Welcome to Liner Notes, where we interview music-obsessed curators and artists. In each interview, we get their three independent artist picks and learn about how their relationship with music impacts their lives.

With this installment, we're speaking with author Rax King, a James Beard-nominated writer whose delightful social media presence serves as a perfect calling card for her sharply confessional work. Rax spoke with us several weeks before the July 29 release of her second essay collection, Sloppy, or: Doing It All Wrong, a series of warts-and-all reflections on confronting sobriety.

Four Indie Recommendations

Pop Music Fever Dream - A Brooklyn band Rax recommends for their high-energy music and old-school rock star moves.

Spotlight Track: Elegy for Memory

Chill Parents - A DC band whose heavy hardcore approach is leavened with an appealing sense of humor.

Spotlight Track: The Raid

Perennial - Out of Connecticut, this group is "funny and poppy and catchy, but in a punk way." Expect to be singing along before the end of your first show.

Spotlight Track: Action Painting

SEXFACES - A raucous DC group that captivated Rax with their cover of Patti Smith's rendition of "Gloria."

Spotlight Track: Feed Machine

Full Interview

The last time we talked, it was for your previous book, Tacky. And now you're going from Tacky to Sloppy.

‍Yeah, we're just devolving down the list of adjectives. Next one's going to just be like Hot Mess or something.

For people who haven't read it — and if you haven't read it, it's time for you to repent — Tacky is a quasi-memoir with a low culture angle, which is something that you have a longstanding public fondness for, and so do I. What went into the thought process behind pivoting from Tacky to this book, which is lot more intensely personal.

I felt like there were two ways that I could go with a second essay collection: I could just commit hard to being the person who writes about Creed, or I could take things in sort of a different direction.

I had just gotten sober at the time that I started writing the essays that comprise Sloppy. When I say just got sober, I mean about 10 days before I started the first essay that's in there, I had my last drink. And so that ended up being a big part of the angle of Sloppy, is... not just getting sober and not just addiction in general, but doing it wrong and, you know, getting sober kind of incorrectly and all the various other vices that I cling to to this day. So that's sort of what Sloppy is all about.

You've talked about the idea that when you get sober, you're basically the age you were before you started using. Did you find that your voice was different? Or your process? Was it harder for you to hear the muse?

I mean, yeah, you quoted me saying that when you get sober, you just regress to however old you were before before you became an addict. And for me, that was 15 years old. So I felt very 15 years old for a good long time after quitting drinking. And I think to an extent that did inform my writing process. I mean, I was not disciplined about writing at all as a teenager. And I just kind of did it when I did it and didn't edit myself hardly at all. And I was, in fact, very defensive about the idea that I should edit anything that I have to say. I distinctly remember when I was a teenager, I took this writing workshop for kids for teenagers, and obviously, the workshop leader had extensive notes for me. And I was just like, "What the hell is this about? I'm good at this. Screw you, writing workshop man." Some of that sensitivity definitely made its way in at this point in the process as well. Although I like to think I'm a little better at being edited now, but you know, that defensiveness was very much there.

And so writing Sloppy was about pushing through that defensiveness to say what I thought needed to be said about addiction and sobriety, and bad habits more generally. just, you know, this is an area of life where I think a lot of people have a lot of defensiveness. People are defensive about their bad habits. And so I thought that it was worth both leaning into that defensiveness and talking about how great bad habits can be, and how much fun it can be to be a sloppy fuckup. Wait, can I curse? Okay. Yeah, a sloppy fuckup. But also, what a mess I ended up making of my life and how I needed to find a way out.

I imagine being in your situation before you started writing the book and having to deal with voices saying, "A writer getting sober and then writing about getting sober is so cliché. I shouldn't do it." I wanted to ask if you had to tune that out, but it sounds like you really were leaning into the multiple layers of discomfort.

