Yesterday I read The Sarah Book and listened to Dijon, Bieber, and Jets to Brazil

Voice memo from the road to Wisconsin for Eaux Claries Festival

audio⬆ lightly edited transcript⬇

Hello from Wisconsin. Driving. I’ve been doing these while driving. There was a huge traffic jam on 90, so Apple Maps routed me around it, gracefully, and it took me through the Wisconsin Dells, which I’ve never been to. I’ve never been around. It’s very similar to Gatlinburg in the Smoky Mountains. It’s like the most American... vacation or uh, amusements. It’s a very specific vibe, but it was cool to see it. I’m driving to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I’ve been driving since, like, 7:30. I’m doing it all in one day which I think will end up taking me about 12 and a half hours. It’s nothing. I’m driving so much. And my audiobook selection… everybody’s reading... well, everybody’s, yeah, everybody’s reading Fights! by Scott McClanahan, and I don’t have it yet. I read two of his other books, I think, maybe, Crapalachia and Hill William. But I’ve never read The Sarah Book, so I decided I would hit the audio today on this drive. And my God, is that a good book. I guess it’s not surprising, you know, it’s, like, unanimous. Although one person I know doesn’t like it. I can’t wait to ask him why, but... Whew. I got divorced. I’ve been divorced for... I don’t know, 15 years, and I’ve never written shit about it. I cannot bring myself to even consider writing shit about it. This dude wrote an astonishing look at his divorce, and I think it, you know, seems like just two years after it. I don’t know about the timelines, really. Maybe that’s wrong, but the end of the book, the final chapter, is two years after their divorce. Just a brutally naked confession, really, about a failed marriage. Man, that was good. I feel like I should read it on paper. There’s a never ending debate about whether audiobooks count. Fuck you, it counts. I read this book. Especially Scott’s book. I mean, him reading it, I don’t know, maybe it’s better than reading the text in some ways. He’s a good reader of his own work. And it was a pretty flat, you know, delivery. A little drone-y even, and I’m curious what it looks like on the page, actually. A lot of almost just reportage so much in this book. It’s like: and then I did this, and then I said this, and then this, and then this, and then this, and then this. There’s a lot of sick use of repetition. So good. I like Crapalachia and Hill William, but this book I love. Yes, I’m going to read it on paper. So if you’re a purist and you’re claiming I haven’t read the book, I will read it on paper, so I can add it to the official list. Okay, I’m driving to Eau Clarie this weekend. I’m coming a couple days early for Eaux Claires Festival to help get the site ready and get everything ready for the show. I booked bands and writers with Justin for this festival. And we’ve been working on it for over a year, and it just hasn’t been, it’s not a full time job, but it’s been this low level hum. I would even say sometimes, like, a low level anxious feeling for over a year, and I’m really excited to now do the festival, and I’m fucking thrilled for the festival… for it to be over, if I’m honest.

🎶 well baby, punk rock won’t stop

There’s a couple bumps and weird moments doing something music related again, and we had three sizable artists, musical artists, cancel, which is a lot of artists to cancel when you only booked 18. Which was extremely frustrating for both the fans, as we saw on social media when we took a fucking beating, especially after ******** canceled. We haven’t even announced the 3rd one yet. We’re gonna do it in the next day or so and replace it with something totally sick. So everyone is gonna be satiated, and the event’s gonna be great whether ******* couldn’t make it, nor ********, who canceled because his record was pushed back. But then he booked the same weekend in Europe, which is a nice touch. Uh, It’s gonna be a great weekend of music. And literary shit, which I think is gonna take almost all of my time while I’m there. From, like, noon to seven-ish both days there’s a pretty stacked schedule of readings and conversations and doing this live memoir—collaborative live memoir thing, which is dope. Sheila Heti’s doing a writer’s workshop, which is sick. We’re doing these one-on-one readings, where listeners can get in a room with a writer and they’ll be read a five minute piece one-on-one, up close, intimate, and personal, with many of the writers and residents that are coming. So if you’re coming for the music, swing through the literary stuff as well. I think it’s gonna be good. We got two really small venues. So of the thousands and thousands of people coming, if we can’t get 50 of you guys to come listen to some fucking writing…. Well, I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ll just read to each other. And I’m gonna have my novel available at the festival. Even though I haven’t officially announced the novel or made it available, really… I gave them out last weekend, or two weekends ago, in Dallas, during the Deep Vellum festival, and I’m gonna be giving them out at Eaux Claires. And not just at the festival, but Thursday night there’s like a maker’s art and crafts bazaar going on Thursday night at the Masonic Temple, in the basement. You can come down and get a copy of Recommended If You Like if you’re coming into the festival, if you’re in town, or even if you’re not coming to the festival. Thursday night is free to anybody, and I’ll have a Little Engines table down there. So come say hello. I’ve been thinking I’ll, like, post a picture of this book cover, which I’m so psyched on, and start talking about this book soon and make it available in a few weeks. I think mid-August. It’ll be available for you and everyone for free.

