Early Risers at Deep Vellum, Livra Books, and Hinterland Festival
chopped voice memo transcript and pics
I think I'm on I-30. I'm in Arkansas. Yeah, 30 East. I stayed in Texarkana last night. The sickest way to name a city. It's in both states.
I'm driving home after the shows in Texas and god they were so good. This was a test; whether we can make a two-off work, a Saturday and Sunday in two cities a few hours apart. We did Dallas on Saturday morning at Deep Vellum then drove to Austin for a Sunday morning show at Livra Books.
It's tough for actual touring. With lives and kids and wives and jobs. And when we did go out for a few consecutive weeks in the spring, the evidence suggested the morning gag wasn’t gonna work on weekdays. So the two-off. The weekend trip. In and out. Texas says it can work, which is awesome. Both stores down there rule, both the right size for tiny readings, rad books everywhere, fucking weirdo book people running these spots. It was like the venues, the venues themselves and the vibes coming off the people at these places were extremely encouraging. Texas delivered.
I would say I sorta knew what was going on with Deep Vellum. Barely, but not really. I was hyped their storefront would host us—thanks to Eliana and Riley for that—and to get coffee with Will, proprietor and publisher at Deep Vellum and an assload of imprints. Dalkey Archive and Open Letter and others I’m less or unfamiliar with yet. The store’s a showroom for their titles and select stuff from other publishers and it’s the office, too, the headquarters. Will moved to Dallas 15 years ago to start his thing and holy shit so much is happening in that little building! He was wearing a bootleg Dischord shirt when we sat to chat. The next morning at the reading he was repping War Zone. I loved a lot of what he said while we talked and one thing keeps coming back to me. Will called the reader is the most underserved person in literature. You hear about stewardship in art, someone’s a great steward of books or writers or translators or whatever, fantastic, we need it, I love it, I’m looking for stewards everywhere, but I was like genuinely… surprised. Like I was hearing something novel and different, this dude talking about taking care of people reading books. And this is in Dallas? I can’t stress enough how far away Dallas is from New York City. How distant LA. Not just far away on the map. Like, Dallas is giant, but a cultural hub, maybe not. So for Deep Vellum to double triple and quadruple down on books there is bold, borderline subversive.
I thought a lot about Secretly Canadian, humble in Bloomington, the late ‘90s. First a label. Then a distributor. Then a label group partnering with other badass labels. That’s music. Very different I guess… calculus on upside and audience possibilities and all of that on a totally different scale, but there are similarities. Thinking back I don’t know if the Secretly guys would have said it so succinctly, but they were taking good care of listeners, for sure. On the publishing side I thought about Two Dollar Radio in Columbus. I’ve only dipped into their shop once and don’t know anyone at the press, but they seem to move in a similar way, publishing in a non-major media center at a level every bit as serious and maybe even more focused, maybe more about the shit you want this all to be about. I’m talking out of my butthole, obviously. Anyway, I’m impressed.
Moctezuma Seth Gonzalez is on a slightly different path, equally good to see. He was a book nut in Dallas previously, knows Will and Deep Vellum peeps, but he’s in Austin now running Livra. As I understand it, Seth was collecting and selling rare and out of print South and Central American books, then other kinds of books, expanding like tweaky collectors do, eventually moving to Austin and opening the brick and mortar spot to house the business. This is a crazy-ass store. It’s small, but comfortably packed with books on mismated shelves, tables, and racks, curated and organized into pockets of subject or genre. We got the donuts and coffee going and did our thing. Great crowd in there to listen.
And Kyle and Mike are such fucks. They're too good at reading stuff out loud. They’re so good at writing and reading. I'm lucky to have these dudes, lucky to do these shows with them. We had John Waddy Bullion join us in Dallas, and Alina Grabowski and Brian Allen Carr in Austin. Brian brought out a bunch of family, his mom and his kids, and my uncle, aunt, and cousin came. I told this story at the show, that back when I graduated college I sent these weird letters from a fake guy named Frank who was going to publish my first book. It was a collection of stories, poems, and hardly fictionalized diary stuff, and “Frank” was asking my friends and family for $30 or something to get his new publishing operation going. Kickstarting in the late ‘90s! Plenty of people sent the money and got a hand-bound, hand-numbered edition of the book, but Uncle Ray sent a check for $1000. I went and bought a new computer. At Livra when I told the touching story, Uncle Ray yelled out: I regret it to this day! and got mega laughs.
Kyle flew from Santa Barbara into Dallas where Mike and J live, and I drove from Tennessee. It was like 10 hours, Nashville to Dallas. First day I drove five and stopped outside Little Rock. I was doing nothing wrong as I made my way, breaking no laws, driving like a wimpy saint now in my advanced age, but I got honked at several times like What the fuck? The next day, Little Rock to Dallas, more honking and I realize it’s my own horn going off without me pushing it, quick toots and a couple of long-ass blows. When I got to Dallas, Mike was in the car and he was like, Who's honking at us? We were in the hotel parking garage. It was echoey so you couldn’t tell but I was like, Oh that's us, and I don't understand. I don't know what the fuck's going on, but my car is honking for no reason.
