There are a lot of misconceptions about the life of a musician. And we want to prove them wrong, or at least make you think about it a little. Most musicians have day jobs –- and not just to pay the bills. Jobs provide new challenges, personal fulfillment and, yes, some rent or gas money.
In Don’t Quit Your Day Job, Scene Point Blank looks at how musicians split their time, and how their careers influence their music –- or, sometimes, how it’s a direct correlation.
In this edition, we chat with author/musician Adam Gnade about setting fiction to music and earning a living while doing so.
Scene Point Blank: You're a musician and author and the two are interconnected. What was your first band and how old were you?
Adam Gnade: I’ve never been in a real band other than recording my writing backed by music.
Scene Point Blank: When did you start playing music and how does that correlate to when you started writing poetry/prose/etc.?
Adam Gnade: I got an acoustic guitar when I was 18 and played it very badly for a while. I began writing around the same time. The actual when is lost to memory, but getting the guitar and having my first story published were around the same time. The same year. Possibly the same month. Then I stumbled forward doing both badly for a very long time.
I didn't really start writing until I got that first piece published. At 18 at the end of high school I read a travel story about a fishing village in Portugal and liked the writing and that summer decided to write a similar thing but about my daily life. The weekly newspaper in San Diego bought it for $400 or something crazy and I was like, "Well, I'm a writer now."
Years later I was interviewed about my first actually released album of writing and after the interview, the journalist said, "Well, if you ever come to Portugal you should stay at my fishing village." I was like, "What's the name of your fishing village?" Same one! Two years later after a UK tour, I went down there and stayed for a week. Ericeira is the name of the place. Life is so strange.
Scene Point Blank: When was your first book? Can you kind of connect the dots between the first questions and this one for us?
Adam Gnade: My first book was a novel called Hymn California which came out in 2008. I started recording my writing and playing very primitive music behind it when I was a teenager. At the time I had no idea how one writes a book much less gets it published, so I’d record things on cassette and give them to people or leave them places or mail them to random addresses I found in the phone book. That was kicked off because I used to send emails and letters back and forth with Richard Hell a very long time ago and his advice to me was if you want to write poetry, don’t, because no one will read it. That in mind, I decided because people love bands, I’ll just be a band, and trick people into hearing my writing that way, which is what he did with the Voidoids.
Scene Point Blank: How many books have you published at this time?
Adam Gnade: I have four novels, Hymn California, Caveworld, This is the End of Something But It’s Not the End of You, and Float Me Away, Floodwaters, and one novella, Locust House. I’ve also got two books that are sort of lite-philosophy, Simple Steps to a Life Less Shitty and the Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad. (Both were written a while ago, and I don’t write that sort of thing anymore. Just fiction.) At the moment, my longtime editor and friend Jessie Duke and I are going back and forth on edits for a novel that’ll be out via Three One G and Bread & Roses Press in January.
Scene Point Blank: How did you get your first book deal? Did you talk to a label, or pitch an agent or publisher? I'd love to hear the story of your first formal pitch since it’s a somewhat outside-the-box concept.
Adam Gnade: I’ve been really lucky that I haven’t had to do much pitching or asking because I would be terrible at that. What happened was I used to write for a music magazine called Kitty Magik and when I recorded my first real album of writing backed by full-band music in 2005, and was suddenly given a record deal for it and offered tours, the owner of the magazine, Marisa Handren, who was also a publicist with Four Paws Media, and was doing stuff with people like like Xiu Xiu and Deerhoof at the time, offered to do press on the record for free.
Which was huge. So much happened because of that. Reviews everywhere, a UK record deal with Drowned-in-Sound, overseas tours booked, meeting the guys from Youthmovies whom I have toured and recorded with many times.
On the book front, though, Jesse Von Doom, the art director of the magazine, also designed the art for the record, Run Hide Retreat Surrender. He liked the writing from the record well enough I guess, and asked me if he and his pal Jack started a publishing house whether I would write a book for it. Of course I said yes and began to write Hymn California.
