John, I end every conversation with a question from the person I'm speaking with. Yours was, yours was interesting. your question is we're in for four years of markets responding to things posted on social media by political actors. What long positions will give the highest yields in such a volatile environment? Hi, everyone. And welcome to The Thing We Never Talk About, a podcast about personal finance for weirdos. My name is Tim Iseler.
I'm a certified financial planner, and I run my own independent financial advisory business in Durham NC. But before that, I spent 18 years in the music industry, working as an audio engineer in both recording studios and touring with bands. This show, like my business, is for people who chose their professional paths based on following a passion or a dream. That includes artists, musicians.
Authors, podcasters, roadies, and really anyone who decided to turn a skill or a talent into a career rather than pursue more conventional, air quotes, normal career paths. And listen, there's nothing wrong with normal. The world needs normal people doing normal things, but it also needs weirdos and those people need ways to talk and learn about the most forbidden topic of all.
Money, the thing we never talk about aims to bring some of those ideas and conversations into a public space to help people who feel out of step with the mainstream, make better decisions with their money. And everyone says I should do this. So I'll say it right here, please like, and subscribe to this podcast on your platform of choice. Today on the podcast, I'm talking with musician and author, John Darnielle.
I toured with John's band, The Mountain Goats, in 2015 when I filled in for their long time audio engineer, Brandon Eggleston, I honestly didn't know what to expect when I agreed to that tour, but I really enjoyed the experience of working with them, and the band had a lot of experience. Interesting team building rituals, like always stopping to have breakfast together on the road or making tour specific merch just for the band and crew, which really never happens.
That really created a nice sense of camaraderie. John is also an author, having written three excellent and strange novels and a nonfiction book for the 33 and a third series on Black Sabbath's. Master of reality. John shares a lot of perspective on the relationship between making art, money and career in this conversation. So let's get to it. Hi, John. Thanks for being here.
My pleasure. How are you?
I'm doing very well, thank you very much. Yeah,
And This is a context reliant question. It's like, it depends on who's asking, but I will, I either say that I'm a musician or an entertainer, or I'm a musician and I write books, right, is, is one of the, one of the things I say, one of those two, I make music for a living sometimes, it, it depends, the thing is, it's never a comfortable conversation if they don't already know who I am, right, because that just sort of, with most people, so what do you do for a living? Oh, I teach. Where?
Oh, I teach at Duke. the end, right? Maybe somebody will say in what department, you know, but if you, if you probably in any self employment situation, but certainly in a creative one, There's no way of getting out of that conversation, without spending five or ten minutes explaining what your, what the shape of your life is, which is fine. but, but it's what it is. It's like how you open it sort of determines what you're going to say.
But I say I make music for a living and I write, I also write books.
I found it was always one of my uncles who would ask me, So you work for anyone famous? And it's like, oh no, you don't know. You
I've told cab drivers who are like trying to, they keep asking, do you play locally? I say, no, no, I'm kind of a rock star. It's like, yeah, no, you haven't heard of me, but that's what I do.
so I toured with your band, The Mountain Goats. Uh, it's shocking to me that it's ten years ago now, but I filled in. Filled in for your long time engineer, Brandon Eggleston.
Where all did we go? We went to Texas, I think at one point.
started in Denver and went over to Seattle and down the coast, and we did end in Texas. We ended in Austin at,, what's that place called where they do ACL moody theater. Is that right?
Moody. Yeah. That was the time we had the moody. That's right.
Yeah. And at that time, leading up to the tour, your booking agent told me that Every album cycle you did was bigger than the last one. So even though it was not a huge tour, like you were able to kind of a slow and steady build this career that was really powerful.
Yes.
even then it seemed powerful to me. And now it seems more so,
Yes. We're approaching total power.
Approaching total power. the first question I'd like to ask is what gave you the drive or the confidence to stick with it over the 30 plus years that you've been going?
Well, as with my other answer, I think mine is idiosyncratic. It's like, there's a, I feel like there's a, there's an expectation of that, that like, that I had this drive to begin with. Right. And it's not true. I had a day job, for the first. 12 years of me doing this, right? And, and I only left it sort of by accident. We moved and I said, when we moved, I had made enough the previous year to say that I had made more of making music than I had making very low wages in Iowa, right?
And I said, well, I will try to make a go of this for the next couple of years and see how that goes. And if it doesn't work out, I'll figure out a day job situation. But it like, it was a good time in our lives for me to test it. And I didn't make a whole lot of money at all for the next couple of years. and in fact, this is a famous story for me.
On the Get Lonely Tour, so this would be three years after, like I've been, I've been trying it for three years as my day job, famously for me in Springfield, Miss, Springfield, Missouri. No, somewhere in Missouri. We're in a days in that didn't feel safe. the hotel is like a very, very cheap days in. and I was downloading applications to nursing school. I was, I was done, right? And, and I did. I downloaded several applications in several places, and I was going to go back to school and stuff.
So I, so I don't, my story is not one of saying, by God, I'm going to do this for a living. It's not that. It opened up as a potential career path when I was about 34. Right.
And I had done a lot of things before and, and then we started hitting the road super hard, you know, it's like, then we, then we really, and I discovered that it was a way that you could make a living, you know, to contribute to your, your half of, of a two person household income, you know, and, and kept at it in part because it's very rewarding work, you know, it's, it's good, it agrees with my childhood image of what I might be doing for a living, you know, and then the other thing is,
though, I think it would have been like a couple of years later, I ran into Scott Solter in a dressing room in Charlotte, and he said, Oh, are you unemployable yet? And I said, What? He says, Well, after a certain number of years without working a day job, you have nothing of value above an applicant who's never had a job, right? So you are unemployable, right? And. You hit unemployable, I think about five years. That's what you just sort of go.
Well, it's not so much persistence as knowing it's like, this is the lot in life you have chosen now.
was success for you at that point? What is it? Just like, I can pay the bills, I'm, I'm a success. Or was it,
Well, success is not a word I have really, I, I, I success is I think like a lot of people of my generation, but also artsy types, especially like I'm leery of a word like success. You know, what is success? Success is when I, I hope, you know, I intend to write a poem today and I get one in draft, that's a success. success in terms of like becoming financially stable.
