Adam English Interview

Getting In Tune

with Sketched Out

by Debbie “debbo” Bumeister

What happens when a caricature artist who also writes and performs his own music combines the best of both of his passions? I guess it could be caricatures about music, but in Adam English’s case it was a CD of songs about drawing caricatures. These songs combine the feelings of dealing with caricature customers in a retail environment with some catchy music and lyrics. Adam was kind enough to answer a few questions over Skype to help enlighten us on how his first caricature song CD came to be and share his thoughts on caricature and what his musical plans are for the future.

Debbo: I know you are in a band called Ookla the Mok, and I know you also do caricatures. So which came first, caricatures or music?

Adam: I started doing caricatures in 1987. I was 17 years old, and I started working for Kaman’s out at Darien Lake theme park. At that time they did not have a caricature concession, so I was their first artist. I had actually started training for portraits, which was what they had out there at the time. I met Rich Kaman on my second or third day of training. He asked how I liked it. I had just had my caricature done on a family vacation the year before, and I thought it was cool, so I said what I really wanted to do was caricatures. He had just opened not that long before, with Dino Casterline and Fred Harper, the caricature concessions at Cedar Point and Geauga Lake (theme Parks) in Ohio for Kaman’s. They wanted to open more caricature concessions. They didn’t have anyone to train me, so my mother bought me “How to Draw Caricatures” by Lenn Redman. Although that is a great book, I would not recommend it as the way to learn to draw caricatures. It took me a few years to actually get competent at it. So that is how I started drawing caricatures.

I actually started doing comedy music in about 1992, with my song-writing partner Rand Bellavia, who is my best friend and song- writing partner still to this day. We, as the “filk” rock band Ookla the Mok, perform at science fiction and comic book conventions all over the world. We’ve got six studio albums out as that.

I started doing the songs about caricatures much later. I had been performing at science fiction conventions, and we were writing comedy music about superheroes and Star Trek and so forth, and I thought, “Where can I find even a smaller audience than that?” And that is how I started writing the caricature songs. Actually, the first couple of songs I wrote were for the Kaman’s Managers conference in who knows what year, maybe 2000. Each park had to do a five-minute presentation on some aspect of the business, and they were really unspecific as to what they were looking for, so I wrote two songs. The first two songs I wrote were “Don’t Blame Me” and “I’m Gonna Draw Ya,” kind of the most obvious of the caricatures songs, I guess you might say, and I performed those at the Managers Conference that year, and people were very appreciative. And it gave me a lot of encouragement to continue writing caricature songs.

Debbo: Everybody always asks, “So did you go to school for this?” So … Did you go to school for drawing or did you go to school for music? [Or both?]

Adam: Ironically, I was an English literature major — don’t know what I was thinking — a $60K piece of toilet paper hanging on my wall. If I had known — when I started doing caricatures for a living, being a professional caricature artist — that wasn’t a thing. I had been doing this for seven years as a summer job, before it ever occurred to me, you know, I kept waiting to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up, and one day I thought, “Hey, maybe this is it!” Maybe I could figure a way to do this as a living, and I did not know one other person who did just this as a living. I know a lot of Kaman’s Art Shoppes people that did it seasonally, but they were all in the off-season trying to find a real job. So it was many years before, you know these kids now, they don’t know how good they got it. They’ve got the Internet, so in the first place, training, I mean, my God , you can hop online and look at thousands of amazing caricatures by hundreds of amazing caricature artists. And I had one book. And if you wanted another book, you had to go to the bookstore and like ask them if they had ever heard of another one. And maybe they could order it for you so you could buy it. There wasn’t a way of looking that kind of stuff up. Every time I found a book about caricatures, I would try to buy it. But before the Internet, that was a lot more difficult.

Debbo: So like most of us, you weren’t planning on doing caricatures full time. So you mentioned English. Did this kind of tie into your song writing?

