Nowhere Band News

Last night, I took a camera with me to the Derailleur practice/recording session, and took a bunch of pictures. Even in the unlikely event that you’re not a Derailleur fan, it might be worth taking a gander to see a bunch of Nowhere Band source material…

An illustration I threw together for a post of Rebecca’s; she saw a woman riding a bike in a fur cape, and how could I not draw it?

While I’m here, a quick status update: I was worried that Nowhere #26a was going to be late, but I’ve made a lot of progress. As long as things don’t go off the rails over the weekend, there should be a new comic on Monday. So, yeah, this is what we like to call “the tale of the false alarm.”

The MPR Nowhere Band profile ran earlier today.  My mind’s still sort of blown.  I guess I’ve arrived (and I guess I talk really fast– and Jesus, is my accent really that thick?). I loved hearing the story; when the Derailleur drumbeat kicked off, I just about started levitating… I love it that it closes with a very new (and very, very weird/sloppy) Derailleur track about Octopussy.

The other guy interviewed is Bill Tuomala, who runs the excellent Exiled on Main Street (both ‘zine and blog).  If you have time to spend online, his place is a good spot to spend it.

(my only regret with the story is that none of the clips from when Chris came to the Derailleur practice space and interviewed the rest of Derailleur made it into the final cut; but time limits are time limits)

Oh, and the next comic’ll be up by Wednesday.

After getting laughed at by Rebecca, I can’t bring myself to use the Item! Item! Item! format anymore.  So now we get em-dashes.

-I’m back from Miami (pictures here, if you’re into that), and finished my Uptown Girl Presents story while on the road.  Nowhere #20 is going really quickly, and should be posted by the end of the week.  Probably by the middle of the week, even.

-The latest word from MPR is that the Nowhere Band piece will run at the end of this week or early next.  I’ll post more when I know more, and believe me, I’ll be linking to the online archive of it.

-It occurred to me today that I never wrote anything about Jim Walsh’s Replacements book, All Over but the Shouting.   I really need to, because that book kicked off about as many trains of thought as the Schulz bio did.  But I’m tired and it’s late, so let’s consider Walsh and the Replacements as members of the “coming attractions” list.

As usual, I’m way better about working on comics offline and thinking, “hey, I should post this to the newsblog” than I am about actually posting things to the newsblog.  Which means that I have a backlog of news, and will be releasing actual comics before too long.

Item!  The McSweeney’s audiobook recording is done, and turned out to be a ton of fun to do.  I felt like a big weirdo, standing on the Washington Avenue Bridge with a recording setup, reading out loud about COBRA.  But hey, you gots to suffer for art.

When the audio download’s ready, I’ll link to it.

Item! Just this morning, I finished inking the guest story I’m doing for Bob Lipski’s Uptown Girl Presents. It’s not a Nowhere strip, but it’s very similar, and the Awesome Boys do make a cameo.  I’ll be traveling for the rest of the week, and finishing the digital part of that comic while I’m on the go (and I’m not sure when the comic would appear here, if ever– certainly not until after Bob’s book has actually been on the stands for a while), and then production will resume on Nowhere.  Strip #20 should be out and about by, say, March 15 (beware!).

Item! I spent a really fun hour and a half yesterday talking to Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Roberts about Nowhere Band (and, to some extent, Derailleur). It was a cool, cool session, and it sounds like the piece will air on this Friday’s Word of Mouth broadcast (naturally, I’ll be out of town for this).  Should also be available online, eventually, and I will of course post the appropriate links when they’re available.

OK, that’s it.

First off, some exciting news: the folks at McSweeney’s have asked me to do an audiobook version of Journal of a New COBRA Recruit; after all these years, I finally get to do some voice acting. I never even knew I wanted to do voice acting, but suddenly I’m stoked. So right on.

And it continues to be weird to me that the COBRA piece has such long legs. For something that popped into my head while I was at a stoplight on my bike 7 years ago, it really winds up opening a lot of doors.

Second, I just finished the David Michaelis biography of Charles Schulz. To which my final reaction is “huh.”

I can’t help but feel like this book was one hell of a missed opportunity, on a couple of levels. For one thing, Schulz’s family has been coming out of the woodwork to denounce the way their family life has been portrayed, and even just looking at page counts, it looks like they’ve got a case– if you compare the amount of the book devoted to Schulz’s (unhappy) first marriage to his (happy) second one (note that the narrative pretty much ends with Schulz’s second marriage, skipping ahead 30 years to his death!), or the amount of space devoted to his one extramarital affair versus the amount of space devoted to his kids, it starts to look like Michaelis had an editorial bent towards the negative in Schulz’s life. Which starts to cast doubts on the reliability of the whole enterprise.

I’m also sort of amused at the reaction, both on the part of Michaelis and by many readers, to the “shocking revelation” that Schulz dealt with insecurity and depression; even if it wasn’t always right there in the open in the comic strip (which it is), insecurity and depression are so common among creative people I know that I’ve just come to assume they’re part of the essential makeup (I have a hard time thinking of an artist I admire in any field who hasn’t dealt with some combination of depression, substance abuse, or suicide attempts: Vonnegut, Hemingway, Robbins, Cash, Tweedy, Westerberg, Thompson, you name it. Maybe Walt Kelly, although I don’t know too much about his personal life…).

I _did_ enjoy the book– the glimpse of life in the Twin Cities in the 20s-50s was cool (and it was a thrill, recognizing a bunch of addresses), and it is pretty interesting to go back and reread old Peanuts strips with an eye for what the real-world raw material for that strip might’ve been. But it should’ve been a masterpiece, and plainly wasn’t, and that’s too goddamned bad.

Next up: reading Jim Walsh’s oral history of the Replacements, which will pretty much inevitably have repercussions on Nowhere Band.

So, the Awesome Boys have finally played their first show, even if it’s just a wedding reception in Fergus Falls. I’m proud of them, and I can relate– both of the bands I’ve been in have done the rural wedding thing, and it’s always bun an interesting combination of fun and weird. I’ve also lived through the horrible equipment-pretzel that Josh suffers in the first panel, although never for three hours.

Despte being #19, this is actually the 20th Nowhere Band comic (9 stretched over two strips).  Arbitrary numbers are always good places to take a break, and in this case I actually have a god reason:  I’ve been asked to contribute a story for an anthology issue of Bob Lipski’s excellent Twin Cities comic institution Uptown Girl. It’s too cool an opportunity to pass up, so I’m going to spend a couple of weeks working on that, and then the Awesome Boys will return in March to deal with their new status as a working band.

The blog will stay more or less active during that time though; news may be brewing on other fronts.

Also:  I just found out that Best Buy now sells guitars.  Fairly nice ones.  What the hell?

Right.  So, here we are, talking about music and about a webcomic about music.  What better way to start it off than some music?  If you’re inclined, here’s an iTunes-formatted version of me, using my home instruments and Garage Band to assault Bowie’s “Modern Love.“  So at least you know where I’m coming from.

I’m not sure how often it’ll happen, but right now the plan is to post links to songs here from time to time, as they become available.  It’s even possible that some Awesome Boys songs may crss over.  “Girls are Greasy” will see the light of day!