You may remember me raving about the Adam Gnade & Youthmovies collaborative EP Honey Slides a few weeks ago. Hopefully you listened to the track I posted, and are going to see them live on their massive joint tour. Or maybe you already did, because they've been on the road for two weeks or so now. I hear they played to about ten people in Harrogate, maybe one of those was you? I DON'T KNOW.
Anyway, I "caught up" (this was actually done via email, because I'm just so 21st century or something) with Adam to ask him a few questions. Questions about stuff. Like, Music and stuff. You know what I mean.
My questions are in bold, Adam's responses are not.
You're coming back to the UK, although this isn't your first trip as you toured here late last year with Youthmovies and Blood Red Shoes. How did we treat you last time? Any fond memories you'd like to share?
Let’s just say, after the second day I was ready to become a British citizen. America, for all its good sides, is a brutal place to live if you don’t jibe with status quo—and nobody worth two shits does. We have all these great new laws that outlaw freedoms, take away privacy, and render unlawful the kind of nonviolent civil disobedience that people like Dr. King changed the world with. We’re spied upon. Blacklisted. The place I live was under FBI surveillance for months. But I guess if you’re gonna make a living writing songs and stories about how much you hate and love your country, you can’t ditch out on the fight when shit is at its worst. But, man, Youthmovies, Blood Red Shoes, and Drowned in Sound treated me like a prince.
This is a pretty comprehensive tour - you're actually playing some places I've never even heard of before! Is there anywhere in particular you're looking forward to playing in or exploring?
STONEHENGE!
Your next record is Honey Slides, a collaboration with Youthmovies. I understand that you recorded two of the tracks when you all toured together last year, and it was originally touted as just being a 7". What spurred the decision to upgrade it to a full CD? How did the long distance affect the creative processes you had all worked out when touring together and writing the initial material?
Good question... I’m not sure when it officially became a full-on CD, but the other three tracks were done via the post. I recorded vocals on my tape recorder, mailed the tape to Youthmovies, and they turned them into what they are now.
That's an interesting way of working. Did you have any idea what sort of music they were crafting to go with your vocals? That's got to require a certain amount of trust! I assume the Drowned in Sound tour last year the first time you'd come across each other – did it just 'click' straight away with you all?
To be perfectly honest, I really had no idea, but I trust those guys and their taste without question. But it was like that from the beginning. Last tour, the tour’s photographer, Rob Queenin, and I got insanely drunk after we got off the plane and got lost en route to the first show in Hertford. Got there right when I was supposed to go on, and they took me in just like that. We were instant pals. Their next CD is going to make so many people fall in love with them. Their track “The Naughtiest Girl is a Monitor” is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.
Beyond this, you've got a double EP set coming out through Bad Drone Media. Give us a bit of gossip about these records - what inspired you while making them?
The first side we recorded, Whidbey Island, was inspired by the place it’s named after. My buddy Thad and I were hanging out on the island back in January and we figured why not just set up some mics and try and capture the vibe. It was beautiful; a roomy little house on the cliff’s edge, all big sunny windows and a wide view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula. You should see the pictures!
The Palaces side I wrote on tour this spring. They both share characters and themes, y’know both haunted by the same group of girls—two sisters and their cousin. Palaces has lots of noise and different instruments, where Whidbey Island is clean and simple—vocals, minimal acoustic bass, a track of mandolin, David’s guitar, no effects, just a couple takes and two mics. On Palaces I got to play banjo, piano, kalimba, modified 5-string guitar, and bells—probably some other stuff I’m forgetting.
Also, we might’ve accidentally caught a murder going down in the background. It’s in the first track; really low in the ambient sound that came through the window. I don’t want to say any more and implicate any of my asshole neighbors, but you can hear it if you listen close.
Your lyrics do seem to have a lot of recurring characters in them. Are they actual people from your life, or fictionalised versions? I understand your forthcoming book will explore some of them in more detail, care to give us any more details?
