Conversation recorded & transcribed September 27th, 2024, at Spinning J.

MATT CIARLEGLIO: How's the sandwich?

ADAM SCHUBERT: Really good. It's got trout and cream cheese on a bialy.

MATT C: Oh wow. Hell yeah. A little lettuce. Yum. So, you got your second full-length record, Gazebo, out on Sugar Records. Congratulations!

ADAM: Thank you! 

MATT C: The record sounds fucking awesome. I think it's lyrically very playful. The tone of the record, to me, has this sense of childlike wonder but it captures the angst of growing up from an adult and very relatable perspective. The opening track, Plastic Figurines, really has that vibe that carries through. It's kind of ethereal and sets the mood.

ADAM: Thank you. I wrote that song before I even started writing for that record. I just wanted to write an album about growing up in Northbrook, where I'm from, and being in high school. I wanted to write a record that my 13 or 14-year-old self would listen to. I was trying to channel a lot of early indie rock stuff, kind of emo-y, definitely angst-driven. I listened to a lot of Nirvana, Bleach. I think I listened to Bleach every day while I was recording the record. A big part of the album is the idea of your first love and when it ends, the pain you feel is so massive.

Like, you could just die [laughs]. It's so funny how heavy everything feels. Every situation is the most intense moment emotionally. The first heartbreak. I kind of wanted to capture that.

There's also a few songs about my biological father that I wouldn't want to go into, but that are a little bit more intense. Sonically, I just wanted it to be lo-fi indie rock. I wanted to make a Built to Spill record, essentially.

MATT: Hell yeah. I think you succeeded. There's definitely some Built To Spill influence in there. Some Figure Eight Elliott Smith era stuff. Magnolia Electric Company, maybe.

ADAM: The Figure Eight stuff is all Beatles. A lot of the guitar solo stuff is going to be George-influenced. It's inescapable to me. There's always going to be a Beatles thing. Which I think everyone thinks is an Elliott Smith thing. But it's Beatles music. So for me, that's always there. Like Basement Stairs, I was trying to write a George Harrison song. It was all I was thinking about. 

MATT: That and Bleach? 

ADAM: Yeah, that and Bleach. [laughs] Exactly. Like if George Harrison was in Nirvana. 

MATT: That would be kind of sick.

ADAM: Instead of Pat Smear.

MATT: Lyrically you have a really nice way of painting a picture without over-explaining things. It's really easy to fall into the song and it takes you to one’s own, personal memories. I think a lot of songwriters struggle with that. The line on Secrets, “I don't care that you're mean to me. Trust in the secrets you oughta keep.” That’s great stuff. What's your process for writing a song?

ADAM: I mean, I wrote that one [Secrets], Pennies, and Plastic Figurines in one shot, one take, and I made up all the lyrics on the spot. I didn't write anything. It just came out.

MATT: Wow!

ADAM: That's usually how I write most of what I do. It's like whatever comes out. I'm starting to veer away from that now just because I feel like it becomes too sing-songy, too Lou Reed. It's about that feeling of being young. It just flew out of me. Most of the time I write the music then I'll have a line or a hook, that is the chorus that I'll usually play while doing the rhythm guitar. I'll find a motif there and build on it. Whatever comes out, that's what I'll stick with. I'll just go down that path of whatever I say. 

MATT: What is the significance of the Gazebo? 

ADAM: There's a gazebo in my town that we used to hang out at. It's in the Secrets video. It's in the Northbrook Green. It's a little structure that we all used to hang out and smoke cigarettes at. I got broken up with there. I started drinking there when I was really young and smoking weed. It's kind of like the hub for that period of your life.

Being in high school, we used to hang out there all the time. There was nothing else to do. There was skating and stuff but that was the hang spot. One of my best friends lived right down the street and we would be there all the time. All night. I feel like that's a common feature in most suburbs or small towns. They have a gazebo that's in the park.

MATT: We had that where I grew up. I'm sure there's kids still doing that. So anyway, you're sober. I'm sober. Pretty fucking cool.

[both laugh]

ADAM: It is!

MATT: To be honest, you were a big inspiration for me early on in sobriety.

ADAM: Thanks, man!

MATT: Seeing you be so active in music, maintain sobriety, and be a genuinely nice person, I was like, ‘fuck this dude is awesome.’ There are a few things you said to me early on that still resonate with me. Thanks for being an inspiration to me and a lot of people!

