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In many ways the ultimate music outsider, Jandek’s brand of weird and often challenging music in many ways asks of the listener questions. Chief among them to at times redefine what music can be, and can you actually like something like what he produces.

Having released 61 albums over the course of 30 years, not much is actually known about Jandek from a biographical standpoint. His album covers often feature the image of a man but until live performances beginning in 2004, there was no conformation that the man on the images was the performer on the albums.

Starting with 1978’s Ready for the House, Jandek began to build an image of the reclusive musician, denying requests for interviews, in fact only giving two over the course of his career. All information that could be gathered was done through two means, the albums themselves and writing to the record label putting out the records, Corwood, who would in turn send a type writer catalogue of all the available albums for sale.

His music’s dark and somewhat personal nature, along with his reclusive nature early on, lead to theories among those who followed his music that Jandek was speaking from personal experience, producing autobiographical music. And that much of the music was recorded in one frantic session and once 19 albums were released they would stop completely. This theory seemed plausible after the release of his 21st album which ended with a frantic song by the name of electric end, lasting 19 minutes.

However with his live performances, never credited to Jandek, but to a “Representative from Corwood Records” has lead to a now more popular notion that the Jandek albums themselves represent a sort of artistic project not related to any fact but instead works of fiction, making his biographical information irrelevant to the understanding of the work.

The music itself shares lyrical elements common with folk and blues music. They often deal with the theme of heart break, desolation, desperation and loneliness at their core. However the music itself is highly unconventional, with what can be described as unique guitar tuning, atonal singing and often yelling. And while mostly solo work occasionally, as in the case of the song Nancy Sings on the second album, there does appear to be collaboration with other musicians. While the music itself can often be difficult, its haunting quality along with the mystery of who Jandek himself may be has won a small but devoted fan base. In reality the best way to understand Jandek, and his music is to experience it for yourself.