Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 9

Why Being a Writer Beats Playing in a Band

For ten years I played in bands. Some of them were more metal than rock or more punk than folk or other times just real loud and someone’s mom would scream from upstairs and say, “MY GONE WITH THE WIND COMMEMORATIVE PLATES JUST FELL OFF THE SHELF!!”

From 14 years old -24 years old, mostly what I did with my time, was write music on my guitar, practice that music with guys I was in a band with, go into the recording studio and spend all my lawn mowing money on recording that music, and maybe twice a month, play a show at the local dive bar, VFW hall, back yard party when someone’s parents were out of town. It was a great period of my life … but I haven’t picked up the guitar in a long time and I don’t miss playing in bands that much, I write novels and short stories, and poems, with my disposable time.

My second novel, F250 is all about playing in a noise band, getting in a ton of car crashes, falling in weird love, and trying to survive through some tough times. Writing about playing in bands was an odd thing to do. But looking back on it made me realize why I don’t play in bands anymore.

Here’s why being a writer beats playing in a band.

You Can Do It Alone

Now, when I want to make something, I just sit down and make it. Back in the day, if there were four guys in the band, we’d be sitting there waiting for the drummer to show up but he’d be late (and this was before cellphones, so you just had to sit there and wonder “Think he got killed in a car crash?”). When the drummer showed up, the bass player would have to get going, he had work in an hour. The singer wouldn’t show up sometimes for years. You’d just sit there and wait and wait and wait. And when everyone was finally in a room together, you’d show the missing person a new song the three of you had come up with while they were ‘on their way for a decade’ and they’d say, “I don’t like that at all.” You’d just sit there, looking at each other, hating each other. Then you’d go get high instead of playing, because ‘fuck this.’

Promotion: 

Promoting stuff you make sucks. It’s a disgusting feeling. When my second novel, F250 came out, I didn’t really feel like doing a zillion things to promote it. I put some links on Twitter, I wrote about the novel a little bit on my blog, mentioned the book a few times on facebook. That’s kinda lame for something I worked on for a long time, put all my effort into … but at least it was JUST me sucking at promoting the novel, it’s not a group effort at sucking.

When I was in bands, there would be four of us, at least and none of us would be doing anything to promote our albums or shows. Making something and getting anyone else to care about it was rough. We’d get to a show and there would be six people there to see us play. At least, as a writer, if it’s just me failing all by myself, without four other people’s collective efforts, it doesn’t feel like as bad a kick in the head.

(Speaking of promotion … you can win a free copy of F250 at the site Goodreads, just by clicking a button. I’m giving away ten copies. Giveaway ends on July 7th)

Nothing Heavy to Carry

I do most of my writing on my iphone. When I’m not writing on the iphone, I write in a notebook or on some scraps of paper that are lying around. Last year I took a flight from NJ to California and wrote some sections of F250 for six hours on a plane on the backs of barf bags.

No kidding, barf bags. I even ripped them open and wrote on the inside of the barf bags when the outsides were full with chicken scratch.

I have nothing heavy to carry anymore. I’m not lugging full stack amplifiers up staircases. I’m not carrying drum sets down alleys to get into the back of a club. Truth be told, I don’t even own a laptop. So, those writers you see in coffee shops, pecking at keyboards and sipping expensive cofffee, that’s not me either. I’m sitting in my car in a parking lot behind a strip mall and I’m writing my novel on my cellphone. Or if the cellphone dies, probably napkins from Dunkin’ Donuts.

No Bright Hot Lights

It’s hot on stage, and I’ve never even made it to a big stage. The bright lights at the local dive bar were bad enough for me. Standing there sweating my ass off wasn’t the best. Now, when I go and do a reading from one of my books, it’s usually at an air conditioned bookstore or at a bar that doesn’t shine bright ass lights on you. I have two release parties coming up for F250, I’m sure I won’t look like I just jumped in a swimming pool with my clothes on when the readings are over.