Everyone’s real and nothing’s fictionalized. I change some of the names, depending upon who it is, but some of the songs use real names just because… I guess just because that’s how they feel best. Run Hide Retreat Surrender and the early stuff before that was all real names. The book, Hymn California, takes a lot of their stories further and, actually, a few of the stories include parts of the songs because that’s where they came from first. I won’t have the book in time for tour, but I will have a little novella with a lot of those same characters. It’s called Seasons Loving Nothing. I’m getting copies today. I leave tomorrow morning. Everything is last minute. In fact, I just got a box from the record company with the Palaces / Whidbey Island CDs a couple minutes ago. Up until now I hadn’t seen them. They look like pieces of candy. Hand-painted by Bobby and Jax at Bad Drone. Really beautiful.
You're quite a unique (at least, in my view!) frontman as far as "indie" (speaking in the wider sense) goes, both in your delivery and the way you construct your lyrics. What lead you down this particular path?
I’ve answered this question differently a few times in interviews and I’m guessing that’s because I don’t really know the answer. I used to pick stuff apart and analyze each piece of sound, outline the lyrics, hone the metaphors, and work within several levels of understanding with the narrative structure, but I’ve given up on dissecting it. I started to feel like a fucking frog on a plastic tray with its skinned pinned off to the side and its guts hanging out. Now I just do it and let whatever goes down go down. I’d rather get drunk and stupid and let the tape roll until something happens. People are too fucking conscious.
Your vocals on Honey Slides have an urgency to them that's not really been seen in your earlier work, both in content and delivery. It's quite a contrast to Run Hide Retreat Surrender, which comes across as quite a dark, downbeat and world-weary record. If you listen to both records as a pair, the charge is quite startling - it's like you've gone from a resigned shoulder shrug to an angry Southern preacher or something. Was this down to touring and working with Youthmovies? I've always considered them quite an aggressive, confrontational band, maybe not in a strictly technical way but certainly in the way they put their songs across live.
That’s a great question. The urgency in the music is definitely thanks to the energy those guys put into their stuff, but as far as the lyrics and the delivery, Run Hide Retreat Surrender was me at my most suicidally depressed. I was ready, and willing, to end it all and I think that record was my final attempt to give voice to all that and get rid of the darkness — which was, at the time, overwhelming. I can’t listen to Run Hide Retreat Surrender. There are too many hard things in there that bring it all back. I had to make that record and move on. The way the vocals are on that one, and the way the music is, all that silence, was the only way I could’ve done it at the time. I was in bad shape. It’s a direct transcription of my soul sort of... dying I guess. So now, two long years later, it’s so nice not to think about killing myself all the time and it’s great to not be insanely sad 24 hours a day. I still get low, but there’s more of a balance. “Honey Slides,” the song, is actually Run Hide Retreat Surrender’s epilogue. I did that on purpose, referencing back to the original album and to some of the older songs, to give myself some closure. You can’t live long with those kinds of demons in you. Need to do a space-clearing ceremony or some shit.
You spent a chunk of the spring on a long US tour, which seemed pretty unstructured and largely booked as you went along. Your tour diary painted an interesting picture of it, with some lows and some highs. How do you feel, looking back on it - do you regret doing it in such a way, or did it make it a more fun experience overall?
We ran out of money and got stranded a few times, stumbled into windfalls of cash from shows we thought would bankrupt us, swam in a couple different oceans, got snowed on in eastern woods, sunburned in the desert, almost died a couple times, and were chased by heavy tornado weather in Texas. It was incredible. I have no regrets. As bad as it is having a terrorist for a president, America—the land—is fantastic. Have you been out here?
Yeah, I spent a month last year traveling across the US via Amtrak. I had a really great time, and met lots of awesome people doing awesome things for little tangible personal gain, and some of the best music venues and record shops I've ever been to. I remember you saying in your tour diaries that you prefer playing in smaller cities. Do you find people in such places more appreciative of live music? Some of the best promoters in the UK are in the smaller, less obvious places that often get overlooked, so people have to work harder to get good music to come to them. Is it similar in the States? You've certainly played some really interesting-sounding places this year!
There’s generally a different caliber of person in the small towns. The way they’re raised. They have to work harder for everything and aren’t exposed to as much crazy sensory input and staccato psychic rhythms as you are in the city. They come out... I guess more grounded. A lot of people talk a lot of shit about the Midwestern states in the US. Y’know, it’s the “Bible belt” and all and some young people are afraid of that. But, really, the people you’ll meet there are some of the best in the country. Really caring, dedicated, hardworking, down-to-earth people. No bullshit, y’know. You also have to understand that Americans don’t travel. They don’t actually know the people they’re hating on; they’re just parroting back something they heard on TV or read in magazines. Culture-culture can be really bigoted. If I don’t end up in the South after I decide it’s time to hide from the world and disappear, I know I have a home in the farm-states.
