ISSUE FIVE: Contents & A Note
featuring: AARON H. ACEVES, VIC NOGAY, M.C. TAYLOR, each accompanied by original illustrations by Marianna Fierro
AARON H. ACEVES
An Allergy
VIC NOGAY
Swan Lake, 2020 +
I have tried, but I can never explain a leaving
M.C. TAYLOR
Some Pilgrims +
Dogwood Smoke
A Note:
A year ago this week, my work as a booking agent came to an abrupt halt. The artists I had on the road called it off, packed it up, and headed home. Plans for shows in the coming weeks and months turned into question marks.
I wrote about this for the Sewanee Review’s “Corona Correspondences” back in April, early in the fog of the shutdown. Re-reading that letter brings me right back to standing at the kitchen table over a puzzle, trying to find the pieces that fit together, with earbuds in for endless, looping conversations with artists, managers, promoters, and co-workers about everything we didn’t know, 24-hour news on background drone.
Eventually, we ran out of things to say. Burned out on questions without answers, the business gave up waiting on guidance, and I found myself with something I’d not had in two decades: A break from the day job.
I started Little Engines in 2001 with four perfect-bound print issues. Each included a carefree mix of fiction, comics, interviews, photos, essays, and more. The Stranger called Little Engines “remarkably satisfying” and Philadelphia Weekly said the magazine was “such a wonderful creation.”
People liked the magazine, and I loved putting it together. But while digging into what should have been Issue Five, my work in music grew increasingly more demanding. I set the magazine aside, temporarily. Seventeen years later, a few months into Covid hiding, I started working on a re-launch.
Originally, I published Little Engines believing I was reacting against something. I was a punk, fresh out of a midwestern state college, moderately educated with an English degree, and ready to rage against a publishing industry I knew nothing about—and still don’t! I ran it the way I saw my friends running record labels: Do it yourself, make it up as you go.
Thankfully, some things never change. Bringing this thing back to life makes me feel like I did publishing in my 20s, and that’s a feeling I thought I’d forgotten.
Little Engines is unprofessional, without a schedule or an economy. It’s just me, but it’s more than a hobby. And while this is a reclaimed personal opportunity, I’m most excited to bring you this work from other writers and artists.
There were no clear principles at play when selecting and soliciting work for those early issues; it was informal and impulsive, and I’m sticking to that approach this go-around.
AARON H. ACEVES sent me a deceptively simple parable, and it was the first piece I asked to publish for the re-launch of the magazine. VIC NOGAY is from Ohio—midwestern like me!—and you can feel it in her writing. I selected two super shorts, and when I asked whether they were stories or poems, she didn’t know, which feels just right for this magazine. M.C. TAYLOR is a dear friend and also employs me to book his band, Hiss Golden Messenger. I’m proud to be the first publisher of his poems. He sent me a grip of them after I prodded several times. I picked two favorites, which share a little blood, but I can tell you the others are good, too. I hope he puts those and future poems in print in other places.
This first new issue back is, well, little. Just five pieces by three writers. It feels right to start slowly, dipping my toe back in. There was a limited-edition risograph’d print version, too. It’s out of print, but send a request for other issues if you’d like, they’re free!
As for concerts, there is light at the end of the tunnel up ahead. Those of us in the touring business face a frightening pile of what ifs, whens, and hows, but we’re cracking our knuckles, stretching our shrunken booking muscles, and digging back in. Soon, you’ll be able to go back out to see music and stay up past 10pm! So, I’m getting busy as hell again, but I’m promising you, and I’m promising me, that this time I’ll protect space for this magazine.
Happy to be here,
Adam
Nashville, March 2021
ISSUE FIVE’S
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE:
MARIANNA FIERRO
Marianna was raised in a pizza shop! She calls herself a food illustrator, but as you’ll see, she does that and much more. Follow her on instagram.com/mnnfrr, visit her website at mariannafierro.com, and check out this cool piece on Marianna at It’s Nice That.
