Regular readers might have noticed several passing mentions in recent months of a piece of writing that I thought would be out by now. Well, it’s out now, and it was worth all the extra time it took to get it right. Today you can find me at the top of The New Yorker website, which is a pretty special place to be. It’s my first time writing for the magazine since they last bought a piece of my fiction in 2015.
“The Heart of Low” is a profile of Alan Sparhawk, co-founder of one of my favorite bands. Low’s 30th anniversary was in 2023, and in mid-2022 I started thinking about a piece that would celebrate their living legacy and singular body of work. Then Mimi Parker, Low’s co-founder and Alan’s wife, died in November of that year. I can remember exactly where I was when I saw the news. I was sitting in the beat-up recliner chair in the drafty living room of the furnished university apartment that had come with the teaching fellowship I was on that semester. I was scrolling social media and the news stopped me cold. I started crying immediately, moaned I’d just been hit or burned. I wasn’t crying for the abruptly scotched prospect of my little essay, but because I had spent a lot of the lockdown listening to Low’s music on repeat at high volume: its desolate beauty and rich dark depths consoled and sustained me like very little else did in those days. I had invested a lot more than I knew—and I knew I had invested a lot—in the post-pandemic dream of hearing Alan and Mimi’s perfect uncanny harmonies live on stage again. Now it was never going to happen.
As luck or fate or grace would have it, in early 2023 an editor at The New Yorker reached out to me. She’d liked my Margo Cilker profile in the Oxford American’s most recent music issue and wondered if I had any ideas to pitch her. I told her more or less what I just told you, with the proviso that there was no way that this brilliant musician, so recently a widower, would be ready to talk to a journalist. Still, at her encouragement, I wrote a proper pitch and it got greenlit and we decided I would at least introduce myself, see how that went, maybe try to do the piece sometime later in the year. Alan’s publicist at Sub Pop got back to me almost immediately. She wasn’t sure what he’d be up for either, but she put me in touch with him, and to my utter astonishment he said sure, I could come out to Duluth and talk to him whenever. I was astonished because I didn’t yet know him. In retrospect, it’s not surprising at all: he is one of the most open-hearted, empathetic, generous people I’ve ever met. Two weeks later I was on a plane to Minneapolis and two days after that I was sitting at Alan and Mimi’s table in their practice space in Duluth, eating a legendary sandwich and talking with one of my heroes about how the death of his wife had tested his faith in God.
I’m gonna cut myself off in a minute because I want you to go read the profile, not my Behind the Music episode about how it got written. But I have to say that writing this piece has been one of the highlights of my career to date, and it would not have been possible without the encouragement, support, and practical assistance of a lot of people, starting with Carla Blumenkranz, the editor who commissioned it; Amanda Petrusich, the New Yorker’s staff music critic, who has been a friend for a long time; and Bekah Z. Flynn at Sub Pop, who vetted me carefully before letting me anywhere near her client, but once she decided to trust me, trusted me completely, not only with the delicacy of the situation but also that the piece really was going to come out, that this hadn’t all been for nothing.
I talked to Alan off and on over the course of a year, but I also talked to a lot of other people. Some of them are quoted in the piece—Phoebe Bridgers (!), Sharon Van Etten, Perfume Genius—and some aren’t. Imagine having to cut Corin Tucker, Charlie Parr, and Ben Gibbard just for space! Philip Harder, the director of Cue the Strings, has known the band for decades; his film is gorgeous, you should see it if you can. Jessica Hopper—whose music criticism sets a gold standard and whose editorial direction of the American Music Series at the University of Texas Press is the reason we have books like Quantum Criminals and Go Ahead in the Rain—gave me what amounted to a graduate education in the band’s history as well as (whether she knew it or not) how to do a piece like this right. She also mailed me some free books, which are beautiful.
In the first draft I quoted literally everybody who talked to me, and it fell to my wise and patient editor to explain why that wasn’t going to work. I could fill an entire issue of this newsletter—or a monograph—with profound stuff Alan said about the nature of composition, performance, faith, and grief; with things other people said about the power and importance of Low’s music. Maybe someday I will do that. But for now, please read the piece, please listen to some Low and think of Mimi, and please also don’t forget that I have a novel coming out in 12 days that you can still preorder and come see me if I’m visiting your city—tour schedule posted below for ease of reference. Second NYC date just got added. XOXOXO
REBOOT SPRING TOUR
SATURDAY APRIL 20 — LOS ANGELES, CA — LA Times Book Festival: 3:30pm-4:30pm Taper Hall 101 . “Thicker than Water: Modern Families, Modern Problems” panel with Ruth Madievsky, Edan Lepucki, and Alexandra Tanner. Tickets required, see site for details.
TUESDAY APRIL 23 — PORTLAND, OR — Publication day! West Coast launch: Powell’s City of Books, 7 PM (1005 W Burnside) in conversation with Jon Raymond.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 24 — SEATTLE, WA: Third Place Books—Ravenna, 7PM (6504 20th Ave NE).
MONDAY APRIL 29 — VANCOUVER, WA — Columbia Writers Series: Clark College, 11 AM (Penguin Union Building (PUB) 258 A-B). I will be helping my old friend Andrew Leland celebrate his stellar book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight. This university event is free and open to the public.
WEDNESDAY MAY 1 — NEW YORK CITY— East Coast launch: McNally Jackson—Seaport, 6:30 PM (4 Fulton Street) in conversation with Andrew Martin. Most McNally events require RSVP these days, but the May events aren’t posted yet, so check back on this one and make sure you can get in.
THURSDAY MAY 2 — DOUBLE-HEADER
DAY GAME - BRONXVILLE, NY: Sarah Lawrence College MFA program—Slonim House, 2 PM. I will be giving a Craft talk called “The Sentence Is a Place to Play.” This university event is free and open to the public. Books will be for sale courtesy of Transom Books.
NIGHT GAME - BROOKLYN, NY: Threes Brewing, 333 Douglas Street, 6:30 PM, in conversation with Anika Jade Levy. Books will be for sale.
MONDAY MAY 6 — MINNEAPOLIS, MN— No Coast launch: Milkweed Coffee, 6 PM (3822 E. Lake Street) in conversation with Dan Hornsby. Books will be for sale courtesy of Moon Palace Books.
FRIDAY MAY 10 — PORTLAND, OR (reprise): Powell’s City of Books, 7 PM (1005 W Burnside). Celebrating Julia Hannafin’s stunning debut novel, Cascade.
FRIDAY MAY 17 - CLATSKANIE, OR: I will be part of the Raymond Carver Writing Festival. Their website does not yet reflect this but they gave me a bumper sticker and assure me it is true. Details TK.