What does it feel like to live with feet in multiple worlds? Nabil Ayers can give a masterclass. He’s both a musician and businessman, bi-racial, the US GM of 4AD, a legendary record label, and writer with a growing profile. Nabil has quietly, persistently engaged in a life of lifting up the work of others, while also carving out his own creative space. Nabil’s memoir hits in 2022 and we’re excited to have caught him as he’s entering lift-off on the long trajectory of publishing his first book. If you’re a music fan, someone walking their own evolving creative path, a person who is figuring out how to make all the pieces fit together - or all of the above - Nabil’s quiet determination will resonate. Nabil’s collected writing at nabilayers.com For the music fans who want to go deeper on 4AD Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Support TMST and keep it ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/ Join our free on-line community (it’s NOT a Facebook group!): https://www.tmstpod.com/
Tell Me Something True with Laura McKowen
Nabil Ayers on Finding Your Voice
Laura McKowen: [00:00:00] Hey, Laura here. I'm going to play you some music, and then we're going to talk about how it's all connected.
[00:00:27] Then there's these two
[00:00:50] And finally these two.
[00:01:16] The TMST music heads get it. But most of us would never know that all these bands and the Cocteau Twins to the Breeders and Pixies all the way through to the National and Beirut. They're all on the same record label. That label is 4AD. So today's guests is Nabil Ayers, and he is the US label manager for 4AD. As a musician and a record store owner he was super influential in the Seattle music scene and at 4AD he's part of a global team that's not resting on their 40 year history and Nabil isn't resting as a creative person. His memoir is coming out in 2022. And I'm so excited to have caught him at this stage. He's entering liftoff on the long trajectory of publishing.
[00:02:11] It's a special time in the life of an emerging writer. For the last few years, Nabil has been making waves as he's finding his voice. He's earned some impressive placements in the New York Times, GQ, the Roots and Rolling Stone. At TMST we want to keep introducing you to people we think you should know.
[00:02:33] Folks who are smart and doing really good, important work and making an impact on our culture. I know there are a ton of folks in the TMST community who are asking, how do I tap into this creative energy I'm feeling? Nabil is humble and passionate and has a quiet fire that I think will resonate. I really enjoyed this conversation and I think you will too.
[00:03:02] Hi Nabil!
[00:03:13]Nabil Ayers: [00:03:13] Hi, how's it going?
[00:03:14] Laura McKowen: [00:03:14] Great. I was telling you before we recorded that I've never been to so excited to talk to someone I just knew existed only a month ago, or I didn't know existed only a month ago.
[00:03:27] We're born about the same time. And so we've listened to a lot of the same music. You have experienced that music in such a different way. So from a fan perspective, I just want to sponge, you know, all these nerdy music questions from you. And I might have to go there here and there. You're also now about to publish a book and I just can't wait to talk to you about your whole, your whole path. Yeah. So I figured a good place to jump in is where you are now at 4AD you've said that 4AD is a place where slightly outside characters can make slightly outsider music that affects people.
[00:04:09] Nabil Ayers: [00:04:09] Yeah. That sounds like something I would say. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:12] Laura McKowen: [00:04:12] So, well, maybe talk a little bit about how you, we'll drop in at where you landed, how you got to have a real job for the first time at 4AD and when that was, and sort of what you meant by that
[00:04:27]Nabil Ayers: [00:04:27] I'd spent most of my life or my, certainly my adult career life, either playing in bands or, you know, working for myself. My friend and I opened a record store when I think we were both 25, maybe he was 26, in Seattle. And that's what we did. And at the same time, I started a small record label and was putting out records by my friend's band and my bands and, and I've kind of always done that.
[00:04:49] And then just sort of you know, knew tons of people at record labels from owning a record store in Seattle, obviously, and moved to New York with the plan of running my own record label full time. I had a couple of bands that were doing well and it was kind of getting busier. And the band I was in at the time were called the Long Winters.
[00:05:06] It just wound down like a long couple of years of touring. So it felt like a great time to go to New York, this was in 2008, and really give that a shot. And I ran into someone at a party who worked at Beggars Group, which is the sort of parent company over 4AD and several other labels. And we just caught up and I told them what I was up to.
[00:05:23] And, you know, my big thing was, I'm so excited. I've just moved to New York. I'm not looking for a job. I'm not even interested in hearing about a job. This is what I'm going to do at least for the next year, you know, I've saved money, blah, blah, blah. And the next day he emailed and he was like, you know, I know you said all this stuff about not looking for a job but 4AD, who was based in London but has a very active presence in America, is looking for a specific 4AD person in New York, which they don't have.
[00:05:49] Would you at least be interested in hearing more about it? So that's the very short version and that's how I ended up a few months later, starting at 4AD. It was, you know, it was, it had been a favorite label of mine for years ever since I was a kid and heard Pixies and Cocteau Twins and all those incredible bands.
[00:06:03] And so it just, you know, it was too good to be true and still is
[00:06:08] Laura McKowen: [00:06:08] Maybe certain people do, I don't pay attention to record labels necessarily who puts out what
[00:06:14] Nabil Ayers: [00:06:14] We know!
[00:06:20] Laura McKowen: [00:06:20] When I w obviously in preparing to interview you, I wanted to see, and as I'm going down the list, I'm like what is going on? 4AD is responsible for like all of my listening for the past 20 years. Just, it goes, just goes down the National. I wrote all down, like the big ones that, sorry, Paul, you're going to have to edit this Bon Iver, St. Vincent and The National, Deer Hunter, Beirut, so what is your life like? Because you have a big job. So, what is your job and what are your days? Like, how are you spending
[00:06:58] your time?
[00:06:59] Nabil Ayers: [00:06:59] So my job and it's, it's always been the same. It's a job I started in 2009. Uh, I'm the general manager of 4AD in America.
