Today we’d like to introduce you to Christopher Lynch.
Hi Christopher, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
In 2022, I had an idea to create and curate a quarterly art/music/literary publication that would include a visual art book and a hand made lathe cut record of music. I was dreaming big and small at the same time, because I wanted to make as much as we could by hand, but I also wanted the end product to look like something you would see in the Walker Art Center gift shop. Sort of a work of art itself!
As a musician I had heard about ‘lathe-cut records” as an option to the long waits at that time to get vinyl pressed, so I did some research and found a Tuscon, AZ based lathe-cut expert named Mike Dixon (https://lathecuts.com/). He has restored hundreds of the old Presto lathe-cutters that were made for radio stations in the 1940’s and 50’s. He hooked me up with a “Presto 6N” and taught me how to make my own records cut onto plastic squares 🙂
He is an amazing person and resource!
My wife Hannah is a fine art photographer and was hooked up via social media to many awesome artists all over the world, so she took on most of the curation for the visual art component for our big/little idea. Hannah had also taken a book-making class with Faride Mereb (https://faridemereb.com/), a Brooklyn, NY based art book guru and designer who helped Hannah get the book layouts and covers looking great. Faride has been our “fifth Beatle” and is also an amazing person and resource!
So we started shaping the idea to figure out how to finance and package the idea and we knew we would need help.
I reached out to my old fellow musician friend Luca Gunther who has always been there for me to bounce ideas off of and to help make dreams realities. He has helped brainstorm and split the capital costs with me and orders up the plastic and most importantly is kind and funny about the whole thing.
We also knew we would need an audio engineer to help shape the music recordings to work with the old antique lathe-cutter so I asked another old talented musician/producer/engineer friend, Steve Price, (also, very kind and funny!) to join the club.
The name Dada Duende Record Club came about because I had just read a Federico Garcia Lorca essay called “Theory and Play of the Duende”. I had gone down a rabbit hole looking for a word to describe the emotion of Flamenco music the way that “Saudade” is sometimes used to describe the emotion that is evoked in Bossa Nova music. If you read the essay, a Duende is like a little devil or imp that is also a house spirit -Duende describes a darker type of inspiration than a classical type muse, and the essay talks about life and death and darkness. I added Dada to lighten it up a bit and the record club part is a reference to the old mail order record clubs where you would pay a penny and get records every month and then get in trouble for not paying your future costs. Hahaha!
After some waffling between ala carte or patreon or some sort of prepay scheme to raise money to make the sets we settled on a subscription scheme through our website: https://www.dadaduenderecordclub.com/. We also decided that each set should be prompted by a given theme, so we pick a resonant theme and ask the contributing artists to play with that idea when creating the artworks/music that they submit. We also decided that it would be nice to include an archival print of one of the artworks from the book. I guess we didn’t think Hannah Lynch was working hard enough with curation, book layout, web design, so we added printing to her workload. Hannah definitely works the hardest to make these. Sorry Hannah! We make 100 numbered copies of each set along with 30 artist proof sets per volume.
We have made 6 themed volumes (sets)- 7 if you include “Maquette”, our proof-of-concept issue, and between the musical and visual artists and the poets/writers, we have published over 60 artists from all over the world. The music has all been Minnesota local because we have so much amazing music here. 🙂
A true labor of love!
I should note we recently decided to move to an ala carte model going forward after Volume 6 “Chanson” and hope this will be more manageable for us!
Thanks!
Dada Duende is:
Chris Lynch
Hannah Lynch
Luca Gunther
Steve Price
With artistic and technical support from:
Faride Mareb
Oriana Nuzzi
Mike Dixon
Pete Rivard
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I’ll start with the struggles. When conceiving of this idea, I did not think making 130 sets every 3 months would be as difficult as it turned out to be. I thought 3 months was a lot of time! Very funny. We also struggled to set a price point that wouldn’t be too scary and out of reach for people, but that would also cover the costs with left over money to get paid, even just a little bit for the labor hours. Ultimately, we failed at this!
The smooth road part was: by involving smart, talented people and having a clear idea of what we wanted the end artwork to look like, I realized a person can make absolutely anything they can dream up! It is so artistically satisfying to hold one of these sets and say “I helped make this!” and “This is a perfectly realized dream of love!”
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I have always made music and art without any regard for it’s commercial viability because I have a day job to pay the bills.
I started in my early twenties writing songs and have never stopped. Also I am an amateur researcher of outsider art and music and an ardent lover of the arts in general.
Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
My little family and making beautiful things makes me the happiest!
Pricing:
- The ala carte cost of each set is currently $80 on our website. This may change to help us cover costs in the future.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dadaduenderecordclub.com
- Instagram: @dadaduenderecordclub
- Youtube: @dadaduenderecordclub