ADAM: Thank you! When I first got clean it was a lot harder. Because there weren't a lot of options back then. There was just soda. There wasn't a lot of [N/A] beer yet. I would just get cokes. 

When I tell people who are trying to get sober, I tell them to tell everybody they know that they're sober. Because if and maybe when you relapse - which is really common - that doesn't mean you're starting from scratch again. It just means that you've lapsed. For a minute. You can start over. But people will not talk to you. People can't handle the depth of that in that moment. If you relapse and have a few drinks at a bar and everyone knows you're clean, people will ignore you. There's so much more shame that would accompany that than if you relapsed and no one knew you were sober. It's an accountability that you keep with yourself and other people in your community and it's helpful.

It helped me stay the course. And Drinking soda. Now that's all I drink [both laugh]. I do like the N/A beer stuff.

Getting sober is … it’s relatively pretty easy. It's doing the normal life things and focusing on your behaviors is what's difficult. You have to focus on your behaviors. Not just the not drinking. It's hard but it's not the same. It's like changing who you are and why you drink. Because if you don't handle that then, to me, you're not really fulfilling all that you could be fulfilling in sobriety. If you don't check out the reasons why, if you ignore that, it would be pretty hard to stay sober. Because you're just clenching your fists for however long, not drinking. Dry-Drunk shit. 

MATT: That's a good point. When I started out, I was like ‘Oh, I'm just an addict. If I stop then everything will be the same except, I won’t drink and everything kind of sucks.’ But after a few months I was thinking, why do I want to drink and do drugs all the time? What is the cause of this feeling? And dissecting that and unboxing those feelings. And going to therapy.

ADAM: That's a big part. And a lot of people can't go to therapy. It's expensive.

MATT: It’s brutal.

ADAM: But there are plenty of other options. There's Smart Recovery. AA, NA, DBT, CBT focused groups. Which are, to me, a little bit more helpful for behavior modification. It's just one of those things where if you don't do that, if you don't look for that, you're probably just going to start using again. Or using something else. Maybe you'll be spending more money. Whatever. The hole needs to be filled. Whatever you can fill it with. If it's not drugs and alcohol it'll be something and it'll be unhealthy because people that have that addictive personality tend to overdo everything and if you don't watch that in yourself, being sober may not be enough.

MATT: It's tough. I was talking about that recently, filling that hole. The void. For me, the first year was just working a ton and not really doing anything else or talking to anyone. But once I got in a good place with that, I still felt like I was missing something. And started to get that itch again. You are feeding this void with substances. What happens after you stop? After that’s gone, what do you do?

ADAM: What you do is, dig down into the trauma of your being and work at it. Chip away at it. It takes a long time. I think people don't realize how long it takes. Think about how long you've been alive! What behaviors you've developed throughout your entire life and then trying to change those takes forever and it takes a lot of work. As soon as you get sober it's like a new life. You have to relearn everything, and you feel like shit sometimes.

That's the thing. I still get really depressed. And anxious and whatever. I just have better ways of dealing with it. The emotions of that don't go away, it's part of you. You have to learn. You're not going to be perfectly happy. The pink cloud of sobriety is really intense. You physically change. You look better. You get thinner. Everything feels a little bit better. You remember things. You don't have hangovers anymore and that lasts for 2-3 months. Then reality happens. And you're like, I did all this stuff but I still feel like shit.

[both laugh]. 

I got clean. I took medication, I did all this stuff but I still feel terrible. Fuck! What do I gotta do here!? What you gotta do is deal with the root trauma. Why do you feel those things? And sometimes you feel them anyway but how you deal with it is what's important. It won't last as long. You can handle it differently.

MATT:  It's the coping mechanisms for dealing with it. I struggle with depression and anxiety. Being able to recognize and accept that shit is going to suck sometimes but you can cope with it. You don't have to drink or do drugs to get past it. And it will get better. 

ADAM: Absolutely. There are other elements of that too. We have so much stock in the idea of you are your feelings. Which is not true. It's only true because you're just telling yourself that. You feel sad. You're not sad. You don't encapsulate depression. Unless you are trying to do that. Which is scary too, because there's a lot of comfort in that misery. You want to feel really special in your misery. That's something that's really common. It's one of those things where people want to feel like no one else feels the way they do.

If you just look up statistics of depression and generalized anxiety disorder in America, you realize that so many people feel what you feel. And it's not that interesting. It just isn't. And that’s OK.