[00:07:06] So 4AD is a British company, but my boss is this guy, Simon who runs the global company. And he's actually based in New York now, even though he's British and used to be in London. So my job, is, there are all these people who do specific things for 4AD, for the record company. There are people who do publicity and it's their job to try to get our bands, albums reviewed and get them on Fallon and TV shows and things like that.
[00:07:28] There are people who do radio promotion. There are people who do the art and the design and the layout and people who work on getting songs in TV commercials and films, and also all these different departments, these people who are all amazing and do these very specific things. In New York, and elsewhere in the world too, but I just run America.
[00:07:45] And my job is to kind of coordinate those when we're putting out an album and working with an artist and try to get the timing right in the work a lot with the artists themselves and the manager and the UK company, because everything is based out of the UK. And that's the sort of worldwide heads. It still doesn't make a ton of sense.
[00:08:00] And I think my mother still doesn't understand, but you know, I oversee all these people and, and try to make it all work and try to make everyone happy. And it's this weird thing where I think the assumption is just that, yeah, just go get it on the radio and go get the reviews and everything.
[00:08:13] But sometimes it's, let's hold back on this and let's not even talk to radio until the albums been out for six months. It's a new artist and I'll have a better shot once we've had more press or once they've toured more. There's a lot of that kind of, sort of strategic stuff.
[00:08:25] Laura McKowen: [00:08:25] And you've had that job for 13 years.
[00:08:27] Nabil Ayers: [00:08:27] Yeah.
[00:08:29] Laura McKowen: [00:08:29] I mean, that's a, that's a big job. How the hell did you find time to write?
[00:08:34] Nabil Ayers: [00:08:34] I know, I think I'm curious to get your thoughts on this or how you do this, but I think, um, I realized when we sold Sonic Boom, my record store in 2016, that's when I realized, I mean, when I moved to New York in 2008, I still owned it with my partner, but I wasn't doing anything day to day with the record store, we would just talk about leases or, you know, big things when they came up, but he was running the store, but when we sold it, I had this weird, like, in the deal with the new buyer was that our email addresses would expire in 30 days. And I remember my partner and I having this conversation where he was like, well, you know, at least you have this other email address. I have to invent a new Gmail or whatever, but I started thinking about it and I was like, this is weird because even though I haven't actually worked on it that much, it's a huge part of me.
[00:09:17] And I started it with him and it has been a big creative endeavor, even though it's a record store, but it absolutely had a lot of creativity involved and it was ending and suddenly, and I wasn't playing in a band. I was putting out records on my own small label, but that's so similar to 4AD, it's a much smaller scale version.
[00:09:35] So I did have this bit of a, like, what? Is this, the only thing I'm doing? Do I just work for this record company and go to work and go home? And I mean, it's a better job than that, but like, is that it? I don't own the record store. I don't play in a band, and that also coincided with reading and the starting of the writing.
[00:09:50] And I think that was a big reason that the writing became my new creative thing. And so at that time, when I thought about that, I didn't want to quit or anything, but it's definitely the least excited I was about my job. Right then, when it was the only thing I was doing, I was like, so that's it. You just do this and we'll put out another record in a month.
[00:10:10] And it never, it never felt like that at the time I'd been there, eight years is a long time and it never felt like that. It was always exciting. It changes enough; people come in and people come out, we have new artists, all that. So it never feels dull, but did for a little while. And then I think the writing got me out of that slump, and I think I just need to do different things to make one thing, you know, doing another thing doesn't take away from the first thing. It adds to it.
[00:10:36] I think my brain needs to be involved in more than one thing to engage in this. I get stressed, but there'll be times when the next draft of my manuscript was due in two weeks, but I was working on that Rolling Stone piece, and it was so stressful and I loved it and it made me sort of figure out how to do both.
[00:10:51] Laura McKowen: [00:10:51] Well that's great. We'll get to the book in a little bit. Given your history of your career and all the work you've done, how has being part of such a long, rich, but very contemporary and sort of vital institution in music. How has it been for you as a creative person?
[00:11:12] Nabil Ayers: [00:11:12] It's been great. I mean, it's really funny cause I come from, you know, first and foremost from playing music from being a drummer in bands, but, but always from a very young age, actually, contrary to the exact conversation we just had, I always noticed record labels, kid. You know, I noticed Impulse on jazz records and I was a huge Kiss fan as a kid and saw the Casa Blanca logo. You know, I really noticed that stuff and I don't think I knew what it meant, but I knew that it meant something and that certain records had that in common.
[00:11:39] Yeah. I'd always been interested in the business side. And even when I was in, you know, crappy bands in junior high, and we were just recording our demos on a cassette, I was the one that was like, let's make 10 copies and sell them at school tomorrow. Like I think I just always sort of was aware that there is more than just playing music, that these business things could happen and that someone had to do that.
[00:11:59] And when you're in that position, you have to do it yourself. No one else is gonna jump in and release my, you know, eighth grade demo. So I think college is when it really became, you know, which is what college is supposed to be. I got a great internship at Polygram, which was then was one of the six major distributors who had, you know, A and M.
[00:12:15] And this was in the early nineties in Seattle. And Soundgarden was on A and M was a really, really exciting time. And I DJed on my college radio station and played in bands and it's kind of, you know, really involved in all of those ways. So it was always still sort of very parallel. I was kind of playing music and somehow working in music at the same time.
[00:12:36] And even when we opened the record store, I played in bands the whole time. And in a way I think I sort of forced myself to go down a path that would allow me to be in bands that could go on tour. And that was what stopped me from getting a real job after college. When, if we're around the same age, when I graduated was a total possibility, it wasn't a hard thing.
