by Jenny Bachynski | Rebecca Dolen & Brandy Fedoruk are the co- owners and designers behind The Regional Assembly of Text at 3934 Main Street. The charming store is filled with beautifully designed stationary, books, and other items that delight. With text being the theme and driving inspiration behind the store, the result is a gorgeously curated space filled with vintage filing cabinets, typewriters, and high school lockers. The Regional Assembly of Text instantly gives you feelings of nostalgia that are strong enough to make you want to ditch your laptop and pick up a pencil again. Being a bit obsessed with typography myself, I was very excited to hear from the experts and learn about the details of their growing business…

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Tell us a bit about yourselves and how The Regional Assembly of Text came to be? We met at Emily Carr while doing our Visual Arts degrees. Sharing similar aesthetics and entrepreneurial desires, we teamed up to create The Regional Assembly of Text in 2005. We both did a lot of book making and screen printing and opening a store (and studio) where we could focus on designing and making things sounded like an idea worth pursuing.

The interior of your store is so beautiful and has a very lovely vintage atmosphere. What was the process of putting the store together like? We loved coming up with the décor of our store. We salvaged a lot of the furnishings from an old high schools that was getting torn down, as well as from surplus auctions and thrift stores. We often talk about opening another space, just so we can design and renovate.

Would you say the majority of the items in your store are The Regional Assembly of Text brand, made and designed in house? We try to design as many products as possible. All of our cards and wrapping paper and gift boxes are done in house. We also do some screen printing and book making and lots of assembling. We do carry products from other companies that we love as well.

The two of you started out at Emily Carr University of Art and Design together. How has owning a small business changed you as artists? Most of our time for the past 7 years has been dedicated to The Assembly of Text and it’s needs. Our art practices have turned into a lot of design work for the store, which is fun and rewarding. As for other projects, we both still enjoy publishing a silly artist book or two a year.

Co-owning a successful business often means finding the perfect balance. How do the two of you collaborate and develop your strengths and talents? We do a lot of brain storming and problem solving together, but work pretty independently. Business tasks get divided by our strengths. Rebecca gets quite a rush from balancing the books, and Brandy types at lightning speed and answers emails with ease. The rest of our tasks we learn as we go, and get better over time.

What is another local business in Vancouver that you admire? We sure do love Collage Collage.

You started the Letter Writing Club in 2005, which I think is such a unique idea. Can you tell us a bit about that? When we opened, we knew we wanted to have a monthly event open to the public. Letter writing seemed like the perfect fit for our store, especially since we both love writing and receiving mail. It is nice to think that we are responsible for thousands of letters going through the mail system. It has become quite a popular event and we get a lot of press because of it…which we are grateful for.

What has been the biggest highlight for The Regional Assembly of Text since opening its doors? The biggest highlight for us has been that we can continue to do what we love, and more recently, when Stuart McLean became a member of our “one book a month club”.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, what would be your top gift idea for someone running into the store last minute? One of our sweet and thoughtful cards perhaps, and a custom button to proclaim your love.

If Vancouver was a font, which one would you be? We can’t speak for Vancouver, but a couple of our favourite fonts these days are Typo American and Commercial Script.

Find out more about The Regional Assembly of Text at www.assemblyoftext.com.

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Jenny Bachynski was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. In her teenage years she packed up her bags and headed to Vancouver to pursue further education in fashion design. In 2009 she started her own small business Jenny Andrews Recycled Leather Goods, as well as her blog Jenny Loves. After starting her blog, Jenny discovered that one of her greatest joys was stumbling upon beautiful and interesting things, and sharing them with anyone who would listen.

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The recently retired, most commercially successful colour film in history gets its documentary due (via).

TAKE ANOTHER BREAK

As seen over McLean Park a few days ago when last night’s amazeballs full moon was ripening.

EVERYTHING SEEN IN VANCOUVER

Pecha Kucha Vancouver’s next evening is sure to be a doozy. It’s the All-Star show, meaning the presenters have been voted to the stage by you. Among their number will be David Eby of the BC Civil Liberties Associaion, artist Ken Lum, and Scout’s perennial employee of the month, Sean Orr (see the full list here). In typical fashion, tickets sold out in three minutes, but we have a double pass to give away to one lucky (and presumably very quick) reader. Stay tuned for details, and stay sharp!

by Daniel Colussi | Rarely does a band’s name so rightly capture their aural aesthetic, but Disappears is the perfect name for what these guys do. They craft hazy visions of half forgotten memories. They’re dream house-livers. They’re ghost riders, patrolmen of lost highways. But as people, they’re much more straight forward. Frontman Brian Case is a longtime indie-rocker, and in the following conversation he sheds light on playing tunes, being a bartender, and everything else that maketh a Chicago psych rocker tick.

