The Guest List | Dehd

The Guest List is a regular book column that surveys the reading habits of our favorite musicians. In this edition, Emily McBride talks with Jason Balla, the singer-guitarist for Dehd. The group’s latest album, Poetry, was released last month by Fat Possum Records.

Emily McBride: So getting the obvious question out of the way first—the album is called Poetry. What about Bukowski’s “The Laughing Heart” inspired the album?

Jason Balla: It’s really the direction life takes, or tries to promote in a way. When I found that video of Tom Waits reading it, it was like this culmination of forces—specifically in my own life—but it kind of reached out broader to everyone else personally in the band also of just, like, living a life of agency and going through life without having to be so overly protective or on this endless quest for comfort. Thrusting yourself into a little bit more and getting a little messy or hurt, getting the full spectrum of experience that life has to offer. And I feel like there are so many one-liners, like “You can’t beat death, but you can beat death in life” or “Your life is your life. Know it while you have it.” You know, it’s just like, yeah, you’re right. I gotta get out there.

EM: It’s like bowling without bumpers.

JB: [Laughs] Exactly. It’s like, you might get a better score with the bumpers, but it’s a lot more fun to hit in the gutter sometimes.

EM: Are there any other books or poems that inspired the writing and recording?

JB: Not really. And it’s funny because, honestly, I’m not even a huge Bukowski fan. Not in terms of poetry, at least. There’s a David Berman book of poetry [Actual Air] that has always stood out to me, especially him being a songwriter. It’s been a bridge to the poetry world for me, but I’m definitely more in the fiction/nonfiction prose world. At the beginning of my journey to find “The Laughing Heart” poem, I read the book Letters to a Young Poet by [Rainer Maria] Rilke. It’s so amazing. My friend worked at this publisher in Berlin for a little while, and then they did an English translation. She gave me a copy when I saw her, and it took me forever to open it. I was in the throes of deciding to—me and my partner at the time were talking about splitting up—and I was super reckless one night and I opened the book, and I just read the whole thing all the way through. It’s also a similar sentiment to “The Laughing Heart” in a way, where it’s the life of an artist but also just a person engaged with the world around them and being dedicated to the act of living your life, rather than being a passenger. I found that book really inspiring, too. But again, I haven’t read any other things by Rilke, so I’m kind of slacking.

EM: There’s still time.

JB: Yes. I mean, I got plenty of years.

EM: You said you’re more nonfiction and fiction. Do you have a favorite book that you go back to?

JB: A couple. I know it’s kind of cliche, or even maybe nowadays kind of bland, to like David Foster Wallace, but I kind of run through his bibliography a lot. I’m always coming back to A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, especially in terms of making music. There’s one essay where he’s talking about irony and the pursuit of genuine communication, or trying to say something earnestly. That’s something that we aim to do in Dehd, and I think it’s really hard to pull off, especially when there are all the veils of being cool or bored or . . . there are so many affectations that people wear, especially in the musical world. So I’m always coming back to that essay and thinking about how to break through that posture. I had this teacher in high school who gave me—oh my gosh, I’m blanking on the name but it’s like “the despicable men” or . . . I can’t remember the title right now, but it was the first time I had read postmodern fiction or whatever basket that you put it in. And I was young, and it was just about these people who are totally different from the suburban Midwest life that I had been living, but with all of the curiosity of the weirder world out there that was kind of opened in that book to me. I always have an affinity for him for that reason, too.

EM: Is that Brief Interviews with Hideous Men?

JB: That’s the one. Thank you. There’s another quality of his writing that I think about, too. There’s this one story in there called “The Depressed Person,” and it’s structured in this way that almost puts you into the daily routine of this depressed person. The way it’s written is this rhythm of this defeated, slow, cyclical fixation kind of thing, mentally. And I’ve always kind of been inspired by using structure in that way in terms of music. If you can transport someone into a feeling through structure in addition to the words . . . when I realized that was what was going on in that story, the lightbulb kind of went off.

EM: For Poetry, the process involved being on a road trip. You’ve said that it’s easier for you to get lost in reflection when you’re removed rather than when you’re at home. What books have you found a similar escape in?