Release Parties in CA:

July 7th in Los Angeles at Stories Book Store

and July 8th in Long Beach at Gatsby’s Book Store

You Most Likely Won’t Break Up with Yourself

I played in a band one time that wrote and rehearsed songs for a year. When it was finally time to go out and record the songs, the band broke up and the material that we worked on for a year vanished into the wind. When you’re a writer, chances are, you aren’t going to break up with yourself and scrap a project that you really care about. You might abandon the thing for a long time, but I bet you one day, you’ll pick it back up.

Slowly Going Deaf

There’s no crying in baseball and there’s no ear plugs in a punk band. Also, you don’t go deaf from sitting in your car behind a Chipotle and writing a short story on your iPhone 5 that your wife gave you when her company got her a new phone.

No Auditions

Okay, so you have a drummer for your band and you have a bass player and of course you play guitar because everyone on Earth plays guitar, but now you’ve got to find a singer. It’s 1998 and there’s no dependable internet yet, no Soundcloud or Facebook or Twitter, so you print out some flyers and take them to the local music store and hang them on the bulletin board. The flyer says: SINGER WANTED. On this bulletin board, there are seventy five other flyers all of them say some version of SINGER WANTED or DRUMMER WANTED.

A few days after you hang the flyer up a person calls and says they want to try out. You drop off a cassette demo tape of your bands instrumental ‘songs’ and the person takes a couple days to listen to the tape and come up with something to sing.

At the practice the singer seems like an okay enough person. You all talk to him for a little bit and he seems like you all could drink beers together and it’d be fine. So you start the first song up … the guitars start it and then the drums and bass come in kind of quiet before big drum roll and then bam everyone is supposed to come in together on a big cymbal crash—guitar, drums, bass and vocal.

The singer screams, “SAY IT TO MY FACE YOU FUCKING FAGGGGOTTT!!!!!”

And everyone stops playing and you all look at the singer kid.

And he says, “What?”

The band says, “Yeah, this isn’t going to work out.”

F250 + Dust Bunny City chapbook

My second novel, F250, with a limited run chapbook called Dust Bunny City … chapbook is free with purchase of book. $12

Recently my second novel came out. I’d describe it like this:

NOISE BAND; CAR CRASHES; WEIRD LOVE. 

Scott McClanahan, author of Crappalachia said: “Bud Smith is a great writer, F250 is full of Jager shots, blood, Bmw hatred and people with their faces ripped off.”

Ben Loory said, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day said, “Bud Smith is Nick Hornby if you strapped him to a Tesla coil and launched him into a Sun made of Poetry.”

Here’s the synopsis of F250: Lee Casey plays guitar in a noise band called Ottermeat, about to leave NJ, to try and make it in Los Angeles. For now, he’s squatting in a collapsing house, working as a stone mason, driving a jacked up pickup truck that he crashes into everything. As a close friend Ods in his sleep, Lee falls into a three-way relationship with two college girls, June Doom and K Neon. F250 is a novel equal parts about growing up, and being torn apart.

If you purchase a signed paperback of F250, I am including a free chapbook of poems called Dust Bunny City, about the time I took my wife day-drinking in NYC and encountered some strangeness. The poems are narrative, funny and bizarre.

Thank you!

some readings

Hey! I have a few readings coming up in support of my new novel F250. There’s one in NYC at the end of June and two more in California in the beginning of July, followed by 

June 24th 

Brooklyn, NY

Pacific Standard

82 fourth avenue

Park Slope 

A reading for Flapperhouse 

 

F-250 release parties in California 

July 7th

Stories Bookstore 

Los Angeles (echo park)

7pm 

with 

Ben Loory, author of Stories for the Nighttime and Some for the Day 

Brad Listi, host of Otherppl podcast 

Mira Gonzales, author of Selected Tweets (with Tao Lin)

Extie Exe, author Today I am a Book 

July 8th 

Gatsby’s Bookstore 

Long Beach, California 

7pm 

with 

Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune 

Janice Lee, author of Damnation 

Erin Parker, author of a forthcoming collection from Unknown Press 

Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day 

and Ashley Perez, editor at Midnight Breakfast 

August 1st-2nd

Small Press Festivus 

in Griffith, Illinois

 

Limited Print Run Zine ‘Dust Bunny City’

I have a limited run of 50 copies of a chapbook I made called ‘Dust Bunny City’. I’m signing them and sending them out for $5 with a dollar for shipping. Click on the button below to purchase through Paypal. Thank you!

