INTERVIEW WITH DAVE HENDERSON SPRING 2009 Picture: Steve Pyke, Athens, Georgia, Spring '08 Explain how the record label came about and (I presume) its genesis - oops, biblical puns already! - in the radio show.
Last year I was doing a weekly radio show for the now defunct MOJO Radio. I featured a lot of strange music that I'd uncovered, most of which was lurking on the internet, hopelessly expensive to buy and similarly difficult to track down. I was also working on Universal’s Lost Tunes projects that was putting rare albums on line because there wasn’t a demand for physical product. Trawling through the Decca singles – they did Vashti Bunyan and The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Deram releases, Vertigo, Stax, Conchord, Motown – they never released that Earl Van Dyke album on CD, nor Ric Tic Relics – it became apparanet that there were lots of things not on CD that just should be. The radio show was called The Church Of Dave to celebrate my ridiculous beard, the label name Righteous just seemed like the perfect brand extension. Did you approach Cherry Red or vice versa? I knew Adam from doing cover mount Cds for MOJO and Iain from back in the early Cherry Red days. Iain is always looking for ideas and we went to lunch to just have a chat and the idea of finding and releasing the stuff I really liked, from beatnik jazz to Appalachian country to northern soul just seemed like a good idea.
What are your main criteria for a Righteous release? We have a hokey manifesto:
We believe that music should affect your emotions. It should tell stories, tingle spines and raise as many hairs on the back of your neck as is physically possible. It should ache, contain high levels of angst, be moody, melancholy and honest.
The releases on Righteous are made by hollow-eyed bluesmen, backwoods country cousins, disenfranchised soul searchers, fried acid folkies, cool muso’s, dishevelled poets and haphazard eccentrics. We hope you enjoy it.
Which releases have you been most proud of to date? All of them really. I wanted to hear the Waylon Jennings album because Richard Hawley had told me abou it. The Merle Travis album has just got a bizarre, clear sound that it’s spellbinding. I love to make compilations so the Murder Ballads that inspired The White Stripes, Nick Cave, etc, was just a joy to do, Jazz Canto is just mad poetry and jazz, Williams And Watson’s Two For The price Of One was from when I used to go to Wigan Casino in the early ‘70s and The Louvin Brothers’ is that aching country balladering that’s gorgeously melancholy.
With all your connections, can you guarantee good reviews from all associated magazines? I don’t think it works like that, sadly. I guess the only advantage is I know most of the journalists from the past 20 years of working on Q, Mojo, Kerrang!, Select, etc, so I think I know what they might like. A lot of them are on the radio now and it’s been interesting to get good feedback from people as diverse as Mark Lamarr and Bob Harris. I think it will be really interesting to see what people say. It’s not like the albums are new bands, so it’s not subjective in that way, everything I’ve done is a buried treasure, it just might be that some people think they should have stayed buried.
Do CR expect sales, good reviews or both? I think they’d like to sell some records. It would be nice to have good reviews but I think the more people who hear these things the more people might get inspired to dig around and suggest more great things to release.
Isn't this an odd time to start a label with everything (esp music business-related) going down the toilet? People either want free music or lavishly packaged things that are a joy to own. I’ve tried to make each release look like something you’d come across in Music And Video Exchange and think, “Wow, I’ve got to have that.”
Do you still believe in physical music product? Is this reflected in the packaging? The packaging is really important. I love those Numero Group albums from the States, with the original battered sleeve and the personal photos inside. I wanted these albums to llok like original artefacts and my mate Dave Black who designs the sleeves has taken elements of the originals to make the whole thing a complete experience.
Who, in your mind's eye, is the 'typical Righteous buyer'? I’d like anyone who gets excited about music to pick them up, from someone like Andre Torres who does Wax Poetics magazine in the US, to Lois Wilson who writes for MOJO and loves northern soul to Richard Hawley or Sid Griffin to people like me who still get an increase in their pulse when they hear something cool ro discover an album that captures a moment in time.
What do you think the label adds to the CR stable, and are there any other labels there you have a soft spot for? Indeed, which label(s) would you like to emulate generally? I think it’s ploughing an interesting path. One thing certainly seems to lead to another, but it’s a slow process and I’ve realised that it’s a very personal thing. Hopefully there’s other people who like what I like. At Cherry Red, I really like El, Revola and RPM, have always been amazed at what they dig up. I think Esoteric is releaseing some magnificent stuff too. Out in the wider world I love the Numero Group releases. Hip-O Select, Rhino Handmade. I always check out Trunk and Finder’s Keepers too. I trawl record shops for Jay Boy and Pama singles. It’s sad, I know.
What lies in the future for you and the label? The next couple of releases are an old George Jones album from 1963 which has been a nightmare to find decent quality recordings of the tracks but the last piece fell into place yesterday. It’s called Blue And Lonesome and it’s an aching epic. There will also be The 101 Strings’ Astro Sounds From Beyond The Year 2000. Recorded in the ‘60s with a band who’d gone from surf instrumentals to exploitative psychedelia, it’s a “futuristic” masterpiece. After that I have an album that I’ve been putting together with new acts who’ve done covers or written songs themsleves on the theme of ‘Sacred Music For Worrying Times’, it will include Bond composer David Arnold, Noah And The Whale, Richard Hawley, The Handsome Family, El Perro Del Mar, Liz Green, Babel, Dawn Kinnard, Malcolm Middleton and several others. If that goes well I’d like to do ‘Music For Migraines’ – a collection of the most depressing songs ever. Can’t wait for that baby.
