Before we get into the story itself, I noticed on your website that you’re a “nomad,” constantly traveling the world. How has that affected your writing, and in particular, this story?
My wife, Asia, and I have been doing this nomadic thing since 2011. Travel has become so infused with my core identity, its effect on my writing is like Hemingway’s iceberg theory: I’m aware of 10%, but a good 90% remains beneath the surface. What I can say is this nomadic life is always shifting, forever uncertain, never knowing what’s gonna happen and, like the creative process, usually starts one way, then winds up somewhere completely different.
The original idea for “The Crooners” came from an interview (which I’ll get into later) I did almost two decades ago. It wasn’t until 2020 that the group gave me the okay to tell their nightmarish tale. The next year, we were living in Guanajuato, Mexico. Asia just shot a short folk horror film centered around the city’s underground tunnels, which inspired this story.
Beyond the locations, this lifestyle also shapes my themes. When you’re on the move for an extended time, your concept of “home” begins to fade. I’d find out—as did The Crooners—returning to who you were before that shift is impossible. Everything looks different, feels different, sounds different.
Your art remains. Your art becomes home. Your art—your words, your voice, your creative mode—rides with you the whole time, so you hold fast to your art or fight like hell to.
Music plays such a big role for me in my writing and in my life, as it seems it does yours. What’s your genre of choice to listen to while working to get the creative juices flowing?
It varies depending on the story I’m working on. Songs can transport you to a specific place and/or time in your life, so music, in its own right, is a powerful mode of travel. Personally, I can’t write to tracks with lyrics. When it’s time to put characters on pages, I turn to classic film scores from paranoid thrillers.
Were there any specific musical groups you had in mind while writing The Crooners?
This story put me deep in the doo-wop and R&B sounds of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. The Ink Spots. The Penguins. The Dells. I had The Platters on loop. Revisiting classics like “Only You” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
In 2006, I wrote a feature story for Boston Globe Magazine about Herb Reed, the bass singer and a founding member of The Platters. There were a bunch of copycats using his group’s name and belting his group’s hits, he told me, making millions off his legacy. Stories like this one—and others from Black musicians of that era—formed the first note of the idea.
And then there was The Five Heartbeats. That classic Robert Townsend film was on heavy rotation for my brothers and me. “The Five Heartbeats in The Twilight Zone” had been a concept I’d been looking to develop for a minute.
In 2022, while living in Ecuador—grubbing on tigrillo and checking out Afro-Peruvian jazz clubs—all the elements fell in line.
I thought it was interesting and quite sad that for The Crooners, the story ends not with their deaths, but with them losing their ability to sing. It’s not their deaths, but for them, it’s as good as. What made you choose this ending?
Did they lose their ability to sing? Only the four brothers in that Cadillac can say for sure.
It’s true that, for an artist, losing your voice, losing your ability to create, is its own kind of death. I’ve been down that road many times. Somehow, some way, I get back on track.
But this story could only go so far. Which left blanks that could only be filled with speculation.
Any known relatives of The Crooners declined to comment, so I had to take what was presented to me. Then and now, too many Black artists pass away at an early age or disappear in other ways. Lives are lost or stolen. Still, the art remains. Giving us a spot of light to drive toward.
What do you have coming down the pike for us to look forward to?
I’ve been developing a full-length play based on the legend Wendell Scott, the first Black NASCAR driver. As we’ve been moving around the UK the past few months, Asia and I have been shooting more horror shorts. Got a few other projects in the works, but I can’t speak on those right now.
