Road Trip update #3: Chicago. Rob Sevier, The Numero Group & Dante Carfagna

Day 10: Friday, August 30th. Chicago. Rob Sevier and Numero Group.

After two relaxing days in Lafayette, Indiana, we hit the road early for Chicago.

Our first stop was to meet Rob Sevier and Ken Shipley of Numero Group. We met them at Numero Group’s office, an old house in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, where we did a video interview with them both.

Numero Group has become a preeminent archival label, and it was a pleasure to talk to the brains behind the operation. And a unique environment it was. Stacks of papers, typewriters, empty coffee cups, bicycles, cucumbers from Syl Johnson’s garden.

After the interview, we went into Rob’s office, where we did a photo shoot and dug through his private collection of records. We started with some recent finds, three or four ethnographic recordings.

Field recordings from around the world have become a central part of his collection, and he organizes them by region, beginning with Alaska, running down the continent to South America, and then on from there.

What interests him about field recordings are that they’re “pre-musical” and have no preconceived ideas about musical structure. “They’re different sounds,” he said.
We talked a little bit about his formative years, what he listened to growing up and how that influences him today. His parents weren’t particularly interested in music and his allowance was small, so most of his early digging happened in libraries.

One of the earliest library finds he made was an LP of Charlie Patton. This was definitive discovery for him, both in terms of Patton’s music and the design and production of the sleeve.
We ended the day with a stroll to Dusty Grooves record shop, a perfect nightcap.

Day 11: Saturday, August 31st. Chicago. Dante Carfagna.

Dante Carfagna describes his apartment as “crispy,” a nod to its being filled with the old and being highly organized. And it is, indeed, both. 

In the hallway outside of his door is a long stack of boxes, oddities and records, all waiting to be combed through and organized before being allowed in. Only after he’s certain he wants it does he carry it past the threshold. Additionally, his collection never grows. When he brings something in, something else has to go out.

He is as tidy as his space. Sharp, respectful and quick-witted. In addition to a large library of music, he has a library of books about music, and also a cat he describes as “respectful.”

“I’m kind of a hippie man,” he told us. “Nothing but mellow music anymore.”

His LPs are organized into three categories: White Music, The Roots and Ethnographic Recordings.

Here we were again, with yet another collector interested in field and historical recordings. This wasn’t just a faint trend, and it wasn’t limited to ethnographic recordings. Patterns of all kinds were beginning to emerge from shoot to shoot, from city to city, and they would only continue to grow in their magnitude in the coming days. These echoes between collectors are born out of a shared curiosity, it seems, not only in music, but in the humanity behind the music. On the one hand, it really is all about the song, but on the other hand, the song is about us.

We then moved on to his soul 45s, most of which are from Ohio. He talked about how Ohio was a prolific state, which he thinks has something to do with its geography. He pulled out a few he called “outsiders,” so rare you have to wonder, “Who were these records made for?”

The last thing Dante showed us was his Bone Zone, a separate room dedicated to the unusual: private presses, old phonographs, posters, flyers. A lot of this he found through a promoter and agent in Ohio, who apparently even has a stack of stripper resumes, complete with measurements and abilities.