Max Clarke is just trying to figure out where everything fits. With his musical project, Cut Worms, the Ohio native and current Brooklyn resident writes songs that arrive like brand new entries into the American songbook. But while both his first EP Alien Sunset and 2018’s Hollow Ground introduced Clarke as an exciting new songwriter on the scene, his tunes resembled lost dispatches that have been haunting the airwaves for years.
With a healthy mix of pre-Beatles garage pop and a deep understanding of AM Country song structure, Clarke’s influences seem familiar but never restricting. In a way, his approach to songwriting is like Tim Duncan’s approach to scoring baskets in the paint. He doesn’t ignore the fundamentals, and that’s what gives his music such an unflappable foundation for him to build upon.
For his newest release, Clarke had written close to 30 songs in the two years since Hollow Ground. Traveling down to the legendary Sam Phillips Studio in Memphis, TN with his drummer Noah Bond, the two worked with producer Matt Ross-Spang — and a tight personnel of friends and session players — to create the 17-track double album Nobody Lives Here Anymore.
While earlier releases had shown Clarke to be a master pop craftsman, Nobody Lives Here Anymore is his true defining moment. The album is a long and absorbing masterpiece that is perfect for this particular moment in time. Rather than seeming like a daunting assignment in our once-breakneck paced lives, the album acts as an extended exhale. A comforting musical realignment that doesn’t shy away from the problems eating away at the fabric of our society — the failure of the American dream, etc, etc — but seems to put it all into perspective concisely.
Like many musicians, Clarke is not able to make a living off of Cut Worms, alone. He works primarily as a graphic designer and illustrator, living in the East Williamsburg apartment he moved into three years ago. As freelancing goes, he is hustling to make it all work. And as the album gains critical praise — including a loving rendition of the song “Last Words to a Refugee” by Jeff and Spencer Tweedy on their nightly Instagram live stream — without touring, Clarke is forced to see how the album is be received like the rest of us; reading reviews on glowing screens and getting kind messages from people he can’t interact with face to face. It all begs the question, what does it mean to release an album of this magnitude during a global pandemic?
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In press releases for Nobody Lives Here Anymore, you’ve talked about it relating to a “homesickness for a home that never existed” With so many people not being able to travel to their hometowns during the pandemic, the realization of how fragile the term “home” is kind of at the forefront. People always say they are going “home” when they don’t consider where they live to be their actual home. It might be that no one can afford to own something these days. But, as a touring musician, do you feel comforted in this kind of transient aspect of being “homeless” or is it something that makes you anxious?
I have multiple homes, I guess, because where my family still lives in Ohio — they still live in the house that I grew up in. So in some sense that is still my home but I’ve also lived here in this apartment in Brooklyn for three years. So this is also my home. I think the concept of home is something that you can bring with you sometimes. It’s kind of hard to say. I think when I was talking about the “homesickness” I think I wasn’t literally talking about a home but a feeling of missing something. Whatever that might be. I think home can be a place in time.
Right, like how we always long for different golden eras in time?
It’s like the age old thing of not being able to live in this moment, right? It’s like what Eastern philosophy spends a lot of time trying to emphasize, being here in this moment. Be here now, that philosophy. Nostalgia kind of becomes, for I think a lot of people, it’s not necessarily something that’s really old that you’re nostalgic for. You could be nostalgic for last week or a couple of months ago. Now, I think a good example is that people are nostalgic for even last year where you didn’t have to wear a mask and think about impending death all the time. Or at least not as much.
There was this unobtainable pace that we were all moving at before all of this. Now that most of us have been forced to slow down and enter a big period of reflection, we are putting some of the vapidness of social media, disposable culture, and just frivolous things we thought were important into perspective. Do you think the more our attention spans diminish as humans we’ll lose our sense of curiosity or discovery down the road?
The attention span thing, yeah. The other stuff, I don’t know if I was necessarily thinking about it in those terms when I was writing. It could be seen as that afterwards, now looking at it. The proliferation of content that has come with the advances of technology and social connection via social media is certainly something I have thought a lot about and what that means as far as the meanings of things. I think a lot of it, to some degree, is just perception. You perceive something differently if there is a lot less of that thing. In terms of music, there is just a lot out there now. Anyone can put something out or do whatever they want in a million different ways. Which is great. But if you think too much about that it can be kind of disheartening or paralyzing to anyone who has a creative impulse or wants to make something. Because I think on a certain level, if you are making something you are trying to say something or create an experience of some kind because you want to share your experience or share something. But if you are another drop in the bucket so to speak, you have to be focused on doing it for your own reasons because the external responses and stimuli are constantly changing.
