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This is Time Signatures with Jim Irvin, a podcast and radio program presented by the Capitol Area Blues Society in Lansing, Michigan. Most any contemporary musical style can trace its roots back to the blues. Time Signatures explores the blues and its musical connections with captivating interviews, lively discussions and news from the world of the blues. And now, here he is, your host, Jim Irvin.

Baby, I'm on the Time Signatures. I'm your host, Jim Irvin. And today's guest is absolutely not a member of one of those in the box blues bands. In fact, you're likely to find them to be a little bit more on the rocky side of the blues. But as I've opined many times on this program, at least for me, blues is a buffet. You take what you want, you add it to the blues mix, and voila, you, you have what makes you happy. Well, this band is called Cold Stairs and they've been around for about a decade now. Their last album, Voices, earned critical acclaim internationally, being proclaimed one of the best albums of 2023 by classic rock magazine. Their work has also created a buzz and caught the attention of the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Larkin, Poe and Grand Funk Railroad, just to name a few. And they just released their latest work, the Southern lead vocalist, guitarist and mascot, label artist Chris Tapp. Welcome to Time Signatures. Glad to have you, sir.

Hey, Jim, thanks for having me.

Now, you said that you just came off of the road, you were down in the Southern states a little bit, doing some touring.

Yeah, these last couple months we have been, we've been going crazy. So we had three weeks in Europe and then a week and a half, two weeks in the Northeast and then we got back. We've done just a couple shows down in the South.

So now how is your music being received in your on the European side? You people enjoying your music?

We've always done a little bit better overseas than what we've done in the States. Blessed to do well in the States, but kind of from the get go, we did well in Europe. And that's kind of been a honey hole for us to go over and play. And it's been a warm reception over there kind of from the start, but it's something that we've grown a lot in the last five years also very nice.

That's not surprising because a lot of the musicians that I talk to tell me that Europe is very, very welcomin to them. And they seem like they, they have a better appreciation for the genre a

little bit, I think. So, you know, it took us a couple years to Kind of figure out why maybe we were drawing so much better over there. And I think a big part of it is over in Europe, you don't compete against country and rap as much. You know, there you go. There's. You just don't have. You don't have as many. You have some DJ disco stuff every now and then, but not as much rap, really, and not as much modern country. You have some traditional country, but. Yeah. So that helps a lot. And then I also think that it's. It's still a priority to the folks in Europe, in the uk, to see people actually playing their instruments. They like to see bands perform, and especially with stringed instruments. So that's been. That's been great for us.

Well, Chris, I have to tell you, I get accused regularly by some of my friends, basically. They tell me that I like everything that I listen to and that simply isn't the. The facts. Okay. But I've been quite fortunate in that I've been exposed to some really cool blues rock music in addition to traditional blues. And Cold Stairs really ranks right up there for me. Talk about how you got into music initially for yourself.

Thanks, Jim. My earliest memories were of my granddad music. I. I started playing piano whenever I was four. I was watching the Lawrence Welk show with my granddad and somehow it switched to a thing between Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swigert. And they were both playing piano. And I said, I want to do that. And my granddad loved music, but he. He wasn't a musician. And I think he was really excited that at that early age I was. I was wanting to play that much. I was over at his house a lot. I came over the next weekend. There was a piano sitting in the front room, and he had arranged for me to take piano lessons. So I did piano from 4 until about 12. At 12, I was playing piano and alto sax in the jazz band at school at a couple bands by that point. But at that point I also had a. My best friend was playing guitar. I noticed all the girls were paying more attention to the guitar player than the keyboard player. And it was also around that time I. I was going to my godbrother's house who lived behind us, and he had poster of Jimi Hendrix on his wall and he had a poster of Bruce Lee. And that was kind of. That was the two big things. I was. I also did karate whenever I was young. But I was like, man, that is, you know, he looked like a magician to me. So that I kind of just fell in love with Then and I played. Been playing music all my life. You know, I have people ask me sometimes, well, how do you get to where. The level that you're at now? I said, well, you know, do you want to play for 30 years, 35 years before you get to, you know, are you willing to do that? I have a degree in history and I've always had to have other jobs up until about the last seven or eight years. And it's just kind of who I am. It's always been who I am. I can't remember a time when I didn't have music in my head or it wasn't a big part of who I am. Sure.

Now, along with those early influences of Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Lee Lewis, who I believe were related too.

Yeah, cousins.

Yeah.

Any.

Any songs that you just couldn't get out of your head when you were younger and you had to hear it over and over and over again.

Manish Boy, Muddy Waters, Rhinestone Cowboy, Glenn Campbell and I Walked the Line, Johnny Cash. My granddad had those records. We had manish boy on a 45, I think. Oh, wow, my God. Godbrother's house. And I just thought it was amazing because, you know, you've got the one guy, I think he's got one of his friends there and his role is just to go, yeah. And you get in that beginning and you just hear that voice. And I always felt like, you know, I was sitting in the room with them and in the little town that I grew up in, there wasn't, you know, we didn't have juke joints and cool stuff like that. But I was just a few hours north of Memphis and my dad would have to go down there and pick up tires and we'd go down by Beale street and just kind of. I fell in love with the idea of, you know, getting out of where I was and getting into places that felt really authentic, you know.