‍Well, the thing about that is that that voice you describe, it doesn't even have to be sobriety. I can tell myself that about anything I have to say. Like I can be so mad at myself and just berate myself for anything I want to write, whatever it occurs to me to write. There's that little part of my brain that says "That is not worth doing, and you should just quit and get a day job, stupid." That's talking to me right now, as I'm talking. She never shuts up.

So if I'm going to be a writer, I have to pretty much ignore that, and that's what I've had to do. And then of course the voice creeps in with "Don't you ignore me. This is how you humiliate yourself, by writing this thing anyway." So there's just all these layers of self-obsessed self-consciousness, and it's been such a part of me for so long. I I think it's a part of every addict, that little voice in your head that's like "Whatever it is you wanna do sucks."

So it's not so much that it's not there, it's that it's so there that it's kind of easy for me to tune it out, actually.

I want to pause here to acknowledge your Patreon. I feel like a lot of people who are not writers probably view personal essays as easy things to write, because you're drawing on nothing but personal experience. You know, what could require less research than that? But it isn't that easy and really, every time I get one of your newsletters, I'm really happy and eager and excited to read it. And so... I'm glad you're still here. I have felt honored to read your really raw journey through all of this. So, you know, the next time that voice speaks up, if...

‍Jeff, I like you too.

I was really excited, to see you had a new book coming out. I'm thrilled to read it.

Thank you. I hope lots of people are thrilled to read it. Everyone should buy it so that I don't have to get a day job.

I know you have a relationship with music because it's a topic in Tacky, but, can you remember when your meaningful relationship with music began?

‍That's a good question. I can't remember ever not having a frankly sort of obsessive relationship with music. I grew up in a music house. Like, my dad was very committed to giving me that. Have you seen that? I think it's a Hard Times meme where it's like "Cool dad raises his kid on media that will put her out of touch with her peers." That was my dad. My dad did that. And it was media that would have put me out of touch with his generation, too. He raised me on Lead Belly and the Carter Family and just all those great old Lomax field recordings; that kind of stuff. So I always had that foundation, and I always really loved that stuff.

And then when I was in middle school, I took the middle school heel turn into punk rock. And, you know, D.C. is is a great city for that because it's all-ages shows everywhere. I think this has maybe changed at this point, but when I was growing up, the default was all-ages shows at just about every venue. If a show was 21 and up, they would have to say so. It wasn't the other way around.

So I was just going to these great $5 Discord shows from the time I was very, very young, without even knowing what any of that stuff was. I didn't know from Discord. I was a little Hot Topic mall punk at the time, but I really, I just feel very, very lucky to have had that background. And then I got in high school, and I went to this kind of hippie high school where some of the teachers there had Discord bands. Discord was a weirdly big part of my life for someone who did not actually know what it was until I was like 20 years old. But I would go to see my teachers' bands play or my teachers would tell me about cool shows and I'd go to see them and that's how I found out about all kinds of stuff.

And so I've just, I've carried that with me forever. I mean, the DC hardcore and DIY scene very much raised me. And it was such a pleasure to go back there this past weekend for the Liberation Weekend Festival and get to see all these people 10, 20 years younger than me, but still kick in. That scene is still just as warm and welcoming and earnest and committed as it was when I was a part of it. That really warmed my little aging punk's heart to see.

What did you listen to while you were writing Sloppy? My initial assumption, given what we're talking about, experiencing this arrested emotional development, is that you would go back to the stuff that you were listening to when you were 15.

Yeah, there was a good amount of that. Definitely went deep into a Fugazi hole for a while — and kind of have yet to emerge from the Fugazi hole, actually — but there was a lot of that.

And then around the time I started writing Sloppy, I also started playing the banjo. So there was also a lot of, you know, that old time music, old time tunes from that I was talking about before. And, you know, the the epigraph for Sloppy is a quote from a Hank Williams, Jr. song. So really, my soundtrack ran the chaotic gamut.

Do you play any other instruments?

I play guitar poorly.

So do I.

Do you also play guitar poorly? Nice!

