Adam Schubert doesn’t have much left to prove to fans of Chicago underground rock. He plays guitar in psychedelic postpunk band Cafe Racer, which has put out albums with two of the scene’s best labels: their self-titled debut via Dumpster Tapes in 2016 and Famous Dust via Maximum Pelt this past February. Schubert is also a prolific singer-songwriter outside that group, though you’ll have to take his word for it: he’s been recording solo for around a decade, and in all that time the only material he’s released has been the June 2018 Dumpster Tapes EP Ruins by his project of the same name (not to be confused with Tatsuya Yoshida’s experimental duo).
Why after getting sober were you like, “This is the next step I want to take”?
It felt really good—it’s kind of an instant validation. I was like, “Oh shit, might as well keep doing this.”
Considering Ruins started as a challenge for yourself, how do you feel about the project now?
I think because as we’ve gotten older, we’ve just wanted to try harder. And I have so much admiration for him that I just wanted to do the best I could possibly do in that band. Sobriety really changes how you view things—that’s a rock for me. Michael, my relationship with him is very important, so everything he does I want to be a part of—because I really care about him, and I get almost, like, inspired by everything he does.
