by SARAH ROWLAND

For almost a quarter century, hardcore vinyl geeks have been postulating about Jandek, a reclusive Texas-based singer/songwriter whose mutant folk music sounds like a suicide note set to an out-of-tune guitar. Some theorists cling to the romantic notion that he's a deranged sociopath who uses his weekend pass to record albums. Others insist he's just an average working stiff who values his privacy so much that he's established his own music industry. Still others maintain he is nothing more than a disingenuous marketing economist who understands the power of creating a demand.

But while they can't agree on the man behind the myth, for the most part they agree they'd rather not know, and director Chad Freidrichs respects this in Jandek on Corwood. In fact, his documentary makes no attempt to unlock the secrets about the man who may or may not be the lost-looking teen with abandoned eyes featured on over 30 album sleeves.

"We felt early on that it would have been pretty counteractive to blow up the mystery because the story is in the mystery," says Freidrichs from his home office in Columbia, Missouri. The "we" he refers to includes producer Paul Fehler. "Anybody who does just a little a bit of research on the Internet can find plenty of biographical information about Jandek. That's not really what we wanted to do with the film because we'd just be doing a Google search in the form of a documentary."

Disturbing speculation

Instead of divulging birth dates, real names and day jobs, Freidrichs stokes the myth by focusing on the people who spend a disturbing amount of time speculating about it. The one tangible piece of the reclusive musician we get is the first and only phone interview he granted in 1985 for Spin magazine. For the first half of the film, Freidrichs builds on the anticipation of hearing the mighty one's speaking voice. Mindful that a bunch of talking heads does not make for visually stimulating entertainment, he deploys a lot of subjective and impressionistic imagery: boarded-up abandoned houses, dank beaches with tempestuous skies and intense close-ups of hand gestures.

What makes the film work is the eerie music quietly meandering in the background, serving as a creepy reminder that this man actually does exist and walks among us. Ironically, these desolate cries emanating from a solitary man's stream of consciousness weren't the driving force behind the film.

"I was disappointed," Freidrichs says, about the first time he heard a Jandek song three years ago, though he admits the sound has grown on him. "But I'm still not really a fan in the sense that I can't wait for the next Jandek album to come out. I wouldn't listen to Jandek if I hadn't made this film. I would have listened to it once and catalogued it in my mind for whenever I needed to reference weird music."

So why make his first feature film about Jandek? "I like the idea of telling a story from the outside in and never getting inside."

The Corwood connection

The Corwood part of the myth evokes just as much speculation as the artist himself. All Jandek business and distribution goes through Corwood Industries, a registered company that operates out of a P.O. box in Houston. Despite the eccentricities that set Jandek apart from other outsider musicians - including the dead schizophrenic blues man Wesley Willis and the demented sisters of the Shaggs - Freidrichs is more convinced than ever that Jandek is not living in a halfway house planning his suicide.

"I think he's just a normal guy who works at a normal job and just wants to make music," he says. "I do think he has perpetuated and intensified the mystique by being so vigilant about not doing interviews. But I think that originally stemmed from an impulse toward privacy."

Although Freidrichs has corresponded with Jandek back and forth throughout production, he is tightlipped as to what his subject thinks about the end result.

"He appreciated it. He enjoyed it," says Freidrichs before pulling a Jandek-esque two-minute pause. "We really can't go any further than that. Corwood has sort of a shroud over their impressions of many things and our movie is one of them."

Jandek on Corwood screens at The Nest (3673 St-Dominique) Saturday, Oct. 2 at 6 p.m. as part of the Pop Montreal festival

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