Following on from my review of his new album 'The Wild Homesick' earlier this week (here), I exchanged a few e-mails with Adam Gnade to discuss the origins of the new album, his approach to writing and a few other things.
Sonic Reverie: First off, How are you today Adam?
Adam Gnade: I'm really, really good. Really happy. Couple months ago I was at a party with my girl and my best friend. She noticed two huge, black, misshapen moles on the back of his neck and was like, "Dude, you need to go see a doctor, like, tomorrow!" She talked him into going to a dermatologist in the city--he lives in the woods--and that's the last I heard about it because neither he or like cellphones or email. So this morning I hear from him and he's like, "Well, she saved my life! The first mole was fine but the second was cancer." The doctor caught it early and he's going to live. So, yeah, I'm happy. I feel good about things. I woke up hungover and feeling mean, but as soon as I heard that my whole outlook changed. I'm alive and the people I love are alive; I'm very much okay with that. Hahahaha, maybe that's more than you wanted... anecdotal evidence of my happiness. Sorry, man. I should've said, "Oh, I'm fine."
SR: In the press release for the new record you’ve said that you think you’re getting closer to what you wanted in talking songs, did you set out with achieving this in mind or did it just evolve throughout the writing and recording process?
AG: It evolved slowly. I have the model in my head but it's difficult actualizing the thing. The model, the frame of reference I'm working with at this point, is a genre of music built upon the song-forms of traditional American roots music, y'know, like country, bluegrass, work ballads, sailor songs, spirituals, Piedmont blues, and gospel with the lyrics fitting comfortably into the song structure and not being ... or rather, not sounding like some asshole reading off a piece of paper, which is why I hate spoken word so much. I think the closest I've come to what I hope "talking songs" will be is my song "Providence." Most of the rest of my songs are just failed experiments in attempting to make real what's in my head.
But that's the point. I think you need to allow yourself the option to be imperfect. Besides maybe Foals or Sufjan or Youthmovies, I don't like most orderly, tight, realized music. It sounds dead to me. I want people to step out on a limb and take chances. You gotta follow what your head tells you to do, no matter how unmarketable or ill-advised it may seem. Listen to the voice in your head, it's always right. Even if the outcome is disastrous, it's a true thing. Like, I could definitely sell more records if I just re-made Honey Slides or Run Hide Retreat Surrender over and over again but then I'd be betraying myself and my purpose (ontologically speaking, as in Maslow's theory of the "master motive" or, to a lesser degree, Nietzsche's psychological principle the "will to power.") Life's too short to make music that isn't what you want to be making at that moment in time. And anyway, I don't need to sell a million records to make a living.
SR: For the most part the album is very sparse musically, was this an intentional choice or did you just feel that it fitted the lyrics better?
AG: For The Wild Homesick it was very much intentional. The music is supposed to sound like the city that the story is set in, San Angelo, in West Central Texas. Outside of the main hub of town, it's desert and the desert in western Texas is very quiet and dry and still. That's why there's so much silence in some of the songs. But, just the same, it's also a place with very heavy weather ... tornadoes, thunderstorms, flash-floods. Which is why the record goes from spacious, slow, barely-there tracks to more spirited and even electric parts. It's a series of fade-outs and scene dissolves as a reflection of its place-setting and of the storm that hits town in the story. Completely premeditated.
SR: As I understand it there’s a lot of crossover between your writing and your music, when doing an album what tends to come first, the stories or the music?
AG: Usually the lyrics, since the characters and basic storyline are already established. This time, however, the music came first because I had a very vivid conception of the place I needed it to sound like.
SR: Do you set yourself a deadline to write, the album for example, do you like to get ideas down as soon as they occur to you or do you like to let them fester and formulate in your head first?
AG: No, never any deadlines. But yeah, I'm a big fan of festering and formulating--or at least letting your subconscious knock your ideas around for a while. Your subconscious is the real champ; your conscious mind's just the workhorse. Or the driver vis-a-vis the mechanic, to change the metaphor.
SR: What first inspired you to attempt ‘talking songs’?
AG: I imagine it was a confluence of things but I don't remember anything direct or specific. I'm kind of in a weird head-space where I try to ignore my own personal historic time-line and live right now, while at the same time ... how to say this? ... at the same time I'm writing my own history, so I have to know it and I have to be immersed in it. It's a confusing dichotomy, to be sure. On one hand, I like what Marx said when he wrote, "History does nothing. It doesn't keep riches, it doesn't fight battles. It is men, real and living, who do this." (That's a paraphrase; I may have got it wrong, but the central idea stands.) Conversely, the only thing I read these days is historical fiction. I'm kind of stuck in a crossfire situation I guess. I'll come to terms with it at some point. I left school early, so I think I'm kind of behind in terms of having a clear, self-aware comprehension of my metaphysical development. I'm working on it, though. Slow and steady.
SR: Do you have plans for any more collaborations, either Faux Hoax stuff or more with Youthmovies, or anything else you might want to tell us about?
AG: No, there's no plans for anything collaborative. Maybe some day with Youthmovies but I've kind of got collaborating with other bands out of my system.
SR: You’re quite prolific in terms of how much work you produce (music, novellas etc.). Do you prefer to work on one thing until completion, or do you do bits of various things all at once?
AG: I generally work on one record and one piece of writing at a time. The writing is, as it should be, a much longer, deliberate, drawn-out process, while the records come and go. At the moment, I'm writing the prequel to Hymn California. I began it the day Hymn California came out last summer, which was a very conscious decision. I'm thinking this one will take me another three or four years to finish. Hymn California was done in a kind of furious, passionate, fractured spurt and finished relatively fast (as books go). This one follows a more traditional, sequential, chronological narrative structure and is a lot more of a slow-going, methodical process. Y'know, really monastic 14-hour writing days and the such. I'm probably not going to record or release another album for a very long time. I want to spend next year on tour, hashing out ideas by playing them live, before I even think about what's next.
SR: You’ve done a little bit of acting in ‘Loren Cass’, is that something you’d like to do more of, and have you ever thought about writing for the screen, or adapting any of your existing work to that medium?
AG: Oh no, definitely not. That was just for laughs, and it was fun, but the world of film is all about keeping in touch, as Joan Didion would say, and networking, and I'm very much a loner. Which is a fucking stupid way to say it, but whatever. I like to work alone.
SR: After the release of the album, what does the rest of the year hold for you?
AG: Besides this book, which takes up a big portion of my time, I'm doing nothing at all. Just fucking off for a while ... going to go ride around the country for a month or so in the back of a truck, stop in Canada for a bit, then I'm headed to California to wait out the winter. I just want to see the world some, listen to a lot of country music tapes, drink a lot whiskey, read a lot, and then hide out for a few months and let my head get quiet again. I'm pretty excited about that.
'The Wild Homesick' is out now, you can order it direct from Adam's site here.
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