That's why I think people have a hard time in AA because when go and they hear literally the things they think about in their own head that they don't tell anybody. Something a stranger says. And that's both the best feeling, to feel like you are a part of another person, and the loneliest feeling ever. Because you're not special. Everybody feels this.

You have to practice living and going on. And being vulnerable and kind to your friends and family while feeling those feelings. Because otherwise you're an asshole. When you do that too much, you're just pushing people away. Even if you do it by accident, let those feelings take over yourself, maybe push them on to other people. 

This morning, I felt like that with Alexa. I said, I'm feeling really sensitive, I’m sorry. That's all you need to do. You just need to admit it and go take a walk. Maybe I'll still feel sad but at least I understand a little bit more. There are other people out there. These are real people. It's not just you feeling sad. If you can recognize that, I think it's a little bit easier.

MATT: I think verbalizing your feelings is important. A lot of people don't really do that. That's something I try to do with myself and my immediate friends. It’s OK to say you’re having a bummer day but still want to hang out. Getting it out of your brain helps a lot.

ADAM: And letting your friends in. That's very important. 

MATT: It's huge. The value of friendship is so important.

ADAM: Oh yeah! And other friendships fall away because they can't handle that. Some people change over time. One of my best friends, it was really hard for them to be vulnerable. And now they're amazing! They've given me such good advice. It's incredible. Sometimes it's worth sticking around. People can change. That's true. But then some people love their misery.

MATT: I've definitely been there. Sometimes it's, maybe not fun to be sad, but it's comfortable. I think in music in particular, there's this sort of stigma that you have to be a sad, tortured artist to achieve the level of success that you might want. 

ADAM: Like the Van Gogh theory?

MATT: Yeah sort of. Growing up I idolized very specific musicians that were living this alternative lifestyle that were in the news about attempting suicide or being an addict.

ADAM: Like Kurt Cobain?

MATT: Exactly. You are fed this from a young age and idolize these people that maybe shouldn't have been talked about in the public eye for their struggles in this idealistic, carnivalistic way. This person is struggling, they probably don't want to be in the news about what they're going through and turned into a God for their pain. 

ADAM: Probably not [both laugh]. That's a classic scenario of the tortured artist thing. I've snapped before, in my life. I didn't really know what reality was. I felt a little unhinged. It sucks. I had to be in a hospital. It was scary. Maybe people don't realize a lot of those things. Especially if you have anxiety or panic attack disorder. It's really scary. I was in fear all the time. It was awful. It was like a nightmare. It wasn't fun. It doesn't make anything interesting, artistically. They were already good. The correlation between mental illness and creativity has been talked about and hammered down. It's like dust at this point.

You can be a really smart, confident, trustworthy, levelheaded human being and make great shit.

MATT: Concerning your upcoming show, you said you're playing with the whole band this time?

ADAM: Yeah, it's a three piece. I've been doing it like that for a while. Sarah Weddle is playing drums for Ashley Guerrero, who is in my band but she can't be at the show. Emma McCall is playing bass. Her twin sister Sarah used to play bass. I love them a lot.  I’ll have some buttons! And hopefully new shirts if I can pay off some credit card debt [laughs].

MATT: Any parting words before we continue our days? You still got half that sandwich to eat. 

ADAM: Yeah, I’m taking it home with me. Stay tuned for more stuff! I'm finishing tracking my next record at JAMDEK with Doug Malone. Exciting!

I would also like to say, for people who want to get clean, maybe this is an old AA-ism but for me at least, you have to admit to yourself you might not be able to ever use again. If you're a person that thinks about having a healthy relationship with substances, if it’s ever crossed your mind and you need to check how many drinks you have in a night — I don't think healthy normal people ever really do that. People that I know who aren't alcoholics have never thought of liquor like ‘Oh how many drinks have I had tonight?’ Or ‘I can only have two beers and that’s it’. Trying to justify it, that's a sign, to me.

It's really fun to be sober. And rewarding. And it's really easy right now to be sober. There's so many options! You could get any [N/A] beer right away! It feels and tastes just like beer. It's worth trying. And you won't feel like garbage. Maybe you won't say some crazy shit to people when you get too drunk or something. You'll be a better you. If you're trying to be sober, if you're struggling with it, talk to people about it. Tell people how you feel. Don’t keep it inside. Let it go.

MATT: I think that's really good advice. Being sober rules. Thanks Adam!

ADAM: Thank you!