Adam Gnade

To-Do List

1. Figure out set-list for tour. Finish the new song and memorize all its endless fucking lyrics. Figure out a better bridge for “The Winter/Their Apartment” and a better way to end “Palaces.”

2. Edit book. Ad infinitum. All day, every day.

3. Be outside as much as possible while the weather holds. Walk in the fields. Go down to the river.

4. Find a place to buy booze in town on Sundays.

5. Finish reading Ulysses.

6. Don’t get overwhelmed.

7. Do pre-tour interviews with press.

8. Drink water. You can do anything you want if you drink a lot of water.

9. Throw out old New Yorkers.

10. Tell all of the phony assholes of the world to fuck off.

11. Pack. Leave home.

“IT’S FRANCES, SHE’S SINGING” BY ADAM GNADE FROM TRAILERPARKS (OUT-OF-PRINT TOUR-ONLY CD, TRY HARDER RECORDS) “It’s Frances” talks about this time of year in a much different place than I am now. February and March in Portland come at the end-stretch of a long, dark, rainy winter. It’s the time of year when the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad comes down and does a number on you that you have to fight to fix. Here on the Farm, March is warm and balmy and we’re looking forward to thunderstorms later tonight. Around this time every day, a herd of shaggy, brown cattle comes crossing up from the lower fields and walks past my solarium/bedroom and I take a break from writing and stand at the windows and watch them.

Days like this tell you that you can win and that everything is out there waiting for you, just beyond your grasp; that all you need to do is open your eyes, step forward, and reach out for it.

So reach out for it…

-Adam

So I’m packing up my guitar and cowboy boots and lucky parka and going on tour in a couple weeks. It’s my pals Youthmovies’ final tour so a bunch of our friends are coming out and playing and DJing and shit. (I’m doing a solo acoustic set and then playing some stuff backed by Youthmovies. We’re probably doing a bunch of songs off this record.) You should come on out and say hi if you’re in that part of the world.

-Adam

PS. This is a photo of us playing together last tour. We’re doing “Become an Island,” a song we wrote together with Joe from 65daysofstatic. Me on talking vocals, Andrew co-vocaling (singing), and everyone else laying down a big, heavy, rising DRONE. I have no idea why we’re both raising our arms.

TOUR DATES

MAR 23 SNEAKY’S PETE’S, EDINBURGH, WITH YOUTHMOVIES, THE ART OF… DJS, SCOTLAND (BUY TICKETS)

Mar 24 DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER, WITH YOUTHMOVIES, THIS TOWN NEEDS GUNS, FOALS DJS, ENGLAND (BUY TICKETS)

Mar 25 BRUDENELL, LEEDS WITH YOUTHMOVIES, HONOUR BEFORE GLORY (SOLO WHISKAS SET), ROLO TOMASSI DJS (BUY TICKETS)

Mar 26 BORDERLINE, LONDON, ENGLAND WITH YOUTHMOVIES, FRIENDSHIP, AND MIKE DIVER AND CRABLIN DJING THIS SHOW IS SOLD OUT

Mar 27 ACADEMY, OXFORD, ENGLAND WITH YOUTHMOVIES, JONQUIL, AND MIKE DIVER AND CRABLIN DJING (BUY TICKETS)

“THE WINTER/THEIR APARTMENT” BY ADAM GNADE FROM RUN HIDE RETREAT SURRENDER Good hot day today on the Hard 50 Farm. Opened the windows in the ol’ ever lovin’ solarium/bedroom and set up the four-track. Played this song… fuck, I don’t know, maybe 10, 15 times. It’s a weird thing this one—I recorded it and didn’t play it for years after that first US tour. Shit was too close to the bone; too many ghosts floating around it or something. Then a couple weeks ago I started recording the Surrenderland tapes and they sent me right back into this fucker head-first. Oh, and if you want to see the record it’s on it’s right here.

-Adam

Because I’m editing a summer chapter in the book, I’ve been thinking a lot about what will happen when the thaw comes to the Hard 50 Farm. What will the trees look like around the pond once they have leaves? What is under all that frozen soil and snow by the bones of the old plow? Will it look like spring by the time I’m back from tour? How green will the valley get?

When I initially began writing the book, I was living in Virginia behind an off-limits nature preserve that I would sneak into every day. This second shot was taken alongside a saltwater lagoon in the preserve after the daily monsoon of a thunderstorm came (3pm, like clockwork.) The giant, ancient tree that I’m in grew out over the water and I would climb it, walk along the sidewalk of its massive horizontal trunk, and sit in the V and watch the turtles rise up in the murk. The air after the rain was always hot and wet and rich. By dusk the fireflies would lift up out of the long grass. I was so depressed I felt like I was fucking mummified.

In the photo it looks like I’m falling out of the tree. It’s not a good photo, but I like the deception of the angle and how it’s hazy and shot up into the light. I like it because that was how the summer in Virginia felt—like a deception, a hideaway disguised as an exile, every day hot and washed-out by sun. Here’s to the good long summer to come and me and you being around for it…

-Adam

Snowed in for days on the ol’ ever-lovin’ Hard 50 Farm. Nothing but time alone with the book. Hit a spot yesterday where (drunk on wine) book-editing became book-writing and I added a new chapter that felt better than anything I’ve ever written. Gonna push myself and make it as big and epic and heartbreaking and all-compassing as it can be. There’s that old quote that says “American novels are about everything.” I think a lot of young writers ride on that sort of idea and write stories that are all over the place but touch on nothing tangible, no characters, no plot. (I’m guilty of this too.) I want this one to tell the kind of story you can give your heart to but, just the same, I want it to hit every nook and cranny of life in this strange, dark, mean bastard of a country. I want it to feel like life in America—all the trailerparks and mall parking lots and bars and graveyards and churches—and I want it to feel like today. It’s going to be a motherfucker of a fight, but I think if I give myself fully to this story I can do that.

