OFF THE GRID WITH MATT WERTH, CONT. Continued from page 22 Werth’s commitment didn’t go unnoticed by the scene’s older generation, and when Mark Dober, then running the local record label File 13, left town to go on tour, he asked Werth to take over while he was gone. The label had been started in 1989 as a way to document and distribute the increasingly vast and vivid network of Little Rock bands, and was passed down to successive generations as a kind of rite of passage. Werth threw himself into the role eagerly, and when Dober returned, he asked him to stay on permanently. From the age of 16 through the end of high school, Werth ran the label out of his childhood bedroom. “It taught me everything I know now,” he said. “It was a complete education in the fundamentals of not only putting out vinyl, but also establishing an identity, an aesthetic and a written and stylistic voice. File 13 had this very strong aesthetic when it was handed over to me, so I had to learn that inside out — learn how to speak the language of the label. And that has directly applied to the way I run RVNG. It’s about a distinct voice.” The transition from File 13 to RVNG, from a local punk outlet to an internationally renowned sonic free-for-all, came as a result of Werth’s next great “cultural immersion,” which arrived when he left Little Rock to go to college in Philadelphia. “By virtue of being in a larger, Northeastern city, there was a little bit more of a flux of music, a larger spectrum,” he said. “There were record stores that offered a different kind of selection sensibility. There were just more people, and they were listening to more music.” It was here that he discovered and fell in love with electronic music, a shift in his musical outlook that he calls a “realization that there were even more alternatives.” He started RVNG there in the early 2000s, initially as a mix series designed as a calling card for a series of parties called “Making Time” that he helped throw with the local promoter Dave Pianka. “I loved the party aspect of it,” he said. “It was a lot of fun for me, but I was missing the tactile aspect,
the nuts and bolts of putting together and almost anything else the label has released, film, but loved the soundtrack, became releasing a record. There was a void there it sounds “fried” and “melted” and “fucked entranced by it and spent years digging for from File 13, which wasn’t a part of my daily up.” “I hadn’t seen Chip or Lee in some time,” records by and information about its comritual anymore. It felt like a calling, a needed Werth said, “but I’ve loved their music from poser, K. Leimer. He eventually tracked shot in the arm to get back into this stuff.” afar. So it’s super special to be able to drop down the reclusive artist, who it emerged When he moved to New York in 2002, he them a line and ask them to go on a journey.” was from Seattle, and “thus began two years continued the mix series, by then called While the label seems primarily oriented of my life,” he says, “putting together this definitive, unheard collection.” The album, RVNG of the NRDS, and began releasing toward these types of forward-thinking full-length LPs as well, mostly by friends projects by younger musicians, Werth is “A Period of Review: Original Recordings and acquaintances early on, like Philly duo also passionate about paying tribute to older, 1975-1983,” is set to be released May 13. “Recognizing the importance of earlier Pink Skull. little-known artists whom he believes have I asked him to describe the sound of been overlooked or deserve some contem- generations of artists, learning from their the label and he said, “Honestly, I’ll take porary reconsideration. This is the impetus practices and processes, is pretty important whatever. It’s open to interpretation, and behind reissuing strange cult artifacts like to me,” Werth said. “So I don’t necessarily it’s about the personal experience. I don’t “Synthesist,” a gorgeous 1980 album by Krau- approach the reissues as relics. I want to cremind genres or parameters; I like that con- trock percussionist Harald Grosskopf, and ate a stage for them, to bring more interest also behind FRKWYS, a series of releases to their legacy or to inspire and encourage versation and think it helps. But I try to keep it really abstract, to be honest, because featuring intergenerational and often them to interact with a new audience and unlikely collab- a new generation.” I’m not so sure. I’m not trying to be Toward the end of our conversation, I clever, but if we’re orations. going to deal in The most asked an awkward question that neverthestratification I prominent of less seemed obvious: How can you make the FRKWYS any money at this? Werth hesitated for a don’t want to be records to the one creating beat before answering: “Just the other day date involved we were going through royalties for the those parameters. So I go Werth flying to year, and, you know, some projects did betwith things like Jamaica with ter than others. And some projects didn’t West Coast do so well. You can’t totally calculate this ‘fried’ or ‘melted’ experimental- stuff. I honestly don’t even maneuver it that or ‘fucked up.’ I know that’s a ists Sun Araw and M. Ged- way, for the sake of business decisions. It’s always just something I believe in, and you cop-out.” des Gengras to work with the Though iconic reggae group The Con- hope that other people understand or share the RVNG gos. “The Congos made one of that belief.” catalogue has my favorite albums ever,” Werth After another pause, he said, “You extended well beyond said, referring to their 1977 classic, “Heart don’t want to get into the practice of drophis web of friends, he still prefers to work of the Congos.” “To work with people that ping bombs, but really nothing is a bomb. with artists he has some personal relation- you admire and respect so much, to actu- Nothing is a failure.” Listen to “A Period of ship with, an approach that has led most ally get into the creative process and DNA Review” and you might understand what recently to his reunion with Lee Buford and of those artists, is just so incredible. It’s hard he means. No one, or very few people at any Chip King of The Body, two friends of his not to be awed.” rate, asked for a definitive compilation of K. “Walking into it,” he said of his time in Leimer’s music, but now one exists, and it’s from his days in the Little Rock punk scene. “We’ve kept in touch and seen each other Jamaica, “I didn’t know what we were get- beautiful. The album isn’t necessary, but it sporadically through the years,” Werth said, ting into or where we would end up. I guess has a quiet, minor importance that is unarguable and even poignant. “but as you get older and you’re geographi- I still don’t. I don’t need to know where it’s cally displaced, you don’t necessarily see going, it’s important not to have a grid. I A few days after our phone call, I emailed your friends as much as you’d like.” like being thrown into situations like that, Werth with a few follow-up questions and I The group’s new record, “I Shall Die where you don’t know.” get an automated response. Every time I’ve Here,” came out of Werth’s idea that the duo Another recent “archival” release was emailed him, for that matter, I’ve received should collaborate with the British producer inspired several years ago by a viewing of the an automated response. He’s sorry he can’t and musician Bobby Krlic, better known 1982 documentary “Land of Look Behind,” check his email and he’ll be back soon, it says, as The Haxan Cloak. It’s a dissonant and a portrait of the Rastafarian movement after but for now he’s “off the grid.” His sign-off ambitiously forbidding album. More than the death of Bob Marley. Werth liked the is one I’ve never seen before: “Be light.”
DUMAS, CONT. Continued from page 7 almost exactly the same as those of her Republican predecessor, Dennis Hastert. But the Republican attacks worked. By 2010 her national ratings were 11 percent approval and 37 percent disapproval. Pelosi makes an unusual ogre. Her fairly brief sojourn as speaker will go down as one of the most successful since Sam Rayburn. She became speaker 34
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owing to her ability to get things done with rambunctious Democrats from the right and left. When the Affordable Care Act becomes recognized as one of the great congressional achievements since Social Security, she should get credit for it, and not so much Barack Obama. When a Republican replaced Ted Kennedy in the Senate, depriving the party of a workable majority, and it was clear that the massive advertising
campaign against the emerging health reform bill had changed public perceptions of it, the White House adopted a new strategy: let health reform slide for a few years and work for small, doable goals. Pelosi told the president to buck up and show some resolve. It was finally the moment that a goal sought by leaders of both parties since Teddy Roosevelt could be achieved and he should not let it pass. She drove the House com-
mittees to finish their work, cobbled together the conflicting bills, pushed them through the House of Representative and forced the affable but bumbling Senate leader, Harry Reid, and the Finance chairman to follow suit. So, it should be called Pelosicare, although that would help Mark Pryor and the other imperiled Democrats very little. One bogeyman or -woman is as good as another.