Sam Brumbaugh, Class of 1988 - Writing Fiction: A different kind of life

By Gary Frank

Since graduating from Trinity College Sam Brumbaugh ’88 has amassed a resume that is nothing if not eclectic. He has co-produced a documentary on the songwriter Townes Van Zandt, worked in a juice bar and several restaurants, published his first novel, finished a second novel, managed several bands, and even gone on an archeological dig in Crete.

However, he considers himself a writer, first and foremost.

“I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was young, but I knew you had to do other things,” says Brumbaugh. “You had to live a different kind of life, particularly in your 20s.”

For Brumbaugh, that “different kind of life” meant high-tailing it to New York City soon after completing his degree at Trinity.

“I just wanted to move to New York and I didn’t care what I did,” he recalls.

He was lucky enough to land a job at the Village Voice, editing for a magazine produced by the Voice titled Seven Days. A short time later, he went to work for the fashion magazine Mirabella.

“I was the only guy there, and I was very green and naïve,” Brumbaugh says.

Within six to eight months, Brumbaugh was assigned to write capsule book reviews for the magazine.

“I would read something like Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, which is over 600 pages long, and the editor would say ‘Give me 30 words on that,’” he says. “It certainly spurred me to write economically.”

After a year at Mirabella, Brumbaugh had had enough of the fashion world, so he quit his job to do other things, which included traveling to Crete for the archeological dig. After another year he returned to New York City. Upon his return he began to use his connections within the New York music scene (several friends were members of various bands) to his benefit, first, as a music director for the Threadwaxing Space gallery, and later, as a founding partner and music director of Sonic Net, the online music site that eventually became VH1 Online.

That experience led Brumbaugh to sign on as a co-producer and talent coordinator for “On Tour,” a 16-part PBS series that was broadcast in 1997, featuring artists such as Beck, Lauren Hill, Bob Weir, Son Volt, Cibo Matto, Taj Mahal, Sting, and Lou Reed among others. He had moved to Los Angeles for “On Tour” and as soon as the series was completed returned to New York.

“It seems to me that if you don’t have something to do L.A. is a difficult place to live; it’s a hard place to get into the motion of things,” says Brumbaugh.

His first major project after returning to New York was Be Here to Love Me, the documentary on the late Townes Van Zandt, whom Brumbaugh had long felt was a “very underrated songwriter and musician.” While the 2004 documentary was well received, Brumbaugh considers much of the time immediately after his return from Los Angeles as “lost years.” He was struggling to make ends meet, working odd jobs, including grant writing. But he also kept writing for himself, publishing works in The Southwest Review, Vice, Esquire.com, and others. He met and married the novelist Galaxy Craze, and the couple had the first of their two children in 2002.

Brumbaugh also kept his hand in music as well, eventually becoming the music curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. “It’s not as fancy as it sounds,” he says. “I book the bands.”