Tuesday Tune: “Town Underground” by Christy Hays

As anyone who has pranked around with interstate mileage signs will tell you, Butte, Montana is frequently the butt of jokes. Sometimes it deserves to have the “e” removed, and sometimes it doesn’t. When traveling on the interstate between Bozeman and Missoula, it’s easy to bypass this city, but those who pull off the nearest exit will find a place worth a linger...if only long enough to drive past the large mansions built by mining tycoons, eat a greasy pork chop sandwich, or stare into the emerald depths of a toxic lake. Once a glorious metropolis and now mired in depression, Butte can be a puzzle and a befuddlement and a reminder that things don’t always turn out the way we’d hoped.

Butte is a boomtown gone bust when the last of its copper mines ceased production decades ago. Now, a little more than 30,000 scrappy souls still stubbornly cling to the memories of its glory days, back when it was the largest city between Chicago and San Francisco around the turn of the 20th century. Though it’s fallen onto economic hard times and many of the once-grand buildings in its historic district are empty brick shells painted with pigeon droppings, there are some people here who refuse to let it die. They steadfastly paint rouge on the cheeks of the corpse every day. I don’t blame them, for I, too, want to believe Butte will someday rise from its coffin and dance an Irish jig in the streets again—maybe not in the same way it did back when Charlie Chaplin performed live matinees in the theaters uptown and Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis on a dirt runway south of town, but perhaps there’s a chance a re-animated Butte could boogie in the 21st century with renewed vigor.

I’ve lived here for eleven years—the longest my feet have ever been planted in one place—and I’m still trying to figure this city out. Psychologically and physically, it’s a mess of contradictions (and, yes, I’m braced for a wave of hate mail from those who can only see the rouge and not the dead cheek). I swing both ways on the love-hate scale nearly every day.

No one has captured the yin-yang of Butte in as compact and poetic a manner as singer-songwriter Christy Hays and that’s why I’m briefly reanimating Tuesday Tune (my own corpse of a blog feature) today in honor of her song “Town Underground.”

Hays is a newcomer who divides her time between Austin, Texas and Butte, where she purchased the family home of the late Edwin C. Dobb, a Butte native who went on to write for National Geographic and Harper’s Magazine before his untimely death this past summer. Hays is in the midst of turning the old miner’s cottage into an artist residency (visit her Instagram account here) and though I can’t speak authoritatively about the afterlife, I’m pretty sure Ed Dobb is smiling at the thought. For starters, his spirit hovers like mist over the lyrics of “Town Underground” (more on that in a minute).

Dobb’s tour de force of creative non-fiction was “Pennies From Hell,” a clear-eyed portrait of Butte published in Harper’s in 1996. Dobb opened that essay with the sad-but-true story of the snow geese that landed on the city’s toxic lake, the Berkeley Pit, which is full to the brim with deadly mining waste a half-dozen blocks north of my house:

Rust-colored, reeking of sulfur, and surrounded by corroded earthen terraces so sterile they appear incandescent in strong light, the 600-acre lake that rests within the man-made cavity known as the Berkeley Pit looks nothing like a refuge, though it must have seemed like one to the ill-starred flock of snow geese that stopped there while passing through southwestern Montana last November. It is uncertain how many birds eventually rose from that bitter pool and flew over the rooftops of Butte, the town that borders and embraces this former strip mine, continuing their winter migration from Arctic Canada to California, but at least 342 of them did not. That is the number of carcasses Pit monitors found drifting in the lake and washed ashore in the weeks following the flock’s stopover.

I have often stood (safely) on the rim of the Berkeley Pit and marveled at how it glows when the right slant of light falls on its terraced slopes. I can see why it was a magnet pulling the geese to its surface. It is gorgeous and it is gross. It was the source Butte’s economic life for decades, and it was the pool of death for hundreds of birds.

Christy Hays, channeling the spirit of Ed Dobb (as well as that of another “Ed from Butte,” poet Ed Lahey) bottles all of Butte’s ironies in her lyrics to “Town Underground” when she sings:

There’s a town that I found
It’s empty and proud,
It’s filthy, it’s grand, and it’s boring.

