FULL TOUR DATES / DETAILS
VOICE MEMO TRANSCRIPT
I’m out on a walk in the neighborhood, haven’t done a voice memo or checked in for a while and have been wanting to do a little behind the scenes book update, but I just haven’t gotten to it. So I’m gonna try to do it this morning for a little bit. Then I got some shit to do, and I might pick it up and add some stuff later and try to post this for anyone who’s interested in how it’s been going. The book is out. The book is out, it’s free. You can get it right now. You can get two copies. You can get an audiobook on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or other platforms. The audiobook is out there as a podcast. If you just search Recommended If You Like by Adam Voith you should find it. I noticed on Audible, it’s out of order. The chapters are out of order, I can’t get anyone to respond to... I’m sending these emails into a black hole for technical support at Amazon, trying to get it corrected, but don’t listen on Audible. Or if you do listen on Audible, just follow the order of the numbers of the tapes. And there’s an e-book, if you want to load this fucker into your Kindle or whatnot. You can download the epub file at littleengines.shop as well. So if you haven’t checked out the book yet, and you’re curious, go ahead and get one. It has been, really, it’s been nonstop since... It’s been nonstop for, like, several months, since Sean and I started working on The Walk Book, which was, like, a really intense sprint to get a book made very fast and out, fast. So it was a couple months just working really hard on that one. And getting it ready to go to the printer, and then immediately shifting to Recommended If You Like, and getting that ready for the printer, and for the promo, and all of that stuff, getting it launched, and then shipping both books… shipping, so much fucking shipping. And I did it out of the house. Very tedious, but also really fun. Putting the packages together. Exceptionally rewarding. So yeah, I thought I’d pop on here and talk about... Well, really, I just want to say it’s felt fucking great putting the book out. It’s sort of like three... stages I’ve been thinking about. One is writing the book. So that was like, you know, 15 years or so. But really the last several years, diligently writing the book. And then there was producing the book, designing and printing the book. Um, it’s gonna be four stages, now that I think about it. Releasing the book and shipping it and promoting it, posting like a fucking motherfucker about it. And then, now, the 4th stage, which is touring the book, which is something I’ve been thinking about for years. And I knew I wanted to go... I knew the primary thing I wanted to do, since I was gonna self publish this, is go to as many cities as possible. I joked in a post that I was gonna go to every city and town in America, which I won’t actually accomplish, but I’m gonna do a lot. First bit is... I don’t know how many exactly, but maybe 14 or so shows. Let me count. If I count Nashville, and maybe I’ll count the 2 festivals we did last month in Dallas and Eau Claire. So that’s 2 festivals and Nashville, 3, and then the Midwest leg of the tour is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, plus one secret one at my sister’s house that isn’t publicly listed, so 15. So the first bit will be 18 shows. And then the next leg is gonna happen in October, out east. That’ll be similar. 14 shows. 14 or 15 shows, probably. After that, I got two more legs, plus some dates with Damien Jurado. So my hope is that by early next year, I’ve done 50 cities, which is a lot of cities in the old Honda Pilot, but I’m really excited about the shows. I have no idea what to expect. When I was booking this tour and reaching out to folks to help organize shows in their town, I added this disclaimer at the end of my pitch, being like, I don’t have any idea if I’m gonna draw anybody. And to, like, remove the pressure from whoever’s promoting—I guess you call them the promoter—letting them know that I’m completely fine if I’m just reading to them. You know, one person shows up, I’ll do… I’ll read to one person. And I fully expect there to be a shitload of very small shows. But then there’s a few that started… they’re starting to feel like there might be some people there, which is cool too. But I don’t know what to expect. We did a lot of touring last year. I did a lot of touring with Little Engines, mostly with Kyle Seibel and Mike Nagel, and added guests in each city or region. And they were equally balanced shows of writers, each doing, like, 10 minutes. But this time, there are people joining in every city, one or two other writers, and I’m asking them to do a short thing, kind of as openers, for lack of a better term. And then I’m going to go long. I’m going to read at least two 10 minute sections and maybe talk a little or do some questions if anyone has any, if anyone’s there that has read the book or knows anything about the book and has questions. So it’s like the Adam Show for the first time. So I just don’t know what to expect. I have started to feel pretty confident doing readings, not freaking out like I had in the early ones last year, got used to it, but really, it’s because I know the materials so well now. After writing and editing the book so many times, and then I actually recorded audio twice for the book, one for a draft last year, and then the final audio. which kind of got me used to the voice and the cadence. And so now when I read, I’m feeling like I know the shit so well. And I’ve got the beats down, and I’ve kind of done them enough now to know where... where people might laugh, or... hopefully they’re laughing. So I’m not worried about performing the shit. Like, I think I’m just more worried about whether people want to hear one person that long. Readings are so often not the best events, or like, there’s good things about the events, but sometimes the actual period where someone is reading to you is the least interesting. But we’ll see how it goes. I’m tweaking… one of the things I love about touring, and doing a lot of dates in a row… And I, you know, this was something that when I was booking bands, you just, you’d see a band at the beginning of the tour and at the end of the tour, and it’s just, it’s definitely a different show. And you can tell that there were tweaks and modifications and adjustments happening every night. You just learn so much each time. And the opportunity to repeat over and over. It’s just, um… the reps. Get those reps in. I think it really improves. So, we’ll see what happens as I do these over and over. I’ve been hearing from people that are reading or listening, and it’s been so sick to get feedback. I mean, what I… like, this phase of the book process. This is the phase you’re really aiming for the whole time. Book is out and people are talking about what they think about it to you. They’re telling you what they think. And it’s just so fucking rewarding that people are reading this thing. So if you’ve read it already or listened to it: Thank you. If you haven’t, I hope you do.