Finally, one of my friends would like to visit Portland sometime soon, and he asks what you would definitely recommend he do if has four days only to spend there.
Tell your friend to let me know beforehand and I’ll show him around. Portland is this great “creative bubble” like all the magazine articles say. Ignore that. The best Portland has nothing to do with bands. If you want to see Portland at its truest, head out to the edge of town. Go up the 84 freeway and see Multnomah Falls. The Columbia River is incredible; you can swim in it in the summer and pick blackberries in the surrounding woods. Sauvie Island is like a Hawaiian plantation by the time July rolls around. So, yeah, there are famous bands, house parties everywhere, and the best strip-club on Earth, but they don’t add up to much next to the jungle islands and hobo camps in the middle of the Willamette River. You can feel the ghosts of fur-trappers, bootleggers, and shanghaied sailors all over the place.
I’ve collaborated with some great musicians here in Portland, but I try and stay away from artistland. I don’t like artists anyway. Too much false reality, living for posterity, and posing.
These days, I live in this wonderful old mansion surrounded in plum and walnut trees and blackberry vine and none of us that live in the place can afford the rent. Nobody works office jobs, or really makes any money, so every penny we pull in—for me that means CDs sold at shows—goes to make rent at the end of the month. When we pull that off, we gather what’s left, go buy a bunch of booze and Chinese food and raise hell until we die. Tell your friend to show up for THAT.
Adam is on tour at the moment, and Honey Slides is now out in shops across the UK. The Palaces/Whidbey Island 12" will hopefully be out by the end of the year in the US through Bad Drone Media, although if you go see Adam on tour he has a limited, handmade double CD set of it for sale. He also has some snazzy, handmade unique badges. Hit up the links below for more details, and tour dates are on his myspace.
links: Adam Gnade @ Myspace | Adam Gnade Official Website | Try Harder Records | Bad Drone Media | Whidbey Island @ Wikipedia
Anyway, I "caught up" (this was actually done via email, because I'm just so 21st century or something) with Adam to ask him a few questions. Questions about stuff. Like, Music and stuff. You know what I mean.
My questions are in bold, Adam's responses are not.
You're coming back to the UK, although this isn't your first trip as you toured here late last year with Youthmovies and Blood Red Shoes. How did we treat you last time? Any fond memories you'd like to share?
Let’s just say, after the second day I was ready to become a British citizen. America, for all its good sides, is a brutal place to live if you don’t jibe with status quo—and nobody worth two shits does. We have all these great new laws that outlaw freedoms, take away privacy, and render unlawful the kind of nonviolent civil disobedience that people like Dr. King changed the world with. We’re spied upon. Blacklisted. The place I live was under FBI surveillance for months. But I guess if you’re gonna make a living writing songs and stories about how much you hate and love your country, you can’t ditch out on the fight when shit is at its worst. But, man, Youthmovies, Blood Red Shoes, and Drowned in Sound treated me like a prince.
This is a pretty comprehensive tour - you're actually playing some places I've never even heard of before! Is there anywhere in particular you're looking forward to playing in or exploring?
STONEHENGE!
Your next record is Honey Slides, a collaboration with Youthmovies. I understand that you recorded two of the tracks when you all toured together last year, and it was originally touted as just being a 7". What spurred the decision to upgrade it to a full CD? How did the long distance affect the creative processes you had all worked out when touring together and writing the initial material?
Good question... I’m not sure when it officially became a full-on CD, but the other three tracks were done via the post. I recorded vocals on my tape recorder, mailed the tape to Youthmovies, and they turned them into what they are now.
That's an interesting way of working. Did you have any idea what sort of music they were crafting to go with your vocals? That's got to require a certain amount of trust! I assume the Drowned in Sound tour last year the first time you'd come across each other – did it just 'click' straight away with you all?