(please put your address in the notes on the PayPal for shipping.)

PayPal

   

Metrocard

the stairs to

the electric train

covered with slime

and discarded

metro cards

stuck like the plastic

scales of a strange

metal animal

that slid through

these cheese grater

stainless steel turnstiles

then across the broken tiles

towards the dark tunnel

horn screaming

bright light eyes

snapping open

happened just a minute ago

I can still feel

the back draft wind

coming up the platform

I just missed it

when I slide

my card

the LCD says

‘Insufficient

Fare’

happens every time

I toss my card

into the slime

and get another

one.

‘The Good Life’ Not by Bud Smith

they have these posters on NYC subways now

corner of the car, over there where the cobwebs grow

Poetry in Motion the MTA calls it

it’s a real peaceful thing

better than Dr. Zizmore ads

anyway

middle of the day, coming

north from Far Rockaway

instead of staring at nothing

I look over in the far corner and try to read

a poster with ‘The Good Life’

by Tracy K. Smith

on it

there’s a guy sitting with his elbows
on his knees and he looks like
he’s eaten a junkyard dog
for lunch and he sees me looking
to the corner where he’s at
in the cobwebs and the flickering light

I’m looking past his shoulder
trying to read the Poetry
in Motion poster

a lady with a bag blocks my view
and I move my head

‘When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover’


elbow guy stills sees me looking over by him
sees me squinting

“You got a problem?” he says

I shake my head no, and I lean in a little closer


‘Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread’
 
 
“Wut you staring at me for?”
 
‘Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water’

 
“Get a good look, bitch.”

I can’t read the end of this
because elbow guy’s head is in the way
now that he’s turned his baseball cap
to the side

he stands up

“STILL LOOKING AT ME BRO?
 MEAN MUGGING ME, MOTHERFUCKER!”

he’s tall, scarred fists off hanging
hurray

I say, “Nah, move to the side, move out of the way.”

“WUT THE FUCK YOU SAY TO ME FAG?”

I stand up and scream, “I SAID MOVE OUT OF THE WAY!
I’M TRYING TO READ THAT SWEET FUCKING POEM
HANGING THERE BEHIND YOUR IGNORANT ASS!”

he turns, surprised
like … ah look at that
a beautiful poem
he faces the poster
like it’s the sun
and he reads it

I watch him mouth the words





‘From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.’
 

 
 
 
italics by Tracy K. Smith’s poem ‘The Good Life’ as seen on an MTA poster on the A train 

I Have Copies of F250

Hello, Hello

The other day a box of books showed up. Now I’d like to send you one. My new novel F250 is out. 

The novel is part Rock n roll, part love story, part hate story and part getting shot in a cannon over the Atlantic Ocean. 

I’m mailing signed copies of the novel if you are interested. 

Send $12 

to: budsmithwrites@gmail.com 

via PayPal 

any questions hit me up at budsmithwrites@gmail.com 

Much love

Bud 

  

F250 Release Parties

Hey! I have a few readings coming up in support of my new novel F250. There’s one in NYC at the end of June and two more in California in the beginning of July, followed by a two day lit fest near Chicago in Griffith, Illionis. 

