Kingston 76. (And 2025.)

A new novel by former Mercury Rev member Adam Snyder hits all the right notes.

…NOT Kingston-Upon-Hull, the closest city to where I was born and where I will be passing through the day this goes up. NOT Kingston, the posh suburb of London. And NOT Kingston, JA, the home of ska, rocksteady, and of course, REGGAE!, and a city I am desperate to visit.

No, the book we are talking of here is set in Kingston, New York, the original State capital, the gateway city to the Catskills Mountains, the “hottest real estate market in the country” during and immediately after the Covid pandemic according to the Washington Post at the time, the closest city to me these last 20 years, and indeed, the town of my formal address from 2019-2024.

(I am now all but a mile up the road from Kingston, in the town of Hurley, which is where the original residents fled when the British Army burned Kingston down in 1777, pursuing George Washington and his Revolutionary army. Because many of the buildings were made of stone, however, they survived the burning, and according to Wiki, “the intersection of Crown and John streets has Colonial-era Dutch stone houses on all four corners, the only intersection in the country where this is so.” The bookshop-bar-coffee-shop-hangout Rough Draft occupies one of those four corners. See end of this post for a photo of that corner.)

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Kingston, New York has gone through many iterations since 1777, and it needs stating that there was a history long before the Dutch were the first Europeans to arrive in the middle of the 17th Century: the land belonged to, and was stolen from, the Esopus peoples of Native origin. Modern Kingston is, in effect, three towns joined together by a “Broadway” corridor, extending from the Stockade District uptown, winding through Midtown to the Rondout, the name of a creek extending inland from the Hudson River waterfront just beyond.

In 2025, Kingston is a city coping with all the good things that come from an influx of NYC escapees and home-bred entrepreneurs, with a new generation of cafes, restaurants, bars, studios, venues and even the USA’s preeminent Andalusian sherry bar. It is also coping with the displacement of poorer residents, much by way of absentee landlords investing in midtown property; extensive poverty alongside great wealth; lingering gang issues; a growing Hispanic population; the occasional murder trial; and a horrendous run of pedestrian and cycling deaths caused by poor City traffic management. In other words, it’s a City!

So it was in 1976, the Year of the Bicentennial, a time when IBM had become Kingston’s main employer and, if it was not quite jobs for all, there were certainly good jobs for many. It is in this year that native resident Adam Snyder sets his debut novel Kingston 76, a damn good read that I am recommending further afield than its immediate geographical confines given its fast pace, its historical expertise, and its relevance to the present day.

I bought a copy of Kingston 76 direct from Adam at a holiday Maker Fair held at the Kingston YMCA in December. I immediately recognized that this must be the man who I bought a CD from many many years earlier: This Town Will Get Its Due. If Kingston received its due musically from Adam back in 2007, it gets its due in storytelling form from Adam now in the form of a great novel. I subsequently discovered that Adam had already serialized it here on Substack, which made the subject of approaching him with questions about the book all the more pertinent. You can find him and his latest novel over here - and his website is here. I conducted the following Q&A with Adan via e-mail; it explains plot, background, and the City itself as witnessed from someone who has spent a lifetime living it - and championing it.

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Tony: Quick background: You have a deep connection with the city of Kingston, including an album you dedicated to it. For those who don't know it, you have 50 words to tell people why Kingston is special. Go!

Adam: Kingston smiles at me, it just does. Maybe any place is special when you see it in full, triumphs along with things that could be improved. A small city is not a big city, but it’s not a village either, I think it’s a perfect combo, and Kingston these days combines hometown with cosmopolitanism, urban with nature. It’s got a singular history dating back to the 1600s, and the people make it great.

You were in Mercury Rev for six years. Which six years and are you comfortable explaining why you are no longer in the group?

I started playing with Mercury Rev in 95 when “See You on the Other Side” was released. After that I joined the band officially and we began working on what would become Deserters Songs. We started touring Deserters in 98 and it was a pretty amazing period.

