How do you reconcile your love of making records with the commerciality of the business?
Hmm. Well, when I was in my early 20s, I was horrified to hear people call my record "product." It was shocking. I just found it obscene! Something so important to me, my record, was not a product like a toaster oven or tires, you know what I mean? Those things are products. Getting to make records and being a musician doesn?t have much to do with my love for records. I would still be an obsessive collector and pundit, if you will, with or without my own career of making music. The two connect in a certain fabric.

There is a certain joy to sharing it all. Recently, I was playing the new Dylan Bootleg Series entry [Vol. 9 - The Witmark Demos] at home, and my 10-month-old daughter loved it. Then I played some John Lee Hooker, "Mad Man Blues," and she just got into it, bobbing her head and all; she had perfect rhythm! She seems to love acoustic blues and folk-country stuff. When the first Holy Modal Rounders album [self-titled, from 1964] comes on, she just flips out, man!

photo: Sorrell Schneider

Have you played her anything electric, like Elmore James?
I haven't yet hipped her to too much electric blues, but if it's got that funky, fat backbeat going, she's down! My wife and I just laugh.

Do you have a count on how many records you own?
I've probably got 4,500 to 5,000 records. I got rid of some to make room for more. And I've got about 500 to 600 records at a friend?s house in Brooklyn for when I DJ here.

What kind of turntable do you have?
I have two turntables and a little DJ setup for when people come over. They're both Technics SL-1210M5Gs. I keep a lot of the super-weird out-there jazz and out there psychedelic stuff like the Third Ear Band in my office where the one 'table is set up for when the family goes to bed and I want to get weird. I have amps, guitars, and half of my library in that office. If friends want to hang out, we can get pretty noisy in there. I don't think the neighbors feel the same [chuckles], but Topanga is pretty hip.

My wife gets the whole thing. She told me, "I understand I married a man who's having an affair in his office with his records and books and weird f---ing Armenian cinema."

photo: Sorrell Schneider