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• Music: “We Live Nowhere and Know No One”

This one’s my theme. Been recorded about 10 times; each time totally different. Most versions’ll never leave the vault (which is not really a vault at all, but rather an old brown train-case filled with tapes.) This unreleased version is me on acoustic guitar and vocals, Thad Christian on lead guitar, Brian Smith playing drums, Shiloh Halsey on bass, and Johnny Askew playing Wurlitzer organ. (Johnny might’ve also played air organ under the intro; don’t remember.)

Song comes in two parts. Part one’s a guy pleading with his girl to leave their crappy town with him. Part two is the girl pleading with the guy to leave town a little while later but at this point in his life he’s just too beaten down to care or listen. (The ending’s left open, but I think the last scream foretells ascension.)

More than any song I’ve written, it sums up how I feel everyday of every week everywhere I am. It’s kind of a shitty way to live, but I guess it’s a real thing and real things can outshine the shit if they’re true enough—and this one’s pretty true. I play this one at every show and I think I always will.

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• Music: “And On Bad Days We Were Sawn Asunder”

Adam on the music:
Note: Originally released as part of the UK-only digital download EP, Shout the Rafters Down!, by Drowned in Sound Recordings

What I remember about this one was a very full basement with Dan, Eli, and JR (who were my band at the time), Ray from Castanets, Nathan from Castanets/Shaky Hands, and some other people I’ve forgotten. Not sure who played what, but this came to be as a really loose jam we all got in on after struggling through a horrible version of my solo song “And Feel the Air Go Still” remade as a bombastic, 15-minute-long desert-rock “epic” with three dueling guitarists (“you’ll be like toreadors and bulls!” I hubristically told them), faux timpani rolls, mariachi trumpet … just a big stupid, convoluted mess.

“Bad Days” was the chill-out after trying to make the first song “happen.” Lyrics are about feeling totally disconnected from people your age and about how down you can get when everyone’s talking shit about you behind your back. (It’s not about me; it’s about a very overwhelmed, very suicidal friend of mine, but I’ll leave him anonymous since the hard drug references run pretty deep.) It’s a whole litany of prophecies self-fulfilled, chemical aphasia, cabin fever, a lot of paranoia. The night before we did this one I had talked a girl at a bar into pepper-spraying me (why?) after which I stumbled back home blind (and blind drunk). Somewhere along my journey I came upon a street island full of rose bushes, took my shirt off, mindlessly filled it with rose buds, and (somehow) made it back to the place I was living and covered my bed (a bench seat from a van) in rose pedals before passing out on them. 2006 in Portland, Oregon was an interesting time to be alive.

This was a live staple for a very long time. Swore I’d never play it again after the 10,000th drunk guy yelled “wooooo!” when I said “coke lines” in the lyrics.

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• Music: “Prince of the Confederacy” EP

Adam on the music:
This was originally released on cassette by DeathBombArc Records.

Was living in Virginia when I did this one. Spent a lot of time alone in the woods or sitting on the riverbanks watching the boats go by. It was winter and the countryside was barren and dark and icy. Lyrics are about that. Raccoons in the trees. Low tide at the Lafayette River. Neighbors screaming in Spanish. Talismans. Haints. Food Lion. Knuckle bones. Magic hand spells. Alligators. Watching coke deals go down over by the Granby St. Bridge. Was playing with hoodoo spells a little. Coming off antidepressants (Zoloft). Getting paranoid and superstitious. Generally losing it. Recorded this, which is a whole EP of five songs (from four pieces of interconnected prose writing), late one night on a four-track while everyone was sleeping. This was about six months or so before I got signed to release my first record, Run Hide Retreat Surrender, so I still didn’t know what I was doing or why I was doing it. Had to borrow a guitar. Strange stuff, this track. A lot of heavy, oppressive darkness and a lot of trying to find some kind of light to lead me. Would just hang out by myself, drink a lot of wine from a lot of mason jars, read religious texts, and listen to the same old 1930s gospel blues song (“I Feel the Spirit Moving”) over and over and over again. Glad to not be there anymore. “There” meaning totally lost and overwhelmed. A friend of mine called this EP “gothspel.” I thought that was pretty stupid.

If separated, the track-listing would read:
1. Neighbors (0:00 – 2:15)
2. Lafayette River (2:20 – 5:06)
3. Talismans (5:08 – 6:07)
4. Little John the Conqueror (6:08 – 7:45)
5. untitled noise collage (7:49 -- 8:31)

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• Music: “Cousin be Strong”

Adam on the music:
“Cousin be Strong” — I like to mix it up. Play solo a while, get the improv kids to show up for the night with trumpets and tambourines, have a band... keep it loose. We called this one Adam Gnade & the Confederate Yankees. It was myself, Thaddeus Christian — who I still record with — Johnny Askew, Brian Smith, Shiloh Halsey, and a couple other guys who came and went. In theory, it was a revolving, communal lineup but those four guys were in it the whole time. (“Cousin be Strong”... the title’s a tribute to one of Matthew from Phosphorescent’s songs.) It's about imperialism and survival. Bombs falling. Red skies. Cracked earth. New life coming from the ruins. Pagan sensibilities. Hope. Earth magic. War is in most of the songs, but this one’s literally a war song. Some of my people are in the military right now, some of ‘em over in the gulf, and war hits you different when you’re personally invested. Also, it’s a pep talk. A lot of these songs start as pep talks for people I love who are having a rough time. Wrote the lyrics (prose, not poetry, never poetry) in London, finished 'em in San Diego. Thad's guitar part started freaky country then turned into something else. “Something else” is my favorite mantra.