In the early 2000s I felt compelled to concentrate on solo projects, so I went for it. I toured pretty extensively, signed to another label. I guess the decision had some pluses and minuses, but we’re all friends and continue to support each other throughout the years, that has remained constant.

When I met you and purchased a copy, I expected a musical novel. I was relieved that music barely showed up. Was that conscious for a first novel?

There are multiple ideas for music-related novels that I’ve tinkered with over the years. The first novel I completed was actually a sci-fi thriller. I had an agent for about five years who couldn’t find a home for that one. Kingston 76 just sort of flowed out as something strikingly different than what I’d imagined my first novel would be.

You set your story in the year of the Bicentennial. Why was that important?

This will connect with the question below. I was ten during the Bicentennial living in uptown Kingston, so it’s sort of a happy coincidence. But it does work into the story nicely because the Bicentennial was a big deal at the time, and living in a colonial neighborhood was wonderful for a ten year old imagination, you felt like you were living inside the story that was being told nationally.

Your Kingston is physically real. The street names, the stores, the parks. The only thing that was not evidently real was changing IBM by one initial. These fictionalizations are tough and I don't know if there is a right or wrong but for the uninitiated, can you offer a quick explanation of why IBM is so central to Kingston 1976 - and to the city's subsequent economic decline for many years also.

I changed the name of the company and also the product, both so I could take liberties and so as not to get sued. But you cannot overstate the importance of IBM to the Kingston area community at that time. Biggest single employer, international significance, top of the tech field at the time, generated vast suburbs while converting Kingston to something more like an inner city. There was no indication at the time that it would do anything but keep growing.

It’s partially on the civic leaders of Kingston for not having encouraged a more diverse economy. When IBM pulled out, it was devastating to the community. Additionally, many IBMers had invested in real estate throughout Kingston, which they continued to own after migrating south, leading to a high rate of absentee landlordism at the same time.

Your protagonist is Timothy, a highly precocious 4th Grader. Is it you?

More-or-less. (Below: the adult Adam Snyder.)

You tackle the very important issue of race in Kingston by having Charles, an older kid who becomes Timothy's partner in the story, as the adopted black son of white parents, the recently deceased father of whom was a respected detective. Is this based on a true person, and if not, I felt it an interesting way to get into this city's (and indeed many American cities) awkward racial histories and ongoing issues. It allows you to address privilege and prejudice within the same character, who gets it from both sides.

Charles, like other characters in the book, is an amalgam of actual friends. I tweaked his circumstances so that he would be dealing with his own issues, different but parallel in a way to what Timothy is dealing with.

The story touches on racism, which most definitely existed in the Kingston of this time period, but Kingston was also a place where we were black and white and all played together, that was the most important message I got growing up.

You address same-sex relationships with Timothy's own mother as well as a violent incident against a gay man. Kingston in 2025 is a proudly inclusive LGBTQ+ positive city. What was it like in 1976? And does Timothy's own awakening to his mothers' same sex partnership reflect your own journey in any way?

This is a central part of the story which took many years for me to figure out how to tell. I think it’s precisely because Kingston is so happily inclusive now that I wanted to say, hey, this hasn’t always been the case. The celebration we’re having now is based on decades of bravery when it wasn’t so easy.

The central premise of the story is that IBM - sorry, IPM - is polluting the local water supply. It's a familiar story with big corporations and their lack of environmental concern. How much pollution did IBM actually contribute to the city and regardless, were the negative impacts of its corporate set-up largely ignored because of the well-paying jobs it brought to the town?

Again, this is an amalgam. I believe there are some polluted areas out by the old IBM plant that are probably still being dealt with, don’t quote me. I do know for a fact that other area companies dumped things into the water, I’ve seen that with my own eyes.