Sure. Now, how about your longtime bandmate, drummer Brian Mullins? How did you guys connect?

We played together. I had a band whenever I was in my 20s that was doing pretty good called Moby Dick. And Brian came up and auditioned for that. And at the time he came in, and this was the 90s, and he had a big drum set, you know, like a 80s looking drum set. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. You know, right off the bat, I. I wasn't a big fan. He seemed super nice, but just wasn't in love with the drums. And I didn't think he was that good of a Player then. And then about 10 years later, I was doing pretty well. A friend of mine said, hey, you should come in and sit with. Sit in with me. He's like, I think the guy that's playing with me played with you before. I said, what's his name? He said, brian Mullins. We were still in our twenties, but anyway, I heard him again and I couldn't believe it was the same guy. I don't think he's somebody that. It came extremely natural to him. I think with any good drummer, you've got a little bit of natural ability just stuck in there. But I think he got aggravated and really, really wanted to be a good drummer. And I couldn't believe that how much better he had gotten. And the other thing is, is there's only these little towns that we grew up in. You know, I grew up, I lived in Dixon for a while, maybe a thousand people there. And the other town I lived in, Madisonville, was 25,000 people. Not a ton of musicians to draw from around there anyway. So there's only a couple options for drums. You better find somebody you can get along with and encourage them. And we kind of did that for each other. We. We just started playing together. And as far as what I do and. And what I need out of a drummer, I've. I've never played with anybody that's as good as. As Brian is.

Wow, that's fantastic. Quite a turnaround over that period of time too.

Yeah, yeah.

Chris. Chris, I like the title bestowed upon you, I assume, by your label, Blues Rock Power Trio. How cool is that that the blues has evolved to the point where adding some, pardon the phrase, badassery has become accepted to the genre? Do you feel that this is the natural progression of the genre as a whole, to expand and grow to include more rock influences along the way?

You know, I'm a bit of a contradiction because I'm also. I also love the purity of the blues. I don't that we necessarily need to push the genre really far one way or another as a whole, but I think it's great to have niches in there for different artists. You know, I. With us, I really, really love traditional acoustic delta blues. And I try to get a couple of those songs, at least one of those songs on every album that we do. And I'm also doing a solo record which is just Delta oriented blues. There's so many great artists out there already doing it, doing the blues and doing blues rock in general. And with us it was, you know, how do we. How do we be true to the influences that we have and still carve a little niche for ourselves and still be. Be who we are, you know, and be. Have an identity that's authentic to us? You know, I grew up listening to those blues albums and. And also fell in love with Robert Johnson very, very early, but also my kid of the 90s. And I grew up listening to Soundgarden and Sabbath and, you know, I found Cream and Hendrix and all those bands kind of through some of the 90s music. And so, you know, I think it's just a. It's just trying to be authentic and be naturally who you are in music, but having a reverence for. For the blues. And I think that you have to be careful because there are so many acts that sound similar right now in electric. Electric blues. Especially in the last 20 years. There's been a lot of. Been a lot of Stevie Ray Vaughan types come and go and a lot of Clapton types come and go. And, you know, I love bands like GA20. There's a couple bands that are really, really authentic kind of Chicago blues. And I. And I think that works great because there's. There's only a few of them right now. And if you want to know what those bands kind of vibed like in the 70s and the 60s in Chicago, they. They got it covered. And I love that if there was 50 of those bands, I'd be griping about it, you know.

Right, right.

You know, yeah. Kenny, Wayne and. And a couple of the guys that really do the. The Stevie thing, they. A lot of those other guys fell by the wayside. Now you just have a few of those guys that really do it well.

And I.

And I think that's great.

They've.

They've staked their place in that our band. And my songwriting leans a little bit more probably like Joe, in that I like to include a lot of different things. And I. I don't want to sound like anybody else. I'd rather the song suffer just a little bit to be able to. Somebody to go, oh, that's. That's the Cold Stairs, or that's Chris's songwriting. There's times that we have to go, oh, man, that sounds. That sounds fantastic. But it sounds exactly like Free or He sounds exactly like Cream. You know, we.

Right.

You don't want to be a. Don't want to be a cover band. We want to do our own thing. But I have an immense appreciation and reverence for the blues and for what came before us. And I always think it's important to talk about that, where the influences come from, and go back a few generations with that, because I think it's invaluable and very important for us as lovers of American music to continue the genre and to grow young people into the music so that it continues. To me, it's the most important thing that we have as Americans in the arts is jazz and blues.

I was fortunate enough to see Buddy Guy in concert during his Damn Right Farewell tour. They got his poster hanging over here, and one of the things he talked about during his concert was the charge that Muddy Waters gave him before he passed to carry the blues forward and to do what he could to make his mark on the blues. And you mentioned something just a moment ago about, you know, carrying it on to the next generation and getting younger people involved. What kind of a response are you seeing from the younger fans? Are you. Are you seeing some younger people that are coming up to you wanting some direction? What. What are you seeing out there on the road?