[00:12:56] People graduated college and either went on to do graduate work or got a job. And it was something I definitely could have done and something I had to make a conscious decision to not do because I wanted to be in a band. And I knew that if I got a real job that, that, you know, if you're 22, 21, when I graduated, if you start making any kind of real money that lets you get a nicer apartment or lets you do things.
[00:13:17] It's really hard to go back and be like, but now I'm in a band. So you know, I think I somehow realized that and just worked at a record store and worked at a temp job and played in a band and loved it.
[00:13:27] Laura McKowen: [00:13:27] Yeah. I had this desire to both write and I was very interested in music, but I kind of knew like, if the writing world was another planet that was foreign to me, the music world felt like another galaxy. I just didn't make that conscious decision to go into it. And 15 years later, I was still in marketing and advertising. So, you know, I don't want that to be a tale for people. You know, if once you choose a path you're stuck on it.
[00:13:53] Cause that's definitely not true. But it's interesting that you had that instinct early.
[00:13:58] Nabil Ayers: [00:13:58] Yeah. And I don't really know what I just, I remember it well, I just knew it. I just felt it. It was that simple. I saw all my friends getting jobs and they're all getting nice apartments. And they were taking me out to dinner on their company, credit cards and I loved it.
[00:14:10] And it also just really scared me. And I was like, that's not, that's not going to allow me to do what I want to do. I think even actually having it around me made it even more obvious that I could maybe do that. And that I shouldn't.
[00:14:22] Laura McKowen: [00:14:22] Totally. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, when people ask you, why did you do this or that you really don't know it was in you.
[00:14:28] So it seems as though you are pretty guided by that instinct throughout you just sort of follow the next breadcrumb and the next breadcrumb, right?
[00:14:37] Nabil Ayers: [00:14:37] You do have to try to make those breadcrumbs, whether that's, you know, it's not just complete luck and falling into places, but yeah, even the 4AD story I just told, I mean that party I was at, you know, I think about things like this all the time of, what if I hadn't gone to that party that night and met Matt who I've now worked with for 13 years?
[00:14:54] But even that was, but there's this whole other funny thing. It's another thing to get into where people always assume that the other thing that could have happened isn't as good. And it also could be better. Who knows? Like, why can't it be like, wow, maybe I would've had a better job, but I don't know what that would be.
[00:15:08] Laura McKowen: [00:15:08] So being a creative. slash also and business person, are you a rare breed in, 4AD, or in the industry? Because I feel like that's something. I know for in the literary world it is pretty rare.
[00:15:25] Nabil Ayers: [00:15:25] Is it? Yeah, my, my, my editor, uh, writes young adult novels, which is amazing, but that's, that's rare. Yeah. There are a lot, I mean, in music, less than at least in my world, but in the sort of the major label world, the big, you know, huge artists world, there are a lot of A and R people, presidents of labels, people like that who were producers or who were big engineers or who were artists. Probably not as many who actually are.
[00:15:52] I think that's, that's the rarity. And, but I, I sort of see myself more among, I mean, I guess obviously the writing thing is, is me being creative. But until that I was kind of a former drummer who worked for a record company, which didn't feel that uncommon.
[00:16:06]Laura McKowen: [00:16:06] And you didn't feel jaded by that.
[00:16:09] Nabil Ayers: [00:16:09] Hmm, a little bit, there was a little bit of like, do I say I used to be a drummer? Do I say I am a drummer, former drummer? My mother who's in her seventies was a ballet dancer all her life, but can't do it for health reasons, constantly grapples with the, like I am a dancer is what she will tell people. And it's very important that she says it that way, but she thinks about it a lot.
[00:16:30] It's interesting how you frame yourself. I mean, I play drums once a year right now. I don't have a drum set in New York for space reasons. But I feel, I still think I'm a drummer, but I wouldn't necessarily have this conversation with a drummer in one of our bands the same way I'm having it with you.
[00:16:47] Laura McKowen: [00:16:47] Yeah. I'm fascinated with identity in that way.
[00:16:51] And I think a lot of it is sort of essence who you are at your essence and that can precede what you do, in a way. I always felt like I wanted to say that I was a writer more than anything, but at what point do I get to actually say that? Like, do I get to say I'm an author? When I started writing, around 2012, 13 when I was trying to get sober. And I was writing in earnest, not just talking bullshit about writing. Right. I said, I'm a writer. Yeah, that's true. And then I called my self, an author when I published a book.
[00:17:25]Nabil Ayers: [00:17:25] Oh, right. Okay. I hadn't even thought of author. I need a new title, right?
[00:17:30] Laura McKowen: [00:17:30] Yeah. You do have a new title. So you have been writing about identity more recently and sort of your growing up in, or coming up in indie rock for lack of a better, I don't know if you call it something else, but
[00:17:48] Nabil Ayers: [00:17:48] Yeah, that's a good catchall,
[00:17:50] Laura McKowen: [00:17:50] Which is, and that maybe I'm stealing some of your words here because I've heard other interviews, but it sounds like you found yourself writing
[00:17:59] stories. Maybe just talk about that, the piece that you wrote about the record store and then how your, what you have been interested in writing about since then?
[00:18:09] Nabil Ayers: [00:18:09] Yeah, this is, this is a pretty, a pretty easy one. Cause it's also fresh because I talk about it so much right now. So I was a terrible student in college, everything.
[00:18:17] We just talked about, me being in bands, putting on parties, do college radio station. That's all I did. And that's all I wanted to do. I, I went to a little fancy liberal arts college in Washington and loved it and had great friends. And the whole social part of it was very important to me. And I think I got a ton out of it, but the actual class part was not my thing.
[00:18:35] I don't know what I graduated with, but it began with a two. It was about a 2.3 or something like that. But I got, I got two A's in writing classes and to me, it's not because I worked harder because I applied myself differently. I just really loved them and it was easy and it was fun. And so that was that.