Adam: Well, yeah, you know, I was going to be a writer. That was always my ambition. Songwriter is what I turned out to be. I’ve been doing caricatures for so many years that a lot of these younger artists that see my sketch say, oh, uh. They thought it would be better, I guess, because I am not as good as lot of guys these days, you know, it’s true — you can’t wave your arms without hitting 25 amazing caricature artists, and I don’t count myself among them. Although I didn’t end up making my primary living at it, the thing that I always felt I did well was write songs. I enjoy drawing caricatures a lot, and I enjoy writing songs a lot, and I wouldn’t want to give either of them up. People often ask me which one I enjoy more: I wouldn’t want to live without either of them.

Debbo: Which one of them takes up more of your time, or are they evenly split half and half?

Adam: Caricatures is what puts bread on my table. So for sure that is more of my time. Music has always been my HOBBY, and that’s not to say I haven’t made a little money at it. My claims to fame, musically speaking, include in 2002, we sold a song to Disney. It was the theme song for a Saturday morning cartoon called (Disney’s) Fillmore! That was an amazing, awesome, really cool cartoon that was on ABC from 2002 to 2004. That was an amazing experience. We got a call one day from Scott M. Gimple, and at the time he was the producer of a very hip Disney show that was in development. The interesting thing about Scott Gimple is he is now the show runner for The Walking Dead, so he did really well for himself. But at that time, we knew who he was because my songwriting partner Rand has an eidetic memory. He is a librarian and remembers everything he has ever heard in his entire life. At that time, we were still at a point where when someone ordered one of our CDs online, we would put it in a box and write their name on a label. Rand had recognized Scott’s name because he was the editor of The Simpsons Episode Guides. That is the kind of memory he has. So one day we got an order for all of our CDs from this guy, and we sent them to him and we noticed he was in “the industry,” as we say. The next thing you know, we get a call from him and one of the executive producers over at Disney, and they were interested in buying the song. It was a long process, but that is what happened, and we got to go to LA and schmooze with the Illuminati, and it was just a super cool experience I will never forget.

Debbo: So in “Sketched Out,” there are (quite a few ) songs that are very passionate about customers and the rigmarole that all caricature artists go through. So I know you were probably influenced by your job, but were some of these written on the spot or did you come home one day and were like “I just like I had to get this out. I have to get his on paper”?

Adam: The two songs, there really are only two in the ilk of which you are talking, “Ocean of Idiots” and “The Day I Killed All the Customers.” Those songs were written back to back one year for the Kaman’s Art Shoppes Managers conference. I specifically remember the moment that the idea for “Ocean of Idiots” occurred to me. It was a sweltering hot August Saturday at the theme park that I was working at. I was at my main fountain plaza stand, and this would have been at the end of the season that every caricature manager knows, that part of the season when all of the college students have headed back to school and you have no staff, so you are probably working a 70-hour weekly schedule by yourself. I was standing out there one day and people were walking by and it was such a dense crowd and I was just looking out over the tops of the crowd at these people kind of drifting by, all shuffling by in the heat. If you take a look at the cover that Steve Brodner drew for the Sketched Out album, the people that are walking by at the bottom of this kind of horizon line of stupid people down at the bottom of the page and that was informed by my telling him about that day, and I just remember that people were walking by and saying things like “Hey, how many people can you draw in a double?! Can you draw my self-portrait, please?!” And all the things that the people were saying, and I just stood there and just had a moment of despair and I thought “I am adrift in an ocean of idiots,” and the song was pretty much written by the end of the day, and “The day I killed all the Customers” was just a logical extension of that. You know I just had the idea that rather than actually doing it, perhaps writing a song about it would be a more constructive use of that energy.

But I will say, my favorite thing about the job we all do is the five-minute love affair I spend every day with as many people as happen by my stand that I get to sit in my chair and get to chat with for a couple of minutes. And I love, love, love the job that I spend my days doing. I’ve always felt like those songs, they were kind of one idea that I had for a song to write about drawing caricatures, but people just — WOW — they really caught on to those. They really latched on to the idea of those. And that is something we have all felt at times, but I hope that we all also enjoy the way that we have chosen to spend our days or what we are all doing out here.

Debbo: So it’s been, what, 11 years since “Sketched Out” first was released? Is that true?

