Rob Theakston – Letters
I first encountered Rob Theakston in the early 2000s at the Ghostly-affiliated weekly, Touch, at The Necto in Ann Arbor. Until recently, it was also the last time. It was hard to make it out on Tuesdays, but I could always count on Rob to be there if I wanted to make new connections. He has always kept his finger on the pulse of seemingly every burgeoning scene of artisans, not only music. I knew I had to try to get him to fire up his mixer for Source Foray.
It had been over two decades, but I checked in with many of his old friends to ascertain his whereabouts. I spoke to Tadd, Todd, Doyle, Plaslaiko, et al. Everyone seemed to have a vague certainty that Rob was doing well, but nobody quite knew where. My determination to locate him would send me on an adventure reminiscent of the search for Carmen Sandiego.
My first tip came from a mutual friend whose bachelor excursion to Bourbon country Rob helped to plan. The great Chuck Cowdery himself provided Rob’s name in response to an inquiry on which distilleries to visit and in what order, and Rob created a rickhouse triptych worthy of publishing as a Kentucky travel guide. I traced this correspondence to a neighborhood in Lexington. All the neighbors remarked that he was a lovely boy. Only one seemed to know anything more, and he had an inkling that his last known hobby, collecting heirloom rice varieties, led him to pack up and move on.
With little else to go on, I researched lost varieties of the most widespread staple grain in the world. I reached out to hundreds of farms, and just before exhausting domestic options, I happened to see a documentary on the nearly lost red variety grown in Gullah country surrounding sea islands in the Carolinas. After locating the area’s foremost culinary anthropologist, I had struck gold. She had known Rob, and gave me the details of his rice-growing venture.
Rob had started the low country’s first rice-duck polyculture farm. He was profitably preserving the heirloom rice using ducks to eat locusts and other pests, prevent weeds, and fertilize the rice crops before being harvested for their succulent meat. According to the farm’s current steward, he had cashed his check for the sale of the property, handed over a 700-some page manual on continued operation of the regenerative practices, and left no forwarding address before moving on.
I thought I had reached another dead end. Eating at a local cafe on the way out of town, in my typical inquisitiveness, I spoke to an aged lady in a striking, handmade dress. She called herself Shanty and detailed making her own clothing since childhood, even weaving the fabrics herself. As I pressed for more information, she commented that the last time someone asked so much about her clothes, he ended up becoming her apprentice. A man named Rob. I could have guessed.
Rob learned the traditional Gullah methods of weaving fabric, passed down through generations, descending upon the coast of the southeastern United States directly from West Africa. He had become so enamored with the textile traditions that he sought to expand his horizons. After studying under workers at Cone Mills’s legendary White Oak factory, Rob learned of an abandoned east coast textile mill with historically significant looms. Once again, he followed his heart, and dragged his belongings on a new venture in New England.
After spending nearly a year squatting in the abandoned factory and painstakingly restoring the dormant looms, Rob reached the point where he was ready to make some fabric. Through an antiquated homesteading law still curiously on the books in Massachusetts, Rob was able to claim the factory for his own due to his renovations and intent. I spoke with a local bookstore whose proprietor was among Rob’s first contacts in town. She explained how she had connected Rob with the plant’s former manager, who agreed to come out of retirement and train Rob on the operation and maintenance of the looms. For the first time since the forties, American fabric manufacturing was back in action.
I packed up and pointed my Pontiac Safari toward Palmer, Mass. Having lived in a former textile mill loft on Detroit’s east side, I immediately recognized the hulking brick structure, central tower, offset boiler stack, and leaded glass windows with rolled steel frames and distinctive awning vents. I approached the main door to find the ubiquitous “will return” sign, the small hand pointing to the two. I sat on a log and waited.
As Rob appeared, our eyes met, and what seemed like a lifetime of stories passed through an invisible electron pathway between us. Words weren’t necessary, and Rob knew why I was there. He simply asked, “What’s the title?” I told him, Source Foray. He had just the thing. He led me through a maze of narrow corridors, creaky stairs, a rickety catwalk, and a masonry arch before arriving at an industrial, patchwork metal fire door.
With the full weight of both of our bodies, the door lurched open, revealing dozens of racks of analog equipment in front of a library’s worth of 2” tape reels. Rob thumbed through the stacks, eventually producing a box covered by a half-inch of dust. After brushing it into a plume illuminated by rays of light from a nearby dormer, he presented a tape simply labeled LETTERS. Closely guarding the tape in my wagon, also packed with bolts of specialty cloth, I drove back to Detroit to digitize the music. I’m thrilled to share Rob’s work with the world on Somnambulant Drift. Stay tuned for custom upholstery.
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