Publishing Talks: Interview with Jeremy Facknitz

Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology. Mostly we’ve talked with people in the book industry about the history and the evolution of publishing and books.

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with editors, publishers, technologists, innovators, and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling past and present.

These conversations have been inspirational to me. I’ve learned a great deal from people who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture, as well as many interesting friends and colleagues in the book business.

Today’s Publishing Talks conversation is very different. Jeremy Facknitz is not in the book business. He is an independent songwriter and musician. Of course there are obvious differences between books and music—you can listen to music while you do other things, and people pay real money to hear singers and bands play live for them; whereas books require your full attention and reading is only rarely a shared public experience. But there are many similarities when you look at the actual business structures of book publishing and music distribution, especially for writers and musicians.

This is especially important now when technology has opened the floodgates of human creativity and enabled the creation and circulation of many more books and songs than was ever possible in the past. This outpouring has upended the economies of both the book business and the music business and inalterably changed how books and music are discovered by readers and listeners. And at the same time, this ocean of books and music has created massive challenges for creators (and their publishers and music labels) to reach audiences.

Jeremy stands out as someone who has found a meaningful path to creating a livelihood as a singer/songwriter, and that’s what got my attention.

Jeremy has been active as singer/songwriter for a long time (see his bio below). While he started out in a band, like many other musicians, he worked in many different non-music jobs for a long time, but finally in his thirties decided to make a living as a performer. He discovered that doing house concerts could be his primary form of revenue. He does his own booking and has created his own unique form of audience building. He now performs over 100 concerts a year in people’s homes.

When I first learned about Jeremy’s work, I thought he would be perfect for this series. Even though his performing does not align exactly with the way authors and publishers work , there is alot to learn from what Jeremy does. His values and commitment to connecting with his audience in a human way is crucial.

So please have a listen and do let me know what you think. There are some links below so you can learn more about Jeremy. I hope you will listen to (and enjoy) his songs. You might want to host him for a house concert of your own!

I love Jeremy’s motto: The Revolution Will Not Be Streamed

TIDBITS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Finalist for the 2020, 2022 and 2025 Grassy Hill Kerrville New Folk Songwriting Competitions at the Kerrville Folk Festival… Winner for the 2023 Empower Music Awards (formerly known as the Posi Awards)… Awarded 2nd place in the 2022 Indie International Songwriting Competition (“Unsung”)… Runner-up in the Renaissance Artists and Writers Association “Songs For Social Change Competition”, 2020 (“Land Fills”)… Member of “The Ottomans” from 1997 through 2002 (2001 Detroit Music Award Winner, “Best New Alternative Group”)… Member of “Standing Room Only” with brother Jarod Facknitz from 2001 through 2003… 2009 Pikes Peak Arts Council nominee for “Best Solo Performer of the Pikes Peak Region”… has opened as solo act for/performed with The Samples, Tim Reynolds (Dave Matthews Band), Pat Donahue (Prairie Home Companion), Edie Carey, Charlie Milo, Lindsay Weidmann… graduated from the Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts in 1997 and was a radio DJ for 4 years (gospel and adult contemporary)… passed the series 7 test for license to sell securities in 2013 and one year later quit working in finance… loves baseball and is an avid fan of the Detroit Tigers baseball club… is married to singer-songwriter Lindsay Weidmann and together they have two children… is a U.S. citizen with Canadian permanent residency and will soon be based in the Vancouver area.

Website

Video “As of This Morning” 

Video “Smilin’ at the Future”

House Concert Pitch Video

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Iris Jamahl Dunkle: Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb

Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb — Iris Jamahl Dunkle — University of California Press — Hardcover — 9780520395442 — 416 pages — $27.95 — October 15, 2024 — ebook versions available at lower prices.

“The new history is coming, if you dig through the archives with a new gaze.”—Iris Jamahl Dunkle

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Sarah Neidhardt: Twenty Acres A Seventies Childhood in the Woods

Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods – Sarah Neidhardt – University of Arkansas Press – Paperback – 320 pages – 9781682262276 – $29.95 – Published March 7, 2023. Audiobook and ebook versions available at varying prices.

Twenty Acres is a wonderful, rewarding family memoir that will resonate both for elder veterans of the sixties and seventies “back to the land” counter culture but most especially for their now adult children, of which author Neidhardt is one. She was just a baby when her quite intelligent, middle class, young, naive parents left Colorado Springs to move to an extremely isolated part of the Arkansas Ozarks, where despite being woefully unprepared and underfunded, they managed to build a cabin and set out to live their lives and raise their children away from the materialist world they came from.