Adam: I believe that is so. It was 2005, so that sounds right.

Debbo: And so a lot of people probably don’t know about all the songs, and there are some people who probably want to know where they can get the CD. Is it available for download or purchase?

Adam: Now, that’s an interesting story. The reason that CD got made is because I had been asked to play, after playing for several years at the Kaman’s Managers conference, I had been asked to play at the — well back then — NCN convention. So I went up and did the songs that I had written so far, and I have still — in however many years I have been performing — I still have never experienced a room like that. Like finishing the song, and the never forget it. I had never gotten that much attention for a song I had written before. Everybody came up to me and they’re like, “You’ve gotta record these songs. Where can I buy this music? I will give you the money right now!” That excitement sent me into the studio. At that point, we still were using a different producer outside of the band to produce our music, but I couldn’t afford him for that record, so I produced the record myself and it was my first time producing, and the recording of that album when I look back at it is very much a mixed bag. amount of appreciation in that room I will never forget it. I had never gotten that much attention for a song I had written before. Everybody came up to me and they’re like, “You’ve gotta record these songs. Where can I buy this music? I will give you the money right now!” That excitement sent me into the studio. At that point, we still were using a different producer outside of the band to produce our music, but I couldn’t afford him for that record, so I produced the record myself and it was my first time producing, and the recording of that album when I look back at it is very much a mixed bag.

But, yeah, I made that record myself, and I really broke the bank on that one. Just for five or 6 songs...I spent maybe three grand getting the record produced, engineered, recorded and reproduced — having the actual CD made. I made 1,000 copies of the record, and, again, I don’t know what I was thinking, because there aren’t even that many caricature artists out there. After everybody made such a big deal about how I had to run out immediately and go record it, I sold 13 copies at the convention that year. Everybody was, like, “Hey you’re really great.” And I’d be like, “Hey, I have this record for sale for $10,” and they’d be like “Uhhhh, let me see how my money holds out till the end of the weekend.” And to this day, I believe the number of copies of the record that I sold is not yet 20.

Debbo: So do you still have 980 CDs?

Adam: Yes, I do! I sure do. I sure have boxes of them in my basement.

You know, of the six songs on that album, four of them are probably the four most obvious songs you would write about caricatures. And, you know, I’ve got some more. I have actually performed some more songs that aren’t on the album at the ISCA/NCN conventions, and I’ve got a bunch more ready to go. My next record is going to be called Back to the Drawing Board, and I’m planning on having it out next year, and I want to have several new songs as well as new recordings of the old songs so people can maybe —hopefully — enjoy them a little bit better.

My original plan was to have it out this year. As it turns out, I am not going to be able to go to the convention this year. My band is guest of honor at a science fiction convention in Chicago that same time, so I am not going to be able to make the convention this year, so I am going to try to have the record done by next year. But we’ll see. You know how hobby/artistic endeavors like that go.

Debbo: Yeah, drum up some business for next year and hopefully you will sell at least 14.

Adam: Yeah, at least 14. Although I will tell you something, in this day and age, 14 copies of a CD, that would be great!

Debbo: Or maybe just downloads, set up a store or something. We’ll see.Alright Adam, it was great talking with you!

Adam: Debbo, thank you so much.

FROM ADAM ENGLISH I’m super-proud of the amazing bunch of artists that have come out of Darien Lake over the years, many of whom appear on the cover of this issue with me, including my amazing Canalside business partner Bill Gallagher, Jeremy Stock, Brian Oakes, Rob Dumo, Tim Reed, and Adam Zyglis, current editorial cartoonist at the Buffalo news who won the Pulitzer Prize for cartooning last year. A lot of people say that having children is the greatest joy that life can bring – I didn’t have kids, I had these guys.

Check to see where his band is playing next. Maybe at a sci-fi convention near you: www.ooklathemok.com

When Adam isn’t doing the sci-fi convention circuit, you may find him drawing here: www.canalsidecaricatures.com

Can’t wait til his new CD comes out? Contact him directly to purchase Sketched Out: caricaturesbyadam@yahoo.com