I've never thought much about, you know, that's a luxury in some, some ways of thinking, but it's just since I was a child, I don't, you know, when I think of success, I think of personal fulfillment, you know, and that. Although you need your basic, you need a roof over your head and you need food and you need clothes, right?
But beyond that, I, I've never thought much about material success, about reaching more people, that's never been anything I think about, you know, that's what booking agents and managers think about, right? as you say, you heard it from my booking agents, that we were bigger, I mean, that was not something I noticed until it had been the case for like seven years.
I say, oh, wow, no, it's playing bigger rooms even still, you know, But we used to be so fiercely loyal to the rooms that we played that it would become like, you know, the rooms were happy to go, we'll do three nights and it'd be like, this is no longer a comfortable room for us or for you or for the fans, but we would stick it out forever. No, that's our home. That's where we go.
You know, we were sort of, you know, thinking in terms of growth is sort of anathema both to the indie mindset I come from and to me a little in terms of like growth in the business sense, because I don't, and I know You know, sometimes this is somewhat healthy and somewhat not healthy, but but you want to protect. If you do something like this, you want to protect it from too much business thought, you know,
Yeah.
thought is necessary for how we live our lives. Right. But it is not the second. It becomes primary over what you're doing. You are hosed, right? It's like that you are betraying your craft for your own wellbeing. And that's not what I want to be doing. And it's like at the end of my life, if I die impoverished, I still want my inner five year old to say, well, you still only did stuff you wanted to do. You know, you still only made the art that you wanted to make and still.
kept your focus on what was important to you about that stuff. So that's what I think of in terms of success. But in terms of material success, after we started touring, I always, I, my, my part wanted to be holding up my half of the house. I mean, this is like, and this is rooted in some, you know, gender, societal genders, but I want to be making as much as my wife makes is what it was true back then. You know, it's like, I don't want to be the husband who's, who's, you know, touring.
And having fun, you can't, the audience can't see I'm putting quotes about that because touring is touring. But it's thought of by most people as a really fun way to live, right? So, so yeah, so I'm seeing the world and I'm going out there. And if I'm not bringing home as much money as the other person paying the bills, then I do not feel successful. Right? That's me.
Uhhuh. do you think? obviously it's speculative, but if you did, let's say you did submit some of those nursing school applications and music wasn't the thing, do you think you'd still be doing it or do you think it would've like left your life?
It's hard to say. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, people think because I write so much that it's a compulsion, but it's not. there's a time before I did this, you know, and there will probably be a time after. Although not entirely after. I mean, I suspect I'll always be pecking away writing songs. Because it's a skill set I have. You know, it's an enjoyable thing to do. Right? And so, so I don't imagine I'll stop writing songs, but as to making records, yeah, I think I will.
and You know, and actually that's not not in the distant future either. I'm starting at my station in life. So, you know, I can see a me who's the thing is that version of me still writes books, which, you know, because I wanted to be an author, even before I wanted to be a musician. And authors never quit. They just write and write and write. Very rare. They do once in a while. I'm trying to think of who, I think Philip Roth announced when he'd written his last novel and said, I'm done.
This is it. You know, and I think sometimes they do. But, but for the most part, most novelists always feel they have more ground to explore, you know? and so musicians, I don't think ever usually reach that point. Yeah. so, so I'd go into a nursing school, I think I'd be doing something.
It would probably be a lot weirder, is the thing, is like, I do think that what I do responds, well I know it does, it responds to the approval that I get from the people I play for, right, you know, which is in terms of applause and attendance, right, just when you know you are playing a bigger room, then you know that you have reached more people, you know, so for some people, then they react by trying to absolutely yeah, make that happen at an exponential pace.
That's not me, but as the audience expands and I learn as a musician, which is a form of communication, like what, what reaches all the people who are already in the room, you know, I get a little better at that. If I wasn't thinking so much about those people, about what's, how's this going to play in a, in a 2000 capacity room. If I was just making stuff for myself, it would probably, a lot of it would be.
Pretty unappealing to most people, like the first tape, you know, most people will never like the first tape, but I like the first tape, you know, because it's extremely bizarre, you know, and like, and stuff like that really appeals to me, but you don't have leeway to do that anymore. Once you employ seven people.
and it's your bread and butter, then, you know, and the thing is, it's, it sucks to say that because there are people in the fan base who go, God, I missed the weird stuff, you know, why can't he just do that anymore? and, you know, it's because that's become part of your, your calculations. Like I make plenty of weird stuff around the house and it doesn't get out, you know, because, because we exist inside a business now.
And whereas the Mountain Goods early, the Mountain Goods for 10 years was not a business in any real sense of the word.
Is there room for any of that? Like, I'm sure your fan base is big enough that if you had, even if these were like the, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use air quotes now, the quote unquote weird records. Like, I'm just gonna release my weird record. We don't have to tour it. It doesn't really even have to be a band record.
Well, the space for that is social media, right? I do it all the time. I did it yesterday. You put up song that is funny and it took literally 30 seconds to write. And then half the people go, you gotta put this on your next album. You're like, no, that's not what the album's really for. This is the space for that. And this is stuff that I like to think about is context specific weirdness, right?
If you make an album of that kind of stuff, most people can't I know from the sales of the early albums, most people can't really lock into that, but in the space of social media, lots of people can and can enjoy it. You know, it doesn't belong at a concert, it doesn't belong on a record, but it's a fucking blast on blue sky, right? Or wherever. so, you know, that's one good of the internet is that it has opened up spaces where I could do that on Instagram. I could do that on YouTube.
You know, if I If I felt like hanging around with, you know, on, on Twitter, I could do it on Twitter, but I do not like that at all. but yeah, that's, that's where you can do that. You know?
And SoundCloud, you know, I, I, there's actually a fair number of musicians using the electronic field who just upload sort of their ideas to SoundCloud, little, little blips, and I can see myself doing that actually, you know, until I die, to be honest, it's like I can, like, I don't love the visual architecture of SoundCloud, but, but I can imagine that.
But I also do imagine stopping, because, you know, because life is, because the shape of life is really impossible to understand from this side of it, but, you know, what does the me who doesn't do this look like? I don't know, because I've been doing this since I was 24.
