I first met Stefan Marolachakis after seeing his band The End of the World play a show at a Brooklyn loft space several summers ago. Marolachakis possesses an immediately recognizable voice, expansive and gritty, and that he was able to croon nimbly while handling drumming duties in a later incarnation of the group is something that never failed to impress. The group’s second album, French Exit, is very much worth your time, with rhythms that pulse and the occasional touch of steel guitar echoing landscapes far from their Brooklyn home. Since the summer of 2007, Marolachakis has been one of the proprietors of Take the Handle, an online literary and cultural magazine, which now includes blogs with topics ranging from music and food to taxidermy and underexplored corners of New York City. Our conversation ranged from the resumes of Take the Handle’s contributors to the ideal way to format literary magazines for online reading.
[Previous interviews in this series can be found here.]
How did Take the Handle get started?
Well I’ve always gotten a kick out of magazines, and one day I got it in my head to start one. At this point in my life, I’ve managed to get to know an incredible group of people, many of whom have aspirations to write, some currently working as writers. So I figured I could create a platform to house the writing of my friends, and perhaps it could grow into something bigger, which it has. It was just an idea until my good friend Alex Reeves expressed an interest, and together we turned the idea into a reality
The magazine’s contributors and columnists range from writers you might expect to see in a literary magazine (say, Nathaniel Rich) to writers who might be better known for their music (say, Tim Kasher). Was there a conscious effort when creating Take the Handle to spotlight a different side of more familiar names?
Definitely. I always liked the idea of seeing the lesser-known side of a person. I’m a firm believer that people are about more than just one calling, one pursuit. This seemed the perfect avenue to explore that, and in a very self-interested way, for me to get the opportunity to read/watch/listen to what my friends were up to
Since starting Take the Handle, have you started to see more connections between the work of someone working in multiple disciplines?
The more projects I undertake, the more I do see the common thread between them. Ideally, there’s a basic spirit guiding everything one approaches. My main goal these days is to maintain a unified sense of identity, so everything I do is a manifestation of my thoughts, in different formats
You yourself make music; do you find that your relationship to writing songs has changed in the time since Take the Handle began?
To be honest, I really haven’t been making as much music since I started doing Take the Handle. Sometimes you need to take a step back from what you’re doing and see if it’s worth returning to, and if it needs a little redirecting. The magazine seemed to come along at just the right time, activating some parts of the brain that felt like they’d been lying dormant too long. I guess the answer then would be yes—it’s added a sense of perspective, and given me the time and distance necessary to approach making songs again.
The layout of the individual issues of Take the Handle echo the feeling of a magazine, while the daily component is closer to — for lack of a better phrase — what you would traditionally associate with a website. What led to the decision to do things this way?
The issues are a real labor of love—they’re not the kind of thing that can be generated on a daily basis. When we started the thing, we were basically making a web site that flew in the face of all web technology: it was a site that updated once every three months. At some point we figured, why not make a simpler daily component so we can really be an online magazine, a journal that capitalizes on all the pros of both the magazine and website realms. It’s a tricky path to finesse, and one I think we’re still navigating, but it’s been incredibly fun and fruitful thus far.