I think a couple things have happened in the last couple years. It definitely changed around 2000, late 2019, moving forward. I think lockdowns and Covid pushed a lot of people to play guitar that weren't playing guitar. You know, when you start playing guitar, you're learning Back in Black. You're learning Manish Boy, you're learning Bad to the Bone. You're learning those easy songs, you know, sure. Starting out. And it creates new fans for. For that style music. So I think two. Two things happened that. That happened and created a lot of new guitar players. It also created a lot of new female guitar players, which has been fantastic as well, because, yeah, you know, for a long time you had Bonnie Raitt, you had a couple of these ladies that were doing it well, and now you've got, you know, you've got a lot of these new young ladies that are. That are doing well, which I think is great for the genre, too. But with us, it's been very helpful that we've had the title track to the trailer for the video game Cyberpunk 2077, which was, you know, huge for us. It's done like. I think it's 10 million. It may be even 100 million streams. It's that a crazy amount of streams on. On YouTube. And, you know, that was a demographic that didn't necessarily listen to the cold stars or the blues in general, but we. We got our song shoved in there, and we've had music on television shows like Animal Kingdom and the Mayans and some of that. That is that has helped quite a bit reach a younger demographic. But it's still. That's a big hurdle to overcome still because I have a 17 year old son and you know, he, he likes the Beatles and he likes going back into time and listening to old music. But I'm not for sure. I think a lot of his generation listens to electronic music and. And doesn't have the experience of seeing a band live playing instruments. It's always a hurdle to overcome, but I think it's. We're in a much better situation now than we were prior to 2019 and I think it's evident that it's growing. Hopefully it continues to move that way.

I agree with you 100. I want you to talk about the album Voices for just a moment because this was an album that really served kind of as a breakout album for you, wasn't it?

I think so. I think a little bit of it was, was timing just that we were getting a little bit more ears because of the video game stuff and the TV stuff. But it was also a point where we added a bass player. That's the first record that we had Bryce playing on the album. And it served a purpose of allowing me to write, you know, kind of write whatever I wanted to. Writing, writing for a two piece was great in that sometimes I'm add And having that limitations of writing for a two piece kind of served me so that I didn't go too far out one way or another. But after four or five records as a two piece I kind of felt like we had said what we needed to say as a two piece. I got sick and tired of the. Of the comparisons to the Black Keys or the White Stripes. I wanted to be able to perform more solos and more of the stuff that we were doing in the studio live and bringing Bryce on Bryce Place organ and bass both and has allowed us to do that. And so when I went in, went in to write that record, I had that in mind. And so it opened up, opened up quite a bit for me.

Very cool. Now on the heels of that one, here you come with your latest effort entitled the Southern which was just released in September. Now I don't want to tell the story for you, so I'd like you to give me your take on this work because you really have embraced your background with this one, haven't you?

Yeah, in so much that it's kind of where we are coming from with the tag of being Southern. We've been playing around the world and I toured Europe four or five times and we kept reading articles written about the band that would call us Southern. And I think to me it was more just because our dialect more than it was the music so much. I mean, we've always had a little bit of Southern rock in our music just because of what we grew up listening to. But I think it was just more the way that we spoke. And sometimes Kentucky can feel more Southern than Alabama or Georgia these days, you know, with the big cities. So we got back, I got ready to write this record. I thought I'd gotten irritated a little bit at one of the reviews. And also around that time, I think there was two or three guys that were kind of drawing a circle around what Southern should be and what. What that meant to be Southern more in the Americana, in the country world. But I thought, man, that's not the experience I had growing up at all. That's not who the people are around me or the music that I heard. And so I thought, well, I'm going to do a record and I'm going to draw as much as I can from the influences that I listened to growing up and give our experience on what it means to be Southern. And it opened up a lot of songwriting. We went in and Memphis, Memphis Magnetic studio in October of 23 and did 12 songs. And we were happy with them. And we thought, well, this is the record. And I came back and like a week later, I'd written another album. And I called the guys and I was like, I don't. You know, you never know when that. When the inspiration comes, when it comes, you just. You have to stop what you're doing and write it. And so I called them and I said, hey, I got another record. We're going to. Let's go back down to Memphis and December and we rehearsed the stuff. We went back in December and cut another 12. So we ended. No, another 11. We ended up cutting one song. We ended up with 22 songs. So we picked, with that Matt, that mascot pick 11 for this album. And then we have the Southern Part 2, which will be released on our record label that comes out in June. So it's kind of a two part thing that we did in Memphis.

Very nice.

Yeah.

And part of it was when Brian and I were growing up in Kentucky, a lot of. Like I said before, there wasn't a ton of musicians. Our first experiences were like, I can remember being 13 years old and getting snuck into the Moose Lodge or the Elks because there was a band full of guys that were in their 50s and 60s, and the guitar player was sick or getting a divorce or having an issue. And I would sit in with those bands. And yes, we would play Hank Williams Jr. And Bob Seger, but we also played Robin Trower. That's the first time I heard Robin Trower. It's the first time that we played a Hendrick song. And we played, you know, I Thought Free was probably from Alabama. It sounded Southern to me. We played All Right now and Bad Company stuff. And so that's really. My Southern upbringing was a lot of blues rock. And so we wanted to make a statement that, hey, I know everybody else is kind of trying to dictate what Southern is in the country world and in this world, in that world. But our experience was just as much blues rock and blues as it was, you know, country and. And the other stuff. So that's. That was kind of the slant on going in, doing the record and also making sure we did it in Memphis. Because we talk about Southern a lot of times, and I think. We think that's Nashville and that's Birmingham or that's, you know, ideally Southern cities. But Memphis is the home of the blues, and it's. It's the south to me, you know?

