After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different

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In August 2009, Punch Drunk Press, released a three-way split CD album featuring his songs and the songs of Ohioan and COASTS. It is called Hello America! [15] In the novel, young James starts out as a happy Pacific Beach Elementary first-grader only to become a miserable Dungeons & Dragons-obsessed middle-schooler and then an anxious Mission Beach High student. Teen James somehow survives both a hellacious acid trip and a friend’s suicide before finding his place with the goth kids, artists and free spirits of San Diego’s underground punk and art scene. After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different presents a true picture of jubilance, happiness, adrenaline, and exhilaration partnered with the depths of despair all framed by heart-wrenching, beautifully written descriptions of food on its most basic American level. The latest installation in Adam Gnade’s seemingly semi-autobiographical series of novels and audio recordings, We Live Nowhere and Know No One , begins as a hopeful, against-all-odds look at the narrator’s childhood and takes a dark turn when he hits adolescence. Each chapter is titled for the food that allows for an escape from or punctuates the distinct moment in the narrator’s life.

I have always wanted to write well and sell books,” Gnade said during a phone interview from the farm outside of Leavenworth, Kansas, where he has lived since 2010. “Struggling with that over the years has been great, and the pain of that has been good pain. Having one thing to focus all of your efforts on is very healthy and sustaining. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t found writing. Some things you should know about Adam Gnade: He’s a writer and a musician. He lives on a farm, and his new novel This Is the End of Something But It's Not the End of You came out last week. Self-reliance and self-empowerment, done with a DIY ethic,” is how Marc Saviano, a Kansas City artist and zine maker who has befriended Duke and company, describes the Pioneers aesthetic. “They’re interested in stuff that looks at creating your own communities and getting away from depending on the system.” Gnade and the character, James, have a good deal in common, so much so that his work might be classified as "auto fiction."Drearier news: A lawsuit that threatens to torpedo Pioneers Press — which Pioneers Press contends is meritless and rooted in malice — is advancing. A judge in Oregon recently denied Pioneers’ motion to dismiss, so they will have to travel to Oregon to defend themselves in court. That’s not an easy prospect for a group of off-grid anarchists who live on almost nothing. It’s not until you pull away that you realize the man you’ve just killed is the grocery store clerk in town. You gasp in horror, dropping his body to the ground. You gasp again at the sight of the blood on your hands and you don’t think before you’re trying to rub it off on the leg of your pajama pants. You don’t have much time to think about how you’ve just made your appearance worse because you catch a familiar scent in the air. After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different is an excellent novel, an energetic tale of ambition, sorrow, and American hunger. Anthony Bourdain meets Roberto Bolaño.” -Nathaniel Kennon Perkins, author of Wallop

Ringside: A Companion Piece to the Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherf***ing Sad (2014, chapbook, Punch Press Press) It’s also the headquarters of Pioneers Press, a publishing house and small-press distributor that sells books and zines on topics such as anarchism, sustainable living and cross-country dumpster-diving. Duke, Christian and Gnade call it the Hard Fifty Farm. My experience of life has been a bit more tomato sandwiches and a bit less crystal meth, but the portrayal of being a bored and melancholic young person still felt very close to home-–sometimes uncomfortably so. A lot of the hanging around at people’s houses nursing small grievances would ring true for anyone I think. I really felt for Joey. I could especially relate to the kind of beach depression, crumbling resorts feeling of a lot of the scenery. There are a lot of places like that here in Norfolk.His creative endeavors are widespread enough that the desire for extra physical space makes some sense. Falling somewhere between Trainspotting and Like Water for Chocolate, Adam Gnade’s self-described “food novel” frames each chapter around a meal, and from there moves wild in all directions. Unsurprisingly, music and local journalism have strong ties in the novel, bolstering the characters as they navigate getting older, grieving, finding careers and/or meaning. As his story comes to a close, James muses, "I thought of how sometimes in the midst of survival, life will jerk you away from your home, how it will push you out across the map, away from the people you love, or into the path of others. … Everything will change aways." JR: This Is the End of Something But It's Not the End of You is an autobiographical novel set partly in San Diego. Can you talk about your San Diego roots?

In 2006, he issued a set of limited run experimental albums ( We Are Ghosts and Bones Down Stone-Walled Wells and the 2 CD single) expanding on his "talking songs" idea before signing a UK label deal with Drowned in Sound (also home to collaborators Youthmovies). Drowned in Sound released Gnade's EP Shout the Rafters Down! in November 2006, after which he toured Europe in support of the record, alongside Oxford, England's Youthmovies and Brighton's Blood Red Shoes. [8] Gnade's youthful characters sink to hard drugs and deep depression as they navigate life at the end of the last century. They celebrate and they battle with their demons and throughout it all they eat. This is not a food snob's novel. Instead Gnade writes about the pain and joy of life and the ways that common, everyday food is there with us at each step. This is a book of deli sub sandwiches, endless burritos, eggplant parmesan, the magnificence of good sourdough bread, of box brownies and Nacho Cheese Doritos, rolled tacos and the perfect tortilla. Released in July 2012, Gnade's latest novella was entitled The Growling Mouth, [29] and it was released on the Punch Drunk Press label. [30] Pretty much everything. I’m never happy with the completed thing. The only records I like are the one I did with Youthmovies and the AMERICANS EP (Blessing Force) that came out this spring. As far as topics, no, not really. If I’m afraid of writing something I go for it.Gnade is urging a more steadied sense of attention; a care and curiosity for the world, and a sense that there is magic out there--even if it is hiding." -Lora Mathis, artist and author of The Women Widowed to Themselves

I liked that it was set in the early-2000s in America but didn’t culminate in some big 9/11 deus ex machina. However, at the same time, I couldn’t escape a sense of 9/11 looming not long after it all. After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different is an excellent novel, an energetic tale of ambition, sorrow, and American hunger. Anthony Bourdain meets Roberto Bolaño." -Nathaniel Kennon Perkins, author of WallopThe lovely, picturesque burrito on the cover of my book is the eponymous "El Veganito" from this cool little gemstone in the Grossmont Center mall. Choice of adobada or carnitas, rice and beans, pico de gallo, and chipotle cream. Your heart shall be a marching horse.” Duke’s connection to Kansas is through her father, a military man who brought the family along when he was stationed for a year at Fort Leavenworth, when Duke was 10.