[00:18:52] And I guess maybe I had some kind of talent for it if it went well. So that was always kind of in the back of my head. But after college, I just played in bands, did the record store. I did all these things, but writing was never part of it. Never really thought about it. And there was a time in the mid nineties when one of the bands I was in was pulled over in the desert in Utah with a bunch of pot. And it wasn't even mine. I didn't smoke pot at the time, but it was ours because it was in our van and it was enough. It was a really scary, crazy thing. It was a possession with intent to distribute. It was a felony charge because it was a lot. And, uh, we were in jail and we were handcuffed and the whole thing, and it's a really crazy, weird, long story with tons of ins and outs.
[00:19:29] And we got off cause we got an incredible attorney and, and that was that. But I've told the long version of the story so many times over the years, it's still really fresh in my head. And I think it was about five, five, maybe six years ago. I was on a flight to London for work and just kind of felt wide awake and bored and didn't want to watch anything and didn't have the internet.
[00:19:48] And I just, something just told me, I thought I was like, I should just get out of the laptop and start writing that story. I feel like doing that. That just sounds fun right now. And I have seven hours and I really told myself, and I remember this from the two writing classes in college. You know, don't, don't think about it.
[00:20:05] Don't overthink it. No one ever needs to see this, let alone, will it be published or anything? Just tell it, like you would tell somebody, you know, tomorrow night or whatever. So I did, and I just kind of really wrote the entire flight. It was flying out and it was really fun. I was laughing out loud to myself, so weird.
[00:20:22] Right? Exactly. Oh, I'm so good. And uh, and then in London, I had that jet lag where I was staying up to like three or four in the morning every night. And I would just keep working on it. And especially now that in a hotel, I had an internet signal. So I was able to look up things that didn't really exist online in the nineties.
[00:20:37] So it was like, oh, weird. This is the date that we were in Cincinnati, or this was this place. And I could find all these it's like this weird research project on myself. And when I came back, I'd written something like 80 pages. And I was like, I don't, I have no idea what this is, but I know that something's happening.
[00:20:53] And this has been really fun. I still don't really want anyone to see this, but that's not the point. So I enrolled in a, just a memoir writing class at Catapult is one of them, there's lots of them in New York, but you know, it was Monday nights from seven to 10 and it was great and it was lots of prompts and it was lots of, you know, free writes and things where you just had to kind of write nonstop for 20 minutes or half an hour. And those are the things that I really liked. We did a lot of reading and everything much like college. That was not my thing but the writing part was great. And I think I got a lot out of it and it just got my brain going. And during those free writes, I was just thinking, oh, let's tell the funny stories about Sonic Boom the record store.
[00:21:28] And let's tell other band stories and just kind of had all these sort of fragments of things. And that's about the same time I started dating the woman who's now my wife, she came from a publishing background. Very smart, great reader, all that. And so I think that, yeah, the first thing I published, so Sonic Boom was the record store that I co owned in Seattle and we sold it, my partner and I in 2016.
[00:21:50] And when we did, we kind of had this conversation about, we sold it to a customer. Like this is a very positive thing. A lot of the employees are staying, all this. So how do we kind of put that out into the community? So The Stranger in Seattle is the cool alt weekly paper. So The Stranger agreed, and my partner agreed, I was like, what if I took some of these stories I've been writing about the store and kind of condensed them into a shorter 1500 word piece and announced it in The Stranger and published that, then it kind of came together really easily.
[00:22:17] I remember our friend who's the editor was like, yeah, that sounds great. And I was like, well, do you want to see it? He was like, well, you have to send it. But like, yeah, we'll run it. It's like, that's not how this works!
[00:22:27] Laura McKowen: [00:22:27] He trusted you, and you knew people would be interested.
[00:22:29] Nabil Ayers: [00:22:29] I guess, right? So, so I mean, but that, and I'm sure you know, this feeling, I mean, sending that was one of the scariest things I've ever done, because that was, it's one thing to write all this stuff and have nobody see it.
[00:22:39] It's another thing to go— even more than I was worried about it getting out in the world, I was worried about it not getting out in the world. I was worried about him saying, uh, you know, now that I've read this, maybe we just do the announcement, like, you know, of course it's all this sort of insecurity and fear kicks in.
[00:22:55] So that absolutely kicked in until he was like, yeah, we're just going to make a couple of small edits and the punctuation and stuff like that and run it as planned. And he did, and it went great. And it was really fun because the feedback wasn't, you're an amazing writer, this is great. It was, it was such a cool thing, because it was so, so many people related to it because so many people that we knew and didn't know had come in the store had been at that event that I talked about.
[00:23:16] So the feedback was like, oh, I met my wife there at this in-store, like things like that. So even though the feedback wasn't specifically about me writing, it still felt like I'd put something out. Yeah.
[00:23:27] Laura McKowen: [00:23:27] You made connections, for people.
[00:23:29]Nabil Ayers: [00:23:29] So I loved it. And then pretty soon after I think my wife was like, you know, this is great. This stuff's really fun. You should keep writing about your bands and your record store. But what you should really do is write about your race and your father, because that's what you're interested in and that's what people are going to be interested in. And again, I got the dark gut, like even just talking to her, I remember how that felt and thinking like, wow, those are the two scariest topics, like that's, you know, people will have opinions about both of those things and other people are involved and it's not just me having fun or
[00:24:04] Laura McKowen: [00:24:04] It's not talking about music, which people can have opinions on, but they're not controversial.
[00:24:09] Nabil Ayers: [00:24:09] Yeah. Right. But that is definitely, that was the moment that got me started down that road and I'm still on it, but I'm also still on the other road and, and, you know, the book sort of combines all of this. There's definitely some record store and some bands in there too. So what's been fun is the shorter pieces I've published over the last few years. Kind of still touch on all those. I mean, there's some race things. And, but, you know, I published a piece earlier this year about being at the Nirvana show where they played Smells Like Teen Spirit for the first time, which was so much fun.