I have always imagined Kingston in the 1970s - at least for the IBM workers - as an updated form of Madmen in the 1960s. That might be because I lived in Dutch Village for five years, an apartment complex down on its heels now due to corporate landlords but which upon its opening in 1971 I imagine were state-of-the-art, with vast atriums for communal gatherings, and wet bar closets and garbage chutes and the like. Any comment?

I’m not sure the Kingston IBM scene was as martini cool as Madmen, this was a very provincial area then. There was zero pipeline between here and NYC, for most people 90 miles might as well have been 900 miles.

I do recall when Dutch Village was brand new, and I do think they were meant to be nice apartments. Funny thing is that they’re built on the flood plain which the Dutch wouldn’t have built on, that’s why the Stockade is up the hill from there.

What I liked about Kingston 76 is that you allow the storyline to propel the pages. You don't appear to be a florid prose writer and so you don't try to be. The action is well paced, you allow these important issues of race, gender and corporate politics to drive the story in the classic show-dont-tell form, and your characters reveal themselves successfully along the way. All of that deliberate on your part.

As a reader, I appreciate when writers make themselves almost invisible so you can be in the story. So, that’s my aesthetic basically, keep the language tight, just enough to do the job. Action engages me as a reader, so I try to make sure things keep happening, just make it believable, in service to the story, not gratuitous.

I note that you are a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. My understanding is that this is one of the US's major writing schools: what does it entail and can anyone attend or enroll? In 2025 is it still an on-premises workshop?

I have no idea if they did online workshops during the pandemic, but the Workshop is a real place, and it’s crazy competitive. The year I started they had 25 openings for fiction writers and over 700 applicants. I applied on a lark and was pretty amazed that I got in.

I love that so much of the history of Kingston of 1976 feels picture perfect. The wealthy IBM workers houses up on Hillside, the FotoMat kiosk in the Kingston Plaza (whereabouts?) Did the Tannery Brook really run through town uncovered? I can't picture it. (And is it connected to the Tannery Brook in Woodstock?) And was the Green Apartment Building real?

Tannery Brook (not connected to Woodstock’s) defined the western edge of the Stockade. It ran wild through uptown until recent years. I dammed it so many times that my neighbor ran for alderman so he could have the DPW run it through a culvert. I contend that this chain of events led to the brook being routed into the sewer near Linderman, which in turn led to the collapse of Washington Avenue for something like two years. So, that was my fault.

The Green Apartment Building is real but it was a different color. It’s still there.

One of the other things that really impressed me about Kingston 76 is the professional quality of its presentation. As an ex-fanzine editor, I am all for self-published books, but too many of them look self-published, and not deliberately so. The only difference between Kingston 76 and, and I use this example deliberately, my memoir, is the lack of a well-known house publishing imprint on the cover. How did you set about ensuring it looked the part? Did you use an online printing firm, because they should be recommended if so? And can you please give a shout-out to your designer, whose logo and use of the "banana bike" which is the protagonists' mode of transportation (we used to ride bikes!) firmly place the book in its time period and are of utmost quality.

Jennifer MaHarry did the cover. She’s an excellent artist who happens to be my wife. Jason Snyder is a fantastic book designer. He pulled the whole thing together, absolutely top notch. He happens to be my cousin. I’m lucky to have such a talented family!

Prior to publication, you ran Kingston 76 as a serial novel on your Substack. I am interested in your thoughts about the process. It's something I explored back in 2000 when I first set up a website. Theoretically, the self-serialization process should work. Practically, I remain unconvinced. What were your experiences, and do you recommend it?

My intention was to publish it traditionally. I had a few tire kickers, but ultimately tired of submitting after 100 or so agents. I put it up on Substack, total snap decision. For me, the experiment worked because it attracted a lot of enthusiastic readers which led to it coming out in book form.

I note that you have gone straight in and serialized two more books on Substack - a true account of Mercury Rev's tour with R.E.M. in 1999 and a second novel, Ghost Tour, which is music-related. Does this reflect faith in the serialization process or just a desire to get the writing out to however many (or few) people will read it?