What I’ve heard so far from Pre Language, the new album, sounds a little more reined in than the last two. The overall sound seems a bit less gauzy, less hazy, and more focused. What was the plan going into this recording? What kind of album did you want to record? And what did having Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth drummer) on board bring to recording proceedings? Well, we definitely didn’t want to make a record like we had before. We move pretty fast in terms of writing, and in the past the recording process mirrored that. This time we had a few more resources available to us (Steve’s studio) and a little more time to work. We really just wanted to do what was best for the songs, which is always the goal, but this time we were a little more considered than we have been in the past. Lux and Guider were each recorded in 2 days and mixed in 2 days by a member of the band in the same studio. This time we had someone to engineer, someone to mix and two separate studios – gives you a little more breathing time and helps keep your head clear.

I was a fan of 90 Day Men, and thinking back to when that band was around, it feels like a different era from today. It feels like there’s just so much more music/labels/bands/etc than ever before. Do you have any thoughts or reflections on how “indie rock” music/culture has evolved in the last 10-15 years? Oh my god, I think about this all the time. Yes, things are so completely different. I mean, when 90 Day Men was around, people were worried about promo’s being sold before release date, not your record being available to anyone who felt like googling your band name. The internet was such a small, tiny part of independent music culture then – it’s so hard to illustrate how it has become a major force in creating, marketing, selling, hyping, and ultimately destroying bands today. Great question that we could talk about for hours.

Something I like about Disappears is how your music balances the spaciness of psych/kraut music with a sort of tight punk rock vibe. Am I way off on this? How does that dynamic come about? How much is that by design? I think it’s just a matter of taste really. Ultimately that’s what makes a band good or bad in my opinion. Yes, skill plays a part, but if you can get a group of people together with a good combination of chemistry and influences, then you’ve got it. That’s how it’s been in all the bands I’ve played in at least. You’re right on with how you describe us; we try and balance the visceral-ness of punk with the experimental side of things. Usually we just slap the two right on top of each other, haha.

What’s the best Hawkwind album? What’s the best Fall album? Honestly I know nothing about Hawkwind, aside from Lemmy being the original bass player and that people think they are an influence on us. I really do need to check them out. The best Fall record is impossible to pick. Right now I’m actually listening to ‘Bend Sinister’ and I can’t imagine anything sounding better, so let’s go with that.

Am I correct in thinking that all of Disappears, minus Steve, are bartenders? That means a lot of time spent in bars. What’s it like to work in a bar and then go on tour and spend all your time in bars? Two of us are bartenders. Ummm…it can be a little like “Groundhog Day” but that’s more about being on tour and being at the same clubs all the time. The bar I work at is in a really nice restaurant so it’s not dark with loud music and people getting wasted so that helps keep it in a different place for me. Jonathan works at a great bar called Rainbo, it’s been around since the 1930′s or something and doesn’t have bands (well, very rarely), so it’s more of a place to hang out vs. being assaulted with a band 7 days a week.

I imagine that Disappears live is a different beast than Disappears in the studio. What makes for a good Disappears live show? What kind of places do you prefer to play? How do you feel your songs translate in larger setting like the Pitchfork or Lollapalooza shows vs. a 300 person capacity bar? I think we prefer to play places where we can control the environment some, a good mid-size club that’s packed with people who want to hear music is the best – everyone can see, there are few distractions and you can really pull off the energy of the audience. With the festivals it’s totally different – you have to fight to make people care, which has it’s own advantages as well. Live is different for us – we really try and link things together, similar to a DJ set. We try our best to keep the momentum going and try and pace things so they build into something versus just playing 12 songs and talking about how rad everyone is between them. Hopefully there’s a little mystery there.

Finally, I imagine that everyone in the band is a total music head. So what gets played in the van when you’re on tour? We all take turns with the music but a lot of times the van is quite tame. We like to talk and use that time to make plans about what’s coming up – what we’d like to happen. Steve and Jonathan end up DJing a lot – lots of old soul stuff, weird new wave, obscure french music…hahaha…just a bunch of music snobs driving around in a van somewhere.

Disappears and The Fresh And Onlys play the Biltmore Saturday Feb 18th. Tickets at Zulu and Red Cat and the Biltmore.

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Zulu Records veteran and tunage aficionado Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine.