Adam Gnade

Posted (and reviewed) today by the Willamette Week newspaper. Go here to read about (and hear) “Summer Suite Part 1.”

You can also download the title track from the “Your Friends Will Carry You Home” 7-inch which was posted and written about by the Said the Gramophone blog right here.

So here are the dates. I’m going to be book-touring with Microcosm Publishing on the Warped Tour (which’ll be really fucking weird.) Basically we’ll be doin’ nothing but sitting behind a big table of our books so please come say Hey and keep us awake. If you want any of my books this’ll be a good chance to get ‘em (and possibly some tour-only tapes. Maybe.)
Love,
-Adam


July
7 - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, Indianapolis, IN 
8 - Post Gazette Pavilion At Star Lake, Pittsburgh, PA 
9 - Time Warner Cable Amphitheatre, Cleveland, OH 
10 - Arrow Hall, Toronto, ON 
11 - Parc Jean Drapeau, Montreal, QC 
12 - Meadows Music Theatre, Hartford, CT 
14 - Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD 
15 - Toyota Pavilion, Scranton, PA 
16 - Darien Lake P.A.C., Buffalo, NY 
17 - Susquehanna Bank Center, Camden, NJ 
18 - Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY 
19 - Monmouth Park Racetrack, Oceanport, NJ 
21 - Comcast Center, Boston, MA 
22 - Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, Virginia Beach, VA 
23 - Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, Charlotte, NC 
24 - Central Florida Fairgrounds, Orlando, FL 
25 - Cruzan Amphitheatre, Miami, FL 
26 - Vinoy Park, St.Petersburg, FL 
28 - Lakewood Amphitheatre, Atlanta, GA 
29 - Riverbend Amphitheatre, Cincinnati, OH 
30 - Marcus Amphitheater Milwaukee, WI 
31 - Comerica Park, Detroit, MI 
August
1 - First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre, Chicago, IL

The great music site God Is In The TV reviewed Adam’s new record, The Wild Homesick. Check out the review here or below.

Adam Gnade - The Wild Homesick (Punch Drunk Tapes)
by Craig Broad

Any self respecting music fan or creative person alike would find something to admire about California-born musician Adam Gnade. While many artists are happy to release an album every two or three years with the occasional tour in-between, anyone that knows of Gnade, will know that his career thus far, has been filled with the constant release of albums, eps and books alongside a constant touring both of his native US and internationally. 2009 sees the release of his latest ep, The Wild Homesick which has been independently designed and released on Punch Drunk Tapes and follows many small cassette and tour only ep releases.

Gnade is commonly known for his knack of mixing folk, country and blue grass along his strongly spoken social commentary and The Wild Homesick doesn’t differ from this.

Any previous listener of Gnades work will know that he is not an easy listen, he will never be a Britney Spears or Madonna, filling up the charts with annoyingly catchy sing-a-long hooks but that his craft lies in the subtleties that can only be gained through the use of headphones and continuous listens. And Their Wheels as a Whirlwind is a great example of this and a testament of what Adam Gnade is about, a shining example for writers and musicians alike, claiming that we should not be content in just succumbing to a 9-5 job, that it is infact okay to adventure and feel alive. The Wild Homesick is littered with great stories hippy-like views and sentiments that are easy to admire but the standout track comes from the upbeat Bright Eyes-esque campfire sing-song of I Will Put Away My Pain and Be a Beacon that brings a sense of urgency and fun that we perhaps haven’t seen from Gnade before…a sense of things to come, I sure do hope so.

Honey Slides, Gnades collaboration with Youthmovies is easily his best work to date, mixing his lyric penning nous with Youthmovies knack for indie pop and while The Wild Homesick cannot be compared to this, you get a sense from I Will Put Away My Pain… that perhaps Gnade has learnt a thing or two from Youthmovies and that his best material is still yet to come. The Wild Homesick isn’t flawless but it isn’t meant to be, what it is however, is honest, endearing and well worth giving a listening chance.

The interview was done by Chris at the Sonic Reverie blog. You can read it at this link and below

http://sonicreverie.blogspot.com/2009/06/adam-gnade-interview_06.html



ADAM GNADE INTERVIEW
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.

Adam’s brand-new CD, The Wild Homesick, is out now and available to order.

HOW TO ORDER: Paypal $10 to the email address adamgnade@hotmail.com or click here to order with paypal, credit, or debit, cards. If you want to pay with cash or check email duke@adamgnade.com

THE WILD HOMESICK CD

A junkyard of minimalistic deconstructed Americana, Adam Gnade’s new record, The Wild Homesick, is a strange, warm, troubled summer record full of doom and affirmations. It’s water moccasins and honeylocust trees, motel swimming pools and fruit bats in the dusk, allusions to suburbs, ranch houses, 40s, trailerparks, and debt. Says Adam, “The Wild Homesick is the story of a group of people who are stuck. They’re stuck for a variety of reasons, stuck in the places they live, stuck in lives they hate, incapacitated by debt; whatever it is, they’re stuck and they’re terrified.”

He continues, “Structurally, I’ve never done a record like this. It’s 10 songs divided into four suites (tracks) of music over the course of less than 20 minutes. Tiny 30 second-long songs packed with music up against uncharacteristically long ones with barely any backing but a little xylophone. Lots of slide guitar and banjo and lots of lyrics. More lyrics than past records. I think I’m finally hitting closer to what I wanted ‘talking-songs’ to be in the first place.” Released by Punch Drunk Records, The Wild Homesick is the first in a series of four seasonal records. This, the summer record, takes place in Texas. —Punch Drunk Records
THE WILD HOMESICK
1. Summer Suite, Part 1
a) Sundown Over the San Angelo Travelodge the Day of the Great Thunderstorm
b) When We Were Thirsty We Saw the Heat Mirage on the Desert Floor
c) Come Back Home
d) This One’ll be a Motherfucker

2. Summer Suite, Part 2
a) The Numbers Roll Forward
b) You Will Rise
c) Normal Good Folks and the End of the World

3. And Their Wheels as a Whirlwind, Parts 1 and 2
a) The Light is Darkened in the Clouds There Of
b) I Wanna Float in the Motel Pool and Drink a Fuckin’ 40

4. I Will Put Away My Pain and Be a Beacon

You can hear track 2 in the myspace player.

HOW TO ORDER: Paypal $10 to the email address adamgnade@hotmail.com or click here to order with paypal, credit, or debit, cards. If you want to pay with cash or check email duke@adamgnade.com

The Wild Homesick CDs are done and in my possession. They look beautiful. Hand-painted covers on the first 50, inserts with lyrics (first release of mine that’s done that.) PD should be announcing the release date very soon and I’m pretty fuckin’ excited about that. Today DS from Menomena is dropping off the 7”s. First vinyl I’ve been on. Should be a good little gift for people who order the first 25 or so. Though I guess I probably want to keep a copy or two for myself. Y’know, just to hold, because vinyl’s kind of magic like that. Good day, today. Sun out. Feeling pretty decent and alive.

PREVIOUS ENTRIES

X
Finished writing the music yesterday sitting outside on a broke-ass chaise lounge under the walnut trees. Four-string guitar, country chords, slide guitar, big choral sing-along, drums, etc. Trailerpark jams, Foxfire inspiration on positive jams, drum-line freak outs, ode to alternate universe Nashville, suites of tiny songs cobbled together.

Everything takes place in Texas or internally. No road songs. No winter downers. Lots of rivers, city stuff, cars, blacktop, electric storms, debt blues. Being stuck (the metaphorical “trailerpark”), being secure and finding solace (the “palaces”), finding a solipsistic strength (“islands”), etc. Oil fields, baseball fields, motel pools. Summer record.

Wanted to expand upon some of the songs I’ve been recording on the Island’s Islands tapes but, besides one track (“I Will Put Away My Pain and be a Beacon”), decided it against it. Finished the song-titles. Finishing the lyrics today. Just sketches right now. Recording basic tracks tomorrow then finishing everything before the 13th. Not sure when it’ll be released. Soon probably. The record’s everything I want to say right now so no sense waiting until I feel different. (“Write everything like yr end statement” etc.) Haven’t been this excited about making a record since Palaces.

Raining now. Heavy clouds over Mt. Hood. Warm rain and gusts blowing the trees. Antediluvian sky. Tropical/volcanic. Thunder rolling. Air smells like asphalt, earth, and KFC (from up the street.)

Tonight take off some time and go drink 40s with John Stafford, et al. Been neglecting everything but writing. Need to be a better friend—and it starts today! Sorry about not answering emails, calls, letters; will try harder.

Speaking of 40s, to record this the right way I need a fridge full of 40s like the old rap videos. Please send them now.
ADMGND

X
TC and I recorded the music last night. Four tracks, three of them being multiple songs stuck together as “suites” which is a word I don’t necessarily like. Mostly summer jams and a little noise/tape sample/heavy multi-trackin’ as interpretation of a thunderstorm. Now piecing the lyrics together to tell the story. Things in the lyrics so far: 40s, gas stations, cattle ranches, storm shelters, flash floods, motel pools, sunburns, stop-lights, power outages, lightning, cops, sneakers, oil fields, water moccasins, roadrunners, honeylocust trees, fruit bats, and shoplifting. Main character is “Sadie.” The songs with a place setting happen in San Angelo, Texas. The rest don’t.

Rainy, shitty day today. Heavy gloom in the mist. Gonna go to town for a while then come back and stay inside with a CD of the rough mix and pencil down the lyrics until it’s done. Up next, field recordings of cars driving by in the rain for the “city” section. Then, lyric recording. Then, done.

-Adam

X
Lyrics recorded. Extra shit (banjo and xylophone) recorded. Mixing this weekend.

Here’s the tracklisting:

THE WILD HOMESICK
1. Summer Suite, Part 1 
a) Sundown Over the San Angelo Travelodge the Day of the Great Thunderstorm
b) When We Were Thirsty We Saw the Heat Mirage on the Desert Floor
c) Come Back Home
d) This One’ll be a Motherfucker

2. Summer Suite, Part 2 
a) The Numbers Roll Forward
b) You Will Rise
c) Normal Good Folks and the End of the World

3. And Their Wheels as a Whirlwind, Parts 1 and 2 
a) The Light is Darkened in the Clouds There Of
b) I Wanna Float in the Motel Pool and Drink a Fuckin’ 40 

4. I Will Put Away My Pain and Be a Beacon

Record’s done. Mixed and done. Ten songs divided into four tracks/suites of music over the course of less than 20 minutes. Tiny little 30 second-long songs packed with music up against uncharacteristically long ones with barely any backing but a little xylophone or banjo. Lots of slide guitar and lots of lyrics. More lyrics than past records. Only one instrumental, and that one’s just an intermission. The rest is story.

Not sure when it’ll be out but it should be soon. Each record in the first 50 will have hand-painted covers, after that I don’t know. There will also be a cassette version. Purple amethyst-colored tapes. Looks nice.

Feeling good about it all around. Finally hitting closer to what I wanted “talking-songs” to be in the first place. Getting close to what’s in my head, at least. Closest I’ve done was the song “Providence” from my record Palaces but I’m still pretty far off. See, the model’s there, it’s up there in my head somewhere and it’s fully articulated but pulling it out and reproducing what is, in essence, totally finished is the hard part. That probably makes no sense. Sorry. Just woke up after 12 hours of sleep full of dreams about telepathic lobster demons dressed as French chefs and tiny men with toad bodies living inside the hill in the bushes behind Laura’s house. Was one of those sleeps where you wake up and you’re like, “Alright, great, I just slept 12 hours. I’m gonna feel really good.” But I don’t. Just kind of loose in the head and unfocused. The post-record-making/pre-record-release limbo I think. Always get it. The big wait between finishing and starting again. Not a bad place to be but you’re definitely not firing on all cylinders. (“Sedition! Sedition! 7-Eleven!” screamed one of the toad-men in the dream. I just remembered that.)

So. Besides a special little split cassette release coming in a few months, this’ll be my last record for a while. Need to sit down and finish this new book. There will be another book coming out later this year, small one, split novella with me and Red from Peter and the Wolf. Goes to press in June. Released by Punch Drunk Tapes. I feel better about what I wrote for that than anything I’ve ever done. Tryin’ something different. Or maybe not different. Just trying to shoot above my game—which is a sports metaphor I think, and I know nothing about sports. Better yet: trying to truly do what my head tells me. Very good-hearted set of stories, that one. The next book, the one I need to finish, is nothing but brutal. It’s a big mean bastard of a love story, but I think it’s honest and it’s what I want to say, so let’s go with that.

But I’m getting beyond myself here. What I want to tell you is my new CD is done and it’s called The Wild Homesick and it’s kind of a risky move but I’m following my heart and I hope you’ll like it.

The front door is open now and I can see the sky. Pale, overcast. The sun is trying but I don’t think it’s coming out today. Better stay in, make some coffee, and be quiet for a while. A few minutes ago I was riding the bus and there was this guy with the loudest cell phone, just a real symphony of honking horns and stacks of screeching electronic birds singing and R&B drums every time someone called him. And he yelled at everybody. A big ol’ yellow-faced, fat-necked, yapping, loudmouth, corpse-y hippopotamus of a man, shouting, “YES, Jimmy. YES. I’m on the bus, Jimmy. NO, I don’t KNOW what time I’ll be there, Jimmy. I still have to get on at Grand. NO, Jimmy. NO. YES. NO. YES. NO. NO. NO. JIMMY, LISTEN, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TIME I’LL BE THERE. LOOK, I HAVE THE INTERNET, I KNOW ABOUT THAT. I HAVE THE INTERNET, JIMMY. YES, I HAVE THE INTERNET. I HAVE THE INTERNET. I HAVE THE INTERNET, OKAY? YES. YEAH, JIMMY, NO, NO, YES, NO, YES.” Poor Jimmy. Maybe Jimmy’s worse, who knows. Maybe they’re going to have a loudmouth showdown when he gets there and maybe Jimmy’ll pop a cap in him and we’ll read about it tomorrow in the Tribune. “Loud Motherfucker, 56, Shot Dead. City Celebrates with High Fives and a Parade.” I wouldn’t blame him. Would you? Regardless, I got off the bus wanting to do nothing but sit still and think clearly and be quiet. There’s no shame in being loud, I’m my share of loud, but it’s good to be quiet too.

I’ll tell more you about the record when there’s more to tell.

-Adam

So, this is what the master CD looked like when T.C. mixed the thing and burned me a copy.

I want this record to come out so bad it’s fuckin’ kicking my ass. It’s (lyrics) what I’ve wanted to say for so long. Hopefully it will be out as soon as Punch Drunk can make it happen. That’s the great thing about indies; you’re not caught up in a bunch of stupid bullshit that holds onto your record forever. You write it and you record it and you get it out. No corporate dickheads messin’ with anything. Just freedom and good vibes and music.

I’m very proud of this record. I don’t know if I’ve been proud of a record before. I’ve always finished them and been like, “Well, that’s done. It could’ve been better, but it’s done. Oh fuckin’ well.” With this one I have no complaints.

Click here to hear a bunch of songs that were just added to the Adam Gnade Facebook band page. In other news, stayed tuned to this site (or this one) for info about Adam’s forthcoming CD release, The Wild Homesick, out very, very soon on Punch Drunk Tapes. Also, Adam is still on the “Photo a Day for a Year Project.” You can check up on that here. See some of the latest photos below:

Go here to read all about it (and get a free download of an unreleased track).

Punch Drunk Press/Records has released Island’s Islands, part three of Adam’s “Island Trilogy” which began with the Whidbey Island EP and the Youthmovies/AG/65daysofstatic collaboration track, “Become an Island,” which was released on Youthmovies’ Polyp EP by Blast First Petite (home to Suicide, Bloc Party, etc). Full details below.