Yeah, of course. mentioned a minute ago your, your sort of historical indie rock mindset. and there's a lot of, well, you're a little older than me, but you know, I'm, I'm. in the sense that I saw in the late 90s and 2000s the indie rock bands that were fairly small and fairly weird have this moment where they could make some money and, you know, maybe buy a house and, you know, maybe not get rich, but do okay. what I've noticed is.
a lot of people that I know, a lot of musicians that I know, there's this sort of idea that the music industry is fucked and Spotify pays you peanuts and you just can't make it anymore. then an example like the Mountain Goats where you're able to record tour in a way that supports. Everybody involved, both, you know, their personal, preferences or limitations, and then also financially. how do you, how do you explain that? Can you explain that? Why do you think it works?
I mean, that is a really complicated question, and I always say the mountain goats are not a good example of anything, you know, in part because, You know, I used to talk to a lot of people who were saying, I got to make it. I would be like, well, you have to stop thinking about making it. It's like you have to work a day job that you care about, you know? And then if you make enough money, then take it. And that's what I did.
I did not take the leap until the money looked like, OK, well, now this is doable. I did not. I cannot comprehend the mindset of I'm going to make this my job, even though no one is. from the gate even going to offer me enough to make rent. It's just like not, that's alien to my way of thinking. I can't make something my job unless it's going to pay my rent.
And so, but, but the way we have done it, the way I would describe it, if I were to, if I, you know, it's slow growth, very slow growth, right? Not prioritizing growth, not, not, Prioritizing anything. I mean, it's, you know, the late Steve Albini would have talked in the same way. It's like, if your band gets bigger because more people like your music, that's great. When I talk about not doing the weird stuff anymore, it does not mean that the stuff I'm doing is stuff I don't believe in.
It just means that that's where I wound up, that's where the growth that takes place between the audience and the artist, which is a sacred space. Like, you make the music that, that they seem, you know, to really Like, and then you sort of have this, this balance you do where it's like, well, I'm going to grow in this direction while not everybody comes with you, you know, some people go, I sound weird anyways, anybody like that's, hey, that's what it is.
There's a million bands in my cat in my record collection is like, yeah, no, I. I checked out about here. I can name them, but I think they'll be employed. But, but, but like I, it is, it's part of the cycle of any growth of any artists as they, as they grow and change priorities.
but the way we have done it is like always prioritizing, only prioritizing what we do in terms of one, the music we're making, and two, our relationship to the audience at large, which is hard to quantify, you know, it's like, it's something you feel in the air at the shows, you know, it's something you, and it's synergistic to use a, uh, you know, a techie sort of word is like, it's something that, that you, you sense and into it and you feel, and it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean that they like
all the songs that you're going to say, I could name the songs for you that we still play at the set where they always like, okay, now they're going to do the one that they like. It takes them 10 minutes, right? Like, yeah, but they're with us on that. They come, the audience. is in the journey, you know, so that when the, when that comes out, it comes out at the end and we're playing the songs that are better known to everybody. It's not just, okay, now here's the one you like.
It's like, it has gotten there. Right. now that for us has been a successful business strategy precisely because, I've always been ready to, to work a straight job. Right. you know, I'd go work a straight job today if I have to, you know, it's like, or I'd write books and Or, or beg a college to, to, to let me teach. but the, but the thing is you're talking about younger musicians. I, it, my heart hurts for how the industry.
doesn't have space for somebody who doesn't want to be thinking about their career for minute one. Like, I grew because I didn't have to think about career and my growth at all, right? Part of that is because I had nursing training. I had a day job. But the other part is that the industry had these pockets where small profitability would give you the reward, you know, like second seven inch Tim Adams wrote me a check for like a thousand dollars after it sold out. The first pressing of 500.
I thought I was going to die, man. It took me a long time to make a thousand. Are you joking? It's like, that was a lot of money. and, you know, well now. If you press up 507 inches and nobody has heard of you, those are going to be very hard to move, right? And you can't get them, people to pay for it online, and you can do a patronage model, but that's a very And patronage is very bizarre to me, because it's asking Well, because it prioritizes a parasocial kind of thing. You support me, right?
Whereas I think of art as work, I don't think you should have to even have a particularly favorable opinion of me. We're only asking about a thing that I made. If that involves you having nice feelings about me, those are projections. That has nothing really to do with me. You know, it's like, we're talking about, I made a bowl.
If the bowl is useful for you to drink from, then do that, you know, but, but, but patronage is a model that asks you to be invested in me, which I think is not, I think really at the end of the day, that's very unhealthy, you know, probably both from a. From a macro standpoint of how economics work, but also from a personal standpoint is like to be too invested in an icon is, is not, it's not good for the icon or for the worshiper. Right. So, this is something going on all day.
So I always jump in if you need to, but, but yeah, so, so I don't know what is possible. The one thing I do know, and this is like, and it's what I do tell people, is, uh, what my friend Ben Harper, who was getting famous when we were both, Our careers were both going to start at the same time. I've known him since, he was, since we were kids. But he was going, he was signing to a major label. He was on his way up. I was like, I would have spit in a major label's face if it had come to me.
I was like, I was going to be weird and small, but, but my, but still it was growing. And he, I ran into him in the alley in Claremont and, the alley between, what was that? Cafe called between Suncrust Bakery and Nick's and he and he says, how you doing? I said wait, you know, it's actually stuff is going on with me musically. I'm actually traveling to play music. It's wild, you know How are you? Yeah, it's good. You know, so you just oh, yeah.
No, I'm making Records, I made a whole album and he said and he said yeah No As as long as it's better live than the music you're live than on the record you're and you're in the right place Now, to me, this was like a pretty broad proclamation as we were both fairly young, but it stuck with me for 40 years now, right, that like, I think it's a good way of thinking about making music, that you should make great records, but what you bring to the live arena should be so special that people, when
they see it, say, I can't get that elsewhere,
Hmm.
I think that is absolutely. Categorically true of Mountain Goat shows, whether we're playing solo or in any formation, you can't get what we do from anybody else. Live, right? if you make a record that's so special you can't get anyplace else, I don't even think you can, right?
