Perhaps it is appropriate that the publication of Travis Burkett’s debut novel, An American Band, follows by several years the death of Texas’ most famous minor regional novelist. Burkett has a similar connection to the Western setting, one not informed by apocalyptic ideation or voyeurism, but lived experience. It is because of this that I believe he is so uniquely suited to act as a chronicler of an American experience which is more diverse and complicatedly informed than an outsider might be capable of reckoning, and An American Band is a pleasure to read, a novel of its time that projects outside of it into a murky future. A novel about a band, a group of friends, and the lonely longing and pain wrought by a suffering that too often goes unseen.
I met with Travis on a cold and rainy afternoon at Flipper’s Tavern in Lubbock, Texas–a very Western city, and yet conspicuously lacking in gunfighters and/or wagon trains–to enjoy a cold beer, hot dog (allegedly), and to talk to him about himself, his work, and his impressive and capable debut:
INTERVIEWER
Did you know you wanted to be a writer from a young age?
BURKETT
No. Back in school, elementary and up, I always knew I was good at writing, but I never knew any writers. I didn’t know that was something you could do.
Growing up, my parents weren’t super strict, but they were fairly strict about what I could watch on tv. I could check out anything I wanted from the library though.
I read Stephen King in middle school. That was probably my introduction to more adult fiction. Obviously, his books are more genre/horror novels, but I think he’s good at describing and setting up his characters, making you care about them before he puts them through hell.
I wanted to get into journalism when I went to college. That was my first major. I thought maybe I’d be a sports writer or something, but I took a creative writing course, Trampas Smith’s class, and then I thought, “I want to go into fiction.” It’s a lot more fun writing fiction than journalism, I think.
INTERVIEWER
What was the process of getting An American Band published?
BURKETT
I started contacting agents around 2019. I’d send out a batch of queries, wait a while, then send out another batch. A couple of them requested the full manuscript but nothing came of it. Then the lockdown came in ’20, and I had more time on my hands, so I decided to do another draft. Finished that, sent it out to a bunch of smaller presses, more agents, still nothing.
I was about ready to self-publish it, just to get it out there and be done with it, when a writer friend suggested I hold off a few months and submit it to a few more places. TCU Press was one of the first I reached out to then. They liked it and eventually we worked out a contract.
INTERVIEWER
What was it like working with TCU Press to prepare the novel for publication?
BURKETT
It was good. I had worried they were going to try to change more of the book, but they really didn’t. It was mostly minor stuff, grammar and punctuation and trimming parts where I overexplained things. They didn’t ask me to take any of the big sections out.
When they were first interested in the book they sent it to two outside readers to get their thoughts before they’d commit to it. The first outside reader said it would be a better, faster-paced book if you took out all the flashbacks and just made it present day, following the band. I wasn’t about to do that.
Then the second reader loved the flashbacks, so it was never a real question of cutting them.
After they took the novel we went back and forth with edits, and I got to approve what they suggested and sent me.
I did the sketch for the cover. Originally it was just a suggestion, something for them to go off of, but they liked it and ended up using it for the cover. A friend color matched it. It was just a picture I took of a black piece of paper sketched with a paint marker.
INTERVIEWER
What do you do for a living, and how does work inform your writing?
BURKETT
I farm cotton. Dryland cotton, so no irrigation, just relying on the West Texas rains to make a crop. It’s a gamble every year.
I come from a long line of farmers on my dad’s side, and my mom’s family raises Hereford cattle. So it’s in my blood, I guess. I’ve learned that, for my own sanity, I need to work outside.
Farming and writing make a good pair. There are times of year I’m too busy to even pick up a pen but there are also times when things slow down and I have more flexibility than a regular job would allow. I wrote a lot of the early pages of the book on the farm. A lot of the better ideas have come to me either on the tractor or out hoeing weeds.
INTERVIEWER
Is the place where you live in Lamesa sort of like Squat’s grandparents’ ranch?”
BURKETT
Not exactly, but it’s an area I’ve spent a lot of time in, east of Lamesa on the caprock. I do have a specific house I based that on.
I grew up out in the country. Me and my wife live out in the country again, near Lamesa. I love the space. It’s an acquired taste, West Texas. It doesn’t have the natural beauty, like mountains or water, any natural beauty really, but the sky, the most amazing sunrises and sunsets. And you can see the stars clearer here than anywhere I’ve been. There’s a lot of cool things about West Texas if you look for them.
INTERVIEWER
In your acknowledgements you cite McCarthy as an influence. McCarthy tends to render brutal depictions of Western landscapes and places. In An American Band, you don’t do that.
For instance, on page 29, you write:
“The ranch sat just east of the caprock plateau, where the flat cotton fields fell away, plunging you down into the mesquite and cactus tangled cattle country. The mesas, which Squat grew up thinking were sawed-off mountains, could be seen in every direction but west. They came up to a narrow caliche road cutting diagonally across the property, a path the energy company made to access the enormous white wind turbine that now loomed ahead. They all craned their necks when the pickup went underneath it. Even the white box that contained the gears and generator, compact in proportion to the long blades and tower, was as big as their bus.”
Even in a scene like this, passing beneath an industrial wind turbine, there’s a sense of beauty and awe in your characters’ interactions and reactions to the landscape and the modifications or additions made to it.
BURKETT
McCarthy was a big influence. There’s different things. He does very little with a character’s thoughts and what’s going on inside of them and I do more of that obviously. And then, contrasted with that are these very evocative passages dealing with setting and place. I think a lot of times he does tie it back, even something very brutal, to something timeless and beautiful. Not always. Like the dead baby tree in Blood Meridian. It’s not at all beautiful, but sometimes he ties it back into beauty.