So now I’m on day five of involuntary beeping. In Dallas we pinpointed that it happens when moving slowly and turning left. There are places you can get away with it. If no one’s around and it beeps, it’s funny, But it's happened many times where other cars are all over us and they’re doing nothing wrong and it’s obviously bumming them out. Yesterday we dropped Kyle at the Austin airport to head home. J was driving, god bless her, and the airport was dunked, like it’s a traffic jam in departures. Eventually we get to the curbside and Kyle hops out, hugs and goodbyes, Hell yes, great weekend, etc. etc. and we need to turtle our way to the left, back into terminal traffic, but J’s taking her time trying to find a window where a honk will fuck with drivers around us the least but we see our lane comes to an end a few cars up at an airport cop. She’s directing traffic in a yellow vest, you know, with a whistle and white gloves and it's very intense arm stuff to keep things moving, keep things orderly, and we’re inching our way up and eventually the Honda Pilot is right in front of this cop and she’s whistling and waving us to the left and J puts on her signal, gives the cop a pre-apology shrug, we all hold our breath and she scoots the car over and the horn blares into the cop’s body for a long, sustained blow. We were embarrassed but in full hysterics. The cop was unfazed.
After dropping Kyle off, we drove back to Dallas, back to J and Mike’s car where they left it behind Deep Vellum. We said our goodbyes, and I rolled on toward Nashville. I pulled into the Texarkana hotel last night and it was honking, honking, honking in the parking lot. Honked my way out of Texarkana this morning and back onto the highway.
Oh my god here's this other awesome town I'm driving past. I'm seeing their water tower and it's called Arkadelphia. Love these combo-meal names. What does Philly have to do with Arkansas? Anyway I'm trying to like stop strategically when I’ve got to pee or get gas and I pick exit ramps where I can turn right to services and I’m a master of navigating gas station pumps and fast food lots only turning right and sometimes that means I’m doing wonky routes to circumvent buildings and traffic lights and intersections. Big time Chevy Chase energy.
So okay, Texas is behind us and next, in two weeks, we do Hinterland Festival in Saint Charles, Iowa. We're going to read on the Campfire Stage after morning yoga. I'm excited to try this at a music festival with zero literature/book stuff happening, out of context completely, another test. The ex-agent in me got us a little dough to cover expenses.
Alright I'm driving again, heading for Hinterland. I was home for two weeks, hardly enough time to miss the dudes, and I’ll meet them again at our hotel in Des Moines. I got the horn fixed. Faulty wire in the steering column. I'm always driving this year. End of last year, I went to the dealership and said, Here’s our old Honda Pilot. I’d like to replace it with your newest Honda Pilot, please. I need to drive around trying and sell books and magazines. So far so good. I must be sniffing at 10,000 miles.
Got back to Nashville yesterday after the festival. The family had already left, south to Florida, the Redneck Riviera, for a beach vacation before school starts up for the kids and for Mal who’s beginning a graduate program. I did laundry, opened my mail and whatever, went to bed early, I’m exhausted, then this morning I was back in the car on my way to the Gulf Coast before the sun was fully up.
My neighbor Eddie Schwartz just released a new EP called Film School. Last year, we went to Eddie’s 75th birthday dinner, the most social thing I’ve done with a neighbor since I left my parent’s house for college in 1993. I was a terrible, terrible neighbor during college in Bloomington, in Seattle at three different places, back in Bloomington again in the house by the mall, and then two apartments and a house in Nashville. My stiff-arm collapsed when Mal delivered cookies and local fruit to nearby houses when we moved to a new place together. Now I’m on text chains with neighborhood guys and I wave and say hello, chit chat with people walking dogs or exercising. And now we’re friends with Eddie and Joanne next door, and they’re awesome. They’ve lived in the house a long time, came to Nashville when it was probably 85% a different town. Eddie’s had a long songwriting career here. He wrote “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” and he wrote or co-wrote other tunes you know. Part of your reward for coming up with a monster all-time greatest hit is a sick beach house on the Gulf. They rent the place out during peak season but the final week had no takers and so they're like, You guys want it? This is last minute and it’s the six days before pre-school is in session, and we’re like, Yeah, yeah, yeah! We want it! We’re only paying the cleaning fee, I guess. I’ve heard from the fam, already there and settled in, that the place is very, very nice. It’s just up the road from the little beach town where they filmed The Truman Show.
