Adam Gnade 'Honey Slides' Interview

Adam Gnade & Youthmovies
Honey Slides
Try Harder Records (2007)

Note--I had a chance to interview Adam Gnade a few months ago during his European tour with the English band Youthmovies to promote their collab EP "Honey Slides". If you haven't heard it, go to www.myspace.com/gnade and check some tracks or just go ahead and order the album. If the first song doesn't make you dance, raise a fist, and make or destroy something beautiful then perhaps you are dead on the inside. I've listened to this record so many times that I'm not going to review it, except to say that it's just the right amount of spooky to get something new out of it with each listen. For instance, the trumpet-led musical arrangement towards the end of "It's Five O'Clock In America" should sublimely obliterate any attempts to pigeonhole Gnade as a spoken word poet or folk artist, as may've been the case after his earlier record "Run Hide Retreat Surrender". Listen. It is a liberating moment. This interview was supposed to appear on an actual website, but due to complications that are beyond me, it will appear here for now, in sorta-actuality... and I'll make the most of what I've got.

RJB: First off, as I type these questions, San Diego is literally on fire. If it did in fact burn completely to the ground (buildings, people, bars, taco shops, memories) what band would you bet would rise from the ashes to haunt the new Kingdom?

ADAM GNADE: I just recently saw Geronimo from East LA and the Locust (San Diego's finest) and it got me to thinking. Say if San Diego were to burn to the ground, both bands would probably still be on tour and since they're on tour together they'd probably arrive back in San Diego for an end-of-tour show just in time to crunch their sneakers on the embers. The only thing to do, then, would be to form one nasty seven-headed hydra supergroup of brutality and righteous bulldog-like intent and usher in a new era. Before this show I hadn't seen the Locust in years. They were even more no-bullshit on stage and so twitchy I felt like they were batting at bees with their instruments' headstocks. Geronimo, who are on [Justin Pearson's] (Locust) label ThreeOneG, are just pure good-noise heaviness and white squall boogie. After the show, we talked about home, about the fires mainly, and about how much it's changed since I left. JP assured me it's still a good place to be, and I imagine after the fires level everything, there will be a lot of work to be done, a lot of rebuilding the city the way it should've been in the first place. Of course my old neighborhood, Golden Hill, won't burn, because I put a magic spell on it the last time I left town: a protection spell. Once the next fires start, take your friends and dogs and kids and cats to Golden Hill; you'll be fine. (reason 7 for putting on Sessions Fest III: survival of the species—RB) It'll be the new capital city of a new country and the soundtrack will be without peer!

RJB: How's England? I saw you play a solo show at Tower Bar last May and it feels like you've been on the move ever since. To ask if anything crazy has happened on tour is probably opening up a huge can of worms, but…consider it asked.

AG: Crazy for sure. I fractured a bunch of ribs. I got rushed to the ER in the back of an ambulance during an after-party … smashed my head on the drum riser and bled all over the place. The van died twice. I stepped into the middle of a block-long riot in Liverpool. There was a good fistfight in Scotland where our driver beat this guy up while delivering action hero one-liners and defending this girl's honor … tons of people hooking up in weird situations, dance parties in the bus. And a lot of depraved stuff I shouldn't talk about in public … a lot of it involving hotel rooms. We broke into Stonehenge in the middle of the night, that was a highlight. Very surreal. We swam in any body of water we could and they were all fucking freezing. We beat the shit out of each other, knocked holes in walls, hiked around the English countryside at night, screaming and insane. It was a proper rock 'n' roll tour. The Youthmovies guys are as fun as you can get without dying. We'd get crazy and we'd keep pushing it, then shit would get kind of dark and we'd have to reel ourselves back in again. Right now they're touring with 65daysofstatic, who are the Cure's opening act for the next tour … riding along in 65's massive double-decker sleeper coach. It pulled up behind our bus on the last night of tour and DWARFED us.
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RJB: Are you playing solo sets, or with Youthmovies?

