(*both laugh*) Episode 44: Franz Nicolay on his debut novel, "Someone Should Pay For Your Pain"

Franz Nicolay has had a long and winding and frankly vaudevillian journey through the music industry over the two-plus decades since he left our shared home state of New Hampshire. Dying Scene readers from the days of yore no doubt are familiar with the #1 accordion player in punk rock (it's true, Connor checked: https://dyingscene.com/heroes-of-the-punk-accordion-a-tribute-to-squeezebox-rockers/) through solo work or his stints in The Hold Steady and The World/Inferno Friendship Society and Against Me! and perhaps Anti-Social Music and maybe Guignol and probably from collaborations with countless beloved acts like Jeff Rosenstock and The Loved Ones and Frank Turner and Junior Battles and more.

A few years ago, he published a fascinating nonfiction book, "The Humourless Laties of Border Control: Touring The Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar." It's an incredibly detailed and dense look at DIY touring through large chucks of the former Soviet Union and Mongolia and the like. At long last, Nicolay is set to release his debut novel. It's called "Someone Should Pay For Your Pain," and it's finally due out next week (August 24th) through Gibson Press, and let me tell you: it's wonderful. It centers around a character named Rudy Pauver.

Originally from Wisconsin, Pauver finds his way to the DIY punk mecca that was late 90s Gainesville and joins a band and, when they goes belly up for a variety of reasons, he continues to ply his wares as a solo artist/troubadour for the better part of the next two decades. There is a cast of characters that includes former bandmates and former proteges-turned-megastars and crotchedy bartenders and condescending soundguys and a next-generation punk rock niece. If you've been in a band or been even loosely tied to a scene, you know these people and these places and these roads and these dive bar floor tiles and these mattresses in the corner at the local flophouse. It's real and it's relatable and it's a sort of book about what happens after the "coming of age" stuff gets old.

For a musician who dabbles in writing - Franz can craft a hell of a novel.

Purchase "Someone Should Pay For Your Pain" here: https://bookshop.org/books/someone-should-pay-for-your-pain/9781948721134

Visit Franz' website here: https://franznicolay.com/