I’ve been thinking about that so much lately. The diminishing of art is something that is happening rapidly and when you see someone like the Spotify CEO Daniel Ek say that musicians should be releasing multiple albums a year, it seems so out of touch with the way creativity works.
I mean, that just shows that he has no concept of what it means to make something. That’s all that is really.
You would think that someone that probably had his platform in development for years and years would have some understanding of what it means to percolate on something.
As we see often, I think capitalism does something to the mind when you reach a certain point. You’re not really thinking clearly anymore. I think everyone on that level starts seeing everyone else as working for them. Which isn’t true, but it is kind of true. Because a few people own everything.
It’s sad really, because if you are a person who is wired to seek out things, streaming platforms like Spotify can help you down some nerdy wormholes of discovery in ways flipping through record crates might not.
I mean, it is a great tool in that way. I don’t have the paid version without ads. It’s just one of my stupid principles. I won’t pay for it. I’ve gone on there and have found a lot of cool stuff just from shuffling through whatever the algorithm hands me. Sometimes it will just give me the same thing over and over again. It is a cool thing, in theory. I think they just need to figure out how they can actually compensate the creators in a meaningful way. Another thing about the idea of content creators having to create more, like he was saying — I think I did a whole rant on Twitter about this — most artists or musicians have to work a fulltime day job because they can’t make a living off of their art. That takes a big toll. It becomes actually impossible to create more because you don’t have the time or the resources. I’m someone who has been very fortunate and has gotten lucky. I have a record label. Where I sit now, 10 years ago I would have looked at this and said “I made it.” I still can’t make a living [off of this]. I still can’t pay my rent or my grocery bills with my music. But if I could, I would be able to make a lot more of it because I would have time to do that. As it stands, I can’t because you just can’t make money off of it.
There’s a tradition of artists having creative or freeing day jobs to fund the things they ultimately get famous for. Woody Guthrie was a graphic designer painting signs for businesses, Phil Hartman did album covers, Rober Pollard of GBV was a school teacher, and Phillip Glass was a cab driver. Has working as an illustrator kept you disciplined when approaching music?
Yeah, I mean, I guess. Whether you do any kind of work, it’s just a matter of how much time you have in a day. If I have to spend eight or nine hours a day doing an illustration job or a landscaping job, either way after that, I’m going to be too tired to work on anything that’s personal. In my mind, it doesn’t matter what the job is. Again, I’m lucky that I’ve been able to figure out to some extent to do things that I like to do. But most of my jobs, on that side of things, aren’t that fun, necessarily. They’re like graphic design stuff. Illustration jobs are kind of hard to come by, actually.
But does working a creative day job help you to stay energized to work on your own creative projects?
I think it can be. At first, what I thought you were asking was that by having a drab, ordinary day job was necessary to experience that kind of life in order to make meaningful art. I think that there are some people who might argue that kind of suffer-for-your-art thing. There is something to that of having to work a job or something. It’s the same thing with kids that never have to work and are able to be a DJ, or whatever. To me, it’s not interesting work. I think that’s part of why it’s not interesting. Or how children of famous musicians often don’t make that interesting of work, in my opinion. But that’s not an excuse for these other people to just not pay musicians! (laughs)
Yeah, the point is that the art has just become so devalued.
Being in graphic design and illustration, it’s something that I’ve heard for years. If you’re looking for jobs on craigslist, or anything, you’re doing work for “exposure” or “it’ll be good exposure for you, but we can’t pay you.” Or people who don’t want to pay you because this is just “what you do”. You’re having “fun” doing this because you’re good at it and it’s a semi-artistic thing that they see as being “fun” for some reason. That somehow means that you don’t need to eat.
You must have had a cathartic moment stepping inside Sam Phillips recording studio with all of these thoughts about the state of the industry with this material in tow. What was that like stepping inside such a historic building with these feelings racing through your head?
