Interview with Peter McDade- 2022
Interview #13 (fiction, literary fiction, academic fiction, music album tie-in)
Peter McDade writes novels, teaches history, and plays the drums. After a childhood in New Jersey and years of touring the country with rock band Uncle Green, he has settled happily into domestic life in Atlanta.
Randal Eldon Greene: You've not only written a book that revolves around the history of a fictional rock band, you also had it published by Wampus Multimedia. I want to emphasize the multi here, because when I looked into your publishing house, I discovered a company that both publishes books and releases music albums. I'm curious about what you can tell us about Wampus and how you discovered them?
Peter McDade: The story of how I started working with Wampus is an example of the connection between my novel-writing and my music-making careers. In 2012 the band I have been in since 9th grade, Uncle Green, finally liberated the recordings that had been rejected by Sony Music a decade earlier. A fellow musician suggested reaching out to Wampus, to see if they would be interested in helping with distribution, and I enjoyed their artist-forward approach. They really focus on helping their artists find an audience, while also allowing the creators of the product retain control over the product.
I got to know Mark Doyon, who runs Wampus, through the release of that album, and we would talk music and writing quite often. After I finished The Weight of Sound, my first novel, he read a draft, and then listened to my complaints about the agent- and publisher-querying process, which I found exhausting. Trying to navigate the publishing world brought back unpleasant memories of my experiences with various record labels over the years, and when Mark said Wampus would love to release the novel and its soundtrack, I was thrilled.
I looked around briefly for an agent when I finished Songs By Honeybird, but after Mark read it he responded with such a thoughtful, detailed, and enthusiastic response that I knew the book had found its home.
Randal Eldon Greene: Honeybird follows two main plotlines, that of Nina and that of Ben, ex-lovers dealing with the consequences and causes of their breakup. Nina is a college student and reluctant dog owner. Ben is a doctoral candidate of history. Nina begins the novel heartbroken, finding herself both frustrated and educated by her dog, Sid. Ben throws himself into his dissertation, which narrows its focus to the history of what appears to be one of the earliest integrated Southern rock bands whose black drummer and white singer and guitarist were killed in a tragic fire. There are questions left unanswered: Was the fire an accident and is it possible that the drummer, whose body wasn't found, is actually still alive?
The premise, I have to say, is very intriguing. What were the origins for the ideas you packed into this novel?
Peter McDade: My books always start with the characters; for me, it's the best way to find the story. Honeybird began as a single scene of a couple planning to move in together, but when the woman tells her boyfriend about her talking dog he calls things off. The couple wasn't even named, and the short piece felt at first like one of those doodles you write and then slide into a drawer somewhere. I kept thinking about that couple, though, and found myself able to relate to both of them. A talking dog? I can see how that could be a deal-breaker. At the same time, aren't couples supposed to be able to tell each other anything? Shouldn't he have been more understanding? Or, maybe we're all supposed to keep certain things hidden, even from those we're closest to?
The next step—turning that scene into a novel, with enough ideas and people and events to make it worth a reader's time—took many years. I completed a whole draft that did not work, and slid it back into a drawer and wrote The Weight of Sound, which became my first published novel. Those two characters were still with me, though, so I started writing it again, without reading the old version. (I still haven't looked at it—maybe someday?) I changed the topic of Ben's dissertation from Hank Honeybird to his son, Harlan, who felt much more interesting, and the story of Nina's family became more complicated, which helped me understand her more. I had a new draft in a year or so, and this time it felt much more alive.
I realize this answer is more about the characters than the ideas, but again, that's how it works with me. I'm not even aware of what themes and ideas are at play in the book until I've finished a second draft, so, maybe two years into it? I mean, I have glimpses of the ideas and themes, but I don't want to look too closely and scare them away. With each revision the ideas become clearer to me, so I can carve out more paths for the readers to find them, as well. Those initial questions that led me to keep working on that sketch—what can we say to the people we are closest to, and what should we say?—are still there, but new ideas were now attached to that framework.
Randal Eldon Greene: You also released an album to accompany this book. Tell us a little bit about your musical background and how this album came to be.
Peter McDade: I started playing the drums in second grade. The lessons were a birthday present from my mother, who was looking for a way to turn my incessant tapping into something positive. By the 7th grade I was playing in bands, and when I was fourteen I was lucky enough to join Uncle Green, a band I would play with for the next twenty years. Touring, and making records, actually taught me several crucial skills necessary for writing: how to be patient, how to wait out the dull moments, how to accept things you cannot control, and, perhaps most of all, the art of a revision. Most songs undergo many changes from the moment they are first written to the final version the world hears. Over time you learn to try every idea, because even though most won't work, a few magically will—and you never would have found those without trying them all. You also learn that sometimes the way to finish something requires taking away that bit you love.
My first novel, The Weight of Sound, centered on the struggles of a young rock band, and I wanted the reader to be able to listen to the songs my fictional musicians were playing. I was able to convince a bunch of my musician friends to help me record an accompanying soundtrack. I don't write music, but I had fun writing the lyrics, imagining myself to be whichever character wrote the song in the book, and the whole experience was very satisfying—if also exhausting. I was determined to not have a soundtrack with my second novel, but once the band Honeybird began to play such a crucial role, I wanted everyone to be able to hear their songs.
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