AG: I'm doing both. A solo set with banjo and ending Youthmovies' set with them, doing "Honey Slides" and sometimes "It's 5 O'Clock in America," which I also do during my set.

RJB: What impresses me most about the 'Honey Slides' EP is the collaborative effort it took to make it. I felt in listening to your earlier records, especially 'Run, Hide, Retreat, Surrender' that there was a sense of the narrator approaching an endgame. Not to say that it was a downer, but listening to it I couldn't help picking up on an intense fatalism and thinking hmm…this guy might not live to make another record. There wasn't a lot of room for the listener to ruminate or enjoy, it was more like, here is the story, here is the woman he needs, here is the delivery, deal with it—the vision was as gravity-laden as the narrator's car wheels and feet soles on the pavement he constantly traversed. 'Honey Slides' is, first off, danceable, and with that comes a regenerative quality in the music and energy that doesn't sacrifice your intensity. It reminds me of the first time I heard "Cross-eyed and Painless" by the Talking Heads, and thought 'oh, okay, this band can also do this'. All of a sudden they were wild with capability and potential. There is room to breathe on 'Honey Slides', breathe and be wild. Would you consider it somewhat of a breakthrough? A necessity, perhaps?

AG: "Honey Slides" is an epilogue to Run Hide Retreat Syrrender. When I wrote RHRS I was in a bad place and I figured I was at my end, so I did the record as an attempt to put it all behind me, y'know, seal it up so I could start living again. I tried everything—anti-depressants sure as fuck didn't work—so this was the last ditch effort. Lyrically and vibe-wise, "Honey Slides" is the kind of track that would've been at the end of RHRS if I'd only waited six months to record it. Instead, RHRS was recorded as it was happening so there's no real perspective or resolution. Taken out of that context, I definitely think it's a breakthrough. It's the closest thing to what I imagine "talking songs" will be like when the genre's actually realized and "done."

RJB: Would you mind talking a bit about what collaboration means to you? I really like how on 'Honey Slides' and even going back to that Faux Hoax collab "Yr Friends Will Carry You Home" there is a clear sense of Adam Gnade and whoever else. When Johnny Marr "collaborates" with Modest Mouse, they are basically making a Modest Mouse record with a new guitar player. Here it feels like two equally strong parts combining to make a new thing, to the point where your fans and, I think, Youthmovies fans would both be satisfied and energized by the final record.

AG: Collaborations are great because they force you to do things and make decisions you wouldn't normally steer towards. I probably wouldn't have made a dance song like "Honey Slides" were it not for the fact that Youthmovies' drummer Graeme Murray can play the fucking shit out of a dance beat. Also, being English, those guys have dance music in their blood. Electronic music is more a part of the culture over there than it is here. It's instrumental house songs or minimalist techno right next to pop and rap and rock on mainstream radio. The press release for that record says something about it sounding like a mix between an American high school marching band and an English rave and that nails it. So I guess, if anything, collaboration for me means stepping outside your general aesthetic and dabbling in different waters. I think it's a very healthy thing to do. "Yr Friends Will Carry You Home" is the same. It sounds a bit like all the people who worked on it—there's a little Menomena, a little Gang of Four, some Tracker, and a little of myself. But in the end, it's really nothing like any of us.

RJB: Looking at the cover of the EP, I notice the photos by San Diego-recognized photographer Rob Queenin. From the tour photos on your myspace page, you've worked with him before, and I was wondering if at this point you consider him (or I guess more specifically his artistry) as a visual component to your music. Is there something about his photos that you relate to or is it just coincidence/convenience?

AG: Rob's photos are definitely a visual representation of the song "Honey Slides." Every photo on the cover and in the layout was picked for a very specific reason; they all echo some part of "Honey Slides." I won't give too much away, but you can listen to the lyrics and almost read it like comic book panels.

RJB: What is a field holler?