To be perfectly honest, I really had no idea, but I trust those guys and their taste without question. But it was like that from the beginning. Last tour, the tour’s photographer, Rob Queenin, and I got insanely drunk after we got off the plane and got lost en route to the first show in Hertford. Got there right when I was supposed to go on, and they took me in just like that. We were instant pals. Their next CD is going to make so many people fall in love with them. Their track “The Naughtiest Girl is a Monitor” is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.
Beyond this, you've got a double EP set coming out through Bad Drone Media. Give us a bit of gossip about these records - what inspired you while making them?
The first side we recorded, Whidbey Island, was inspired by the place it’s named after. My buddy Thad and I were hanging out on the island back in January and we figured why not just set up some mics and try and capture the vibe. It was beautiful; a roomy little house on the cliff’s edge, all big sunny windows and a wide view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula. You should see the pictures!
The Palaces side I wrote on tour this spring. They both share characters and themes, y’know both haunted by the same group of girls—two sisters and their cousin. Palaces has lots of noise and different instruments, where Whidbey Island is clean and simple—vocals, minimal acoustic bass, a track of mandolin, David’s guitar, no effects, just a couple takes and two mics. On Palaces I got to play banjo, piano, kalimba, modified 5-string guitar, and bells—probably some other stuff I’m forgetting.
Also, we might’ve accidentally caught a murder going down in the background. It’s in the first track; really low in the ambient sound that came through the window. I don’t want to say any more and implicate any of my asshole neighbors, but you can hear it if you listen close.
Your lyrics do seem to have a lot of recurring characters in them. Are they actual people from your life, or fictionalised versions? I understand your forthcoming book will explore some of them in more detail, care to give us any more details?
Everyone’s real and nothing’s fictionalized. I change some of the names, depending upon who it is, but some of the songs use real names just because… I guess just because that’s how they feel best. Run Hide Retreat Surrender and the early stuff before that was all real names. The book, Hymn California, takes a lot of their stories further and, actually, a few of the stories include parts of the songs because that’s where they came from first. I won’t have the book in time for tour, but I will have a little novella with a lot of those same characters. It’s called Seasons Loving Nothing. I’m getting copies today. I leave tomorrow morning. Everything is last minute. In fact, I just got a box from the record company with the Palaces / Whidbey Island CDs a couple minutes ago. Up until now I hadn’t seen them. They look like pieces of candy. Hand-painted by Bobby and Jax at Bad Drone. Really beautiful.
You're quite a unique (at least, in my view!) frontman as far as "indie" (speaking in the wider sense) goes, both in your delivery and the way you construct your lyrics. What lead you down this particular path?
I’ve answered this question differently a few times in interviews and I’m guessing that’s because I don’t really know the answer. I used to pick stuff apart and analyze each piece of sound, outline the lyrics, hone the metaphors, and work within several levels of understanding with the narrative structure, but I’ve given up on dissecting it. I started to feel like a fucking frog on a plastic tray with its skinned pinned off to the side and its guts hanging out. Now I just do it and let whatever goes down go down. I’d rather get drunk and stupid and let the tape roll until something happens. People are too fucking conscious.
Your vocals on Honey Slides have an urgency to them that's not really been seen in your earlier work, both in content and delivery. It's quite a contrast to Run Hide Retreat Surrender, which comes across as quite a dark, downbeat and world-weary record. If you listen to both records as a pair, the charge is quite startling - it's like you've gone from a resigned shoulder shrug to an angry Southern preacher or something. Was this down to touring and working with Youthmovies? I've always considered them quite an aggressive, confrontational band, maybe not in a strictly technical way but certainly in the way they put their songs across live.
That’s a great question. The urgency in the music is definitely thanks to the energy those guys put into their stuff, but as far as the lyrics and the delivery, Run Hide Retreat Surrender was me at my most suicidally depressed. I was ready, and willing, to end it all and I think that record was my final attempt to give voice to all that and get rid of the darkness — which was, at the time, overwhelming. I can’t listen to Run Hide Retreat Surrender. There are too many hard things in there that bring it all back. I had to make that record and move on. The way the vocals are on that one, and the way the music is, all that silence, was the only way I could’ve done it at the time. I was in bad shape. It’s a direct transcription of my soul sort of... dying I guess. So now, two long years later, it’s so nice not to think about killing myself all the time and it’s great to not be insanely sad 24 hours a day. I still get low, but there’s more of a balance. “Honey Slides,” the song, is actually Run Hide Retreat Surrender’s epilogue. I did that on purpose, referencing back to the original album and to some of the older songs, to give myself some closure. You can’t live long with those kinds of demons in you. Need to do a space-clearing ceremony or some shit.