[00:24:35] Laura McKowen: [00:24:35] Which blows my mind. The piece is really good, but also everyone needs to read that who was alive in the nineties for Nirvana.
[00:24:44] Nabil Ayers: [00:24:44] It really was that great, too.
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[00:26:43] Laura McKowen: [00:26:43] Did you feel like race was something that was, you were experiencing consciously or racism, or just race identity being in a predominantly white industry, were these conversations you had or was it even more buried than that, or is any of that true?
[00:27:06]Nabil Ayers: [00:27:06] I'm still not totally sure, but I'm definitely more sure than I, than I ever have been about all these things, because I've been writing about it and thinking about it.
[00:27:12] But, you know, I mean, my father is black. My mother is white. It's sort of, it's a little more complicated, but that's the very simple, basic breakdown. I've never known my father, grew up with my mother who was wonderful, had an incredible childhood, you know, on paper it doesn't sound very good. She was young. She was 21 when she deliberately decided she wanted to have me.
[00:27:31] She wanted to be a young single mother and my father who she was barely dating and he said, yes, but I'm not going to be around. And I've always known that. So. Of course, there are things, but it's not a divorce, no one left us. It's a very unique situation and I've known about it since, you know, as long as I can remember, my mother has been very upfront about it.
[00:27:49] So the race thing, I mean the first 10 years of my life, I was born in New York. We moved around a lot, but Cambridge, Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, which was amazing back to New York all within my first 10 years. And all of those places, especially Amherst were so, so diverse. And by diverse, I don't mean, yeah, there were like five black kids in the class.
[00:28:09] I mean, like everybody was like me, everybody was racially mixed. A lot of people didn't have a father. Like I was really in no way unique, which was great. Yeah. No, there was no, there was no norm kind of.
[00:28:23]Laura McKowen: [00:28:23] Especially for your first 10 years.
[00:28:25] Nabil Ayers: [00:28:25] Right, right. So all of us were the norm. So it was so I didn't realize how unusual it was.
[00:28:29] It was just amazing. So I didn't have to think about it. Race really wasn't a thing. It was like this magical little bubble in Amherst. It was crazy. And when I was 10, we moved to Salt Lake City. My mother worked for American Express and they moved a big part of the company there and Salt Lake City is not like that.
[00:28:44] But the weird thing, and I've spent so much time talking about this over the years, I lived there for seven years, sixth grade through high school, and still spent every summer in New York with my uncle who I'm really close to. So it kind of got the best of both worlds. But Salt Lake was great, even though it's very white and of course, very Mormon, I think it was about 60% then the rest of the state is more so, but Salt Lake is the big city, just like the kindest, most accepting people.
[00:29:08] And it never felt weird to me. I had Mormon friends, I had non-Mormon friends, I had lots of white friends because that's who was there, but it really, it wasn't weird. And the only, I mean, there are tons of little race issues along the way, but I've only recently started to think about them because they're kind of sprinkled throughout the book.
[00:29:28] And when you write about your entire life and look back at it, through that lens, it is really easy to be like, oh right. There was that time when the high school football coach said this thing, and then this weird thing at the prom and those things. And when you list them, which is literally part of what I was doing when I was writing the book suddenly it's like, oh, actually there are tons of things.
[00:29:47] But at the time they felt isolated, and luckily for me, never that huge and never really scary or threatening, just more like, yeah, sure. Touch my Afro. You know, just like things, but not huge things. So only recently I think of, I kind of become aware of how much of that has always existed in my life, but I've also kind of just shrugged off.
[00:30:09] Laura McKowen: [00:30:09] And how do you hold that now that you, this sort of coming to your consciousness?
[00:30:17] Nabil Ayers: [00:30:17] I don't know. It doesn't, it doesn't make me mad at anyone at the time. I mean, again, cause none of these things were that bad. A lot of these people, you know, kids don't know what they're doing. They have no idea. I don't think anything was, you know, meant to be harmful.
[00:30:32] But I think, you know, even some of the people, I mean, some of the stuff in the record store sections of the book, I showed that to my partner who's white. I wasn't even thinking about the race stuff that's in there, which there's a lot of, I just said, I want to show you this because you're in it. And it talks a lot about the store and I want to make sure you're okay with it and that the details are correct and everything.
[00:30:50] And he emailed me back, this was just a couple of weeks ago and, he's like, wow. I didn't know any of this was happening. Like, how was I during this? Basically asked me, and I was like, oh right. That's, I didn't even, when I sent it to you, I wasn't even thinking about that stuff. But it's just weird that, you know, the two of us own the store and did the same things in the same place.
[00:31:08] And now years later I can have this totally different memory of it than he can.
[00:31:13] Laura McKowen: [00:31:13] Yeah. And it's where it's like a lens that you're putting on it now that you're applying to it, which was always there. I'm fascinated with identity things, because I think so much of it is how we end up holding it and how it informs everything that we do.
[00:31:33] And I have noticed when I hold a certain part of my identity too tight, or when I don't account for it enough, you know? And so, I'm glad you're exploring that in the book. And I don't want to spoil any of the book, but I'm really glad you're writing about that. Here's another question. How was writing for you overall? What was that like? Maybe how is it different from your past creative endeavors?
[00:32:03] Nabil Ayers: [00:32:03] Comparing, it's hard to compare to past creative endeavors. I mean, as I was always the drummer, I guess I played guitar in one band in college, but most of the time I was a drummer, which meant that, you know, I wasn't the song writer, I wasn't writing lyrics.
