Friday feature: a Captive Audience with Dave Reidy

June 26, 5:59 AMChicago Literary Scene ExaminerRobert Duffer

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Photo pulled from Time Out Chicago Books section

Dave Reidy knows how to play the crowd. His debut collection, Captive Audience, released this week by Ig Publishing, features young male protagonists (with the exception of Abe Vigoda) facing a crowd with the daunting wish to connect with someone.

I connected with Reidy on an article for the Books section of Time Out Chicago(where I stole this photo) at his local River North pub, Green Door Tavern. Since I've already reviewed the book and Dave in the TOC article, I thought we'd have a informal, unstructured and a little goofy Q&A to tie-in to the article. And Dave's up for anything to do with the art of performance.

EX: In "The Regular," which won the EWN contest, your characters reveal guilty pleasures in Journey's "Faithfully" and "Do You Feel Like We Do" from Frampton Comes Alive.  You've admitted to liking Steely Dan. What song would you karaoke if you had to karaoke?

DR: I've probably done karaoke about a dozen times in my life--it took me a while to get over my "No way--I was in a band" attitude. My old stand-by is Sinatra's "Fly Me To The Moon," but that doesn't play with every crowd. I've also done the Buzzcock's "Ever Fallen In Love," which is on my short list for Quaraoke (a karaoke night/reading at Quimby's Bookstore, July 15th, with Claire Zulkey, Mark Bazer and Megan Stielstra). Perhaps my most shocking outing came the night I did "Mama Said Knock You Out" with Wolverine-style sideburns. That woke some people up at Trader Todd's.

EX:  What was your favorite song, cover or original, to play with Dunbar?

DR: We had an original called "Rent in Limbo" that we loved to play. But one of my favorite covers to play (at least in retrospect) was "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" by the Dandy Warhols. We played it hard--but acoustically--and it pretty much worked.

EX: You're a Notre Dame alumnus. What Notre Dame myth or misconception can you disprove?

DR: Gosh, I don't know--perhaps the myth that ND's students don't care much about the arts. I'm continually impressed by old friends and classmates who have gone on to do great things in music, design, animation, theater and writing. My old intramural basketball teammate Marty Moran is now a poet. He can add that title to his resume alongside Shot-blocker. He has very long arms. Most good poets do.

EX: Boxer briefs, briefs, boxers, nothing or other?

DR: Boxer briefs. They don't bunch.

EX: What one music poster sticks out in your memory as the one that resonated most personally?

DR: This one.

It was done by Jay Ryan of the Bird Machine and I've had it hanging in my place for years. I bought it without being a huge fan of either The New Year or Silkworm. I just loved the image of that massive yellow moon pulling all objects unto itself. The poster inspired, at least in part, the illustration that Ted makes at the beginning of "Look and Feel" (a story in Captive Audience) and Silkworm, one of the bands featured on the poster, gets a mention in the collection's final story, "Dancing Man." The poster has taken on a grim significance since 2005, when a woman attempting suicide crashed her car into another car that was carrying Silkworm drummer Michael Dahlquist, as well as Chicago musicians Doug Meis and John Glick. Dahlquist, Meis and Glick were killed. The woman survived.

EX: What are you reading now?

DR: The Magus by John Fowles. I wanted to get a feel for the flow of a good, long novel. I did the same thing last summer with Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude. Next on the docket: Graham Greene's The Third Man.

EX: What did you last read?

DR: I read James Webb Young's A Technique for Producing Ideas. Young was an ad man from the 50s who turned a lecture about how ideas are made into this slim volume which can, I kid you not, be absorbed and enjoyed in half an hour. It is, in terms of length, the anti-Magus.

EX: Three of your top ten favorite books?

DR: Love & Hydrogen: New & Selected Stories by Jim Shepard

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

EX: Classic TV shows: aside from Barney Miller and Newhart, which shows rank in your personal pantheon?

DR: The Office (UK) is perhaps my all-time favorite television show. Among older shows, the Dick Van Dyke Show is a favorite.

EX: Favorite Chicago activity?

DR: I like to walk along the Chicago River. I first did it on a wood-chip path near my first apartment, which was on a stretch of Cuyler Avenue that dead-ends into the North Branch. These days, I pick up the riverwalk path at the Kinzie Bridge and head north. When the path ends at Grand, I jog over to Kingsbury and catch the River again at Erie Park. You see so much on the river--kayaks, leaping carp, pleasure boats and garbage barges. You can see the faces of the pilots and the passengers. You can wave or not. The Lakefront has its pleasures, but I'll take the gritty, grimy intimacy of the River.

EX: Why do you write?

DR: My life is richer for writing--for the act of sitting down and doing it. I hope some of that richness makes it into the fiction.

EX: Will you be doing Running Man at your wedding?

DR: I'd like to say that I won't be, but I can't be sure.

EX: What will be your signature dance move?

DR: I recently saw a friend of a friend, a woman whom I'd met only once before. When we recalled that we'd first met at the Darkroom, where we and our mutual friend were dancing to the PANIC! DJs' blend of Britpop, new wave and indie, she said, "Oh yeah, I remember you." Then she started rocking back and forth and wielding her fist like a hammer above her head. I recognized immediately that she was imitating my dancing. So that rocking hammer-fist thing must be my signature move. Look for it Saturday night at the Darkroom--and at my wedding.