Interview with local Chattanoogan and author of Spare Change, Tom Foote

How did Spare Change come about?

Spare Change started in the summer of 1995. My old band went on tour with some other bands. It was our first time going out on a tour and we didn’t have anything to sell on the tour. We didn’t have shirts, we didn’t have music, so I decided to try to make a zine, because I had always wanted to write. And so I decided to make a zine to sell on tour, and you don’t make money doing that. It also didn’t help that I called it Spare Change. The first issue or two, it said, “Price: see title.” There were a couple times when somebody would pull out a handful of change and give me thirty-six cents. And you’re just like “Thanks.” But yeah, so that’s how it started. I kept it up for a little while, kept going, and finally decided to break down and put a price on it. You still don’t make money. But you’re doing better at least, you’re getting closer to cutting even.



When did you develop a passion for zine making?

I think the passion was there from the beginning, but I just had that idea to try to get money while on tour from it the first time, and I realized that I couldn’t do it if that’s what it was going to be about. I think by the third or fourth issue, I started putting a price on it, and it was just to try to make it cut even, if even a little bit. I mean, there were so many people I was giving zines to left and right, and I’m not going to go into it too much, but there were definitely ways I was trying to make it cheaper. And sometimes free, but yeah, the passion was there from the moment I started, for sure. And I mean, it started off the first issues were just a couple interviews, which are really hard to do, especially when you’re interviewing a band. I’d go back and listen to a tape later, and half of them were drinking, and everybody’s talking so fast, and you can’t remember who’s saying what, and it’s just really hard to transcribe that back into paper. It was just that, and rants, and I could’ve never thought I’d want to write anything about my life at that point. It was a few issues down the road that I thought, “Oh wait a minute, I’ve got something to say about this.”



What are most of your zines about?

Most of them, nowadays, it’s basically a personal zine. It’s all autobiographical pretty much. It’s been that way for a little while. Like I said a minute ago, I mean, there was a point in time where I couldn’t imagine my life being anything I wanted to write about, but then, I realized this is, like, really cheap therapy. And it’s a nice way to get things out there, write it all down, and look at it again and maybe finally figure out a lesson from some of it. Maybe relearn lessons that I already did from a lot of it. I think it has it’s value that it could be helpful to somebody else. That’s what I think a lot of personal writing is, connecting to somebody else and people realizing that we all are the same, you know, we’re humans and that’s there for everybody. But yeah, it’s been mostly personal writings. A little too much poetry lately, probably, for some people’s taste out there.



Your latest zines have been a series called “Haiku and Reply.” What’s that about?

I’ve always been kind of against New Year’s resolutions, and around 2011, I kind of started making New Year’s resolutions, but I figured out this little plan that they weren’t about not doing things, that I had to make resolutions, they were about doing things. That changed it all for me a little bit. And 2011, I just had some mild resolutions, but 2012, I went into it saying that I was going to write a poem every day and I had all these reply cards that I’ve been saving. I’m obsessed with the post office. I love the post office. I don’t want it to go away and I know that’s been a problem lately that they’ve been talking about. So I decided to take every business reply mail and write something clever, and hopefully witty, on the back of it and send it back to them, because that way they have to pay the postage on it, giving the post office more revenue. The poetry, 15 days into it, I hadn’t written a poem yet, and I suddenly thought “Let’s try haikus for a little while and see how that goes.” Maybe I can catch up by writing haikus. By the end of the year, that year, I had written over 1800 haikus. So I kind of really beat my 365 haikus for the year. And I still am writing haikus. I’m almost at 2000 now. I’m still doing the business reply mail just because it’s there and it’s fun. But yeah, that’s where those things came about. I still have so much material sitting there waiting.



How did you first hear about zines?



Well, just from going to punk shows when I was a kid, and I had friends later on who wrote zines, and I got to see those zines. A really good friend of mine, Ivy, she put out a zine around ‘92,'93, and it was written from when she had to go to jail for a while. And she interviewed other female prisoners and it was this amazing zine called “Inmate.” It’s actually in the zine library downtown right now. I donated it, so it’s there. So yeah, I saw that and I was like “This is amazing.” It’s very informative, but still, it’s autobiographical. You’re experiencing other people’s experiences and that kind of blew my mind. She introduced me to a lot of zines, for sure. But yeah, it was mostly through punk rock. We don’t really have newsstands anymore, and that used to be a thing where you could go in and find a small publication in a news store, that sold just magazines. You don’t really see that anymore these days. But that was definitely something in the 80s, early 90s that you’d see a lot of. I would just go and find zines.



