In late 1998 Norah Utley printed up 1,000 promotional buttons that said “I (heart) Norah (TM).” For the next three years she handed them out at shows and bars around town. “You know how there’s bands that you’ve never heard but are really well-known because people always wear their buttons?” she says. “That was my attempt to try and do the same thing, but with myself.” Utley’s buttons have since turned up as far west as California–a friend of hers spotted somebody wearing one in a club in LA. “I still get people coming up to me saying, ‘Are you the Norah, from ‘I heart Norah?’”
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These days, though, Utley has something more conventional to promote. Three years ago she started Shit Sandwich Records, a tiny label that’s earned enviable loyalty from garage-rock collectors across the country with its seven releases to date. “I think it’s pretty impressive,” says Eric Friedl, aka Eric Oblivian, who runs the Memphis trash-rock institution Goner Records. “It took me ten years to put out seven releases. . . . She seems to have her finger on the pulse of some good stuff that’s going on.” The Shit Sandwich catalog includes seven-inches from locals like the Tyrades and M.O.T.O., Memphis neo-new wavers the Final Solutions, and ferocious Baltimore postpunks the Fuses. All the singles have sold out their initial pressings, and Utley plans to put out a Fuses LP–the label’s first full-length, and its first record to get a CD release–early next month.
In August 2000 at the Fireside, Utley and several friends debuted as Airbrush, an air-guitar band complete with air drums and lip-synched vocals. “We’d burn CDs of songs–mostly Motley Crue and cock-rock stuff–and then record our own between-song banter, which we’d also lip-synch to,” she says. “I would have to get super, super wasted to perform, though, because it was completely embarrassing.”
In November 2003 Utley debuted in her first real band, Headache City, with Mike Fitzpatrick and Dave Head–their previous group, the White Outs, had been her second release. She plays keyboards, though she likes to joke that she’s only in the band because neither of the guys is any good at talking to the crowd when somebody breaks a string. “I feel like such a dork sometimes, ’cause I’m actually playing in my favorite band, which is really weird,” she says. Headache City has released a seven-inch on Shit Sandwich and plans to put out a full-length on the label later this year. The group was the only Chicago band at Goner Fest in January, and last month it played three gigs at South by Southwest–including a joint showcase for Shit Sandwich and another Chicago punk label, Criminal IQ, that drew a wall-to-wall crowd.
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