Yes, sir. So you alluded to this new album that you're working on that's solely yours, going to be a solo effort. When are you thinking that's going to be released?

I'll give you a little backstory on it. We were in London early last year, and Peter Green from Fleetwood Max auction was going on at the time.

Oh, man.

And they were auctioning off his guitars. And I knew the auction was coming up, and I had been kind of saving up some money and sold some stuff off and watching it for about six months. What so happened to be that we were in London playing at the close of the auction the day before. So I was lucky enough to purchase a couple of Peter's guitars. And one of the guitars was his national resonator. I was a huge Peter Green fan, always have been. And also his story and just kind of what he went through. It was always very sentimental to me. My granddad struggled with some mental health issues, and I just felt a really bond, a real bond with. With what he had gone through. But anyway, I got the guitar home and I couldn't put it down. And every time I would pick it up, I would want to write. And I kind of felt weird for writing songs on Peter Green's guitar. It just had this. I had this weird aura about it and started thinking, man, I should do something with this guitar as a solo thing. And there's been so many great Peter Green tribute records. I didn't want to do Peter songs, but I just had this feeling. It's like this guitar served him and he wrote songs on it and it still got songs in it. So I thought, I'm going to write an album using nothing but this guitar. I'm going to write all the songs on it. I'm going to perform all the songs on it. No other guitars, you know, I've got mandolin and I've got some harmonica and some other stuff, some drums, but no other guitars except for this one. So I call the album Green and it will come out in the spring. I've had two singles so far. I've got a version of Line and Track, Lead Bellies, Line and Track, and then a song called in the Pines. But it's. It's been cathartic for me and I feel like I'm serving to get to rn Peter, both by just keeping in circulation and doing. Keeping it going, doing something with it. And.

Oh yeah.

And I've been using what I use one microphone. I used to hear trumpet microphone for the entire record. And wow. And the resin, the resonator sounds just unbelievably. It's. It's magical. So that's helped as well.

I can't even imagine holding one of Peter Green's guitars in my hands. What. What is that like for you?

It was everything that you would think it would be. I had gotten the guitars in London and we got back to the hotel room and we had a show. We played Made of Stone Festival and Maidstone outside of London the next day. And I got the guitars in the hotel room with me and was finally alone with them for a little bit. And I just. I mean, immediately, as soon as I picked it up, I started writing, you know, and I thought, man, I got to put this down because I'm not in a place that I can write and record and write this stuff down and remember it now. I did some. Just took my phone and made some recordings of stuff just to kind of make sure I remembered it. Because it was just kind of instant inspiration with that. But you will have an understanding for it. But I don't know how to explain it to somebody that doesn't know or have the reverence for Peter that we do. I don't know how to explain it maybe to a young girl that. That gets something. That's Taylor Swift's Peter Green to me, you know, as far as tone and just kind of taste. Oh, well, was one of the first songs that I heard and just was like, oh, well, that's. That's what I want to do. Like, he's. He's talking. He's talking about himself and his condition and.

Yeah.

And kind of where he's at. And he's kind of poking fun at himself, but he's kind of irritated. Sounds like it. At society in general. And the guitar is really bluesy, but it doesn't sound like Manish boy. And it's. You know, it's. He's got his own thing going on and Albatross. Some of that other stuff I just got lost in. So Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Peter Green are. Are my three. Three guys that I. I really love for different reasons. But Peter, I always felt we had a little bit of connection just through my imagination, you know, And. But. And the other thing is, it's somewhat providence that I got those guitars because after the. After his auction, we had Mark Knopfler's auction where the guitars were astronomical. We just had Rory Gallagher's auction where the guitars were astronomical.

Yes.

And Peter had a couple resonators, and one of them went for crazy money. It was a 31, I think, and mine's a little bit newer than that. And all the emphasis was looking at that guitar. And my guitar closed auction just a couple minutes afterwards. And I just got lucky and got it, and I paid a very reasonable price for it. And it's. It's one I. I'll never. I'll never get rid of. But it was, you know, I. I felt. I. I don't. I don't know how to liken it to. To somebody giving you a really, really important car, you know, you'd want to drive. It's like, I got this. I don't want to just put it up and not look at it. It's like it's. He. There's a video on YouTube of him going through his guitar locker and looking at some different guitars. And he pulls my guitar out and he. He talks about it a little bit and looks at it, and you can just see in his face that it meant something to him. And that. That alone means a lot to me, you know?

Sure, Chris. Where can folks get more information on the Cold Stairs? Maybe check your tour dates, get some merch and just learn more about you guys.

Super easy. We're at just the coldstairs.com Cold Stairs on Instagram, Facebook, X. All the. All the usual stuff you can find us on Spotify and Apple Music and hear us on Bluesville and and see us on Chevy commercials. You may not. A lot of people don't know that. They've they've heard us and they have. But yeah, we're around and appreciate every single person that's out there listening and sharing our music. So yes, sir.