I kept taking whacks at playing guitar for a long time. I really didn't get into it until the year I turned 40. There were a couple of gateways that helped me get there, one of which was the ukulele, and the other was open tunings. All of which is to say that the banjo is fucking daunting. If you don't play guitar very well, to jump in with banjo, that's brave.

Is it daunting? It feels easier for me. My problem with the guitar is the neck is really — this is so embarrassing. The neck of an acoustic guitar is really big and wide. And I don't know if you can tell, I have these, like, creepy little doll hands, so holding a guitar is so difficult. Like, if I had a guitar in my lap right now, it would just occupy my entire screen. I'm such a teeny tiny little person, and a banjo is small and the neck is skinny. So that right there like made it so much less daunting of a prospect. And I also don't play it, you know, Bill Monroe bluegrass style. I'm not fast by any stretch. I'm still not dexterous.

When I really got into guitar, what I found really wonderfully instructive about doing it at that late of an age was that it reminded me that it's okay to suck at something, because you can still get better, even after the period when we start to think we know everything we're capable of really doing. And also, a lot of what you think of as sort of innate skill has more to do with just dumb repetition building into muscle memory.

Yeah, I think that's definitely been the case. And it's probably also a problem that I took up the guitar when I was like 12, which is not a great age for, you know, maturely and sensibly pushing through discomfort to get to the other side. Like, I was just like, why am I bad at guitar? Fuck this. And now I know why I'm bad at banjo. I mean, I'm not bad at banjo. I'm pretty OK at banjo at this stage. But when I first took it up, I knew exactly why I was bad at it. I had never played it before. And so it was, you know, it was less discouraging to be bad at it and to just let myself be bad and get better. And since honestly, since getting sober, I've taken up all kinds of extracurriculars similar to playing banjo, and they all start in the same place where I'm really, really bad at it for kind of a while. And, you know, that just changes. So at this point, I'm able to take up something new and feel pretty optimistic that I'm bad at it now. I'm not always going to be this bad.

That's kind of what I was getting at, because you're in a stage of life where you were confronted with some of the most, I guess, kind of fundamental discomfort that a person can agree to engage with in order to simply stay alive. And so maybe picking up banjo after you've already confronted this, you're just like, "Well, I can do hard things."

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, it's a great way to fill those hours that come up when you're not spending most of your day either hung over or in a blackout. And that was a big part of it for me was, no, this is why I keep taking up and pursuing other interests.  I had so many hours in the day, and I just did not know what to do with myself. And at some point I was like, "Okay, I just can't have this much free time because when I have this much free time, my brain goes to trouble and what kind of trouble I can I get myself into, so let me jam some stuff into the free time and let me get good at an instrument and let me take up, you know, difficult sports and stuff, like anything to just make my life harder in a manageable way."

Now that you're on the other side of Sloppy, how do you feel about your relationship with the muse or your command of the craft? How do you feel like this has changed things for you, if at all?

I feel like Sloppy is a more mature book than Tacky was. It would have to be. I mean, I'm obviously older writing it. I would hate to say that it was less so, but it's a little bit more subdued, I think, and a little less outright exuberant. And part of that, I would imagine, is just... you get older and you just don't want to write in specifically the same way that you did before. But I think part of it, too, is I was really not in a good way writing most of Tacky. I was writing well and I had a good writing discipline going, but every other corner of my life was such a mess. And a lot, you if you read Tacky, you kind of find little Easter eggs of it. Like, there's all these moments where I'm speaking up in defense of being a huge fucking mess.

We're working on it and I'm just trying to be realistic about it, but maybe I don't need to put on quite such a vamping show about it either.

That makes a lot of sense. And now comes the part where I'm going to ask you to recommend three indie acts.

I'm excited about this part. Can I recommend four?

Please do!

Sick. I really could not pare down my little list. So number one of my recommendations would be this band, local to Brooklyn, called Pop Music Fever Dream. They are the funnest. And if they ever come to your city, that is the live show to see. They put on a show like I've never seen before. They were playing it at Liberation Weekend, actually, and the lead singer smashed a guitar, which I have not seen since footage of Woodstock. It's such a cool, old school move. They have a crazy energy. They're so much fun. If you have a chance to see them live, absolutely do it.