It's like there's this too, there's too broad a selection and so much stuff happens in the studio, but live, there is an essence, a flavor, something spiritual, that happens if you've put enough into what you're doing, right? And, and if you've developed something between yourself and the audience. And, And that's what I would say, you know, I think that is the only way you can grow as an artist that eventually forms the kind of bond I'm talking about between artist and audience.
If, if the property that you bring is, can't be confused with anybody else's and, and delivers some needed quality, right? Then, then that, that need won't, won't go away. It's not trendy. It's, it's something people need from art.
Yeah, I think about that a lot in terms of, like you mentioned, young people now, young musicians, how there's this pressure to think of it as a career right away, and I think there's a huge pressure to think of yourself as a brand right away. Even if you're not a creative, just if you're on social media, you're like, you're creating your personal brand. The algorithm rewards what everyone else likes. It doesn't reward you thinking independently and being apart from the herd.
It everybody being in the same herd,
Yeah, this is why I say my heart hurts about is like that is so much pressure if you're 16 or 17 and you already you're like your ego is in that growth phase, you know, you are going to respond to that sort of environment in a way, I mean, one, when you get the positive reinforcement, it's going to feel like a million billion bucks, right?
You won't, it takes a long time to learn, you know, this important rule that, you know, If you believe the person who says you're a genius, you're going to have to also believe the person who says you completely suck on every level. It's like, you can't, you know, have to navigate that stuff and it's harder to navigate when you are younger. And, and the milieu of social media means unless you are extraordinarily good about.
not reading your replies, which most people are not, you're gonna wind up drowning that. Although it's my understanding that the weather station, whose record I was listening to this morning, is really being very, pretty diligent about not, about avoiding the whole environment, which, which may speak to why she has made such an outstanding record this year. It's like, you know, the record comes from a place of real engagement.
I want to switch gears and dive into your fiction work. So, I read Wolf in White Van because, I think I knew you. I definitely knew you when I read it. I don't know if you, it came out before I met you, but I was completely floored. I've known people who are musicians who write books, and it wasn't just that you wrote a good first book.
You wrote a really unique book that, it's, it's not like it was weird in the sense of it didn't exist in a world I couldn't understand, but it was so different than what I expected. And I guess the first thing I really wondered is as the first book that you published, how much were you writing fiction before that came out? Or, or was that genuinely your first attempt at a novel.
At a novel, yes. but I, I wrote fiction from the time I was very young. I wrote a story, when I was Six, I think like this is my origin story as a fiction writer, although I had done stuff before in little comic books, I would make with rubber stamps and put captions on them and stuff when I was very tiny.
And I remember those two, but, but I wrote a story called the magic bugle when I was five or six and my mom, like, I just, there was a typewriter in the house and I put a piece of stationery that had a Jaguar on it or a cheetah. I liked the look of the piece of stationery. So I mean, I don't remember the thought process that went into, I guess I'll write a story, but I, Probably just I'm playing with the typewriter. What do you do?
You type and, you know, and, and so I typed a sentence, my mom read it and sent it to my father. They were divorced. but my father taught English and my dad was one of my fondest memories. my, my dad went out of his mind about how good my sentences were. he, he, he would read the story or the first sentence. Of the story to his freshman comp classes at Cal Poly and would tell them very sententiously. Now, if you, if you write a sentence that good, you've got your B, right?
And so, once a bugle stood in the window of a store that sold brass goods, right? I was six years old. I mean, you can do this math. I don't get to be with my dad anymore, and I love my dad, and my dad goes ape about this sentence, right? So a love of sentences probably dates to there. and the, the sentence is the level at which I write. I wrote short stories for a long time. I stopped writing short stories and started writing poems when I was about 14. But one of my short stories.
got honorable mention in Literary Cavalcade, which was this national contest that when our teacher, the sainted Rosemary Adam, with whom we wouldn't be having this conversation at all, she entered us in her creative writing class, manuscript, it was called manuscript writing for publication and she entered everything in contests and she would say, okay, people, it's the Cal Poly contest.
One of us usually wins this, so do submit, you know, and she meant like my class wins this and when the Cavalcade came up, she said, Okay people, Literary Cavalcade is coming. I really want to encourage you, but we never do win. I will say we don't win this one. And I was like, I was 14 and pretty arrogant at this point. So I wrote a story and it got honorable mention, which I was like so proud. It's like, yeah, Rosemary, nobody else gives you this, but I give you this.
And so, so I was very proud, but after that I went to poetry. I won some poetry contests with poems that are absolutely appallingly bad. and I still did the occasional fiction, but I listed into poetry and from poetry into songs. Right. But I had a fiction. Fiction had been what I had wanted to do first, right? And when 33 and a third asked me why I wasn't pitching them as the rest of, cause I wrote music journalism. I wrote for New Times and a bunch of places.
And, David Barker wrote and said, Hey, all your friends pitch books every year. You're not pitching. I was like, I don't know. I'm busy. So we should pitch. And so I did. and it was accepted and I wrote Master of Reality and Chris Paris Lamb, my agent, read that and said, I'm a fan of your music. I didn't know you could write books. Would you like to sign a contract with my agency? No obligation whatsoever to ever send me anything, but if you do, I'll shop it around, right?
I had already started writing something right after I turned in Master of Reality because I had enjoyed the feeling of finishing a book. It had been sort of something that had been, not a goal, but You know, what if you did idea and it felt really good. And so, so I started writing the day I turned in Master of Reality and then it took shape after that. That was Wolf in White Van. I'd started work on it. It looked very different at first.
I didn't get the idea to tell it backwards until I'd been working on it for several years.
I don't know much about the literary world. so obviously the agent reached out to you, which is huge and seems kind of unheard of. How much did you feel like you needed to have ready before you shared it?
Oh, this is the thing. This is the thing. I didn't, I didn't send it to him. I think I was chipping away at it from time to time. I was touring all the time, six, seven months a year. It was not a priority. I had a job. My job was to tour and support the people in my organization, you know, and so I wasn't, I wasn't about to say, I'm going to go hole up in a cabin for six months and write a book. I don't. You know, that would be leaving people out in the cold. That's not what I do.
so I was chipping away when I could and Chris wrote, I mean, I want to say five or six years after this. I didn't think about this contract. I got in a contract. I was like, yeah, if I ever finish a book, I'll send it to you. It was not a goal, but he, he wrote and said, Hey, it's Chris. if you. If you had six chapters or so, I could show them around and maybe get you an advance that would allow you to take long enough off tour to finish your book if you wanted.
