In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Jules Wernersbach’s Work to Do is a mesmerizing debut, a workplace novel that embeds the reader in the dramas of an Austin food co-op.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“Wernersbach’s depiction of their large, diverse, economically struggling cast of characters gives even the minor players their full humanity and their evocation of the Austin setting sparkles with verisimilitude, right down to the very affordable pitcher of Lone Star at the Spider House Café. A workplace novel crossed with a soap opera, offering plenty of food for thought. (Organic and locally sourced, of course.)”
In their own words, here is Jules Wernersbach’s Book Notes music playlist for their debut novel Work to Do:
When I lived in Austin, Texas, two things shaped the hours beyond my writing desk: books and music. I worked full time at bookstores and book festivals, driving to and from the store and author events listening to a vivid and ever-evolving soundtrack of pop, country, and indie music. Austin, Texas is a city that calls itself “the live music capital of the world.” It’s true that in the decade I lived there, I saw more live shows than I have in the rest of my life combined and discovered a ton of artists. Behind the grocery store workers in my Austin novel, Work To Do, is an industry of gigs, bars, clubs, and music festivals run by service workers and backstage hands who scurry just outside the spotlight’s edge, much like the characters in this book run around their grocery store. There’s a nod to this nightlife in one of the characters in this book, Hala, who supplements her thin paycheck from the grocery store with door gigs, clocking into her co-op shift with her hand stamped and looped with wristbands from the places she worked and partied the night before. I could make a whole playlist just for Hala.
Hala is one of the characters leading the work to unionize the co-op, which is the central issue of this novel. Work To Do is about yearning, queer love, messy relationships, and the emotional drama of working with other people to gain some kind of protection in the hellscape capitalist environment of hourly retail labor. Labor organizing has a long history of protest music and I’ve threaded some songs in here that galvanize me to fight the power, and which I give to these workers now. The rest of the songs are Texas songs, love songs, and music that was in the back of my mind as I wrote.
People have the power. And we’ve got the music.
All My Exes Live in Texas by George Strait
We’re kicking things off with a modern country classic. I sang this song with increasing emphasis over my nine years living and dating and breaking up in Texas. Work to Do is about labor and queerness and organizing and Austin, yes, and it is also about people who carry a flaming torch for their Texas exes. (For true Austin style, listen to Asleep at the Wheel’s version of this song.)
4 American Dollars by U. S. Girls
I was twenty-four when I first got into bookselling, earning minimum wage, of course. Before that, I’d worked a slew of jobs that paid fewer than ten bucks an hour: grocery store clerk in the produce and dairy sections; burger-flipper in a health club kitchen; dining hall server; Bath & Body Works greeter; mall carousel operator. I regularly overdrew my bank account. I lived on cheap peanut butter and supermarket bread, making the American dollars in my pocket stretch to their outer limits. As this song chants, you can do a lot with four American dollars, a catchy chorus tinged with all of the grim optimism of working hard without making ends meet. I think the co-op workers organizing in this book would love this song.
Moneymaker by Jenny Lewis
Jenny Lewis is my Lord and Saviour and therefore gets a shout out in this book. There’s a scene where the store’s softball team has a game, and this is Roz’s batting song. Roz is the manager caught between the unionizing staff and the co-op’s crotchety old lesbian owner. Tensions are high. The keg’s about to float. And Jenny Lewis, sultry and sharp, follows Roz to the plate with a song about transcending the exploitation of prostitution and owning the work. Is Roz listening? Does she understand that she’s the same as her other team members, worked to the bone for someone else’s benefit? Will she score a run for their team or strike out like everyone else? Will Jenny Lewis read this book and realize that she is madly in love with me, has been all her life, and write her next album full of songs pining for me? (Probably.)
Take This Job and Shove It by Johnny Paycheck
I insist that you listen to the version of this song Paycheck sings on the 1978 Willie and Family Live album. (Willie Nelson is, of course, an Austin icon, with a statue downtown to prove it.) I’ve known this song my whole life. One of my parents used to sing it when she was a mechanic, and then when she worked in a power plant for the county. She sang it with real feeling, real oomph, an emphasis I came to understand as a working class adult myself. Literally every co-op worker in the novel is singing this song in some part of themselves, even if they love what they do, or maybe especially because they love what they do, but management stifles that affection and pride again and again and again.