Worth noting, I wrote for Kitty Magik for free and it led to absolutely everything. So when people are adamant about not doing any free work, I tell them that some free work is fine because it can lead to all sorts of things. Some free work, not all free work, though you should always do anything your friends want you to do for free. Don’t bring money into friendship or else you’ll fuck it up, which I’ve done. Money is kind of like love, the more desperate you are for it, the less chance you have at getting it.
Scene Point Blank: Did you have other writing jobs prior, or was doing this for a living a complete left turn from your previous career?
Adam Gnade: I started writing full-time when I was 18. Freelance journalism. A few years later I got a job at the online version of the San Diego Union-Tribune which led to me working for a “weird news” wire service covering UFO sightings and appearances of Bigfoot and shit which led to Jessie Duke and I starting a weekly paper called Fahrenheit San Diego which led to me getting a job at the Portland Mercury. I freelanced during all the gaps between those editorial staff jobs. I quit journalism, though, in 2007 when I was offered the deal to write Hymn California. That had always been my intention. Plan being: as soon as someone wants to do a book with me, I leave journalism, and don’t look back.
Scene Point Blank: What influences your ability to earn a living while simultaneously creating? Are you restricted by publisher schedules or other third parties? From a distance, it seems like you have a job you could do from any location at any time of day.
Adam Gnade: I don’t have any restrictions.
Scene Point Blank: If a random stranger asks what you do for a living, do you say you're a writer, a musician, or both?
Adam Gnade: I don’t tell them either one. Telling someone you’re either a writer or a musician opens the floor for horrible, awkward conversation. Usually I steer the conversation away from myself. Also, I hate talking to strangers.
Scene Point Blank: From a business perspective, what is something you'd tell a young artist interested in pursuing a career as a self-employed artist (in these mediums or another)?
Adam Gnade: Where I live here in the country, we have a thing called the “farm model.” Farmers out here have fruit stands, sell livestock, hay off their neighbors’ fields, give horseback riding lessons, rebuild tractors, you name it. Artists should do the same. Diversify. Tour as much as you can, make a ton of merch, do festivals, table your shit at book fairs, whatever you can. I run a record label for writers who do audio work like myself called Hello America Stereo Cassette. It’s all part of the farm model. Oh, also, don’t expect to make any money doing music. I used to make my living selling my records, but as soon as Radiohead released whatever that album was for free, within a year or two no one was buying music. Thankfully that happened right around when my first book came out, and thankfully people buy books.
Scene Point Blank: From a creative perspective, what advice would you give to an artist just starting out and seeking some type or work/life balance?
Adam Gnade: I’m the wrong person to ask about work/life balance because my work is my life and I never stop working. It’s not healthy.
Scene Point Blank: Who is your favorite writer with some kind of overlap in the music scene?
Adam Gnade: My friend Andrew Hykel Mears of the band Youthmovies.
Scene Point Blank: What is your favorite book right now?
Adam Gnade: Selftitled by Nicole Morning off Trident Press. Trident does a lot of cool shit thanks to their editor-in-chief Nathaniel Kennon Perkins being such a bright star. Trident also reissued Bart Schaneman’s fantastic The Green and the Gold on the same day as Nicole’s book. Also, anything by Dickens because he had a sort of tremendous, uncorkable energy I look for in myself every day. Just finished A Tale of Two Cities. The parallels between Revolutionary France and post-Trump America will fuck your ass up. Oh, and Lora Mathis’ poetry collection on Party Trick Press, The Women Widowed to Themselves, is a massive, colossal favorite. So, four-way tie between those. I’m also working my way through every Tyrant Books title.
Scene Point Blank: Anything you’d like to add?
Adam Gnade: If you want to be a writer or a musician, or both I guess, the trait that will serve you best is bravery. Life is fucking short, and it’ll be over before you know it, so take risks. Don’t be afraid to step into the fucking fray. Most people are terrified. I know I am. The trick is to not let your fear bother you.