Well, Chris Tapp, it has indeed been a pleasure having you on this episode of Time Signatures. I sincerely look forward to having an opportunity to see the Cold Stairs in person when you guys get to Michigan. So please come visit and be sure to give my best to the guys if you would, please. And by all means, when Green gets ready to release, I'd love to have you back on to talk about it. What do you think?

I'd love to do that, Jim.

Very good. Well, that wraps up this edition of Time Signatures with Jim Urban. Once again, my thanks to Chris Tapp of the Cold Stairs, but most importantly to you, my subscribers, listeners. For without you, none of this would be possible. Jim Urban reminding you that keeping the blues alive is everyone's responsibility. But preserving the history of the blues one story at a time, that's my mission. Until next time. So long

this has been Time Signatures with Jim Irvin presented by the Capital Area Blues society in Lansing, Michigan. For more information on CABS, visit capitalarea blues.org you can find this episode and past episodes@lccconnect.org the Time Signature's theme song, Michigan Roads is used by permission and was written by Root Doctor featuring Freddie Cunningham. Until next time, keep on Keeping the Blues Alive. Examining the issues and topics that affect our lives from the local level to the world stage. Listen to the programs of LCC connect anytime@lccconnect.org

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Washington Square on air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review, Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing.

Hey there.

This is Melissa fordlocken, Editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Quentin Collins, Assistant Director and alum of the Solstice MFA program, which is housed in LaSalle University. Hey Quintin.

Hey, good morning.

It's nice to see you. So tell us a little bit about yourself before we kind of get into the whole MFA program stuff.

Sure. So I currently live in Boston. I've been writing poetry since 8th grade and I earned my MFA between 2016 and 2018, and since then I've been able to publish two full length collections of poetry and I'm currently shopping around a third.

Nice. What about poetry intrigued you? How did you get started with that?

So the funny thing about me and poetry is that I actually started it because I was planning to sing as part of a talent show in eighth grade and I luckily had some friends who either were very caring or very uncaring to tell me I can't sing. So right before the audition happened, I had to figure out what exactly I was going to do and I wrote a poem in about five minutes and very terrible in rhymey Love poem that somehow catapulted me into just writing poems for years to come. And it started off with stuff like that. Then I got into high school and got angsty, as we all do, and wrote some stuff that was more related to social issues. And then once I got into undergrad, I was originally a psychology major. And when I figured out that as much as I loved a lot of the theory of it, I didn't really want to do the practice to make a livable wage, I somehow thought that going to be an English major was going to be much better in terms of that. And so, yeah, I ended up switching to creative writing as my major in undergrad, and then worked in marketing and then ended up, you know, going to grad school. So it's been a long time, a long time of a start. But it really kind of just began with an accident, I guess, a lucky mistake, and then turned into a passion I decided to pursue.

In the early years, when you were still in high school and writing poems, did you share them with people?

Oh, yeah, quite a bit. And that was depending on the case. It was either a good thing or a bad thing. I really did get to a point where I started to focus a little bit more inward around high school because I was focused on this idea of getting better and, like, taking it seriously. And I didn't believe that a lot of people around me had that kind of knowledge or interest. We did have, like, a lit mag at my high school, and we did have meetings and we shared work then, but that was probably the extent of it. I didn't really start doing open mics or anything until I was in undergrad, which in the Chicago area when I went to undergraduate. There is a very vibrant slam poetry scene that's been going for years. That's supposedly the birthplace of slam poetry in terms of the competitive sense. And there's also a big youth poetry scene out there, which I had no idea existed until I went to college. So for me, it was kind of weird being that interested in poetry and then getting there and realizing there have been so many people who are my age who've been, like, performing poetry since the time they were, like, 14. So, yeah, you know, it took a while, but that was kind of the point where I really started getting out there, reading my work in front of people more and trying to pop up at open mic scenes where I could and maybe fail or succeed. But that's kind of what comes with the territory.

Okay, that sounds a little bit like a happy accident number two. Just Landing in the right spot. You mentioned the competitive aspect. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So slam poetry, I mean, I, I, I love the nature of performance. I'm not really big on competition, weirdly, although I submit my work to competitions now. But in the way that slam works, you essentially have potentially multiple rounds where you read a poem and then a panel of judges. In the time I was going, it was like they just picked 10 people or however many from the audience to say, hey, do you want to be a judge? And after you read your poem, they rate you on a scale from 1 to 10. Kind of like a gymnastics meet or something. So for me, it was, it was a little institutionalized in that sense. But yeah, I mean, people, they did this, you know, and they still do, they go and they read their poems. Usually there's a three minute limit on your poem and people judge your work. And if you win, maybe you win some money if there was a collection taken, or maybe you win a stack of books or.

Sounds pretty exciting, a little bit stressful, but also exciting. And it's a good opportunity to get kind of instant feedback.