JB: Honestly, that one book One Hundred Years of Solitude [by Gabriel García Márquez]. That’s another one I kind of reread every couple years. I actually was reading it when we began the journey. It’s kind of this escape through history, but also the magical realism thing, and it’s a world that completely resembles our own, but things aren’t fully understandable. And every time I read it, I also understand way more of the human element of it, because sometimes it’s so easy to get drawn into the fantasy of whatever world is built. But then when I’m reading this book, I can relate to a lot of the older characters now, after reading it when I was twenty and now I’m in my thirties. I’ve been noticing that with a lot of art anyways. People tell you to read this cool book or watch this movie when you’re young, and then you re-get into it. And then you [realize you] just hadn’t lived enough life yet to actually understand what this thing was talking about . . . because it’s your lens, which constantly is getting slowly misshapen and askew.

EM: You’ve mentioned that something you love about music is the ability to recognize yourself in other people’s expressions of emotion or experience. What was the last book you read that made you feel seen or that you saw yourself in?

JB: There’s a restaurant in Chicago called Lula that put a cookbook out [The Lula Cafe Cookbook by Jason Hammel]. It’s actually funny with the David Foster Wallace connection, because before the head chef became a chef, he was in the Illinois State Writers Workshop learning under David Foster Wallace, which I didn’t know until I read the cookbook. There’s a bunch of exposition. It started in the late ’90s, and basically what [spurred] him into moving to Chicago and starting this restaurant was this sense of community and outsider-ness that I think existed in the late ’90s and early 2000s, which is kind of the same reason why I moved to Chicago. It was really taking me back to the importance of community and then also this mass movement of people moving to the same place to be part of this community, because it’s based on a set of ideals of making art and ideas and this kind of cross-breeding thing. I think maybe it’s starting to happen again . . . like there was a lull of this kind of thing where people just wanted to be in the middle of it and making stuff at any cost because we just like to make things rather than think about whether it will bring you success or money or whatever. I think the trend has been “only if it serves me in some greater way” . . . which I have found really inspiring to see, because it reminded me of this younger version of myself that was getting ready to move to the city and had all these ideals about falling into that creative environment.

EM: Do you have any favorite books about music?

JB: I’m reading this one now . . . honestly, l feel like it’s so hard to write about . . . you know, this is the world that I live in. And so often, it tries to be representative and becomes this total cliché. That being said, Crying in H Mart [by Michelle Zauner] I feel is one of the best examples of someone talking about being in a band, playing shows and touring. You’re just in these shitty bands, and you’re playing for your friends and your parents don’t understand. But it’s not glamorized in either the shitty end of it or the other way. It’s just like, we are just making this thing because we have to. I feel like that was like a super genuine depiction of it that had a lot of lived experiences, like where you could tell it was like coming from a really real place. My mom also passed away from cancer. So on many levels, I was able to really relate to that.

EM: Oh, wow. I’m sorry to hear that. It’s a beautiful book.

JB: It really is.

EM: And then you said you’re reading another music book right now?

JB: Yeah, it’s called Our Band Could Be Your Life [by Michael Azerrad], about the underground scene in the ’80s through the early ’90s. It’s pretty inspiring, in the same way that this cookbook is for me, where it’s that DIY ethic, which is where Dehd started and where my musical career also started. When I did move here, that was a huge part of the Chicago scene, just making shit because you didn’t see the thing that you wanted represented anywhere. And just for whatever psycho reason, you just feel like you have something to say. I guess that impulse is probably best not to probe too much into, but just the need to make something. But that book is amazing. And it’s also a world that we kind of take for granted now. But it’s a relatively new invention—I mean, forty years ago—and bands like us are buildling on this history of people really working together and starting something from scratch. And now all these indie labels or whatever are huge companies. But it’s kind of crazy that it was a totally grassroots thing that started out from people making zines and sharing music because it was exciting to them.

EM: Any other books that you want to give a shout-out to?

JB: Oh, yeah. Probably the most recent book I read that was just like an absolute journey and was so much fun to read was A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. It’s always been on my list to read. I had finished a couple other books and was at the airport on an eight-hour layover, and I had seen it in the airport, and I got it. And it was truly a wonderful book.

EM: It’s a blast.

JB: It’s so fun. And it’s based in New Orleans, and similarly to band life, I feel like it’s super hard to capture what New Orleans is actually like. I’ve spent a lot of time there over the years, just having friends live there and going to Mardi Gras and things like that, but it always becomes the Disney-fied version in depictions of it in movies and stuff, and this was just so purely, and so strangely . . . wonderful that the place really just comes to life.

Emily McBride is a music writer, previously serving as an editor at Paste Magazine and YouTube Music, as well as a freelance contributor to Consequence and Noisey. She currently resides in Portland, Maine and is on a lifelong quest to find the perfect michelada.

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