ADAM GNADE
ISLAND’S ISLANDS
CASSETTE EP
(PUNCH DRUNK PRESS/RECORDS)
$10 (PRICE INCLUDES SHIPPING/POSTAGE)
“Island’s Islands came about after talking to a friend of mine who’s made a pretty good life for himself as a painter. No matter how well the guy does he refuses to mass-produce prints of his work. Everything he sells is an original; it’s something he’s made with his hands and it’s something that, in all probability, he’ll never see again once it sells—which I thought was kind of brave. Island’s Islands is a cassette release, limited to 100 copies. Each version will be recorded directly into my analog recorder onto that particular tape itself and each will feature different songs… new ones, covers, noise collages, revamps on old ones, whatever feels right at the time. Each tape will be its own original piece of music for whomever orders it. I’ve already recorded a couple of them and it feels pretty damn good.” —Adam Gnade, 2/22/09, 1pm

ORDER VIA PAYPAL, DEBIT, OR CREDIT CARDS:
paypal $10 to: adamgnade@hotmail.com
or see the ordering section of this website.
Email duke@adamgnade.com with any questions.
OR SEND CASH, CHECK, OR MONEY ORDER TO:
Adam Gnade Island’s Islands Order
1075 Reed Avenue
San Diego, California
92109

Adam’s new zine of “folk magic, earth spells, recipes, health remedies, and quotes from cult leaders” has been released by Asthmatic Kitty Records as part of a gift pack that includes a zine and grocery tote bag created by comic artist Laura Park. Adam’s zine contains contributions from members of Ohioan, Jackie O Motherfucker, Inca Ore, and Microcosm Publishing founder Joe Biel. You can order it here

The Adam Gnade & Youthmovies track “Honey Slides” from the EP of the same name has been featured on a mixtape the guys from Foals curated for Drowned in Sound. Go here to check that out. You can get one of the last copies of the EP right here.

Adam Gnade and Andrew Mears (Youthmovies) will be doing a reading Tuesday, Nov 25, 2008 at Oxford University in the Pontigny Room of St. Edmund’s Hall. Three pound entry. Free wine. Also featuring an introduction/reading by Kit Monteith (Jonquil, Crosswords Records.) Check out Hymn California ordering info right here.

Adam now has a Facebook band page. Check it out here

Hot on the heels of the release of his debut novel, Hymn California, Punch Drunk Press has released The Darkness to the West, a collection of what Adam calls, “adventure stories all linked together to detail one strange lost summer in America.” Check out ordering info right here.

From a review by writer Rich Biaocco, “Hymn California is the debut book by musician Adam Gnade and it spreads in Mark Twain-like episodes and anecdotes from San Diego (Golden Hills, Pacific Beach) throughout the state and across the country. Many times. Back and forth. But don’t believe it drags, no no, it moves, this book here, and at times races from coast to coast, and to that effect Gnade’s writing and narrative sense is vital, poignant, clear and accessible. Funny thing about reading Hymn California is that despite the fact that I read it on one cross-country plane trip and one rainy afternoon in an empty Portland Bed and Breakfast, it wasn’t exhilarating, despite it’s observed page-turner result. It wasn’t “On The Road”—it was lonlier, it was moodier, if anything Kerouac, it was closer to a lesser known novella he wrote called “Tristessa”. Rather I kept turning the pages because I was curious: curious to find out about this vagabond narrator James and the parade of characters he passed time with (Ben Frank in particular, whose passages are probably the best writing in Hymn California and a promising marker for future Gnade books), cared for in some way he couldn’t always articulate, borrowed from, gave to, impregnated, fought with, feared and worshipped. I was curious about the observations and commentary and findings of this writer living a life so close to mine and so many of my friends, yet so DISTINCTLY different because here he was living it, while I was in fact reading about it. I was impressed with the report from the front lines of a life that could be mine, or yours or so many of ours because Gnade the author seems to understand,or at least make it clear, that home is not a house, but a “sense of home”, and that sense can be present in a town, a state, a collection of parties, a bindle of interstates, and the familiar motion, even, of running away from someone you love to run away from.” Check out ordering info right here.