[00:32:16] It is comparable in some ways, but from the creative standpoint, you know, there's nobody else to blame anything on. It's me, it's what I'm saying, I'm putting it out there and that's it. So, so that's new and scary and really exciting and fun and definitely publishing these shorter pieces I've absolutely been testing the waters if that makes sense. I think that the big one that got me, so when my wife told me that I needed to write about my father and my race, I was like, okay. Yeah, I'll try doing that. And I started, and I wrote this piece that I don't even know where it came from. It's published in The Root. And it's a very, it's almost like to me, like when I look at it now, I'm like, what was I thinking?
[00:32:53] Like, it's almost like this manifesto that just kind of says, like, I'm biracial. I've never had that strong of a racial identity. My life actually hasn't been that difficult because of it. And there are some weird circumstances the end.
[00:33:08]Laura McKowen: [00:33:08] I read it. I don't think it's just that!
[00:33:11]Nabil Ayers: [00:33:11] But that's what, that's the insecure side thinking like, why did you do this?
[00:33:14] But, so I originally pitched that to NPR Code Switch, who I love and ultimately ended up writing for, which was great, but they came back and they were like, look, this is really nice, but this doesn't have you know, their things they want, like an angle or something crazy, which I ended up doing with them later until I was like, yeah, yeah, I get it.
[00:33:32] And so I pitched it to The Root realizing, like to me it was like, Code Switch NPR, you're gonna at least hit a pretty large liberal white audience with that. Obviously not completely, but definitely more so than The Root which is a very Black website. But I love The Root and the editor's email was sitting right there in the masthead.
[00:33:49] And so I was like, I'm just gonna try this. And I emailed her and she emailed right back saying like, I'd love to read it. And I sent it and had that feeling again. And then she emailed back the next day saying, great, let's run it Saturday. And I was like, oh my God. And this is the first thing I thought is that there are going to be people who read this, who hate this, who are really mad because of my easy life.
[00:34:11] I'm doing air quotes right now. And I knew that, and that scared me, but it, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't saying anything untrue. And this is how I feel about my book. I've been telling my story, and I wasn't, I don't think, bragging about it or saying my story is better than yours, or you should have done this. It wasn't an advice piece.
[00:34:27] It was simply here's how I've kind of gone, here's one piece of how I've gone through life. So it went out. And The Root, they have comments, they allow comments. And I knew that. And my wife, even before it went out, said do not read the comments before they even went up before there were anym and pretty soon there are like 20 comments.
[00:34:48] And I was like, I think I need to read the comments. And I read the comments and they were almost all brutal. Like this, everything you would imagine like, oh really well, you know, screw you and your easy life. Here's how it's been for me and all this stuff. And when I got done I was like, oh, great. This is great for so many reasons I can do this now.
[00:35:04] It's great to affect people, I love, I don't want to make people feel bad, but I mean, getting a reaction out of people is important and it's not always going to be positive. And if you say something that affects people that way, that's also, I think, interesting and powerful. And I liked that. And I also just liked that I had a thick enough skin that I read all those and kept going and felt like great. That was almost, that was the weird test that I can write about race and my father.
[00:35:29] Laura McKowen: [00:35:29] Okay. That's, you should celebrate that that was your reaction. It sounds like you did a little bit, but it's, that's not always how it feels, you know,
[00:35:39] Nabil Ayers: [00:35:39] Have you ever written for a site with brutal comments?
[00:35:44]Laura McKowen: [00:35:44] Yeah, or just being a person on social media, I mean, you can't get away from it. I have at times had thick skin and have at times not. And you'll experience the same with the book. The more important message here is, it can't matter if you're to continue. It can't matter that much if you're to continue. I think feedback in some ways from the people, obviously that are close to you is very important.
[00:36:07] I think that the fact that you took it that way is great. And yeah, you talk about certain topics, no matter what, it's going to rub people, but, okay. So you wrote that though, and then it, obviously it takes an extraordinary amount of effort and time and endurance to write a book, you have to really care about the topic you're writing about. So something opened, right, when you wrote that.
[00:36:37]Nabil Ayers: [00:36:37] Yeah, absolutely. That, I mean, my wife's encouragement was one thing and then publishing that piece and feeling okay about it was the second thing. And I think then, then I took another writing class. My move then was, I don't know how to just start writing about that stuff, but I do know what I can do cause I've met my father a handful of times in my life once where I actually got to sit with him as an adult when I was in my thirties and have lunch and talk for a while, almost interview him.
[00:37:02] But many times as a kid, sometimes really, really briefly sometimes for a few minutes. And I remember not all of them, but you know, a handful. What I thought I'd do is I'll just write about each of those times, and those will be moments and I'll just try to remember everything I can from them and what I got from them and what it felt like.
[00:37:19] And then of course it turned into, oh right, that was that summer when I was with my uncle in New York and we ran into my father and that summer in New York was really fun. Like, I think there's this something happening where once I started writing, it got easier to keep writing. And so I'd start writing about my father, but it would just turn into a sort of time and place thing that expanded into something else. And before I knew it, I had these like five points. So I definitely didn't write the book from beginning to end, even though it's a memoir and it's very chronological, but I think I started it with these five pieces from the, you know, whatever, three years old, 10 years old, 15 years old, 35 years old, and then kind of filled it.
[00:37:57] It's like a coloring book or something, but just filled in with other stuff and try to figure out what's the balance between my father and race and band and labels and what was happening at the time. And, you know, tried to get that all together.
[00:38:10]Laura McKowen: [00:38:10] The process of writing my memoir was many things for me, but one of them was, it revealed parts of me to myself that I learned a lot about myself writing it. So did you find that to be the same experience and what did you learn?
