Adam Selzer- Ami, Go Home - Graphic Novel (FYI013)
The new Graphic Novel by Adam Selzer:
Between fronting local folk-rock band Norfolk & Western; touring with M. Ward, working with his new group, Alialujah Choir; and running his recording studio, Type Foundry, Adam Selzer has collected plenty of stories from a wide-ranging and varied musical life. One of the strangest, though, is the tale of the solo acoustic tour that took him to Europe in the fall of 2003 to open for a German band called Noise Toys. Selzer didn’t know until shortly before he left that Noise Toys was a Christian band, and that many of the stops on the seven-week tour would be at massive Christian rock festivals. Needless to say, his sparse, somber folk songs didn't quite fit.
Selzer has chronicled those seven lonely weeks in a new graphic novel illustrated by Nick Choban, Ami Go Home (“Ami” is German slang for “American”). It's a darkly funny story about the ways we gain perspective and the things that make us feel out of place.
Here's what others have to say about it:
“A subtle, warmhearted, and wryly funny memoir of one nonreligious American musician’s sideways journey through Christian Germany.”
~Patrick DeWitt (Author of Sisters Brothers)
“Ami, Go Home is a perfect summation in words and images, of the grim rock n roll tour, no limos, Lear jets, or adoring crowds here. You are shown the reality of the low level touring machine: the tortuous van rides, indifferent crowds, the bad food, and the overall sense of pointlessness. It is well worth a read for anyone wondering what the road is really like.”
~Peter Buck (REM)
"Ami, Go Home effortlessly puts you in the shoes of a struggling working musician on a difficult tour. It's funny and strange and heartbreaking and Selzer's dialogue is something else. What a surprise find, and one of the best graphic novels I've read this year."
~Willy Vlautin (Author of The Free, Lean on Pete, The Motel Life)
“So many times friends ask me what is it like touring Europe and I wish I could hand them this book to show them how strange and surreal situations can be. Both Adam Selzer's perspective and Nick Choban's illustrations weave an interesting tale of a musician's life on the road.”
~Joey Burns (Calexico / Iron & Wine)
“(Selzer) is just as an amazing story teller as he is a songwriter, an American voice heard by few but "worshiped" by those that have drunk the wine.”
~Chris Funk (The Decemberists / Black Prairie)
“A thoughtful, funny and sometimes sad take on the absurd situations in which touring musicians often find themselves.”
~Laura Veirs
"Ami, Go Home" is the perfect travelogue to tell the tale of that particular brand of existential crisis that can only be experienced by traveling thousands of miles in a foreign land only to play music for unappreciative or nonexistent audiences and sell too few records along the way, but you don't have to be a touring musician to relate to Adam Selzers' story of traveling Europe as the opener for a small time Christian rock band. Together with Nick Chobans' brilliant illustrations, Adam has added another layer to the Robert Louis Stevenson quote, "There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign."
~Tom Hagerman (Devotchka)
"Ami, Go Home" captures the strange mix of isolation, dream logic and excitement that goes with being on tour. An anti-romantic slightly downer vision of the road that still somehow manages to make you want to go on tour anyways. Go figure." ~ Eric Isaacson (Founder of Mississippi Records)