Their idealism was quickly met with the harsh realities of country life, of course. Sarah Neidhardt’s early life with her struggling parents and her siblings was not easy, and the crushing poverty and difficulties they endured as a family are reconstructed by Neidhardt as a way to understand her early life in deeply rural Arkansas. Still, the book is filled with many joyful and humorous moments – it’s not an altogether dark story, but a complex one that is filled with the ambiguities and complexities of family life in any time or place.

This story is similar to other back to the land adventures I’ve read that did not end well, or ended with the participants deflated by the rigors of a life they were never prepared for, though it is different from some because of the relatively extreme isolation the Neidhardt family experienced. Communards had it better in some ways than those who set out on their own in places where the culture was so deeply foreign to their generally urban or suburban backgrounds and counter culture values. But the underlying conflicts of culture, education, expectations, and the challenges of rural life really are common for so many of the children of the counter culture, unwilling participants in what was generally a short-lived socio-political explosion that had long lasting ramifications for its youngest and most innocent participants (even as that era’s most deeply held values and beliefs have survived and become entwined in modern culture in so many important ways).

It’s been more than fifty years since the era of the hippies, and books like this one will help set down and explain the history of that brief period of time, when so many young people thought we could change the world for the better. Talking to Sarah about her book, her family, and the process of writing their story was rewarding for me and I hope for all who listen to our conversation.

Sarah Neidhardt has worked as a bookseller, secretary, paralegal, copyeditor, and stay-at-home mother. She grew up in Arkansas and Northern California and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and teenage son.

“Disillusioned with the modern world and idealistic about living closer to nature, Sarah Neidhardt’s parents packed up from Colorado–a place that some other back-to-landers would seek out–and moved to small, isolated Fox, Arkansas to attempt living completely self-sufficiently and off-the-grid. In this memoir, Neidhardt examines her memories from that time, and also pinpoints one of the most particularly problematic parts of the back-to-the-land movement, which is that many of its participants were anchored in privilege. … A memoir infused with both empathy and inquiry.”—–Wendy J. Fox, Electric Literature

Author website here.
Buy the book here.

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Maureen Owen and Barbara Henning: Poets on the Road

Poets on the Road – Maureen Owen and Barbara Henning – City Point Press – 9781947951709 – Paperback – 176 pages – $18 – June 6, 2023 – ebook editions available at lower prices

This is a special book by two very special poets. I know I am biased. They are both friends of mine, and Maureen I have known for almost fifty years. This terrific travelog documents an amazing poetic journey they took in 2019, crossing the country in a small car, with stops for poetry readings, visits with other poets, cheap motels and funky meals from Brooklyn (where Barbara lives), first south, then west all the way to California and back to Denver (where Maureen lives).

It was truly an incredible trip, originally documented in a blog they wrote while traveling. This book collects those stories and features photos of the poets and the people and places they visited along the way.

I loved this story so much, I decided to publish it, and consequently this book is a collaboration of the two poets plus the exceptional book designer, HR Hegnauer and publisher City Point Press.

Here’s an excerpt from Pat Nolan’s wonderful introduction:

Although a road trip across North American calls to mind Jack Kerouac’s youthful meanderings of self-discovery, this reading tour was more in the manner of Bashō’s late life journeys through the backcountry of Japan. . . . The road trip was in a sense a pilgrimage of reengagement with their calling as poets, and a chance to reacquaint with like-minded friends, old and new, in a far-flung landscape of American poetry.

Venues would include upscale bookstores, coffee houses, museums, legendary used bookstores, botanical gardens, university classrooms, art centers, and artist coops—in short, a unique sampling of poetry environments tracing an arc across the Southern States, the Southwest, and up the West Coast before hooking back to the Rockies.

Framed as a personal challenge, the poets hit the road much in the manner of itinerant preachers and musicians, lodging at discount motels, funky hostels, Airbnbs, and with friends along the way. Adding a social media touch, Maureen and Barbara created a blog of their tour so that friends, family, hosts, and fellow poets might also share in their adventure.

It’s always a pleasure to spend any amount of time with Maureen and Barbara, so this conversation was truly special for me, and I hope for all of you as well who will be listening in.

As further full disclosure, let me add that we were also in Tucson when she and Barb came to visit, so I am a participant and contributor to the blog and to the book as well, making it even more fun for me to talk to both Maureen and Barb about it here.

Maureen’s most recent book is let the heart hold down the breakage   Or   the caretaker’s log (Hanging Loose Press)

Barbara’s most recent book is Ferne, A Detroit Story (Spuyten Duyvil)

Maureen’s website

Barbara’s website

Buy Poets on the Road here. (this link is to Bookshop.org, sales will support indie bookstores)

Barbara Henning (photo by Miranda Maher)

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