And I said, yeah, let me see what I can do. And I took the six of the files I had, which were all over the place. I grabbed a big section, the first six chapters, and I said, okay, get these into shape. And I sent them and he sold them. And so they went to auction and Or not, not auction. He sent them out, to six publishers, four of them bid, and, and we took for ourselves in a row.
So, but yeah, it was, like, it was, it was not, the thing is, this is the, in terms of wanting young people to, to do things, like, this is sort of like saying, well, hope that something magical happens, you know, but the magical thing happened because I was working all the time, right? And making my work known, right? I was not, you know, I wasn't sitting around dithering.
I was making sure that the thing I was working on would be quite polished when it was done, whether anybody ever saw it or not. Right. and so, yeah, so I had a person encouraging me to basically get the work in front of the people who think about it from business end.
So how different are the economics of, you know, making a record, releasing a record compared to making a, a book and releasing a book
the economics,
or, or just like the, the process in terms of an advance or, you know,
they both operate on an advanced recoup model in book world. I think recouping is extraordinarily rare. I think, I think most of the big names. are paying for the publishers to put out books that they believe in, that they hope someday find their readership, right? But then names like Stephen King, you know, whoever published Stephen King can make enough money off a Stephen King book to support other writers to give them an advance that lets them finish their book.
The book industry is, you know, has that kind of benevolence in it. There's a lot of people thinking about the health of literature. There's other people thinking about other things in there too. It's like, it's not a benevolent industry. But there are a lot of people in it who are thinking about that sort of thing. What books do they want to see in the world? What do they want to see on shelves, on racks? Music business has less of that just because it's smaller now. But labels like Merge.
Merge is putting records out into the world that they want to see in there. That they like, you know. And they're supporting the lives of musicians. It's important stuff.
But with a book it really is, it's the case that if you get an advance, Unless you're a certain type of writer, you can't say when you're going to finish your book, you know, I mean, There's every writer going, I do a thousand words a day, and when I have 50, 000 of them, I'm done, and then I'll revise, you know, You don't know where it's going to go, you don't, a book, I really, I talk to the writers about this, I think, The more time you can afford to give a book, the more likely you are to
get the book you want. You know, Wolf in White Van. had the luxury of like a seven year incubation, right? And, and that means that the original draft, it was going nowhere. It didn't have any structure at all. It was just prose. I mean, it had structure, it had sentence structure. It told stories, but they weren't sequential. I didn't know what was, how it was going to work.
I was just telling these stories, you know, a bunch of scenes that didn't wind up in the book or in there, the character was fairly different, but, but. But to write and revise and throw away is, is such a big part of writing a book. It's like making a sculpture, you know, you're, you're, you have this big rock of an idea and all the words, literally every word in that you are able.
To type in your brain, and you're trying to chip away at that giant stone until you find the shape of the book, right? And you get to do that over and over and over again. With an album, you only have that luxury in the 70s. It's like, otherwise, you get your idea for an album, you write it, you record it. Very few people throw away whole album ideas. Very few people go into the studio, record something, and say, you know, I don't, that's not it. Let me, let me try again.
You know, you hear stories about it. Axel got to do that for years. But, I mean, the thing is like, I think that's glorious. You know, it'd be amazing to do, to have a month to record an album and go, we did all 12 songs in the first week. And then the third week we listened to those, we didn't love them. So we did them again. You know, an album doesn't work that an album is very gestural.
An album is what you were able to make of the material you wrote during the week you were, could afford to record it. So.
how much, if at all, do you plan for extra songs when you go into the studio knowing, you know, one or two of these might not work out?
I don't think that much about it usually, I, I just bring in, I mean, I, I have the ones in my head that I'll think, this could be true in band dynamics where somebody will go, you know, I'll say, look, I don't think this one's going to happen and somebody else will say, I don't know. I kind of like that one. You'll be like, yeah, no, it's on the chopping blocks. Well, let's do it.
And they'll always be very mild with me because the singer type guy will, will can get reactionary if you, if you argue. So, you know, let's give it a shot if we can, you know, and then on day five, Hey, we never got to that one and we have space this morning. Can we give it a try? And you know that what they actually mean is. this is my chance to get John to do the song he doesn't believe in, you know?
So, because those songs can wind up actually being really big numbers, ones that people like a lot, you know? Because the ones that are the chopping block for me are usually the ones that are most obvious, you know? Like, oh, a famous example in that zone is that I intended to fix the chorus of this year, right? To me, one line that has no rhyme was not enough, right? So I brought it in, and I was going to fix it.
And Peter said, I mean, you can do what you want, but, it seems pretty good the way it is. And I knew he was like, he means don't do this, but I, he, I know he also would have also meant like, well, maybe he'll do something really good, you know, who knows, but, but to me, it was too obvious and kind of too blunt. And plain, well, the years have proven me wrong on this. It was just right for that song. but yeah, but the thing is those, those decisions you get.
In the indie rock world, you have seven to 10 days to make your final call on those decisions. And then you were done. Right. So it's like, then it will be then that's what makes the album.
How easy is it for you, or maybe it was not easy and now it's easier, when something like that comes up? Because I could imagine if you're feeling like something's on the chopping block. It can be a little hard to put your heart into it because you're already sort of,
This plays into something we haven't talked about, which is my work ethic. And it's like, if you are bothering to sing a song, you just give it everything you got. You sing it as if you loved it. That's not hard to do, right? That's not, if you are a performer of any rank at all, you don't have to believe in, you don't, that shouldn't enter into it, right? There's a romantic conception of a singer, it's like he has to be feeling it while he sings.
But we know that this is like childlike thinking, right? A singer doesn't have to feel anything when they sing. They can. You can feel many things. But it might be something completely different from what the audience is experiencing. The notion that you have to be feeling the thing you're emoting. Come on, man. Judy Garland playing 300 shows a year. You think that she really is feeling the same thing every time she sings it? No. She's thinking, I have 30 minutes left on this.