When I first heard her sing those words, I was driving down the snow-cluttered streets of Butte, past the pawn shops and the pot shops, tucked ass-to-elbow among the casinos and banks. An elk head peered over a pickup truck’s tailgate, tongue lolling as it winked at me with dead eyes. Just ahead, the orange terraces of the Berkeley Pit shone in all their terrible beauty.

Hays’ voice (which reminds me of Emmylou Harris and Patty Griffin in their finest, gentlest moments) continued to pour through my speakers as she reached the chorus and I turned into my driveway:

Maybe I’m wrong to love it so much,
It’s bound to disappoint me like love does

All I can say in response is “Yes, yes, yes.”

I have only love, and no disappointment, when it comes to “Town Underground” (the rest of her 2018 album, River Swimmer, is just as great). Christy Hays has written a pitch-perfect love/hate/tolerate letter to this crazy mixed-up town and I will be pressing repeat on her song as often as I can for as long as I live here, still breathing and still above-ground.


Visit her website to learn more about her music.

Celebrating the 1,000th Quiver of My Pen

I woke up this morning feeling very milestone-y.  According to my Blogger statistics, this is the 1,000th post here at The Quivering Pen since I started blogging on May 2, 2010 ("And so it begins...").  I don't know about you, but 2010 seems like the Jurassic Era in internet years and enough water has gone under the bridge since then that I could fill up Lake Erie.  Twice.

Not that I'm nostalgic or anything.  I'm always looking ahead here at The Quivering Pen, always scrambling to put together the next day's post (and the next and the next).  Speeding along at 80 mph, I rarely have time to stop at rest areas and think about the journey.  Nonetheless, #1,000 seems like as good a time as any to take a look at the most popular posts in Quivering Pen history.  Here we go, counting up from #10:

Front Porch Books: December 2012 Edition
When it comes to grit-lit, there's no one giving Donald Ray Pollock and Chuck Palahniuk a run for their money more than Frank Bill.  His debut collection of short stories, Crimes in Southern Indiana, smashed readers with a right hook as powerful as the one pictured on the cover of his first novel, Donnybrook.  You'll notice that fist has no glove.  That's how Bill writes: smack! smack! smack! without letting up.  Wrack and ruin.  Drugs, sex, blood.  These pages aren't for the timid.

Having Sex With Madame Bovary
Before the financial ruin, before the shame, before the suffering, before the world's slowest suicide, there was the sex.  And it was good -- at least in the hands of Gustave Flaubert and Lydia Davis, the most recent translator of Madame Bovary.  Flaubert's novel, published in 1856 and dragged through the courts a year later, has long titillated readers with its ripe, non-explicit sex (e.g. "the joys of the night").  But now Davis helps make Flaubert even frothier for a new generation of readers.

Great Beginnings: The Doorknobs of Novels
In the best novels, every word serves a purpose, every sentence propels the reader to the next, and the next, and the next.  And it all begins with the first words on the first page.  Here, opening sentences set the stage as they bring us inside.   If novels are split-level, five-bedroom homes in which we lose ourselves down hallways and up staircases, then those first sentences are the doorknobs.  Turn, push, enter.

My First Time: Jessica Francis Kane
I allowed myself to daydream about the day of acceptance.  Often, this was the only dream that kept me going.   I was pretty sure the news would come by phone, and so sometimes if I came home from work and there was a message on my machine (this was before cell phones and texting, you see), I would walk slowly to the table to press the button, relishing the last few moments of possibility before hearing a message from my mom or bank or dentist.

Michael Cunningham and Jodi Picoult Kick Me in the Ass
This might be the only time you see Michael Cunningham and Jodi Picoult together in the same blog post here at The Quivering Pen, but I'm using them today to help kick-start what has been the writing equivalent of running a pickup truck into a muddy ditch and attempting to climb out with bald tires.   In short, the Dreaded Doldrums have come to pay me a visit again.  It's been about a week since I did any serious writing on Fobbit (typing a period in a sentence lacking one, and changing a character's hair color from blonde to brunette does not count as "revision").  I've lost focus and have succumbed to distraction.