Yeah, it definitely is. I think that for the vibe, for the vibe alone, it's great, you know, and I think that in terms of bringing in a lot of younger individuals into poetry, expanding the space of which people can hear poetry, like where they hear poetry, and then also teaching people that poetry is a lot more than what they typically get in grade school, which is very narrow, very white centric, very, very male centric, giving them a sense that like, oh, hey, there's more poetry being created and it can be created by you. This is something you can do. It was definitely a way that kind of opened things up. And I think beyond slam being what it was at that time when Deaf Poetry Jam was around, you know, people being able to watch performance poetry on HBO was like a big deal. You know, you had a lot of folks who, for many reasons, you probably never think in their life they'd have a national audience for their poems, you know, watching at home. And that really brought it to a lot of people, myself included. I, I do credit to hip hop. Music is like my big inspiration in terms of what my approach to poetry would be. But my first experience with poetry outside of the classroom was my parents watching Deaf Poetry Jam at night. And I was like, all right, if I'm going to do it, I want to do that. I want to do that thing that they're doing.

I was thinking when you were talking about the slam Poetry, the sense of community that would come from an experience like that. And also it sounds like people could participate to the degree that they are called. They might go and listen, they might read their poems, they might be a judge. So they kind of get to step into it at the rate that they're called to do it. Instead of, like, compared to what you were talking about, like in school, when you're basically told which poems you're going to read and you're kind of told how to interpret them. So those two environments to me sound really different. And I could see how somebody would feel much more excited in a slam poetry community than they would, you know, at school being assigned a particular poem. So you participated in these communities. And then what is it that made you decide to go and get your mfa?

So the crazy thing about, like, living in Chicago and living in a city with such a vibrant literary scene, especially because by the time I graduated undergrad, the Poetry foundation had finished its construction. It was open, they were having events there. It's like, this is like the premier poetry space in the country in terms of like, everybody you could think of who's a big name poet, who you'd want to see read poems is going to come through this space. And there's a lot of poets who live in Chicago. And all this is to say that it's very shocking that you could find a point where you're writing a lot of poems and you have no one who you can talk to to share your work, get some feedback, read their work, and get some feedback. So I was working at this marketing company at the time, and in the office I was in, there were about at least 80 writers who worked in that office. But the thing is, a lot of the people who came to that job, because this is at the end of like the Great Recession, a lot of the people who came to that job were not people who studied writing. They were not people who planned or ever intended to be writers. At the time when we were writing for content marketing, what Google needed for the algorithm was just as many 200 word stories as you can pump out on your company blog. So you didn't really need people who really knew how to write that well to do that job. So I'm in a room full of 80 writers, but I'm really probably in a room full of like, you know, 75 people who write for this job and five writers. And talking to my friends from undergrad, I was like, hey, like, no, we got Google Docs. Let's like swap some poems. Give each other notes. And what happened is I realized over time, not only which I cared a little bit less about, was I not getting any notes on my work, but they weren't even sending me work of theirs to read and give them notes on. I was like, hey, I want to read your stuff. And so I kind of had this overwhelming feeling of like, wow, I'm in such a huge city with such a vibrant literary community. And I'm also in this office space where I'm working with Neo 79 other people who are calling themselves writers while they're sitting in these chairs. And I'm not really talking about writing, which is really insane. So that was the point where I decided to really look into MFA programs because I knew that I was like, all right, not only do I need to seek a community of people who are really serious about this right now and put myself in that space, but there are things that I don't know and I want to know. And for me and how I operate, the best way to do that would be in a very confined and very structured environment for two years of my life, which is what made me decide to do it. And so, yeah, that's what made me look into programs. I started looking at low res programs, in particular, low residency, meaning that students are only on campus two times a year. The rest of the time they're working remotely with faculty from home. Because I liked having a job. I liked having money, even though it wasn't that much for what I should have been making. And I liked having health insurance. So, you know, those are reasons I was like, I have to look into programs that allow me to keep my job. Although I did apply to some full REST programs, particularly one in Chicago as well.

So I think having done a low residency MFA myself, I can say that that is one of the best reasons to do it is because it allows you to do what you want or need to do with your moving forward in grad school, but also, you know, maintaining your life and being, you know, a person that has rent to pay and that kind of stuff. So let's talk a little bit about what you got out of your mfa. So you went in with these expectations of being in a structured environment and being more committed and around other people who were committed. So talk about, how did that turn out once you got there?