You spent a chunk of the spring on a long US tour, which seemed pretty unstructured and largely booked as you went along. Your tour diary painted an interesting picture of it, with some lows and some highs. How do you feel, looking back on it - do you regret doing it in such a way, or did it make it a more fun experience overall?
We ran out of money and got stranded a few times, stumbled into windfalls of cash from shows we thought would bankrupt us, swam in a couple different oceans, got snowed on in eastern woods, sunburned in the desert, almost died a couple times, and were chased by heavy tornado weather in Texas. It was incredible. I have no regrets. As bad as it is having a terrorist for a president, America—the land—is fantastic. Have you been out here?
Yeah, I spent a month last year traveling across the US via Amtrak. I had a really great time, and met lots of awesome people doing awesome things for little tangible personal gain, and some of the best music venues and record shops I've ever been to. I remember you saying in your tour diaries that you prefer playing in smaller cities. Do you find people in such places more appreciative of live music? Some of the best promoters in the UK are in the smaller, less obvious places that often get overlooked, so people have to work harder to get good music to come to them. Is it similar in the States? You've certainly played some really interesting-sounding places this year!
There’s generally a different caliber of person in the small towns. The way they’re raised. They have to work harder for everything and aren’t exposed to as much crazy sensory input and staccato psychic rhythms as you are in the city. They come out... I guess more grounded. A lot of people talk a lot of shit about the Midwestern states in the US. Y’know, it’s the “Bible belt” and all and some young people are afraid of that. But, really, the people you’ll meet there are some of the best in the country. Really caring, dedicated, hardworking, down-to-earth people. No bullshit, y’know. You also have to understand that Americans don’t travel. They don’t actually know the people they’re hating on; they’re just parroting back something they heard on TV or read in magazines. Culture-culture can be really bigoted. If I don’t end up in the South after I decide it’s time to hide from the world and disappear, I know I have a home in the farm-states.
Finally, one of my friends would like to visit Portland sometime soon, and he asks what you would definitely recommend he do if has four days only to spend there.
Tell your friend to let me know beforehand and I’ll show him around. Portland is this great “creative bubble” like all the magazine articles say. Ignore that. The best Portland has nothing to do with bands. If you want to see Portland at its truest, head out to the edge of town. Go up the 84 freeway and see Multnomah Falls. The Columbia River is incredible; you can swim in it in the summer and pick blackberries in the surrounding woods. Sauvie Island is like a Hawaiian plantation by the time July rolls around. So, yeah, there are famous bands, house parties everywhere, and the best strip-club on Earth, but they don’t add up to much next to the jungle islands and hobo camps in the middle of the Willamette River. You can feel the ghosts of fur-trappers, bootleggers, and shanghaied sailors all over the place.
I’ve collaborated with some great musicians here in Portland, but I try and stay away from artistland. I don’t like artists anyway. Too much false reality, living for posterity, and posing.
These days, I live in this wonderful old mansion surrounded in plum and walnut trees and blackberry vine and none of us that live in the place can afford the rent. Nobody works office jobs, or really makes any money, so every penny we pull in—for me that means CDs sold at shows—goes to make rent at the end of the month. When we pull that off, we gather what’s left, go buy a bunch of booze and Chinese food and raise hell until we die. Tell your friend to show up for THAT.
Adam is on tour at the moment, and Honey Slides is now out in shops across the UK. The Palaces/Whidbey Island 12" will hopefully be out by the end of the year in the US through Bad Drone Media, although if you go see Adam on tour he has a limited, handmade double CD set of it for sale. He also has some snazzy, handmade unique badges. Hit up the links below for more details, and tour dates are on his myspace.
links: Adam Gnade @ Myspace | Adam Gnade Official Website | Try Harder Records | Bad Drone Media | Whidbey Island @ Wikipedia
2 comments:
I would quite like to live in a mansion with walnut trees. Best move to Shropshire then :(
Good interview- it makes me want his records, and badges, and book.
awesome interview. Pretty lucky for your friend going to Portland.
x
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