Soup and Salad: Anna Keesey's Paperclip, etc.
You must imagine me crouching, an unbent paperclip in my hand, trying to pull a lumpy woolen scarf through a keyhole.  This is what writing a novel was like for me.  It could be done, but it was painstaking work.  A few millimeters would come, but then a bunching, or a knot in the wool, compelled retreat—that precious progress had to be poked back through and drawn forward again.  The bit on this side of the keyhole, though perhaps gay in color, looked ragged from the journey.  On the other side—who knew?  Perhaps some dexterous artificer was behind the door knitting away, and if I remained patient and picked and pulled and picked and pulled with the little tool at my disposal, then as much as I pulled she would knit.  But it was also possible that I was working in vain, that there was nothing much there, and what emerged from the keyhole would be weathered, ugly, and too short to wear.

Why I Should Hate Tea Obreht
To say that I liked this book is like saying "sipping chilled wine and eating French pastries while floating on a raft in a swimming pool on a butter-warm day under robin's-egg-blue skies as your poolside wife reads The Wall Street Journal aloud, reciting the rising numbers of your stocks, while on the other side of the lawn the members of the London Philharmonic you've hired for the day play your favorite Strauss waltz" is just an "okay experience."  Yes, I loved The Tiger's Wife.

Soup and Salad: John Kennedy Toole's Lost Manuscript, etc.
The Millions has the account of a biographer's dream--the discovery of a lost manuscript.  In this case, the original manuscript of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.  Cory Maclauchlin, author of Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces, describes his quest for the Dunces grail:

I have been researching and writing about Toole for seven years, digging through archives, interviewing his friends and family, trying to decipher Toole’s character, his fears, his desires, his angels and demons.  And I have often contemplated that missing manuscript.  His mother claimed she discarded all the “[Robert] Gottlieb edits” in order to showcase her son’s “pure genius.”  Still, seeing how Toole altered the creation that he felt defined him would certainly offer insight into his final years.  But no one I interviewed seemed to know its whereabouts.  The Toole Papers at Tulane University does not have it, nor does the Walker Percy Papers at UNC Chapel Hill.  Some of Toole’s friends had heard that Percy’s typist threw the “badly smeared, scarcely readable carbon” away after she retyped it.  Walker’s wife, Bunt, didn’t believe that story.  She suspected it might be in Walker’s miscellaneous papers that had been boxed-up after his death in 1990.  But the family scoured the boxes and found nothing.  I had nearly given up on the question of the original manuscript until a year ago when I interviewed Lynda Martin, the sister of Toole’s best friend in high school.  “The manuscript?” she said in a soft southern accent.  “Yes, well I have it in my closet here at home.”

Tuesday Tune: "Poison and Wine" by The Civil Wars
What starts as a somber meditation on the brutally honest things you can't tell your lover rises to a mutual cry of pain.  Each partner in this relationship is building their own brick wall, but it's a melancholy task.  Then, in a brilliant moment of editing around 2:45, they are together in the same frame, nose to nose and still singing “I don't love you but I always will.”  If you're anything like me, you'll be coughing down that lump in your throat at this point.  This, then, this was the moment my admiration for The Civil Wars turned to love.  The dichotomy of emotion in the climax of the song nearly shattered my computer monitor in half.

....And the Most Popular Quivering Pen Post of All Time is....

Front Porch Books: February 2012 Edition
I recently stumbled upon Jenny Lawson's popular blog, The Bloggess, and--as they say in Hollywood and Amway brochures--my life will never be the same again.  Why was I wasting so much of my internet time dillying and dallying when I could have been coming straight to the Bloggess for the web equivalent of Our Daily Bread?  One will never know.  But here's one thing I do know: Lawson's words grabbed me like a snoutful of cocaine right from the Opening Lines of Let's Pretend This Never Happened: "This book is totally true, except for the parts that aren't.  It's basically like Little House on the Prairie but with more cursing."