Yeah, so as you mentioned, when you're kind of talking up at the start, like, I. I not only am the assistant director for Solstice, but I went through Solstice. And one of the things that the program really emphasizes is the sense of community. And for me, in terms of what I was looking for, what I was missing, that was what. What I really wanted to get out of it, more than just writing some better poems, but that sense of community. So after I graduated, I not only had a better sense of intentionality with my writing, like, my first drafts are stronger first drafts. I can diagnose what's wrong without having to tear everything apart, but I also have some good friends who, you know, not only I can send work to, but they can send me work. We continue to push each other to write. So, like, my first, like, six months out of the program, I spent nearly, if not every day, at least once a week, sending publishing opportunities to a couple of friends and just saying, all right, so here's where you're sending your book. Here's where you're sending your book. And we were just doing that back and forth to say, like, all right, like, hey, here's where we're submitting our manuscripts. That kind of friendship and that kind of community among writers is the thing that sometimes we need most. Because even if you still live in a vibrant literary city like I live in now, in Boston, a lot of the work we do writing is very solitary. You know, it's. It's not that we can go and see our writing group every day because we have to go to work, we have to pick up our kids from school. We have to cook dinner and wash the dishes and then go to bed and do it all over again. So it's nice to have someone who can say, like, you know, hey, I'm just going to text you if I see something that you should submit your book to. And that's something that an MFA program can definitely give people that goes beyond, you know, am I going to publish a book in two years and then get a movie deal out of it? And, you know, win a national book Award. Really, it's just, you know, finding the idea of finding your people, people who are, you know, not only interested in this, but very committed to the amount of work that goes into getting work published, and that work doesn't stop. Also, once you have a book, you know, you have to continue to promote your work. You have to reach out for all these things, these readings, and sometimes it's nice when you have friends who are in other states who can tell you, hey, all right, you're trying to put it together, a book tour. God bless you on that effort. But while, you know, maybe a higher power can help you in Certain ways with getting this going. I know a local bookstore that I have a connection with. If you were looking to come to the state where I'm at. Those are the kind of things that, like, you know, I would say are most invaluable coming from programs like you have these people who are going to be your first, your second, your third, and your fourth and your fifth readers on your work. And again, you know, when you, when you touch down somewhere, anywhere, anywhere in this country, you can hopefully have somebody who's there who can link you into their local literary scene, whether it exists already or maybe they're trying to build it. Maybe they're saying like, you know, I'm in the middle of Oklahoma and we don't have a slam poetry scene here. I'm trying to build it up. Would you like to come crash on my couch and maybe be like the first feature for it so that we can kind of generate some interest? Those are the kind of things you can get with these programs.

So we've got connections, community commitment. Those are all good reasons to consider starting an MFA life and mfa, like beyond the MFA lifestyle. I like the way you put that. Can you talk a little bit about the sort of workshop experience that a person can expect, expect when they go into an mfa?

So I think the etiquette piece is a, is a key one that can be harder to attain when you're working with a local writing group. And I don't just mean like people being respectful, as Max likes to tell our students. Matt Carney, the founding director of the program, reining in your intelligence so that you can prioritize your compassion. Sometimes it's really just understanding the etiquette around how to comment in a way that is useful for your peer. And even with some undergraduate creative writing programs, as I'm coming to understand from seeing conversations with my peers who do teach at the undergraduate level, they don't necessarily get some of this understanding of like, all right, when you get someone's short story and you want to put notes on it, circling a sentence and saying this is good is affirming, but it doesn't necessarily help the writer. So what is good about the sentence? What effect did it have on you as a reader? And how can you convey that to the author so that they can then understand what's working in their work? I didn't like this. Okay, so what wasn't working? Is it also a one off issue that doesn't necessarily need to be commented on in workshop space? Is this something that maybe you just Write a note and say, hey, this sentence felt clunky because the syntax just isn't fitting the rhythm of everything around it. And then in workshop, you talk about maybe some overarching issues with structure in the story that recur, things that happen more than once. And there may be a better use of that student's time as you're giving them your feedback along with everybody else in the group. These are things that our faculty definitely set their own expectations for their workshops. But some of that is at the front and as the workshop is going, directing people toward having these thoughts. And so the great thing about it too is with the program being set up the way it is, you have students who are graduating, you know, in a particular residency, sitting in the same workshop as some students may be in their first residency, in their first semester. They get to see that modeled for them from people who over time got to get better at that kind of thing. Like commenting in ways that are helpful for, helpful for the person who is being workshopped, but also helpful for themselves. Because you should intend to see things in your own work as you're talking about someone else's, that can be helpful. And I think really for me, it's getting yourself in a space where everyone is excited, excited for everything that's presented, even if it's not theirs, and excited for the potential of what the writing wants to be. I'm a little woo woo in the sense of saying, like, all right, so I understand what you, as the author wants, but you know, what does the poem want to be? What does the story want to be? And really getting in that sense of thinking about what is the intention, not only of the author, but really what is the intention of the work so that everyone can be excited about that intention and talk around that and have that shared feeling. I think those are the things that workshops do well when they do them very well. Because we can't deny that there are some workshop experiences that are challenging, some workshop experiences that are just directly toxic or discriminatory. I know that the talk about the Iowa model, the long standing Iowa model of the person being workshop can't talk while their work is being discussed, has its criticisms that people are talking about and talking about ways to move past that. There's a mini text now about how to conduct workshops in ways that are more conducive for our thinking in this day and age, particularly getting out some of those biases and some of those practices that are rooted in things tying back to oppression, because we want these experiences to be for People to bring in things that they want to write, but to write it better. You know, the analogy I give people for, like, the solstice approach to workshops is, you know, you have a house that you want to build, you have your dream house, you know, that's your dream house. It's what you want to look like. I can't tell you what your dream house has to have. I can't tell you, you know, what it needs in certain ways. But I can maybe if I'm, you know, the person mentoring you on building your own house, tell you, like, here are the building codes you have to, like, think about. You have to put a foundation down. Like, that's like a thing you have to do. And also beyond those things that are just completely necessary to keep your structure standing up once it's done, I'm going to teach you how to use the tools that you're going to use to construct the house. But ultimately you have to design it. You have to put forth the work to build it. But the idea being that I'm going to teach you how this particular saw, here's how, here's a miter saw, here's when you use a miter saw, here's how it works, here's how you, like, use it without injuring yourself. And then, like, go forth and build your house. Like that should be, at least in my opinion, that should be the format with which we approach workshops because we want people to come with again what they want to write, but should show them how to do it in the best way possible so that we're not imposing our own biases on their work.

