My book: GET IT WHILE YOU CAN
Advance praise for Get It While You Can:
“If you're convinced that memoirs are strictly about awful things, Jaina's memoir will disabuse you of that notion. It's a tremendously likeable, structurally innovative look into what it's actually like to try to make a living while making art, plus silent meditation.”
-Megan Burbank, The Portland Mercury
“As in his songs, Jaina here manages to imbue life’s darker moments with a lightness … [he] imparts some bona fide wisdom and provides one of the most eloquent exegeses of the love song you’ll ever read.”
-Mark Baumgarten, The Seattle Weekly
“Modest though he is—and Get It While You Can isn’t short of passages describing its narrator’s failings—Jaina also knows how to turn a phrase. That comes out most keenly in the love letters, which are so gorgeously frank you’ll
be tempted to steal from them for your own.”
-Alexander Varty, The Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC)
Available in Portland at these bookstores:
Powell's Downtown
Powell's on Hawthorne
Powell's in Beaverton
Broadway Books
Tender Loving Empire
Mother Foucault's
Reading Frenzy
Upcoming live readings:
February 3, 2015
Wolverine Farm Bookstore
144 N College Ave
Fort Collins, CO
February 4, 2015
Mutiny Cafe
2 South Broadway
Denver, CO
February 5, 2015
Late Night Library
Literary Arts
925 SW Washington
Portland, OR
I wrote a book called Get It While You Can, published by Perfect Day Publishing. It is a great Christmas gift that you can pre-order now. Only $8.
From the publisher:
"When his beloved guitar is stolen, Nick Jaina finds himself untethered from the dream he’s pursued since he was sixteen. No matter how many albums he’s released or tours he’s led, he still can’t shake the feeling that he has failed at life. So the critically acclaimed, endlessly heartbroken singer-songwriter checks himself into a ten-day silent retreat. As those silent days unfold, Jaina attempts to rewire his own brain in a burst of unpredictable digressions and unsent love letters, musings on the miracles of science and the fallen heroes of popular music. Get It While You Can is a late-night ode to the pursuit of sanity."
A couple pieces from the book in earlier incarnations:
- Where We Can Never Reach Them: The Effects of Love Songs on Their Intended Subjects
A survey on the ability of love songs to woo anyone, featuring interviews with people I've written love songs about.
- Unsent Love Letter #1: Quantum Entanglement
The first in a series of passionate letters that say things I'm not able to say in any other fashion.
My one-man show: THE HOLE IN THE COFFIN
The Hole in the Coffin is a 50-minute story told through words and music by me, Nick Jaina, about a strange experience I had in New Orleans of going to the funeral of my hero and ending up inside the coffin with a gun and a bible. I try to unravel the information I am given, reconnect with my former love, and piece together the perfect love song.
Upcoming Performances of The Hole in the Coffin
July, 2015
Capital Fringe Festival
Washington, D.C.
TWO NEW CONTEMPORARY DANCES
I presented two new contemporary dances at Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 16th and 17th. The program was reviewed in the New York Times:
"[The} pure, pungent, earthy music for strings, piano, and percussion... were the most physically bracing part of the night."
The music is available to stream or download at the Satellite Ensemble Bandcamp page.