I love McCarthy, his prose is incredible, but I have a hard time explaining his influence on me because his style is just in a league of its own.
I think I’m drawn to write things that combine brutality and hope, which several of McCarthy’s later books do in their own ways. If you put your characters through hell without ever really giving us a glimpse of their humanity, what’s the point? There are many horrors worth writing about, many ugly parts of life worth seeing, but if you’re just nihilistic and cynical all the time, I get tired of it.
INTERVIEWER
Were there any novels written by West Texas writers that you were reading while you were writing An American Band?
BURKETT
When I was in the program at University of California-Riverside (UCR) I had Stephen Graham Jones as a professor.
Before that, I read this book he wrote called Growing Up Dead in Texas. It’s kind of part memoir, part fiction. He’s open about that fact.
It’s all about him growing up in a small farming community outside of Midland, which is not too far from where I grew up.
That was a really good book and that was the book that showed me that writing about West Texas could be interesting.
Until that point, none of my short stories had been set in West Texas because I thought, No, that’s not interesting. Everyone I knew was from there, and no one cares about growing up in cotton country and all that.
Then, once I went to UCR and people would find out I worked on a cotton farm, their eyes would get wide. It seemed like another world to them. That’s when I began to realize that West Texas was a pretty fertile place for writing fiction.
INTERVIEWER
How did the program at UCR, with its faculty and your peers, help prepare you for the writing of the novel? What are your thoughts on the MFA? What would your advice be to aspiring writers considering whether or not to pursue an MFA?
BURKETT
I don’t think this novel would exist if not for my time at UCR. Not saying I wouldn’t be writing or even that I’d never have written a novel, but this specific novel came out of that experience. I didn’t think I had the discipline to write a whole novel. I’d only done shorter pieces up to that point. The framework and the due dates helped me prop up the first draft. I’d finished half of it by the time I graduated.
As far as the MFA, I have mixed feelings. I had a couple of excellent instructors, and some of my peers’ writing really blew me away. I also liked that the program wasn’t snooty when it came to people writing genre fiction. But like any MFA, there’s also a lot of groupthink, a lot of things you have to unlearn. I don’t think it’s always a good environment to find your voice.
To anybody debating the MFA route, what do you want to get out of it? If you’re deadset on teaching or you’re craving the community and connections, go for it. If you’re just focused on getting better at your craft, it can do that too, but there are alternatives. Local writers groups, workshops, that sort of stuff. Either way, if you want to be a good writer, you have to read and write. A lot. There’s no way around that.
INTERVIEWER
Here’s a layup of a question: Do you play music?
BURKETT
I’ve never been in a band. I’ve never performed, unless you count for family and friends. I picked up guitar in middle school and took some lessons. I started playing more when I was in college, but mostly just for my own amusement.
INTERVIEWER
The novel includes the lyrics to several songs that you wrote. Is there something about novel writing that feels more natural or comfortable to you than playing music?
BURKETT
I feel comfortable writing songs. If someone else wanted to perform one of my songs that would be fine. It’s more of my singing and playing that I’m not comfortable with. Writing lyrics for the book was a different experience because I wasn’t necessarily writing songs the way I would write them. I was trying to figure out how the band would write them. But a couple of the songs I already wrote long before starting the book and they ended up fitting in there too.
INTERVIEWER
What were your writing habits when putting together the novel?
BURKETT
I wrote five days a week longhand for my first draft, and then typed it out on the computer. That was like a revision in itself. I like pen and paper to start just because you can take it anywhere. Whereas the laptop you gotta worry about it being charged, and when it’s hot you don’t want to leave it inside your truck.
I like to write in chunks. And that’s harder now with kids.
When I lived in Kansas City I worked at a cabinet shop from 7 AM to 3 PM. After that I’d go to a coffee shop or brewery and write for a couple of hours and could still get home at five and have time to spend with my wife.
Now I’m having to adapt more to writing in shorter segments. There’s a lot of distractions.
INTERVIEWER
Has being a parent changed your writing at all?
BURKETT
Oh yeah. Before kids, I liked to do my day’s writing in one big chunk after work. I can’t do that anymore. And that’s alright. I wouldn’t trade it. They’re only little for a little while.
I’m having to adapt to writing more irregularly, writing for shorter periods of time. I haven’t found my rhythm yet, to be honest. But I’m still writing when I can. I find myself writing more stories again, poems and songs too. Things I can accomplish with less time. But I’ll get back to writing novels.
INTERVIEWER
There’s a big time jump between the first part and the second part of the novel, that you pull off, as with most things in this novel, very well. Was there a physical gap in time between your writing of the first and second parts?
BURKETT
I don’t think so. I think I just knew that where I left it, something was about to change. Instead of describing what happened between El Paso and Los Angeles, I just wanted to jump forward and briefly fill you in on what happened. But there wasn’t a big gap between writing the first and the second parts.
INTERVIEWER
Do you have any plans for a second novel? Are you working on anything currently?
BURKETT
Yes. I started another one during the lockdown in ’20. It’s partly based on some experiences I had in Kansas City and part larger than life fiction, like this book. I got a couple chapters into the new novel and then shelved it to edit more on An American Band. I might go back to that one, but I was recently struck with another idea for a shorter novel, novella maybe, and I think that one has more juice right now.
So we’ll see. I’ve been messing with this speech to text app that lets me ramble on while I’m driving the tractor. I’m hoping to be able to make something coherent out of that.
Travis Burkett is a farmer and writer from Lamesa, Texas. Besides the novel, he writes short stories, poems, and sad country songs. His work has appeared in defunct literary journals and on scraps of paper howled away by the West Texas winds.
High Horse 