Here’s a list of what’s going on. Would love to see you at any of these events or if you’re local to NYC, shout out to me at budsmithwrites@gmail.com 

  

June 24th 

Brooklyn, NY

Pacific Standard

82 fourth avenue 

Park Slope 

A reading for Flapperhouse 

  

 

F-250 release parties in California 

July 7th

Stories Bookstore 

Los Angeles (echo park)

7pm 

with 

Ben Loory, author of Stories for the Nighttime and Some for the Day 

Brad Listi, host of Otherppl podcast 

Mira Gonzales, author of Selected Tweets (with Tao Lin)

Extie Exe, author Today I am a Book 

  

July 8th 

Gatsby’s Bookstore 

Long Beach, California 

7pm 

with 

Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune 

Janice Lee, author of Damnation 

Erin Parker, author of a forthcoming collection from Unknown Press 

Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day 

and Ashley Perez, editor at Midnight Breakfast 

  

August 1st-2nd

Small Press Fest

in Griffith, Illinois

with 

Robert Vaughan, author of Addicts & Basemnets 

Joani Reese, author of Night Chorus 

Michelle McDannold, author of Stealing Midnight from a Handful of Days 

and others …

 

Jackhammering

I said hello to the Con Edison workers, they were pulling up on my block. I was leaving. It was 8pm. Even watched one drag an air hose across the street while I talked to one of the other guys about something that smelled good being cooked in one the apartments in the valley of buildings surrounding their work truck. 

“Tell you where it’s not coming from.”

I pointed at our window right above. 

Anyway, I got on the 1 train and took the subway up up up. Went out to a bar in the Bronx till about midnight. 

When I got back to my street, the Con Ed guys were still there and the block was a war zone. There were all these crazy high powered lights set up and two jack hammers going. Some emergency repair. 

I went in to our apartment and Rae was talking on the phone to a friend in California. She was yelling real loud into the phone to be louder than the jackhammers. Half way a scream, but a normal conversation. 

“YEAH MAYBE WE’LL GO TO THE BEACH THIS WEEKEND OR GO SEE THAT KILLER DINOSAUR MOVIE.”

I brushed my teeth. The noise clammored on. All lifeforms vibrating at the same frequency tonight, boy. This block anyway. We laughed about it (life), and went to bed, with the jackhammering going off right below the window. The high powered lights shining in our window. The hiss of the compressed air. The upheaval of the normal world. 

You live here long enough, nothing phases you.

At one am my wife lifted her head from her pillow. The noise had stopped. That’s what woke her. And she was talking in her sleep, she said: “Where do you think that smell is coming from? Someone’s cooking something good.”

From the Breakfast Nook

I’ve moved my computer into the kitchen. Probably it’s more like what you would call the breakfast nook, if I thought we had a breakfast nook here.

We live in a two bedroom apartment on the third floor of a pre-war building. The walls are very thick. I definitely appreciate that.

I’m writing in the breakfast nook at a yellow table facing the Hudson River. The Hudson is totally flat right now.

This beats where I used to write. My office is down the hall and I used to write in there. But there was no view of anything. Just the building across the street.

Today at 11 am I went for a walk. I bought a bag of onions from a guy who was hanging out under a shade tree on Broadway and 171st. He sold me a bag of carrots and four bananas and a clove of garlic. Package of mushrooms too. All of that for $4. When I came home I cooked a pan of asparagus and tomatoes (plus the things I just mentioned) on the stove and stood there at the stove. Added two eggs when it was mostly done. Ate lunch facing the river, of course.

Anyway that’s how the day goes by.

Sat in a chair by the window reading Cormac McCarthy and avoiding the things I should be doing on this sudden day I have with no work. What should I be doing?

1) Filling out the US Census that was sent here a month ago.

We get letters saying ‘IT’S THE LAW’

2) Writing an email to get my new novel F250 converted for Kindle

3) mailing in my card to get my yearly drug test for my job working construction

4) doing the dishes

5) Some things I don’t even remember

Right now I’m listening to the radio and drinking a cup of iced coffee. In a couple hours I’m taking a train up to the Bronx and reading a couple poems on 238th Street.

here’s one I’ll read

Fuck Ups
 


I’m not sure how to get to where you are

all I have is this room I’ve always had

sometimes it rains and the raindrops

hit the lake

outside the window and the fish come up

and kiss the spots where the rain

is hitting because they think the rain is mayflies

you’re where you are and you can’t get to me either

both me and you, we’re perfect we survive on mistaken rain

perfect.

That’s the state of things right now.