🎵 “Hand Me A Cigarette” by Twisted Teens 🎵
So, yeah, it’s the next phase is the in person shit. We did some in person stuff with The Walk Book with Sean, and it was so rewarding and interesting to do things with a book that was being given away. And I just can’t wait to be out and about in the Honda Pilot loaded with these books. So far, just with the 2 events, we did 2 festivals that I had books at in Dallas and Eau Claire last month, and the online orders… It’s weird to say orders, the online requests. that are piling up. I think I’m caught up to a day ago on shipping, so if you ordered one, your copy is on the way. But I think I’ve gotten rid of 700 books, which leaves 300 from this first print run, and I’m a little worried I’m gonna run out on the tour so I’ve been pushing the printer for a reprint. They’re not being super generous with information on how fast they can turn around new books, but hopefully they’ll get some to me on the road and I will not run out. It’s like this classic anxiety that I remember with bands of potentially running out of their record or T shirts on tour and a scramble to get reprints out. That’s me now. So, yeah, come out to a date. And bring a friend or tell a friend, or if you see dates that you can’t go to, but you think someone might dig it, tell them. I keep saying this book only lives by word of mouth, and it’s true to an extent. I am trying to do publicity on my own. I wanted to... I wanted to get on here to say that everything... the process of making this book has ruled, writing it, designing it, all of that has been so great and felt right. There was a point in the process about deciding how to do this, how to put it out, and what was important, where a good friend of mine said that he’s like, I think, well, he asked me: What’s most important to you? And I rattled off some bullshit, which were, you know, probably true bullshits, but I was kind of like feeling around for an answer. And he said really bluntly, and clearly— this person’s known me for a really long time—and what they were like, I think what’s most important to you is how it feels. And it hit me really… I just was like… I absorbed that very quickly and started focusing on that. What does it feel like? And everything has felt pretty fucking good, except publicity, except mailing out… except emailing my pitch and a one sheet and stuff. It just doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t. It’s embarrassing, I guess, or it feels futile. It feels like an exposure that... it potentially leads to, like, people saying not so nice things about the book. But the reality is, you know, I thought, well, maybe I just don’t do this. And I was like, no, you should do it. You should do it and know that it doesn’t feel great and know that it will pass. And so I have been doing some publicity, hitting people up and asking if they want to write about the book. And it has resulted in some good stuff, actually. It’s mostly resulted in dead silence with no reply. But there’s been some cool stuff, people doing reviews or features or having me on their podcast. And I have noticed a few people have, like, when someone mentions the book on their podcast or in their substack or whatever, that new people show up and ask for a copy. So I guess it works. There seems to be a lot of talk about how book reviews or publicity doesn’t work, and I don’t think I believe that, based on what I’m seeing. Seems like it does something. But anyway, the main thing is word of mouth with actual people, readers telling their friends if they think they might like this book. And I think, well, I hope that seeing it live can help spark more of that, get people yapping. And, yeah, with the publicity thing, like, I’m actually gonna do more today. More embarrassing follow-ups or sends. And I totally understand why most of it lands in, uh, most of it goes into a black hole, because there’s no… You couldn’t do this more incorrectly for how book publicity works. You’re supposed to send out books months and months in advance. I’m sending them out, you know, as or after the book is actually released into the world. So it’s not fresh anymore. Books seem to… book publicity seems to die real quick upon… it’s a short window, but all the press, the press commitments and things seem to be sorted way before the book comes out. And you see people talking about how that has to change, that the shelf life should be longer or that folks should be writing about old books or books that have been out and cooked for a little bit. And so I guess I’m trying to appeal to that mindset. But yeah, the sending it out at or after publication is starting at a deficit. And self-publishing doesn’t… isn’t exactly something that book writers are psyched about necessarily. Self-publishing is not something that book writers, people that write about books seem super thrilled about. The book being free and having no distribution is probably