This is where it gets a little crazy. I was looking at the need to continue my Substack at the same time as writing a new novel. I have a nine year old boy, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. So, whereas Kingston 76 was a book that was already written then posted one chapter at a time, Ghost Tour I am actually writing week-to-week.

So it’s really due to practical necessity that I’m doing it this way at the moment. Bizarrely I’m going to say that it’s working for me, but my guess is that it wouldn’t work for most writers.

You need to be absolutely ruthless with your first draft to share something publicly and in real time and make it readable at this stage of the game.

Much as I loved Kingston 76, I have a criticism in that I found the ending too "pat." Everything got wrapped up in a nice little bow. Now, to be fair. I had exactly the same issue with Ted Lasso, which is otherwise my favourite TV series of the last several decades. Still, in both cases, I felt that there could have been some plot lines and relationships left unresolved because surely, isn't that life? Please don't feel you have to defend yourself, but I would like to get that comment out there and afford you the chance to respond.

Wrapping it up somewhat happily and neatly was a necessity for me. Yes, in real life some of these issues would take a decade or more to wrestle with, and some writers would choose to go in that direction, but I feel there are a lot of wide-open emotional scenes within the course of the story that are plenty real enough. The way this book resolves makes me personally happy, for me it’s the right thing for this story at this time.

I sense that you see yourself as more of a writer these days than a musician. But of course the two can and should co-exist as mutually beneficial creative forms. How much music do you still play and where else can we find your writing?

The writing is coming out faster and works better within my schedule, but I’m definitely still a musician. My third solo album is taking WAY longer to accomplish than I’d imagined, but it’s coming along. Big return to the piano. I play out whenever I can. I also have a new band called Elephant Rex. William Ferguson on bass, Mike Dwyer on drums, me strumming and singing.

I’ve been doing a lot of music/arts writing for HV1 lately which is great because there is so much talent living here or rolling through these days, it’s great to get to write about it.

I’m also hosting a weekly show on Radio Kingston, Wednesday nights at 11pm. I’m reading chapters from Kingston 76 live each week, mixed in with songs from the time period.

Finally, next year will be 50 years on from Kingston 76. The city has been coming out of a long decline that was brought on in large part by IBM shutting down and deserting the city and those well-paid jobs going with it. Now Kingston is experiencing heavy gentrification. While the Hudson Valley and the Catskills have always been populated and regenerated by expats from NYC, the process went into overdrive during the Pandemic, as people discovered Kingston's viability and location and affordability en masse. This has benefits and repercussions and you are welcome to list both.As one of the city's most ardent creative champions, where do you see it in the bigger picture these days, how do you see addressing the inevitable conflicts... and compared to 1976, what Grade would you give Kingston and what comment would you put in its report card?

Kingston is vastly different today than in the 1970s. But the 70s were very different from the 1800s, the 1700s, the 1600s, etc. There is no one true Kingston, it’s almost European, it’s existed long enough that it has been many places, and will continue as such into the future.

Personally, I kinda love all these new ventures and people all over town, it’s fun to see all this going on. Thanks for being here everyone!

One thing I do sort of miss is the utter originality you found here about 20 to 30 years ago. Like I said, I do like the new stuff, though a lot of it is standard-issue hip that is popping up in every city.

When IBM left, there were people doing all sorts of creative things on shoestring budgets and no one cared if it was hip or not, they just did it, and honestly that was the coolest of all.

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While you can purchase Kingston 76 online from all the usual suspects, PLEASE support your local bookshop or order direct from Adam’s Wheelie Press shipping page, here. Online behemoths should be last resort, not first, lest we lose more of the corner shops that make a community a community. On the subject of which, the photo below is of myself with younger son Noel on his 20th birthday, this past Xmas Eve, hanging out at Rough Draft. Like I said, this city has history.)

Further reading on old Kingston, NY can be found here. There are also multiple historic books about the town, including one on the IBM Years, should you be interested.