LIVE by DJ DJ TANNER

Warm Gospel 77

It was nearly a decade ago when I first heard some of the songs that would end up on the first tape I ever released on Warm Gospel: “ANTIHERO” by DJ DJ TANNER. The tapes were recorded a bit too quietly on an old Panasonic dual deck cassette player I had found at the Goodwill down the street from my house. I printed the J-cards and tape stickers out on my college desktop printer, and all the sleeve info was handwritten. The DIY learning curve for all this took a bit to get around, but I eventually settled into the label’s aesthetic and rhythm, surpassing 75 releases last year.

A friend and I also went in on purchasing an old lathe together last year, fulfilling a life dream of ours to release music on vinyl. We didn’t find it at a Goodwill, but it did take a number of months for us to dial in the proper adjustments to achieve the quality of cut we wanted. Hilariously, the process of figuring out the best way to print the jackets and the record stickers feels pretty much like it did when I started making tapes.

Now, nearly ten years after releasing the first DJ DJ TANNER cassette, I’m pleased to announce the first DJ DJ TANNER record. As suggested by the title, the album is representative of DJ DJ TANNER live shows, which tend to include more vocals than much of his recorded material.

Many of the songs on the album are the ones he was playing at shows when I first moved back to Des Moines in 2014. There was a small edition of handmade CDs made of the album then, and I listened to it in my car obsessively for months before it disappeared somewhere in the console. I dug it out recently, and after it still hit me as hard as it did back then, I immediately had my heart set on turning it into the first vinyl release on Warm Gospel. The last song still makes me cry.

treyreis@gmail.com

Send me an email to be added to the newsletter list.

treyreis.com