I love that because then they will leave the workshop excited about their piece and feeling like, like you said, so the conversation becomes excitement around the piece and you know, what they can do to it to make it stronger and better the way they want it to be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think like the idea of, you know, what your peers are doing in that space, right? Giving them that same knowledge so that as they go through it might be. All right, so you're, you're presenting a story in workshop and I'm going to say you presenting the story is you need to, you need to cut a piece of lumber and you were using a rip saw. And when you were using this rip saw, you were cutting across the grain. And maybe your peer says, hey, because you're cutting across the grain, maybe, you know, use a cross cut saw instead, right? They're not telling them, like, okay, like, now that you wrote this, I want you to Put a pool in the backyard. They're like, I think that maybe for the current thing you're doing, you're just using the wrong tool in the wrong way. And, you know, again, it's about fostering that understanding, not just among the faculty, so that they help students, but, like, the students, like you learn this. So then, like, the faculty members just continuously get to, like, step back and guide and guide and guide. Put their hands in for a second, say, all right, everybody, let's rein it in. Let's direct it. Let's make sure we're mindful of time. But also, like, they can step back and just be part of the conversation along with the students who were there.

I was thinking a couple things. One of them is that I like that analogy because it puts the emphasis on the tools which the author can then write, or author, whichever we want to call them, they can use those tools again on their next project and the one after that so that they maintain the skill and then they're growing skills, not just writing pieces.

Exactly.

The other thing I was thinking about is it might be good if someone was looking into MFA programs to find out what they can about their workshop models and their workshop philosophies, and that might be something that they could use as a way to decide which programs they wanted to look more seriously at.

So I think so. I mean, I think it's a good question to ask.

So if somebody's thinking, all right, I'm going to do the research, going to find the program that's right for me, can you offer maybe one or two tips when they start to get their application materials together, pieces of advice you'd offer them?

Yeah. So I would say for the personal statement, if the program that you're applying to, like Solstice, clearly lays out the questions that they want you to answer, answer the questions. Not only does answering the questions do what the admissions committee wants you to do, it also makes it really easy to eat up the page count by just doing the base of what you're asked. Because I know that personal statements can be big and can be scary. And she's like, I have to talk about myself and make myself sound good. But if they're kind enough to give you questions about what kind of things they want to cover, just answer the questions and you'll notice that you've already covered all the pages you need, and you just need to finesse the language so that it actually makes sense and reads a flow and clarity. When you're submitting your manuscript, submit your best Work, don't submit the stuff that you're maybe not sure about, the stuff that you just wrote that morning. Like submit work that you are really proud of. Yes, you are going to get into this program and two years later you'll be like, wow, I sent this in. This was terrible. How did they let me in? That's going to happen probably. But at the time what you perceive to be your best work, send that work in. Because there's no reason that you want to give an admissions committee, you know, not the best impression of who you are as a writer and as a reader. Right? We want to see your best work and we want to see, at least for Solstice, we want to see the potential, right? We want to see not just where you are, but where you can go when you finish this program. Because we want to know the pathway that we, we need to take to help you get there. And so, you know, send, send your best. And also be honest. You know, be honest about things and, and don't skimp on, especially don't skimp on the details about what you're reading. If you're reading books, make sure that if you're not a person who can recall things that specific things you like about them, what they're doing, take some time to write it down. Because you can't do this work as a writer if you're not doing your work as a reader. That is a personal opinion I hold, but it is one that I would say very much comes through in terms of applications that succeed and don't succeed. As you can tell who reads and who doesn't.

I agree with the importance of reading and writing being two sides of the same coin. And it keeps you in conversation with other people that are maybe working in areas where you're working and that's your community. So why wouldn't you want to read there and hang out there?

You would think. But.

All right, if people have questions for you and they're interested in learning more about the program or maybe asking you something, kind of follow up question, where can they get in touch with you?

Yeah, so if you go to the Lasell website, so that's L A S E L L edu, you can navigate through that to find the Solstice MFA program webpages within it. Or if you just Google Solstice MFA Program and La Salle University, you can usually find us pretty quickly. And that's if you want to contact me about anything Solstice related, all that information is there. If you just have questions about writing me as a poet, writer, poetry booking for events and all that. That's all on my website. My website is Q C O L L I N S Writer. So Q. Collins Writer and then dot com. So that's where you can find information about me. Get in touch with me if you want to book me for something, you know, otherwise I'm on social media. I'm on Instagram, also at Q. Collins Writer. I have a Facebook that I I mostly spend time seeing what other people are posting than interacting other than saying I'm doing a reading somewhere. But yeah, I'm on the Internet a little bit. I'm scaling back quite a bit as social media is burning to the ground in various directions. But I'm out there.

Okay, beautiful. I'll be sure to include those links in the show notes so people can find either you the assistant director or you the poet.

Perfect.

Awesome. Well, thanks a lot for coming in today and appreciate everything that you've offered.

Well, thank you for having me.

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