) Poe who has a strong presence here, you know, with the Ravens being so popular. Yikes!

One of the hurdles facing any new venture, and one that keeps most of us from starting, is resources. We see time and time again, a little ingenuity go a long way in getting a new project off the ground. What has it taken to keep Narrowhouse afloat?

I’ve been paying for all of the recordings and related expenses, but we initially started off with an individual awards grant from the Maryland State Art Council. It’s been a bit rough starting out, but that’s expected from any new “business.”

As far as promotion, we rely solely on the website acting as the main resource for audio downloads, photos, and interviews. Kevin Thurston has helped a great deal with spreading the word with his interviews and reviews section (double.wide:) and we try to talk to as many people as we can at readings and openings. The more established creative community in DC has been extremely generous; I’d feel a bit out of the loop without them. We do need to focus on distribution though, hopefully SPD will pick us up when Rod’s project is complete.

[Random dialog, and then Narrowhouse turns the interview around a moment.]

Are you going to the Ottobar tonight (Will Oldham)?

Yeah. [Ed note: I didn’t have tickets and the show was sold out – which I didn’t expect, I thought the place held many more people. The people ahead of us in the sold out line had a pretty lady who sweet-talked their group in. I just looked at the door guys and said, yeah, I can’t really compete with that. We drank upstairs for about 20 minutes, and then got in later after some crowd had filtered out, or pity got the better of said doormen. It was a great show.]

How do you go about planning, selecting and soliciting each release?

I guess we stumble into writers as we go. For the most part we’ve known each writer for a short period of time before we approach them, or they’re friends of friends. Garrett Caples, who lives in Oakland, will be an experiment for us though, in a few different ways. He might engineer the entire album by himself (vis-à-vis his home studio) and then send us the audio so we can choose an artist/photographer that fits the sound for the layout. His project will be a blend of poetry and very heady trip/hip hop – should be a fun album.

Planning varies from project to project. We’ll travel if we have to or train/bus/fly writers out to our studio. We mainly rely on the internet to keep in touch with everyone while a project is being engineered and designed – sending PDF proofs or snail mailing CDs for approval. Andrew and I have a plan to streamline the recording process a bit, we were a bit sloppy with Rod’s sessions, but only because of technical difficulties (multiple locations for recording, traveling from Baltimore to DC, computers burning and not burning correctly).

How’s distribution going?

We need to get on that. Right now you can order directly from our website and people in the area can travel to Bridge Street Books in DC. Hopefully SPD will pick us up once Rod’s CD is finished. They should, we’ve had everyone from John Yau to Anselm write letters of recommendation to them. I understand if people are finicky about CD projects, they can be corny, but we’re trying our hardest not to be.

More on resources – how much does "business sense" (likelihood of breaking even even, or even getting a head a little to help fund more stuff) factor into the projects you undertake?

If or when Narrow House begins turning a profit I’ll begin treating it like a business. Until then it’s something fun and meaningful that I do. Of course I have to think about sales (which is a bummer) and we choose more established writers who will most likely sell enough copies for us to break even, but that goes for any industry unless you’re ceiling or costs are next to nothing. We give promotional copies away to universities, the media and friends in the field, but we can’t hand out CDs or leave them at bus stops like your favorite “Free Xerox At Work Press”.

Funding slows us down a bit. Our goal is to release a project once every six months. I can afford to do that out of my own pocket, but it does hurt a bit. We’ve had help from benefactors which is both flattering and encouraging and I give much love (free buttons!) to the real people who give us cash instead of napster-ing Berrigan tracks. That would be a gas.

Do you find it difficult to "keep it going" after the initial adrenaline rush of your first release?

I go through irritating bouts of self doubt, but no more than the (normal?) creative person. Going to readings and talking to like-minded people keeps us motivated because writers are interested in what we’re doing. It sounds cliché, but when you love someone/something the feeling definitely changes or seems less potent, but then you learn to adore it/him/her differently or you appreciate other aspects you didn’t notice before.

The Third Factory Attention Span 2004 listing made us smile and we Google ourselves (everyone’s guilty pleasure) to see who has linked us up, all of that keeps us believing. Most of all I love the community which is growing around the label, it’s the type of culture work that is the most rewarding.

To date, what was the best Narrowhouse moment?

I’d have to say… right now it would be recording Anselm’s record at Quad with tall boys of MGD and 2 Pac’s ghost cringing in the sound booth. Or, when on the way back from our anniversary party at the Bowery Poetry Club we stopped to get gas and watched a U-Haul burn in the parking lot. It was horrible to watch fire fighters pull chunks of melting furniture out of the back of a smoking truck, but it was also kind of beautiful. Hopefully the family was insured.

The worst?