But her craft is so great that, and I'm sure that she's engaging at multiple points in the song, Springsteen, whoever else you got, is like, yes, they have many feelings while they're performing. Emotional engagement is part of it, right? But it is craft, right? You can put, you can, you can act that, and it's acting really essentially, is like you inhabit it. You're there for the moment. Is that you?
Put scare quotes around Y. O. U. Yes and no. It's, it's a version of you that you are performing, right? And it's the, you know, that's a very long conversation about the nature of that because that's what writing is too. It's like, it's putting on a mask, but it's a mask that sticks to your skin and it looks so much like you when you do it. that whether it really is you in the end, vital analysis is another question.
But, but it doesn't stop you from saying, if you tell me this is a good song that I wrote and I'm not really fully feeling it, I'll, I'll, I'll give it my best and I'll probably wind up agreeing with you because you're hearing something that I'm not. Maybe, maybe it's that the song is too intimate or too close to the bone and I'm just, you know, and I'm recoiling from it and putting distance between it and me. There's a number of reasons you might have that response.
yeah, gosh. I love that phrase you used of like you're wearing a mask that looks like your skin or whatever.
Like most good ideas, it probably comes from the twilight zone.
John, what are one or two things that you wish more musicians knew about money? And then one or two things you wish more authors knew about money?
I mean, I think, I don't know if this is about money, but I have a shtick. I have a thing that people have heard me say over and over, that to make art is labor, right? And you deserve to be paid for your labor. Now, it's different from other labor insofar as you might do it for nobody. You might just do it because it's a pleasure. It's still labor. That's unpaid labor that you've chosen to do for the sheer pleasure of it. Like gardening. Gardening is labor, right?
but you don't get paid to grow a garden in the backyard, but you do because The fruit grows, the flowers bloom, and that's your payment, right? But, but thinking of art as just this magic space that isn't work, like divorcing it from the concept of labor, is, is really how they get you. It's like, it's like, it's the way that the people who hold the purse strings, You know, think of artists to say, Oh, they're going to do this. Anyway, you know, they're going to, they're going to do it.
They can't help themselves. Right. they wouldn't have it any other way. They say all these things right about they, they, they conceive of this labor space where it's their job to exploit the labor for capital rather than. The job of the workers. But of course we, as the workers don't want to think that we're exploiting our stuff because that's gross, right? And it is right. There's another world that would be possible if money didn't exist, right?
If everybody's needs were met, art would be very different, you know? but, but within the sort of economies that we travel in, it is good to think of your work as labor, to be thinking of it every time when you wrote a song, I worked today, I clocked in. And I did some work. That's why you're collected. What you're collected works is what you issue at the end of your life, right? It's like not your collected fun times. You're collected work. and, oh, there's one other. There's a line.
And then when I got from Salter, it's more like a, you can tease it out the meaning of it, but like, you know, it's not the music friends. It's the music business, right? So you gotta remember, it is a business, and if you're not thinking about business, other people are. Right? In my world, I have a manager, and I strongly prefer not to be thinking about business. I don't like business. I don't, it's not my thing. You know, it's like, I like to try to think about matters of the heart and mind.
Right? And those often feel incompatible. with thinking about the business end. Cause I was talking about it. More people liking my work does not mean that I'm writing in the hopes of getting more of them, right. You know, but if you start thinking too much about business, then you will do that. You will go, how could I make this chorus make more money to me? That's anathema. I can't do that. People who do do that, God bless them. May they have all the success they desire.
but for me, there is something sacred and holy in the connection to art that, that I w I want to protect from business. Thoughts, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be thinking about the business end of your, of your deal, you know, because if there is a business end to it, if you're not thinking about it, then it'll wither, you know, or go, or go haywire. You have to think of it as labor. What was the second question?
Oh, just the same thing, but for writing,
Oh, for books. I don't really know. I mean, actually, I, I can't speak too much. You, you publish books so seldom unless you're, you know, a book every year guy, you know, but, but. understanding the scope of the work. I would say that the most important thing is this is not a business thing.
It's like, this is like, the book is so important to me that if you're putting anything out ahead of it, deadlines, commercial viability, you know, I mean, I feel this way about records too probably, but I don't think about it because I sort of make records. I'm so in that zone. I don't really do much meta thinking about it. But with the book is like, if it takes 20 years to write, then it takes 20 years to write. Nothing, nothing should be ahead of it.
The fact that Your contract specifies that you deliver it 19 years ago and you're 19 years late. It's what it is, you know, it's like, and I deliver stuff on deadline, generally speaking, or at least until fairly recently, but, but, but a book to make a book is to make something that, that asserts itself as something that deserves to exist in the world. You know, it's like, it's, it's an arrogant thing to do, to make a book. If you're going to do something arrogant, then.
You should be standing behind it, right? And that, that means putting nothing in front of it. and that's why actually writing books is not really financially a good choice unless you're willing to betray this ideal. Because like, you know, because you're going to get your advance, but then if you calculate over time what your advance was since it took you seven years to finish the book, it won't, it's not that much money.
but, but, but to me, With a book, you really, you will be happiest with the book if you make the book you want to make
That's
and that's going to matter more is the thing I don't care how much money. I don't care if you sell it to the movies. If you're unhappy with your book, you'll know it. You and your heart will know it. So we're happy with your book, you know, your devil house, you know, Wolfenwhite van is the one that pops hardest for everybody. I love devil house so much, you know, and, and it did fine. It did, you know, I get the best sellers and everything, but like, yeah.
You know, but if it hadn't, I would feel the exact same way about it. It's like, I, I, I really love where it wound up.
It was also good. I read all three of them.
Thank you.
had to pick one, I might pick Universal Harvester.
think that's probably from a formal, from a literary perspective. That's the best one, right? I think he does the best job of squaring what I do best, which is connect with the emotions of the reader or listener, you know, at a, not at a, not at a, at a melodramatic level, but, but connecting with the deeper. Feeling of grief, you know? but Devil House is so violent and I like violence.
Ha ha ha. And you nailed the cover on that one, too, I have to say.