Do you think there’s a “Zine Renaissance” happening, especially here in Chattanooga?

Yes, definitely in Chattanooga, for sure, and all around I would think, in a way. I think it’s done throughout the years, off and on. This is definitely a good one happening now. Years ago, I had some zines in a zine library down in Miami, and I have been putting zines in a zine library in Gainesville, Florida for years now. So it excited me completely when Chattanooga got one. It excited me at Zine Fest, the first time I heard of it I was like, “This is how they’re gonna get me,” like this isn’t real, this is a set-up. This is how they figured out to get me to show up. It didn’t make sense to me that there would be a Zine Fest in this town, ever. I was kinda like, this seems like a set-up, this is a way they’ll convince me to show up and they’ll be like, “Aw, yeah, you’re the guy who’s zine my kid read five years ago and I found it in his bedroom” and put the cuffs on me. It’s funny, after doing this for 20 years, I’ve met parents now, or my friends’ parents, who their kids introduced them to me and said, “Do you remember that zine you found in my room years ago?” It’s all a laugh now, but yeah, once upon a time they were not too happy about my zine being in their kids’ room.

What’s the most interesting thing that’s ever happened with your zine?

Definitely the most interesting thing is just knowing that your zine is going to other places, other countries is always cool. Years ago just by sending them out for reviews, I ended up getting orders from Japan, or from England, and Canada, and other places. Over the years, about six years ago, this guy contacted me from Australia, who has a newsstand out of a subway station in Melbourne, Australia, and it’s called “Sticky.” He’s been selling my zine out of there for about six years now. I send him zines, and he sends me different zines from Australia and from around the world, which is really cool. No money involved and a lot of those I have donated to the zine library. His zine is up there quite a bit. So years later, I went to a show and a band from Australia was playing. I went up to their merch table to buy something and give them a couple zines to take on tour with them for something to read, and they totally were like “I’ve read this before. I own this copy, I have that copy. I don’t have this one.” So I let them pick through and get what they wanted. That was kind of neat to meet these people from the other side of the world who had already been reading my zine.



So this is your 20th anniversary of making Spare Change. Do you have anything big planned for it?

The next issue will be issue #30 which will be coming out at the end of this month. That will be the 20th anniversary issue. Actually, the 20th anniversary will be this summer, but I thought it would be odd to have it issue #31. It’s kind of odd, thirty issues in twenty years, an issue and a half a year it seems, but that’s not how it really went down. I mean, there were plenty of years with no issues, but last year, I put out four issues. And there was another year with four issues, but there were plenty of years with no issues. I’m putting out a whole 20th anniversary zine, and have something from every issue in it, and it’s going to have something new as well. It’s gonna be big — it’s gonna be huge. I’ve been trying to find some shorter stuff to put in there, too, but sometimes some of the good stories are big and you just have to put them in there. It’s gonna be really big compared to usual. Probably have to up the price a little bit in the stores for that. But yeah, that’s definitely one of my plans for it this year. I would like to put out a book. I’ve been talking to friends about it for a while, but I mean, one thing you realize with self-publishing, is that when you work with others, you’re suddenly on a different time frame. I mean, you can make all the deadlines in the world for yourself, but when you’re working with all the others you’re on their deadlines, too. It’s awesome — you can compromise and work a lot with other people. My friend, Heather, is a wonderful artist. She’s making the 20th anniversary issue cover, and that’s coming along great. She’s awesome with this. The book ideas been talked about for two years, so maybe it’ll come out sometime soon. 20th anniversary would be a great year for it to come out.

Spare Change author Tom Foote will be at Chattanooga Zine Fest 2015.

To buy Spare Change, send money ($4 for anniversary issue, $2 for back issues) to P.O. Box 6023 Chattanooga, TN 37401