Main Street News

On Thursday, September 26 at 6:30pm, author and musician Franz Nicolay will be in conversation with fellow journalist and author Joe Hagan at Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff, NY, to discuss the release of his new book, Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music. 

The book provides a portrait of the proverbial musical middle class – the “band people” who are the “anonymous but irreplaceable character actors of popular music.” 

About Franz Nicolay

Nicolay, a decorated musician in his own right, was initially inspired by his own experience on the road to write this book. He was a member of cabaret-punk orchestra World/Inferno Friendship Society, American rock band the Hold Steady, Balkan-jazz quartet Giugnol, and co-founded the composer-performer collective, Anti-Social Music, among many other acts. 

“I had the opportunity to pause and take stock of this thing that I had devoted my whole life to,” he explained. “I understood myself to be a part of a community, but that community wasn’t necessarily defined, so I wanted to describe it and put a name to it.” 

This is not Nicolay’s first book centered around music. He previously published The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar in 2016, which explores the past and future of punk rock culture in the postcommunist world of Eastern Europe, and Someone Should Pay For Your Pain in 2021, a novel that was named one of Rolling Stone’s “Best Music Books of 2021.” 

Writing has always fit in Nicolay’s life. If you ask him, he’ll tell you that while his priority was always to be a musician, he was rarely seen without a book in his hand. While on tour in his 20s, he would keep diaries that detailed some of the most important moments during shows. Later, he began writing longer, more detailed pieces that would turn into concepts for books. 

He studied music at NYU and obtained an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Previously, he has taught at Columbia and the University of California at Berkeley, and he is currently a faculty member in the music and written arts departments at Bard College. 

“Once I came off of being on the road full-time, writing and teaching was an opportunity to stay creative without having to be away from home for 300 days out of the year,” he explained.

Band People: They’re just like us 

The book pulls from hours and hours of interviews that Nicolay conducted with a variety of musicians – including drummer Josh Freese, who is an original member of A Perfect Circle, the Vandals, and Devo, has previously served as the drummer for Nine Inch Nails and Guns N’ Roses, and is the current drummer for the Foo Fighters; bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, who has performed with Tinker, Hole, The Smashing Pumpkins, and with various other musicians, in addition to her solo career; and Shazhad Ismaily, a primarily self-taught multi-instrumentalist, composer, recording engineer, and producer who has recorded and performed with countless musicians – just to name a few. 

How did Nicolay curate his list of interviews? He started his list with people that he knew he could get in touch with, and at the end of each interview, he asked the interviewees who else they recommended he get in touch with. “Some names started coming up over and over again, so I wanted to identify this community based upon who people look up to and think of as part of this community.” 

Indeed, transcribing the interviews, synthesizing, and deciding what to include in the book was the most time consuming part. He conducted the majority of the interviews over the course of one summer, and during that time, was administering three to four interviews per day. 

“Anyone who writes, especially nonfiction, will tell you that the research is the fun part,” Nicolay said. “I could’ve continued interviewing people indefinitely, but at a certain point, you have to put a flag in the sand and say ‘it’s time to turn this into a book.’” 

In addition to his interviews, Nicolay also pulls from an assortment of sociology studies centered around the culture of music and other social-psychology research to paint a vivid portrait of what it’s like to be a modern working musician. 

Nicolay shared that he attempted to write the book in a few different formats; one of the early drafts had each chapter focusing on one person at a time. Eventually, he found that it was easiest to organize the book by topics, such as the different hierarchical structures that can exist within a band and how the members exist within that structure. 

Despite his lengthy experience in the music industry, Nicolay worked to keep his experiences out of the book and focus on others. “I was trying to make sense of my own life in a lot of ways, too.”

There are two kinds of readers for whom Nicolay wrote this book. The first group are those who identify themselves as “band people,” and Nicolay noted that he hopes they “feel like I got it right.” The rest of the readers are lumped into the second group – made up of non-band people – and Nicolay hopes that the book de-romanticizes the music industry a bit for the average person. 

“I hope they identify with the fact that band people are doing a job just like everyone else, albeit in a slightly unusual environment. They’re workplace colleagues who are trying to budget for time-off and deal with taxes, just like everyone else,” he said. 

Franz Nicolay will be in conversation with Joe Hagan at Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff, NY, on Thursday, September 26 at 6:30pm. Admission is free, but registration is requested. To learn more about the event, visit this link.