Henry Owings is no longer hungry, he’s hangry. “It’s when you are both hungry and angry,” he says in his slight Atlanta accent. “I need to eat.” The renowned Chunklet zinester has been invited to Toronto to curate a showcase at this year's North by Northeast festival, but even 800 miles from home, the guy can't make a simple lunch run without bumping into friends. On the way out from his Marriott hotel, Owings runs into L.A. noise-popsters No Age and fellow Atlantans The Black Lips in the lobby. He then takes a minute to text Damian Abraham from Fucked Up on his iPhone, apologizing but secretly charmed by the attention. “I’m so flattered, honestly Chandler, to be asked to come here," Owings says. "It’s fucking rad that [NXNE] asked Chunklet to do a showcase.” On the night of June 18, the Bovine Sex Club will host sets by reformed British post-punk pioneers The Homosexuals, Atlanta-girl punks The Coathangers and Detroit nerdcore outfit Tijvek courtesy of Owings’ indie music rag, Chunklet — though the founder will be running so ragged, he will hardly be seen. Named after a brand of ice machine Owings once observed in the deep south next to a stained-wife-beater-clad redneck getting a mani-pedi from his wife, Chunklet is the de facto source of snark for the indie-rock regime. Though the magazine itself comes out as irregularly as every three years (issue 20 is cheekily titled “The Last Magazine Ever Printed” — which happens in Winnipeg, by the way), it was started in 1993 as a middle finger to the bastardization of alt-weekly rock writing. (Um, no comment.) Stuck writing 4,000-word features for Athens' dominant alt-weekly for as little as $3 a shot, Owings set out on his own to take down the sacred cows of music critics the world over. Take for example, the shout outs featured in the latest Chunklet entitled “Dear Rock Star,” in which everyone from Kurt Cobain to Stephin Merritt gets the piss taken out of them. “Dear Mick Jagger: please pass away, it’s over. Watching you prance onstage is like watching elderly women fuck,” one writer instructs. Vice could use a taste Chunklet’s bile. Wearing oversized transition lenses his wife detests, Owings digs into a car bomb-sized hunk of King’s Crown nachos at Sneaky Dee's and admits to a hulking inner nerdiness. “I have one terabyte of music on my computer. I’m the kind of guy who pares down his record collection to just the essentials — but it’s way more records than anyone else should own. I bought new shelves for my birthday just so I could store more records — they were taking over my floor. I’m a big archivist of live shows, just in case some touring band stays at the house and asks if I have any Dag Nasty.” Music has owned Owings life ever since he sprouted ears. Raised in a strict Catholic household, the young Owings was banned from listening to bands brandishing pentagrams or rock-styled album-cover fonts — that meant no KISS, Def Leppard or even ZZ Top. He later bounced from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania and then finally Georgia, stumbling onto a major scene with every move. He tagged along on tours with more than a couple of notable Athens band from the '90s (including Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power and Olivia Tremor Control). When he moved to Atlanta — “because I was broke and needed work” — there was nothing but a cultural wasteland. Soon, future Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox was handing Owings his first demo tape and later babysat Owings' dog (named in honour of Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos) during a Deerhunter photo shoot for FADER. Still, Owings insists, “Les Savy Fav say that any band I praise in Chunklet is doomed to a life of obscurity.” If indie-rock is Owings religion, he’s a man in devout service, even though he acknowledges that people wonder if a publication filled with such disdain could ever express genuine love for new music. Owings is the sort of guy who doesn’t understand why people cross their arms at Mission of Burma shows, describes disposable blog-buzz band Passion Pit as “musical stryofoam — I just don’t get it,” and debates with Brutal Knights frontman Nick Flanagan about which underrated hardcore band at the Chunklet NXNE showcase will receive a more enthusiastic reception — Easy Action or Youth Brigade. In response to rampant hipsterism, Owings increasingly finds inspiration in Americana. “If you go to a monster truck rally that costs $10, you’ll see how excited and crazy the crowd gets. There’s an energy there that people don’t experience at concerts they even spend $200 at.” Though Owings fights the culture wars from both sides (critics are as critics do, but they don’t often program hardcore shows for low cash grabs), he understands that his position as a maligned indie-rock critic is something that’s privileged, even today. Says Owings: “I’m 40 now, and feel like the luckiest person in the world for being to do the things that people much younger than me think is impossible.” Asked by Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber for advice on his then-web startup, Owings questioned online media’s place. “There’s a reason this issue [of Chunklet] is called the ‘last magazine ever printed,’” he says, digging a nacho in hot sauce. “It’s getting harder and harder for music magazines to prove they’re relevant.” Case in point, Chunklet’s “Online Music Journalist Application Form,” in which writers are encouraged to answer such soul-seeking questions as “Have you ever used the phrase ‘seminal’ to describe a record that has been out for less than a year?” and “Do you use Microsoft Word’s thesaurus to find alternate words for ‘angular’?” (Guilty as charged.) The creator of a magazine made for self-hating critics, it seems like Henry Owings owns the party. Barely denting the nachos, Owings’ true hunger subsides once he’s thumbing through singles in Rotate This. “You’ll have to leave now, because things are going to get really, really nerdy now,” he says by way of a (seriously nice) apology, that genteel accent rounding out the vowels. If everyone white and nerdy was so self aware, even "Weird" Al Yankovic would be out of a job.
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