Tattered Cover is excited to welcome Franz Nicolay in conversation with Jon Snodgrass to our Colfax location on August 22nd, 2024 at 6PM.
They will be discussing Franz's new book, Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music (American Music Series)!
Partly an oral history of the post-DIY musical present, partly a how-to manual for getting along with your bandmates and getting paid, join us for a thorough crash course in what it means to be a working musician in the pop and rock scenes.
Registration includes a signed copy of the book and an opportunity to meet the author.
Registration link for this event!
If you are unable to attend the event after purchasing a ticket, you are required to pick up your copy of the book (with proof of purchase from your event registration) within 30 days after the event date. If the book is not picked up by that date, you relinquish your copy to Tattered Cover Book Store.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A close look at the lives of working musicians who aren’t the center of their stage.
Secret (and not-so-secret) weapons, side-of-the-stagers, rhythm and horn sections, backup singers, accompanists—these and other “band people” are the anonymous but irreplaceable character actors of popular music. Through interviews and incisive cultural critique, writer and musician Franz Nicolay provides a portrait of the musical middle class. Artists talk frankly about their careers and attitudes toward their craft, work environment, and group dynamics, and shed light on how support musicians make sense of the weird combination of friend group, gang, small business consortium, long-term creative collaboration, and chosen family that constitutes a band.
Is it more important to be a good hang or a virtuoso player? Do bands work best as democracies or autocracies? How do musicians with children balance their personal and professional lives? How much money is too little? And how does it feel to play on hundreds of records, with none released under your name?
In exploring these and other questions, Band People gives voice to those who collaborate to create and dissects what it means to be a laborer in the culture industry.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Franz Nicolay is a writer, musician, and faculty member in music and written arts at Bard College. In addition to records under his own name, he has been a member of World/Inferno Friendship Society and the Hold Steady. He is the author of The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar and the novel Someone Should Pay for Your Pain.