My number two recommendation is a band out of DC called Chill Parents. Isn't that such a good name? Every time I tell that name to someone recommending them, they're like, that is the best name. I randomly saw them play in DC. I try and go back as often as I can because I miss it, and I was there a couple of months ago and decided I felt like going to a show at this pie shop called Pie Shop. They run shows sometimes, which is an incredibly DC sentence, because just everybody runs shows all the time. So I went, and Chill Parents were playing and they were so like, heavy and sludgy, but also really funny and just like good old-fashioned, hardcore type DC music.

My third recommendation is another group that I saw at Liberation Weekend called Perennial out of somewhere in Connecticut. I forget where, but they they're really funny and poppy and catchy, but in a punk way. I had never heard them before, but I was singing along to their songs like I'd been singing along to them for years. They've got a really good energy for that, and really good lyrical soundbites that everyone latches on to. And I feel like I just never listened to bands that have keys either. That's  checking off a box for me.

And then finally, another band out of DC called Sex Faces. I know. I have great band names in my little roster. They just released their LP, whose name is escaping me right now. They're another one that I happened to see live just because a friend of mine, when I was home recently, said, "Let's go to such and such place and there's a band playing," and we walked in and they were there like very chaotically playing a cover of Patti Smith's version of "Gloria." It was just so raucous and fun. I think every band that I've recommended, I've used the word "fun," but it's true. It's true every time. So yeah, all those guys, all those guys are my recommendations.

What was it like going back to attending live shows as a sober person? Did you have to think about that at all? Was it a thing?

Yes. Yes, I did. I didn't do it for, I don't even know how long, maybe like the first year. I don't think I hardly went to anything. I had such a chip on my shoulder about the fact that I was sober and other people were not. I don't feel that strongly about it anymore. Honestly, at this point, I don't really care. Like I'm at the stage in my sobriety where if somebody's jabbering at me all coked up, I no longer envy them. I'm just like, "That sucks for you. That's gonna be a pain in your ass in the morning. You are gonna be so embarrassed if you remember this conversation." Like kind of in a smug way, you know? Like I'm never gonna be embarrassed about something like that again. So at shows, it's a really good opportunity to have lots of those conversations, but also nobody cares. Like every venue pretty much has a non-alcoholic beer option or, you know, places are generally willing to make me a Shirley Temple, which is kind of my sober girl drink. And I can't remember the last time I felt like if I stayed in a bar, I was going to get myself in trouble.

That was a big thing. Keeping me out of bars and venues for months when I got sober, like "I can be here and probably nobody cares that I'm not drinking, but I just feel it so hard. I feel that I'm not drinking and no amount of, you know, ginger ale with bitters is gonna change that shit, so let me just leave." And I don't feel that way anymore. I just feel normal about it. I've become normal. I'm fixed now.

Would that that could be true for any of us.

Yeah.

Sloppy is out July 29 at finer bookstores everywhere. Where do you want people to come and find you on the internet?

I'm on all the socials that you would expect. My username everywhere is RaxKingIsDead, because somebody else years ago took RaxKing, so I've just been stuck ever since with RaxKingIsDead. And I'll also be doing a brief book tour for Sloppy, so I may be coming to a city near you, and if so, please come see me. I'm so afraid no one's gonna, and then it's gonna reflect poorly on me, and I'll feel bad about myself, so you probably don't want to be responsible for that.

Yeah, that's the thing I think a lot people don't realize about these book tours. They're supremely nervewracking. Just... "I'm gonna show up and sit at a table and hope other people are there too."

Yeah, if nobody wants me to sign their book, I'm going to throw a tantrum. Hasn't happened yet, but it could at any time.

Everybody, buy Sloppy, buy Tacky. Subscribe to Rax's Patreon, come find her on her socials, and keep an eye on those book tour dates, because we don't want any tantrums.