[00:38:25] Nabil Ayers: [00:38:25] Where did I learn about myself? Ah, I mean, I know I did now. I'm trying to scan the chapters! There wasn't a huge takeaway. I mean, the thing we just talked about, I think it's not necessarily a big lesson about myself. But if you'd asked me if I'd asked myself before this was done a few years ago about racism in my life, and if I had experienced much and how I felt about race and everything, I think I would have said, no, it's fine. I've been lucky. And I've kind of just like skated through and nothing's really ever happened. And that is absolutely not true. And the book doesn't completely focus on that and I could have written a lot more about that, but it definitely opened my eyes to really how scary that stuff can be. And I mean, a lot of it that I was in a few different bands and there's parts where we're touring through America and touring through Europe, but touring through Europe was never scary. Touring through America always terrified me and I still have this like, fear of just that someone's going to see me at a gas station and not like the way I look and that's going to go the wrong way.
[00:39:29] Laura McKowen: [00:39:29] And shit, you didn't realize that until you started to write about it?
[00:39:32]Nabil Ayers: [00:39:32] I definitely did, because I always had that fear. The van, you know, we were in a van every time we pulled into a gas station somewhere, I would always sort of do a little scan of the parking lot before I got out. I think I always knew about it, but that stuff I think, because it was so ingrained in me and it was so knee-jerk that I actually, that, that never felt like a thing to me.
[00:39:52] And luckily not much ever happened and maybe it never happened because I was always doing that or maybe it was never going to happen and I didn't need to do that. And maybe I brought all that fear to myself totally unnecessarily. We'll never know, but no matter what, going back years later and looking at years of it and putting it all together, it was like, oh wow.
[00:40:10] I was scared every day, but it didn't feel like I was scared every day, every day.
[00:40:15] Laura McKowen: [00:40:15] Yeah. Well, what is unconscious is unconscious, you know, and it's just the water you're swimming in. So, and till you explore that, it's, it's just what you know. Okay. So you did learn something good. What about in the writing process? Anything in there? Like, how did you find that?
[00:40:34]Nabil Ayers: [00:40:34] I mean, I loved it.
[00:40:36]Laura McKowen: [00:40:36] You did?!
[00:40:37]Nabil Ayers: [00:40:37] Not the whole time. Of course not. I hated a lot of it, but overall I would say I loved it.
[00:40:41] Laura McKowen: [00:40:41] I was like, you're a unicorn and you need to write many more books. Cause you're the only one.
[00:40:48]Nabil Ayers: [00:40:48] You know, I have friends or, you know, acquaintances are like, wow. So they just like said you should write a book? There's like, no, there is no, "they," the classic "they," it's like, yeah, someone just gave you a book deal or whatever, even Rolling Stone just called you to do that Nirvana thing. It's like, no, at least to this point. And I, of course hope it gets easier, but worked very hard and done everything on my own.
[00:41:08] And luckily I've had, you know, friends and people who've helped connect me with people, but the fact that I had to push myself to do it. There was no one else telling me to write whatever, 250 pages about myself made it so I kind of had to like it, if that makes any sense.
[00:41:24] Laura McKowen: [00:41:24] Yeah. Well, I mean, it is extraordinary that you did this. It is very extraordinary that you did it on your own.
[00:41:33]Nabil Ayers: [00:41:33] Right. Aw, thanks. That's mostly, I think I really did enjoy it. And there's an incredible feeling when you, and you probably know this one there, you know, it feels terrible when you're stuck or when you, when you think, oh, this whole section's terrible.
[00:41:44] Why did I do this? I should take it out. What am I doing? But there's a really incredible feeling when, or at least for me, when I forgot about something and it just popped up where it's like, oh, this happened in the middle of this. And that becomes the new focus and the stuff that surrounds it, maybe even goes away.
[00:42:01] It doesn't, but it, it, the process brings up so many things because you're reflecting so much upon whatever it is.
[00:42:08] Laura McKowen: [00:42:08] Yeah, I joke that it was like therapy on steroids for me, because you just so much comes up into your consciousness that you, cause if you remember it all that all the time you would, you could function.
[00:42:21] Right. That's true. So good writing really slows down. You know, they say show, don't tell if you're going to show someone what it was like to be experiencing whatever you're writing about. You have to really be in it, not the person watching it. And that brings up all kinds of stuff. So I feel you on that, but, but man, there has been nothing that is, it was like therapy on steroids in the beneficial sense to widen the aperture so much on my story, the story I had going on and not just about myself, but other people too.
[00:42:58] I don't know if you found that like, oh my gosh, Even more love for my brother or I didn't really think about that from my mom's perspective in that one day and that one scene or, you know, whatever it is.
[00:43:11] Nabil Ayers: [00:43:11] I think the thing that I'm, it's not really a worry, it's a thing that I know is going to happen where, you know, I'm not a very emotional pouring out person. I have lots of great friends, but they definitely don't always know what I'm thinking and they don't need to, at least from my point of view, that's fine. But they're about to read what I was thinking at the time. Cause now I'm thinking about it. And again, it's not, none of this is slamming people.
[00:43:36] But I do think I'm going to get a lot of, like my record store partner, a lot of people just saying like, wow, I was with you that whole time in college. And I never knew that this was going on or that you were thinking about this. And I almost feel a bit like deceptive, even though I'm not. It's just, when you finally sit down and look at it all with this huge wide lens and talk about it, it weaves together this narrative that I didn't notice when it was happening, you know, in real time.
[00:44:03] Laura McKowen: [00:44:03] Yeah, that's a real thing. And especially for people who are very close to you and you know, for me, it was my mother, even my brother, they're very prominent in the book. My mom was the most, she was upset for many reasons when she read my book, cause she was the most upset because she said, I didn't know how much pain you were in.
[00:44:23] I just had no idea. And so it was so deeply upsetting to her to not know that. And as a mom, I completely understand. But it was also like nobody knew.
[00:44:34] Nabil Ayers: [00:44:34] Right, right. Maybe you didn't know.