By the time I went into the studio, I was just trying to appreciate that opportunity and just kind of live that moment because it was just really nice to do and be with cool people doing it. Matt Ross-Bang and his assistant engineer Wesley there at Sam Phillips and my drummer Noah, it was just the four of us kind of just hanging out and doing this thing for two weeks. I just felt very fortunate to do that. That it was in this historic space was an added dimension to it that was really cool to think about. When I was actually making it, I wasn’t really thinking about the other heavy stuff. I was just trying to get the songs how I wanted them.
Tell me about some of the personnel on this album. Alien Sunset and Hollow Ground were mostly solitary affairs but for this record you rounded up a gang of professional session players to flesh this album out.
It was cool! There weren’t a ton of session players. There was one day where we brought in some horn players, two saxophone players, and then there was one day where a pedal steel player came in. Then when I got back to New York, later on, then I had one or two other friends and I spent a day or two with each one to try and add some other stuff. A friend of mine who played pedal steel and one who played cello. The bulk of the record or the basics — drums, guitar, vocals, bass — the meat of the record, was all done with pretty much just me and Noah playing. Then I overdubbed stuff afterwards to flesh it out. But, yeah, it was cool to have other people playing on it. I think there were more people playing on this one than the last record, which I think is a good thing. They come up with things that I couldn’t come up with. I can’t play certain instruments.
This is a double album with 17 songs. Given that a lot of us have been forced to slow down our lives due to the pandemic, it feels like this is the perfect time to be completely absorbed by an album like this. You had written around 30 songs this time around and recorded this before the pandemic. Did you have any reservations at first about making a double album given your thoughts on throwaway culture?
I didn’t really even set out to make a double record, specifically. I was just trying to record as much material as I could and that topped out at 17 songs. Afterwards, rather than widdle that down to a 12 or 11 song album, it just didn’t make sense to me. I thought the material was strong enough and I felt like it all went together. Rather than cut it and don’t do anything with it or put it out as two things spaced apart, it all felt like one thing to me. I just wanted to put it out all together.
Time is something we are more conscious of during the pandemic and seems like people are able to focus on things they would have never before. That is, if they can break away from how terrible things are for a moment. Whether it’s fitness, a sourdough starter, diving into the Criterion Channel, or getting into ambient music. Have you found yourself able to focus on things you used to neglect or take for granted?
I don’t think I personally have a ton of time on my hands since the pandemic. I’ve been working from home when I can. There hasn’t been as much work lately, so I’ve just been worrying about money and where it’s going to come from and trying to scheme ways of making money other ways. That between all of the crazy news that has been going on, I haven’t found it to be a relaxing time. It seems like time is weirdly going fast even though you can’t do anything. With that said, I have been watching movies and reruns of the X-Files.
It does seem like slow stretches into fast ramp ups to horrible news stories. Those are the markers of time now! Have you been able to give your brain a break from how terrible everything is lately?
I’ve kind of gone through waves. Back a couple of months ago when all of the protests were going on, it didn’t feel right to me to tune out when all of that was going on. I think you have to pay attention to certain things. At the same time, there is only so much that the mind can take. With that stuff, it really started opening people’s eyes to everything that is wrong with society. Bringing all of that stuff out needs to happen, but trying to deal with that all at once is really overwhelming and just not realistic. I hope people can keep a sustained effort with trying to change things for the better without getting so overwhelmed with all of the problems at once that it just makes you want to tune out again. Which is what I think was part of what lets those problems flourish, when you have a large amount of people not paying attention or caring. If you let these people do what they’re gonna do and sell off your interests to the highest bitter, they’re not going to work in your interests if you don’t make them.
Has it been a difficult thing to not be able to tour behind this record?
I don’t know … I like playing shows, but I don’t necessarily love touring all that much. Being a touring musician wasn’t one of the reasons that I started playing music. Sure, I dreamed of playing shows and stuff, but being on the road nine months out of the year wasn’t my idea of a perfect life. I’m more interested in writing and recording music more than I am playing shows or touring. But I do miss playing live. It’s definitely hard on the promotional side of things because that’s the main way that you get the word out there or the music in front of people. Otherwise, you’re just relying entirely on word of mouth or streaming algorithms and playlists and stuff. Press items being picked up. All of that stuff matters in normal times too, but it’s been strange having it be only that. I just had to relinquish all control and be like “it is what it is”. I made the decision to still want to put this thing out during this time. I guess I only have myself to blame for that one. I don’t regret it.
This interview has been edited down for clarity.