-Adam

Book progress all week in the solarium. Gonna have this motherfucker done by June I think. Best work days are sunny, amber Kansas light through the windows. Cows doing the endless slow-walk ‘cross the field. Reading Carver, Joyce, and Hemingway in the downtime. Birds and squirrels in the trees. Figured spring was on but the snow came back today. Lake frozen over again. White valley and all the trees. Heater roaring while the windows freeze. Now 10pm and GIN. Tomorrow more bookwork. Going for the long haul. Send good vibes…

-Adam

Editing the book. Hit the halfway point this morning. My solarium/bedroom is about as good of a place to work as anywhere I’ve been. Windows on two sides, six of them all told. Cabin shack walls painted blue and yellow. The lake shimmering in the distance. With a kettle on in the next room and some nag champa burning on the window sill it’s heaven on earth. Gonna be hard to leave the farm once tour starts.

-Adam

The house is an old converted farmhouse on three big acres in the country. The view from my room is the side of the barn-gone-garage-party-room (which you can see in this picture) and then fields. The fields go as far as you can see. From the west-facing windows you can see the valley and the lake and the neighboring rancher’s cows further off in the distance. To the north it’s snowy pasture land, which will be heavy and green in the spring. My room is what people used to call a solarium—low, wooden, all windows. The previous tenant, the murderer, who I’ll tell you about later, painted my room blue, white, and yellow and it has a light, mellow, silent feeling. A good place to be serious and write, which is what I intend to do; finishing the book and these cassettes; getting my heart straight; making my dreams come true. This is where I live now. The Big Quiet.

-Adam

It’s snowing again here in the Big Quiet so I’ve been hard at work recording these Surrenderland tapes. I guess I should’ve known but it’s taking longer than I imagined. Each one has to be its own thing; I can’t repeat myself or get lazy. The songs need to be turned inside out, stripped down, built up. Just finished tapes 10, 11, and 12, which I’ll send off to Denmark (two copies) and Scotland Monday morning. If you want one of these, there’s still some left here.

This was one of the early ones. Not sure which one. All the tapes are numbered but I don’t paint the numbers on until after I’ve listened back to them.

While I was recording tape #8, this note was slipped under the door. If you get tape #8 (which will be sent off to Christchurch, New Zealand on Monday) listen for ghosts.

-Adam

When you release a new album, your record label asks you for a photo to use for the press run. I don’t think I’m telling you anything new here when I say that promo photos are pretty much shit. The band sitting on the curb looking down at their sneakers. The band with their hands in their pockets, all looking different directions, brooding. The wacky shots. The shots where the band wears clothes they would never wear in real life. The band—or singer, as it may be—standing in the middle of the woods or in a field of wheat, pretending to be from the country (or the ’60s.) It’s all crap. Which is why doing the press week stuff can be frustrating. For Surrenderland, I gave my label a candid photo from the night of the Great Portland Blackout, where me and Jamey lost power in the house during a big howling storm and got candle-lit drunk (which is the best kind of drunk.) It’s not very press photo-y but whatever; it’s a photo of a good night and to me a good night means a lot.

-Adam

Punch Drunk Press is proud to announce a brand-new limited-edition release by Adam Gnade, the extensively titled, Surrenderland: You Could Quit Your Jobs and Run Away Like You Used to, Back When You Did Things Just Because, and Because it Felt Good to Run Away, and Because You Didn’t Worry so Much Like You Do Now… just Because and Leave the Assholes Behind and Fuck ‘em Anyway, They Don’t Mean Shit.

Part two of the three-part cassette series that began with his Island’s Islands cassette, Surrenderland will be issued in a limited-run of 100 cassettes, each one recorded live into Adam’s 4-track machine, and each one totally different, a 20-minute analog artifact recorded directly onto the tape that you get with your order.

Theme-wise, the tapes will take songs from Adam’s debut record, Run Hide Retreat Surrender, and will offer up alternate versions of the songs.

Says Adam, “I’m recording each 20-minute album onto the tape I send you and whatever you get will be totally different than any of the other tapes. I chose to deconstruct the Run Hide Retreat Surrender songs because there’s a lot of room to fuck with those songs and I’ve been wanting to try new shit with them for years—acoustic versions, experimenting with noise revamps, more avant dissections, full band arrangements, heavier minimalism, fucking up the lyrics—whatever feels right at the time.”

The third and final installment of the tape series will be a split cassette featuring Adam on one side and Andrew Mears (Youthmovies, ex Foals) on the other. This will be out in late 2010 and will be a wide-release (not limited-edition).

Issued on clear purple and orange cassette tapes, Surrenderland, has hand-painted faces. Email duke@adamgnade.com with any questions…

GO HERE TO ORDER SURRENDERLAND WITH PAYPAL, CREDIT CARDS, OR DEBIT CARDS

You should read this story my buddy Bart (left) wrote that was published as a mini-book by the Dispatch Lit-Review. Real American writing. Stuff about how people ARE. No bullshit. Go here.

-AG