Adam Gnade
ADAM GNADE & YOUTHMOVIES “IT’S FIVE O’CLOCK IN AMERICA AND EVERYONE’S SLEEPWALKING” FROM THE HONEY SLIDES EP (TRY HARDER RECORDS)
It took me a while before I figured out how to give writing and music equal time without losing my shit. What it came down to is I had to combine them and immerse each in the other and then work on both as hard as I possibly could. Because of that I have to do two projects at once if I’m going to do anything. One writing. One music. And both connected. Which can be a strain. It can also be totally natural, like when me and Youthmovies wrote and recorded this one together in the studio in Oxfordshire. Came outta nowhere, music, lyrics, and then it was done. Right now I’m doing the edits on this new book (which won’t be out for a year or two) and writing a new record. The book has been natural, and a pleasure to write, but the record is giving me hell. I want the kind of ease I had with this song but it’s not coming.
Which is why it gives me hope when I read things like this, my friend Bart Schaneman’s bit on struggle, identity, and fear…
The world likes to see a man who is striving for something, as much or more as they want him to succeed. It’s the struggle that’s interesting, not the result. And there are some who would like to destroy a man for trying. We find ourselves in our selves. But identity is always shifting, always eluding our grasp, always inches beyond our reach. Some people find it in what they once were, yet even then they are changing, growing farther away in time from that person, and that too is a shift in identity. We seem to place value on self-awareness, self-knowledge. We like those that aren’t afraid of the world, that somehow seem to know their place in it. But I’ve never met anyone truly, thoroughly unafraid of the world.
If you’re not keeping tabs on Bart’s writing website, you’re missing out. He’s doing good things, things you can relate to and carry with you while you fight. And he’s a good dude to be around. Here’s a picture of him hanging out in front of a damn red wall…