Oh, I, I have nothing to do with it. The, the, the,
it looks great.
thank you. Yeah. No. Well, the thing is, you have an, I wonder if you, if you, if you ever harm is your favorite. Let me show you a thing that very few people have that, that's the most amazing thing. You see this?
Yeah.
What is it?
It's a VHS cassette from a rental place,
What rental place?
Video Hut.
Uh huh. So it's got a copy of She's All That in it, which is, which is the first movie watched by Jeremy in the book, and, it says, Be Kind, Rewind, but, but it, But it says it's from VideoHut on Lincoln Way in Nevada, Iowa. this is the one I think that, the people who are going to make a movie of Universal Harvester sent me. but the actual galley of the book also came in a, In a, in a VHS container. The paperback was a VHS container that didn't have the spindles, right?
Which is really the coolest thing ever.
what's your favorite thing to do that is cheap or free?
it's funny because I started naming things and they all involve previous investment. Like cooking is not free, you have to buy stuff, right? Reading is not free unless you check it from the library. It's like, I love reading. I have a million billion books, but I bought them. And so, I would say running actually, you have to have gear to run though. It's like you can't. If you run in your day shoes, you'll regret it soon. that is my favorite though.
It's like, on a day to day basis, it doesn't cost me anything. It's like, I have to renew my shoes every 200 miles. but, but that's, that would be it. I mean, beyond that, it's like, you know, I have children. It doesn't cost you anything to play with your children. That is the greatest thing in the world, you know.
Yeah. Absolutely.
really it's, it's, it's, you know, you, you have times with your children every day where you go, Oh my God, I would pay 20 million for the, for the moment of laughter. I just had, you know,
That's beautiful.
have 20 million and that's what hoping that to get to that 20 million level.
when you look back on the last 6 to 12 months, what's something you did that was an unequivocal win? And that can be something you chose not to do also.
Well, so the thing is, Peter Hughes, our bassist, resigned. he hung up growing shoes, right? And, and when that happens to a band, not to a band, I shouldn't say, but this is a thing that happens in the life cycle of a band. People do come and go, right? And, he was not even the first bassist to leave, although first in 20 something years, right? So,, but so we had to decide whether we were going to, replace Peter, which is the obvious thing. It's what most in rock music, right?
Most people just replace whoever leaves, right? But there had been a tour that Peter and me were gonna do as a duo tour, right? Now, if I had been feeling ambitious. I said, well, now I get to go keep all that money for myself and tour solo. But I didn't want to do that. I'd been looking forward to making music with my people, right? And so I took out Matt and John as a trio, a format we'd only played in twice when Peter got sick on tour, and we had to play two shows without him, right?
Or no, but only one show I think was trio on that, right? Well, but the trio show had been pretty weird and special. It was like It was different. It was, it was, you know, it was born of necessity and, and, and it went places that we couldn't have predicted. So then we did that tour that was going to be the duo tour as a trio tour, me and Matt and John. And if I ever get a better tour than that one, by God, I'll be grateful. It was just a miracle every goddamn night.
We, we had no idea what to expect. You know, I made a set list of songs, a master list of songs that, you know, that I thought might be cool in that format, but it was, it was taking a leap into an unknown quantity of the trio. I don't even know if we're ever going to have bassists again at this point. It's like, we love music so much. Put basses on, on records maybe, but the trio may be the thing that happens because the music was miraculous.
You can listen to the recordings of it that are up and like. It just went special places and we didn't expect it, which the thing is that does tie into how I was talking about how I wind up doing this is like I did not have, I did not set out to do this, nor did it fall in my lap.
I chipped away at the labor for 10 to 12 years, and then it began to yield dividends, and I had provided for myself in other, you know, in nursing, otherwise, it's like and that, you know, I, it would be great if we had an economic model where an artist could say, okay, At 18. I'm going to be an artist. Will this world support me in this and there are governmental things in place. So yes, we will go find you what you're doing. That would be great.
But in the absence of that, making it sort of the object of desire that you're looking to from your other thing. Helps you sharpen your craft.
That makes a lot of sense. John, I end every conversation with a question from the person I'm speaking with. Yours was, yours was interesting. your question is we're in for four years of markets responding to things posted on social media by political actors. What long positions will give the highest yields in such a volatile environment?
I should, I should say Tim. So Tim's sent me an email saying, you know, so you have any questions for me? And I knew it was supposed to be a money stuff. So I wanted to post something that sort of felt almost cynically financially oriented, but
I couldn't
actually
mean,
I don't, I'm a musician. I have like a very simple retirement account idea. It's like, I don't, I don't, if you give me a long position, I will take exactly no action on that.
well, that that's actually kind of good because, you know, this is, the truth when you're talking to financial advisors is often, it'll sort of start with, it depends.
Yeah.
the first thing I would say is like, nobody anywhere should change investment decisions because of podcast and whether that's me or, you know, nobody should do it.
Are you sure that's, but what if, but what if the financial environment is such that lots of people are doing exactly that, right? Listening to that podcast host who says, Hey, you know, what's a good stock for me. And then that person has enough listeners to actually move the needle. So that's the case, right? Like that is now. Oh
irresponsible, and
It's chaos.
you, and it's to be cynical. It's like, it's just a cash grab because let's say you're listening to, you know, like a crypto bro talking about how crypto is so great. Number one, if that person owns a lot of crypto and then a bunch of people buy it, that drives up the price. So the person giving the suggestion profits when people take the suggestion, right? So that's one reason you should never do it.
another reason is you should never assume that whoever is talking has the same interests as you. So if you say, Right. If
that
I'm putting money into my retirement account, that's a lot different than what stock is going to be hot in the next three months. Like those are totally different.
is why I said long positions is like, because I think long is unless you are, and I'm not any kind of money expert at all, but I think so, but that makes me like most people, right? Most don't know anything about money at all. I don't either. Right. So what I do know is if I'm investing at all, it should be in stuff that I don't have to worry about what's going to happen today or tomorrow. Cause I'm not going to be online selling and buying. I'm an English major. It's like, Oh, right.
And I suspect that many people who think they do know also don't know. And, and so, but I, but sometimes you do things like, well, what do I wish I had a piece of, you know, if like, if, if, you know, I made 2, 000 in 1995. Well, I kind of wish I'd put one of those in Microsoft. That would have been cool.
yeah, well, I would say on that tip, I recommend for every like everybody who's an individual investor that the best thing you can do is buy something you can own for a really long time. for most people, that ends up being mutual funds because they don't really change very much over long periods of time. And. If you are going to think about individual companies, you have to, I think everyone would benefit from thinking about like, what if I couldn't sell this for 15 years, would I still do it?
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
are certain companies that, you know, like, I think Apple computer will probably still be in business 15 years from now, you
Shears, Bowbucker, Montgomery Wards.
Yeah. Yes. Here's a robot. Well, eventually, eventually they'll fail. Like eventually Apple computer will fail. Well,
big right now and they're big. They have, yeah. They, I think I was big funny, but it's like, I think that's probably right. Is that the, the only one to buy individually would be if it's been around forever. So,
is totally true. And I wish I, I'd wish I knew the makeup of this, but if you looked at what the top 10 companies in the S and P 500, 20 years ago, exactly zero of them are in the top 10 right now,
Wild, wild.
no matter how big you are, eventually. It doesn't work. yeah, so buying things you can own forever. So index funds are good because you can own that forever and the companies can come and go and
Right.
it's fine in terms of social media, man. Hey, I don't know. It's a dumpster fire. I, I kind of think of it as like. You know, there's money to be made in oil. There's money to be made in tobacco. There's money to be made in social media. Do you, if you want to put your money there, you can make money, but it's not where I would put my money.
I know people who, I personally know people my age, which is to say people contemplating retirement, which is the only reason I think about this stuff is I get, you know, like I say, I come from a rock perspective thinking about money. It's like something I don't want to do, you know, but, but eventually you got to think about how long am I going to live without making, you know, the kind of living that I make now, you know, whatever that is, eventually you're going to do less of it.
If you make 30, 000 a year right now, a day will come when you're not generating that much for yourself. So you got it. Lay away some and, and I know people my age, whose answers to that question has been to literally put everything they have in Bitcoin. And
Oh
they've done pretty well so far, but I hope they, here's the thing. If you, if I go to a craps table, right. And I do, cause I like to shoot craps. Right. And I take whatever my stake is. Usually you need one to 200 to, to, to buy enough chips to play a few rounds. Right. And so say my stake is 200, right? If that 200 goes away, I'm gone, right? I'm not losing more than 200. That seems insane to me, right?
if that 200 turns into 300, I take the 100 in chips, and I move it over to another rack, and that's no longer my money, right? That money is the money I made, and this other two is still the money I'm playing with, right? And that's, if people were investigating, like, Crypto, I would say, cool, when it, when it jumps, get back, whatever your initial investment was, put that aside someplace, you know, now go ahead and play with the rest of this stuff.
Yeah. It's a great analogy because it is completely speculative. It is like, nobody knows Bitcoin has no underlying value. So. as everyone believes the story, it keeps going up.
I can't, that's the thing I can't understand. It's like, like, since I was a child, since my first economics class, I was like, wait, so it's literally just everybody standing around going, this is pretty good. And then the price goes up because they say so.
Yeah, it really is.
Well,
that's, that's definitely in the short term. That's all that happens. Like whatever's happening in the market today. It's literally that it's like people who are experts saying, I think this is what's going to happen tomorrow. Let's buy and sell based on that.
yeah, when you read Pfizer, you would like prior to the stock market being actually. You know, prior to the NYSE existing when there was more action in Philadelphia than there was New York, like it was literally like 12 to 20 guys in a boardroom going, how about this? It's like, that's the, that's the madness that informs the whole completely bonkers thing.
Yeah, but if we take like, let's, let's take apple computer again for a second, like That stock will go up and down, but Apple makes stuff and they sell stuff and they have profits. And so the company itself generates more money over time because that's what corporations do, et cetera. Bitcoin has nothing under that. And I'm not like, I'm not saying I hate Bitcoin or I hate crypto. I'm just saying there's nothing under that where.
Yeah.
can say at least they produce a lot of widgets and the widgets make
Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, you can't, there's nothing to show for it. It's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, the thing is, I was gonna say it's like ghosts, but I would 100%. If there was like a NYSE stock ticker GHS and it meant I could buy stock in Ghosts. I mean, I would throw my money away into the ghost because that would be cool. You know, it's a
you can make a meme coin,
ghost coin that would be really fun.
coin.
Cynical.
There you go. Well, I think that's a great place to end it, John.
All right. Well, I just want to, give a little promo here for ghost coin. we're seeking, we're seeking VC, to really develop ghost coin and, and help it reach, its potential.
Yeah. I wish you nothing but good luck. I was really happy that John shared so much about the relationship between earning an income and making art. Without that outside income. He wouldn't have been able to persist through those first 10 or 12 years where music was really not making much money. And allowed him to eventually turn that into a career. And similarly, separating his fiction writing from income generation gave him that 7 years or whatever to finish his first novel.
And this is definitely true in the world of personal finance. The faster you need something to happen, the more you need everything to work out exactly right. And not only is that difficult, but it's also stressful. But if you have a long time to work on a plan, all the steps can be much easier and much more manageable. So I tell people all the time that a simple plan you can stick with for the long term is a great recipe for success. And I feel like John's story mirrors that sentiment.
and listen, that thing I said about never making investment decisions because of what you hear on a podcast, that's real. And that includes me. Just because I talk about something that's right for me or not right for me, that doesn't mean it's right or wrong for you. All right, with that, let's throw in some disclosures. Disclosures. Disclosures. The thing we never talk about is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It's not legal, investment, or tax advice. Alright?
People on the show, including yours truly, may have interests for or against any investments discussed, so do yourself a favor and don't make any decisions based on what you hear. If you have a money or finance question you'd like answered in a future episode, please drop me a line at Podcast at iselerfinancial. com again, that's podcast at iselerfinancial.
com and Iseler is spelled I S E L E R. And if you like what you hear, please like, and subscribe to the show, wherever you get your podcasts and you can get my insights on money and more delivered directly to your inbox by subscribing to my keep it easy newsletter at iselerfinancial. com slash newsletter. Thanks for listening. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you.