not helping it. Maybe even the topic isn’t, you know, on its face, it’d be really easy to be like, I don’t give a shit about Christian Rock. I’m not… I don’t think that’s for me, but my hope is that, and not only my hope, but now I got some evidence that people that weren’t in Christian Rock, or didn’t have that history, that very shameful history, and have, I don’t know, like, reading as an outsider, are digging the book, and finding some things in there that are more universal than the frame that it sits in. But it might be a turnoff at first blush. I guess I wanted to talk a second about reader reaction. And what people are asking and saying, and there’s a common thread. Not to get into the autofiction fiction slash nonfiction quagmire, but so many people are being like, I want to know what’s real. Like, there’s a story in there. Kevin Morby texted me. He and I are doing an in conversation event in Bloomington during Secretly Canadian’s 30 year birthday celebration next week. And so he read an early version, but he’s reading the book again. And he really likes the story that takes place in Taco Bell. And he read it and was telling me how much he dug it. And then the next day, yesterday, he texted me, and he was, like, asking something specific about how I... Hold on, this fucking cement truck. So loud. Yeah, he texted me. He’s like, Hey, how did you feel about Taco Bell at the time? And he was asking about Adam Voith not Anderson Humphrey, the narrator, who’s obviously very closely related to Adam Voith but not Adam Voith, but he’s like, he was asking about real life. And I told him the truth, which is that I don’t know anymore if that story is real or not. It feels completely real to me, and it very well might have happened, or some kernels of truth are in there, but it could also be totally made up. And there’s a lot of stuff in the book like that, where I don’t remember what is a memory or what has been incepted as memory because I lived inside this novel frame, putting this story together. And so when people are asking this, what’s real? Is this part real? Is that person real? I’ve actually I’ve been answering, to the best of my ability. No, that’s fiction or yeah, that’s kind of true, but it’s a composite or yes, but the timeline’s different or whatever. And I’m like, now starting to wonder if I should stop answering that question. Find a dodge for it because it’s just not… I don’t know. I think the fun part is wondering. Or not knowing. And it doesn’t matter, actually. And in fact, well, yeah, it doesn’t matter. In some ways, I could say everything in there is 100% true. Which wouldn’t be lying. And then there’s another thing I could say that’s also true, which is nothing’s real in there. It’s all a novel. It’s all in this container. And therefore, that’s what makes it not real. So, yeah, I mean, I’m gonna keep getting that question, I’m sure. I’ve been thinking about, there’s a chapter in the book. One of my favorite chapters in the book is mostly the protagonist and his father. in a car, driving to Cleveland to catch Roadside Monument in Cleveland so that the Christian Humper can rejoin the tour. And I loved the chapter. I loved writing it. I love reading it, and a lot of people are responding to it. And it’s actually, I do know, that that chapter is completely fictionalized. There’s nothing real in it. Nothing happened. It’s not based on anything real. And when I finished it, I was really proud of myself for having totally fabricated something. I felt like I’d grown in that way. And so, like, yeah, it’s cool to know you can do that, I guess, as, like, showing your own progress, or feeling your own progress, through a book, and now when I think about the next project, I have in my head that I’m gonna try and write something that has no truth in it, or nothing based on my life directly. Hi. I’m distracted. It’s getting... What is it? 7:50 a.m.? There’s more people out walking now, and I feel like an absolute weirdo. Talking to myself into my little influencer mic attached to my cut off tank top as I walk around the neighborhood. And I also have to pee so bad that it’s distracting me, so I’m gonna start walking fast to get to the house. And I think I’ll jump back on and talk more. Maybe, or maybe not. Come see the tour, please. Bye.
oh man I thought the out of order sequence was just an artistic choice. I regret to report that I listened to it in the out-of-sequence order the podcast episodes came in my app. still dug it!
I feel like it’s worth telling you that the weird thing about receiving a free book was that I felt like I had committed to reading it, which has been a problem for me of late. Many books bought, far fewer read. Indeed I read AND enjoyed The Walk Book and am having a good reading Recommend as well even though the end of August is the usual slam of things that need to be done. You made me nauseous in the car though describing mom’s dinners!