Okay I’ve been thinking about the festival in Iowa and want to recap it maybe to just work out my own thoughts. We got booked because a promoter friend I worked with for years curates the Campfire Stage at Hinterland with a few late night sets after the main festival is finished for the day. Doing something in the morning was an experiment, but there are 8,000 people camping out there, basically captives before the main festival grounds open for the day. We offered free donuts and coffee as bait. I think at moments we allowed ourselves to imagine, Damn maybe it’ll be a whole bunch of groggy heads out there with us. Again we were seeking proof of concept. Does it work outside any literary context at a cool music fest? Will people come hear stories and buy books when there is absolutely nothing else to do?
Was there proof? I’d say it's inconclusive. I guess the other things a camper might do instead of coming to hear funny literature the morning after raging day and night at a festival might include: sleeping in, morning sex, or looking at a phone. Given these same circumstances, we might not rush to do it again at a music-only festival, but it's not like a total dead end. We had some people come listen. I bet we had like…
Okay, so the festival I think is 25,000 people total per day and the headliners this year were Tyler, the Creator, Kacey Musgraves, and Lana Del Rey. Before I retired, I booked Bon Iver to headline Hinterland two summers ago and didn't hear much from their camp about the show. This happens. A band plays a gig and the agent won’t hear shit unless something goes really wrong, like something’s super fucked. Or maybe a show truly transcends, then they'll let you know. When a touring band leaves a city, it comes off the itinerary. It’s no longer on sale or being promoted, Etch A Sketched away, all focus on the next show. Normally, I’d reach out during and after big shows, texting tour managers, promoters, or lead singers. When I was feeling the job, I went to many of the festival shows, especially if an artist I booked was headlining. Maybe because I’d lost energy for the gig, I don’t recall asking for a report, and Hinterland 2023 came and went for Bon Iver.
On my drive to Hinterland 2025, I was talking with Justin on the phone and I was like, Oh, I'm on my way to Hinterland to read. He's like, Oh right on, cool fest. Then he goes, That was a weird one. It's really young. The audience is extremely young and I remember being up there like, ‘Okay, this is… these kids aren’t really knowing Bon songs too much.’ This proved to be true; I was a fucking elder on the grounds. Even Kyle, Mike, and J, much younger than me, were exceptions to the general rule.
We were sent some treasure-map directions to a secret entrance to the festival grounds. You went down a narrow road in the back parking of a building then past a few beat down sheds and ended up at one of the bone yards for festival production semi trucks. Tucked between two rows of parked trailers was a well-hidden, unmarked gravel road. It was rugged through the woods to a clearing with a grassy, natural bowl and the Campfire Stage.
When we arrived and asked the stage manager how it was the night before, he said it was packed and wild for the first late night show out there, a Rebecca Black DJ set. He estimated 300 campers were there in front of the stage and up the hill partying.
Each time we do an event, I’m on the karma payment plan. Before the show as we get close to the advertised start time we try and play it cool, but we’re looking over our shoulders, out the door of the shop or up the grassy knoll to see whether anyone’s coming. I used to put bands in this zone all the time! I have to tell you, the vibe might not be good for one’s head.
Thankfully, each time but twice a handful or more of people show up and we do our thing and sell stuff and feel fine. At the festival, maybe 30 people were there? More than some shows we’ve done, but it’s a wide open space, a big gaping stage, and most people spread out high on the hill. It looked sparse. A few folks brought blankets and lawn chairs. Everyone had donuts. Before we got started, a few clumps of rumpled sleepyheads ambled down the hill only to grab donuts and bail. I guess you can't blame them. Actually, fuck those campers. Just kidding (sorta).
Getting anyone out of a sleeping bag at 10am to hear writers they don’t know is a win by any measure, but from the stage it was iffy, like maybe people weren't laughing or we couldn’t hear or see their feedback. Everyone was so far away, patches on the hill. There were five or six people in the vicinity of the stage, but not up close, they were still probably 20 feet away. As I prepare to say this, I’m like legitimately embarrassed again, but okay… I did the lame thing a sad band does when faced with the vast expanse of an empty concrete floor or festival field: I stepped to the microphone and announced that there was plenty of room up front, that folks should feel free to come up to the stage. No one moved. They never do.
I kicked us off, read my stuff, introduced Avery who did a great piece and hit them with a poem. Mike did his essay which is now privately called “Misty Potato Head,” then Kyle read a new short story then his hit single, “Rollercoaster House.” Actually, Kyle’s not reading shit, he’s doing his stuff from memory. You could take shots at what he’s doing up there, really performing his pieces, but that would make you a cynical prick and you shouldn’t think like that.
Anyway, while the guys read I thought, Okay maybe this one’s a miss, but then after we finished, at the merch table, it was like… I don’t know, it was great? The campers were very psyched and buying books.
Ever coming to Pittsburgh??