This Tornado Loves You by Neko Case
Okay, back to the romantic drama in this book. Two of the main characters can’t let go of past relationships, while the third main character is caught in a love triangle with one of their coworkers. Messy, messy, indeed. Weather is also a significant character in this book. I did a lot of research into hurricanes and tornadoes while writing Work To Do, most of which was cut, but oh, the metaphor and drama of our global weather system! Love is a tornado. Organizing, activism, is a tornado of change. This tornado loves you, even if it might destroy you.
It’s a Good Day to Fight the System by Shungudzo
Another song for the workers. The best time to do the thing is today. Conditions will never be perfect for changing the system. Fight today. Fight tomorrow. Fight every day for a just and equitable world. I love the joy of this song, it’s light touch. It feels like it’s being sung the morning after a big win, waking up into a world that’s just a little bit more fair than it was the day before.
People Have the Power by Patti Smith
I was at the Texas State Capitol the night of the Wendy Davis filibuster, and the days leading up to it. The state legislature was trying to ban abortion (again). For days, protestors showed up in orange shirts to march and shout inside of the huge, historic building. I ditched work several times to be there. The night of the filibuster, when Wendy Davis spoke for eleven hours and worked hard to run out the clock on the session so that they couldn’t take a vote, I was there until midnight. We were all refreshing feeds (this is what finally got me on Twitter), and at some point the Republicans called some malarkey point of order to make her stop. Everyone inside of the chamber and out in the rotunda, all of us who filled this building with our refusal and rage, screamed and stomped so loud that the legislators inside couldn’t hear their own proceedings. The building shook under our feet. Together, we beat the clock. It was incredible. Our physical, vocal refusal stopped the vote. Of course, they went on to do what they were going to do, but the next morning, I played this song loud in my apartment, believing every word Patti sang. I give this song to the workers in this novel.
Just Another Christmas Song by Sharon Jones
Anyone who works retail knows that the holidays mean Christmas music. The same songs, over and over and over again. These days, the only holiday music I’ll play in my bookstore is Sharon Jones and the Dap King’s It’s a Holiday Soul Party. The holidays also typically mean some type of staff holiday party, with forced socialization and free drinks (if you’re lucky). A holiday party is pivotal in Work To Do, so I’m including this here. (Sharon Jones was also one of the absolute best shows I ever saw in Austin. Some of us at the bookstore got free tickets because the store promoted the show. I wound up making out with a coworker afterwards, which we awkwardly never talked about again, also very fitting for this novel.)
Walk of Shame by Nikki Lane
Speaking of making out with coworkers…. It happens, right? It happens. You go out to see Sharon Jones, or you get drunk after work or after the softball game, and you hook up and then you have to show up to work the next day and face each other, wondering if the other person regrets it (or if they want to do it again). Someone saw you two leaving together and now there is gossip and maybe one of you technically isn’t even single…. Nikki Lane understands. This song is a banger. Here’s to every coworker I ever kissed. And here’s to Nikki Lane, who I discovered in Austin and have followed ever since.
Fruits of My Labor by Lucinda Williams
Oh, Lucinda. She was a Texas soundtrack for me. All the workers want is to share in the fruits of their labor. This song is full of romantic longing, which also underpins the deep yearning for love in this book. So much yearning, for love and for money.
Texas Sun by Leon Bridges
Okay, so this song really bothered me when I first heard it. Leon Bridges is modern Texas music royalty and I love his sound. But this song felt a little too cloying. Texas loves to mythologize itself. Austin loves to do the same, permanently nostalgic for “old Austin,” whatever that even means. So I rejected this song at first. Too pandering. But damnit, it kept coming on the radio and I had to admit that I didn’t really want to change the station. I can’t help it, I love it. There really is something special about the orange and rose gold of the Texas sun. All eternity lives in its stretch. All history and all possibility.
Dress Sexy at My Funeral by Bill Callahan
Austin boy Bill Callahan is the icon of the city’s relaxed, low-key vibe. He feels like a vestige of the old Austin everyone is always lamenting is gone. (And with the big tech influx of the last several years, maybe it really is.) This song is for Eleanor, the co-op’s owner, who has stood in the way of the store’s progress for years, and who is confronted with her own mortality at the start of the book. Her existential crisis swims around her broken relationship with one of the co-op’s other founders. Who will dress sexy at Eleanor’s funeral? Or has her bitterness ensured that no one will show up at all?
Jules Wernersbach is founder of Hive Mind Books, a queer independent bookstore in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They are coauthor of Vegan Survival Guide to Austin and their writing has appeared in, among others, Heavy Feather Review and Bennington Review. Wernersbach lives in Brooklyn, New York.