[00:44:37] Laura McKowen: [00:44:37] And I didn't exactly. That's, that's part of the deal. I think I actually heard you say something like this, that once you started to write, you started to pay attention a bit more in your life.
[00:44:49] And I feel like I've had that going on even before I started writing. But more so once I really did it, there's like a, a writer that's watching the life and then there's just you in your life and going sometimes it's, you know, snarky and sort of voyeuristic, like, is this going to, is this going to be good material?
[00:45:13] Nabil Ayers: [00:45:13] It's also strangely I never been a huge reader. And I think this is actually, the writing is parallel to when I kind of got into reading for whatever reason around the same time I started reading a lot. And I think that is connected, but it's, I don't want to say it's ruined reading, but it's definitely made me read books differently.
[00:45:31] And there are times I'm like, oh, that's an editor sentance. Or, you know, or that's too nicely buttoned up. And I don't, I bet they had help with that. Just things that, you know, you noticed that I wouldn't have noticed before.
[00:45:43]Laura McKowen: [00:45:43] Yeah, you're ruined forever in that way.
[00:45:45] Nabil Ayers: [00:45:45] And music, music is like that too. It's the same thing. It's like the equivalent.
[00:45:48] Laura McKowen: [00:45:48] Oh, I'm sure!
[00:45:48]Nabil Ayers: [00:45:48] Let's get to the chorus faster or whatever, you know, all those.
[00:45:52]Laura McKowen: [00:45:52] Oh, my God. I never even thought of that.
[00:45:54]Nabil Ayers: [00:45:54] It's all so parallel to it, not just the music to me, but to the, the sort of, not business of, but the sort of process of that to me, I've been, when I, you know, publish these smaller pieces, those are singles that I'm putting out and this book is my album.
[00:46:09] Laura McKowen: [00:46:09] Yeah. Leading up to the album.
[00:46:11] Nabil Ayers: [00:46:11] Yeah. And they're all, actually, they're not exact parts that are in the book, but they all kind of touch on different things. So it really does feel like that to me.
[00:46:19] Laura McKowen: [00:46:19] Man, I don't think it hurts to have that, for you be thinking that way. I think that as long as you don't, I don't know, maybe capitalize on it in some way creepy way.
[00:46:30] Nabil Ayers: [00:46:30] Like what, what could I do?
[00:46:31] Laura McKowen: [00:46:31] It just makes it just makes you a smart business person and, and it, and you know, artists, I wish more artists were good at marketing their work because I want to know about it, you know, and, and you know, how important marketing is. Sometimes it's a bunch of crap, but sometimes it really glorifies the essence of what something is and adds to it. It's additive. Right. So, so I don't think it's so bad to be thinking that way. Yeah. So are you one of those people that your work, I mean, I assume so, but I want to ask you that what you do for work is so personal that your personal life and your work life, there's this like blending and bleeding together.
[00:47:14] Nabil Ayers: [00:47:14] There's a big blind. It's not just the actual work itself. I mean, I really do love the artists we work with, I'm good friends with a lot of them and some, you know, Tune Yards, I think I met a week after I started working there in 2009 and the we just out her fifth record. She is friends with my mother because they both used to live in Oakland at the same time. Like, it's not like that with everyone, but there's a lot of that. And of course the music that these people make is also amazing, but there's also, it's a very tight company. It's different to me than being in a band or making music, but it's, yeah, it's tied to it in that, you know, when I said that I was noticing record labels when I was a kid and putting out demo tapes.
[00:47:53] The fact that I'm not in the band doesn't mean I get zero of that satisfaction because when I was in a band and we put out a record or got a review or got something, it wasn't just the playing that was fun for me. It was all the business stuff too. So I still get a good chunk of it when one of our bands, when something good happens for them and we have somewhere around 15 bands and a lot of good things happen for them.
[00:48:12] So it's actually in a weird way, better than being in a band when you're in one.band, when it's going well, it's great. And when it's not, it's terrible.
[00:48:20] Laura McKowen: [00:48:20] You're really riding the, right. You only have one sort of emotional frequency that you can ride. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like to me, or as someone who's sort of squarely in their Dharma, the, which is I don't, I talk about that a lot, the sort of yoga term for a purpose, or I don't feel like everyone has to live there, but man, you're lucky if you do.
[00:48:40] Nabil Ayers: [00:48:40] Yeah. I feel like that's what I'm doing. I think, I mean, I don't think it's, my job never feels hard if that makes sense, which is not to say that it's easy. I mean, there are plenty of arguments and angry bands and angry managers and lots of things. Everyone's not happy all the time. And sometimes I get the call or I get blamed or whatever.
[00:48:58] It's like, it's a normal job in very many ways, but generally it's just great.
[00:49:03] Laura McKowen: [00:49:03] Well, you care. You're genuinely interested and curious about and still have a love for the space that you're in, I would imagine. And I feel the same way. I, lots of my parts of my day are job stuff, normal job stuff. Having worked in a place that wasn't right for me, you know, in marketing and advertising, where there were great times, you know, good things about that. And I use it all now, but I, it never felt like, yes, this is where I want to be right now. Right. I told you before we got on, I've never learned about someone who I felt like, oh my gosh, there's another sort of person, they're like me, who's a business person, but also a creative person. And so it's just been really neat to talk to you. Where can people find out about you and find your writing?
[00:49:50] Nabil Ayers: [00:49:50] The writing is all at an nabilayers.com. That's really the best place. I mean, the record company is 4ad.com.
[00:49:57] Laura McKowen: [00:49:57] If you're into music, people just go look at their list. It's wild.
[00:50:02] Nabil Ayers: [00:50:02] It is very good. I feel very lucky.
[00:50:05] Laura McKowen: [00:50:05] They're very, very good.
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