What did I listen to? This is what I listened to on the drive. I listened to the 1st Dijon record, which I hadn’t probably listened to in a year or so. Obviously it holds up quite well. And then, it got me thinking about Dijon and Mk.gee and I was like, I should listen to this Justin Bieber album that I didn’t listen to. I’d heard two of the singles or whatever and loved his performance on the Grammys—it was the only thing I liked at the Grammys—but I never listened to the record, so I listened to Swag, which is, like, 20 fucking songs. It’s too long. There’s a lot of, I felt like there’s not, you know, maybe it’s not. Maybe it should have been 12 songs, but there’s some good shit on there, and it is now… I’ve now listened for the 1st time in my life to an entire Justin Bieber record. I imagine I’m better for it in some ways. And then I listen to Orange Rhyming Dictionary by Jets to Brazil. And then I listened to the third Jets to Brazil record, which I never super got into and I always… every few years I check it out again to be like, Did I miss this? Was this, like, actually good and I should realize I was an idiot? So I put that on. And it is not great. There was some good songs, but it is not a good album. I’ll probably try it again in a few years anyway. So, yeah, that is my listening, my 12 hours of listening. I made some phone calls. I actually talked to Nabil Ayers, who I knew… I’ve known for a long time, from back when he was running Sonic Boom Records in Seattle and playing in The Long Winters, and then as the label executive that he still is, and now as the writer that he is. He hit me up saying that he had seen me makin’ noise on Instagram about my book and that maybe we should connect. We don’t know each other well. We’ve probably talked a total of seven exchanges on the internet in the past 20 or 30 years. And then maybe a couple hours at Sonic Boom when my office used to be across the street in Ballard. But I’ve, like, kept an eye on him. I went to see his reading when he came through Nashville. We didn’t talk. I had to leave early, but I watched him tour the fuck out of his book. Anyway, he hit me up and said he wanted to catch up, so we did, and it was awesome. And he gave me all these great ideas for my tour and we kind of laughed about how, because we come from music, like, he did 70 book events. You know, when he started working on his tour, he said his publisher, which I believe his Viking, was like, You don’t have to do this. Like, you can just do, like, five or so cities, and he’s like, no, you don’t understand. I wrote the book so I could go on tour like this. This is what I want to do. And it’s totally what I want to do. You know he’s got, he had a traditional publisher. His book was for sale. It wasn’t free, obviously, so he was doing bookstores a lot. But he also did a lot of non traditional spots and record stores and stuff. And so he’s gonna give me his list and I’m hoping I can, like, chip away at some of the spots he went to. I don’t know if I’ll get 70 shows in. My goal is to do 40 this year. Maybe by next year, though, if I keep going, I can match his 70. But God, that’s impressive. But he gave me this amazing tip about how to book colleges, which seemed like a mystery to me, but the way he described it reminded me very much of, like, early days booking bands, searching for email addresses and sending Hail Marys. But he had a lot of success and kind of gave me some pointers. So I think I might try to do that, add some of those to my outreach program for trying to play a show, a book show, in every town and city in America, which is my stated goal. So, yeah, it was awesome to catch up with him. It’s interesting. He told me he’s got another memoir that he set aside, and now he’s written a full novel that sounds awesome, and he’s out there shopping it. So sending him the best of luck finding a publisher for it, but it sounds great. And we joked about how, you know, I told him something about my book that is, uh, true to my real life. And he kind of laughs, and he said, Yeah, there’s a bunch of shit in my novel, my new novel that’s more real than the stuff that’s in my memoir. Which is the way it goes. I guess. So shout out to Nabil. He also said something interesting, which is that he didn’t feel like, by putting out this book and touring all this, that he connected with the writer community. He still feels like an outsider, and more like, he’s just like the music guy. He got a podcast now that does really well too, but I thought that was interesting. Like, we both are on a similar timeline of when we’re, like, trying to put out a book later in life, middle age. He actually just had a kid too. He’s like old dad like I am. But I thought that was interesting that the writer world didn’t quite latch on or find him, but maybe with the novel, they will. He deserves it. Or maybe he, maybe it’s better that they don’t. I don’t know. Maybe he’s better off for it. But it was rad to catch up with him, and I appreciate that he reached out. His interest was piqued with my little teases on Instagram. Which is all I got. My little teases so far. Okay. Come to Eau Claire, Wisconsin this weekend if you can. Anybody that’s nearby that doesn’t have a ticket, if you hit me up, I’ll put you on the guest list. Just don’t tell anybody.