Raymond Cummings is a freelance writer primarily for The Wire, “with some work for SPIN and Rock & Roll Globe here and there.” Over the years, he’s contributed to countless music magazines. Raymond is also the author of four poetry collections and a few books. As Raymond puts it, “with the exception of poetry in recent years, music writing was just the most comfortable zone of authorial expression for me—more than news writing, fiction, editorial, or personal essays. Sound has been a wonderful prism through which to express the experience (good, bad, indifferent) of being alive.”
How did you get to where you are today, professionally?
From around the age of 5 or 6, I knew I’d be a writer. I just knew. It was just a certainty, even amidst fleeting childhood fantasies of being a police officer or a doctor. Somewhere in this house there’s a marble composition book with I AM A WRITER on it from third grade. I’d write and draw these very simple picture books, photocopy them, sell them to relatives for 50 cents each. By high school I’d graduated to making homemade zines and linking up with fellow travelers via ads in places like Maximum Rock’N’Roll. At Washington College, I created literary magazines, served as a features editor for the school paper, and was the editor of the campus features magazine for a year; around that time I interned at the Baltimore City Paper, where my first published pro review (though not yet paid) was of Sonic Youth’s SYR 1 Anagrama. That was the beginning.
From there, it was a steady climb from writing for different alternative weeklies and music websites to print magazines, bigger music websites, and the occasional content company, with zigs and zags and zooms along the way. I’ve always had non-music writing related day jobs, so this stuff is all freelance.