Drunk driving in a Howard Johnson parking lot in St. Mary’s Maryland at three in the morning (where the Women in the Avant Garde CD was recorded) and sailing over an invisible median. Andrew’s rim was bent so bad that he had to replace it along with the shredded tire; we spent the next day getting (more) drunk at a creepy diner across the street from the mechanics.

So, tell us about the new Rod Smith CD.

It’s definitely the funniest of the projects that we’ve produced, funny in a jabbing at your kidneys kind of Rod Smith way.

The opening line is “Sorry Officer, I thought you were a shape shifting rat,” which, I think, is one of the revolving titles of Snips (a cut up poem that changes each time it is read). Originally the first line was “Junior, stop making faces at the chickens.” That cracked me up even more, but we accidentally cut off Junior and it ended up sounding like “unior”. With all the roadblocks we had with this project we opted to cut the second title in there, appropriated from a line in the middle of the piece, to avoid a fifth recording session. Thankfully, the nature of the poem allowed us to do so without ruining the integrity of the work.

I love the whole CD and I think the recording adds a lot of personality to the work that doesn’t translate onto the page. Rod has a very dry, rough style of reading, but his deadpan delivery is perfect for the content and rhythm of the work.

For some reason he reminds me of a really heady, abstract Lewis Black. He might not like that and it might not make any sense, but his work kind of asks, “You know what I’m saying?” and you’re like, “For the most part, yeah.” It’s political, intellectual and humorous but only fully accessible if you pay attention. Did I say Lewis Black?

Rod was very intuitive about the continuity of the tracks, we shared a vision about how it would flow; a few not so serious tracks moving into very language based, more challenging work and then back into something like “All of It’s Gone to Moneyland,” a poem he co-wrote with his daughter that’s cute and anti-capitalistic. I believe that you have to take a lot of care when you organize an album like this. You’ve got to balance the work so the audience doesn’t get bored with too much preachy political work or too much difficult language all crammed together that might take five, ten, twenty replays to understand. Like Anselm’s CD, there’s a section of a long poem at the end of the album, one of my favorite pieces “The Good House,” the entirety of which could fill an album by itself. Then there are very short tracks that are under a minute long to break up the pacing. Basically, it’s the same philosophy as creating a mixtape, you have to be sensitive about how it flows, from beginning to end.

[Rod and I] are both thrilled with the art work as well. Tim Davis, a brilliant photographer from NYC who teaches at Bard, offered up three photos. They’re all very different and it was difficult making them work together into a package, but the whole project turned out great.

What's next for Narrowhouse?

John Yau has agreed to record and we’re extremely excited about that. Personally, I own him a lot as far as turning me onto the New York School poets and Nathanial West and a bunch of other great writers when I was in college.

He is a special type of creative person, one who has, over the course of his career, bridged many gaps between the art world and the poetry world. You look at the scene and you’re like, “everyone should be collaborating with each other in this cross disciplinary way,” but it’s not happening so much. It’ll be cool to have John choose an artist for the packaging, someone who complements his work both orally and in conjunction with the content. He’s an outstanding reader and an audio project might open him up to an even larger audience. After that, Garrett Caples will definitely break some ground with his album, I’m super curious about his trip/hip hop/poem style and how he’ll develop it for the record. Hopefully we can release some CDR projects with lower print runs as well.

Who do you want to record most?

After hearing c.’81 by Alice Notley on the Frequency/Penn Sound site I can’t get it out of my head. A project with her might be in the works via Rod and Anselm (her son). I’d love to work with David Berman or Dan Higgs, both are writers I respect for a number of reasons and I know their projects would expose a younger audience to great writing. I’d love to put out any audio interviews William T. Vollmann might have stashed away, maybe some Tenderloin- or Sarajevo-related recordings if they exist. These people aren’t active in the “poetry scene”, but they’re writers who would benefit from recording their work and sharing it.

Locally… Blaster Al Ackerman would be perfect, he’s a real gem.

Ashbery would be great for obvious reasons.

Since you are running a poetry record label, who is the most interesting reader you've heard and what is the reading you wish you had recorded?

Even though I can’t get through even one page of his written work, Kenny Goldsmith’s performances are outstanding. I need a pocket recorder.

Things Rock Heals didn’t get around to asking about, though Justin wishes we had: elves, diet soda, video games, CNN, arm wrestling and peanut brittle.

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Narrowhouse Recording’s latest release is Fear the Sky by Rod Smith. It’s chock full o’ great poems, order directly from Narrowhouse Recordings. It should be at Bridgestreet Books (DC) soon enough, and maybe SPD, down the road.

Learn more about Narrowhouse’s releases and projects at http://www.narrowhouserecordings.com/

Posted by Rock Heals at July 20, 2005 12:30 AM