AG: Slavery-era work songs. A lot of it was chanted and half-talked. The best had a second level of understanding beyond the narrative. Metaphors for hope, rebellion, coded oral history, even secret messages and plans to pass along without the masters knowing. (You can find some in the Library of Congress recordings.) I've always understood things like field hollers and old spirituals and blues more than modern music. Once big money came into music, a lot of functionality was lost. Historically, so much of music has served to pass on history, relay messages, bring down or expose injustices, but a lot of that has been lost as music has become a commercial product. In a way I'm sure a lot of the old singers considered their work more utilitarian than artistic; they were doing a job with their songs and it was an important job; a job that had nothing to do with money and everything to do with preservation of culture and communication.

RJB: When I listen to your music, I think of spirituals. Not religion, necessarily, but a sense that the songs are driven by an artistic spirit—where a knee slap and a boot stomp is as good as a snare and kick drum. Hand claps, coughing, coffee table percussion, empty-jug percussion, whatever seems to be around, all make it onto the records; do you like accidents? Are you some kind of a sound-junky? Do you just like banging on stuff and making noise? I get the impression that if you really wanted to make a song and you were locked in a prison cell with a 4-track and a few friends, you'd get something done.

AG: I get sick of hearing the same shit over and over again so if a coffee table works, I'd much rather slam a coffee table down for the beat than use a standard drum kit. I'd like my songs to move more towards that, finding music in the things around you. It feels good. It's where it all started. Voice, hands, and feet. Though right now Born to Run is my favorite record, so go figure. Have you heard Peter and the Wolf? It's all about the junk orchestra.

RJB: If a drug existed that would disintegrate your flesh and bones and just leave your spirit to roam the earth, would you take it? Your spirit can still drink if you want it to.

AG: For the first time in my life I'd have to say no. I've spent so much time wishing I was a ghost but I've been feeling pretty okay with being … here lately. Walking out of the emergency room alive a couple days ago felt incredible. Life hurts and leaves a lot of scars and can be pretty daunting some days, but nothing beats being aware and standing on solid ground and feeling the blood move through you. I want to feel everything I can. I want to live violently.

RJB: Do you feel that your music presents European listeners with a vision of America that is in contrast with what they assume America is like? I think one of the strengths of your records, lyrically, is that you present Americans with a vision of America in contrast to what we assume life is like: An America concerned with survival, camaraderie, and nightmares, rather than an America in denial of it's own weaknesses, faults and fears.

AG: I'd like to say yes, but I really have no idea. More and more these past few months, I've been trying to give in to desire and do what my gut tells me to do, rather than mapping out every stretch of psychic landscape and trying to compartmentalize and quantify everything. It may sound obvious, but if you pick apart what you're doing too much you're going to lose what you came for in the first place. Also, once you start analyzing why people like something, you tend to start doing things as a reaction—even if you don't realize it—and that changes what you make. Beyond that, I hope I tell my own idea of America as truthfully as I can. I think I might be too close to it to know what that America "is." I just hope people see my intent as honest.

RJB: Randomly, my CD player just faded out the end of Snake Lore Part II and moved into "Ghosts" by sixties jazzeteer Albert Ayler, which is kind of a free-form, acid trumpet, deconstructed New Orleans funeral parade kind of song. On some next-level shit, it works pretty well--you should consider encoring with it!

AG: That's some synchronicity there! You just explained my musical fantasy of the moment. A few months ago I dreamt I was listening to this song we did, "Hymn California," and all the time signatures had shifting around. The verse would go on through all normal but when the chorus would hit, it would slow down and chug along into a heavy, greasy New Orleans funeral groove with a horn section swooning all drunken and woozy over the guitars before the verses would pick up again. It had a very loose, sensual, dark propulsion it. The bulk of the song was there, but it was like the verses existed in my conscious while the choruses were from my sub-conscious. I want to recreate that sound more than anything.

RJB: Are you ever going to release "We're Sick Of It"?

AG: I'm not sure. I like "We're Sick of It" and I've recorded it a few times, but the versions I've gotten sound fucking lifeless. They sound dead. It should be vigorous and full of passion. On record, it comes off like somebody cut its fucking balls off. The song should rip itself in half and make your heart race. It just doesn't.