I can't leave this "milestone" post without a word of appreciation to all the readers who have joined me on this journey.  I've had the chance to meet a few of you over the years--especially during the Great Fobbit World Domination Tour 2012--while others have remained fleshless names in comments and emails, but I am humbly grateful to all of you for your cheers and applause for what I do here in this little corner of the internet.  Some of you know that I seriously thought about shuttering the blog recently when all the competing pressures in my life--the Day Job, writing the next novel, continuing Fobbit tour events, helping my wife with her new business, etc.--reached a boiling point.  For now, I'm continuing to go full-steam-ahead with The Quivering Pen, thanks in part to the many supportive emails I received in the past month.  Bless you, loyal readers for propping me up with your kind words of encouragement.

Now, onward to the next 1,000!

Tuesday Tune: "Black Christmas" by Poly Styrene

Not all Yuletides are gingerbread and tinsel-haired angels.  Sometimes Santas go on shooting sprees.

I love a wholesome, heart-tickling Christmas carol as much as the next guy, but there's something about Poly Styrene's anti-Xmas anthem that gets to me, too.  "Black Christmas" was one of the last songs she released before her death in April of this year.  She had breast cancer which had spread to her lungs and spine.

Born Marianne Elliot-Said in 1957, Poly Styrene was, according to the New York Times, "the pioneering, braces-wearing frontwoman of the 1970s British band X-Ray Spex" who "made a place for feminine brashness in punk."  She was best known for her early hit "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" but was making a comeback with a new album Generation Indigo which was released just weeks before her death.

I'm dreaming of a black, black Christmas
Black smoke blows against a midnight sky

"Black Christmas" is about as bitter as they come.  Written by Poly Styrene and her daughter Celeste (who also appears in the video), it was a reaction against the horrific shooting spree in 2008 by a man dressed in a Santa suit.  "Oh no, we're not merry, no..."

(If an ad pops up on the video, just click the small x on the ad to continue playing the video)

Tuesday Tune: Songs About Books by Carey Wallace

If ever there were songs tailor-made for the Tuesday Tune feature here at the blog, Carey Wallace's EP Songs About Books is it.  The five tracks are exactly what the title says they are: songs inspired by books Wallace has read over the years, ranging from Wise Blood to Ender's Game.

You can get the CD at Amazon, iTunes, and Bandcamp for a minimal cost, or you can go to the Songs About Books website and snag the tracks for free.  If you pay for the music at iTunes or Bandcamp, you get the added feel-good factor because all proceeds benefit African women and children through Fount of Mercy.  Another way to get the CD is to email Wallace and she'll work out a artisan's trade deal with you.  Make no mistake, this is a very unique music collection.

(By the way, I'd strongly recommend you get your hands on the CD version of Songs About Books.  The packaging is a work of art, filled with liner notes and vintage photos of readers with books--like the one on the cover art--which come from Wallace's private collection.)

Though Carey Wallace is not a professional singer--she's a writer whose novel The Blind Contessa's New Machine came out in paperback earlier this year--there's an undeniable earnestness to her voice which burrows deep into her lyrics.  At times, she reminds me of Liz Phair; at other times, she reminds me of a debutante from 1911 who has gathered the family in the parlor to sing ballads for their evening's entertainment.  (Both of those are compliments, by the way.)

Carey has partnered with her brother Mark and father Rick to record music that ranges from lullabies to folk-rock.  It's a diverse line-up which is sure to appeal to a wide audience of ears.  From the first bass guitar chords of the opening song "Wise Blood," you know you're in good hands.

Wise blood knows how to walk the way the wind blows
Wise blood hears grace whisper right behind

My favorite track is "Heavenly" (inspired by Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth), which you can hear near the start of this trailer for Songs About Books:



Carey was kind enough to answer some questions about the project via email.  Here's our interview:

Tell me about how the idea for the EP was hatched.

The EP was a way for me to make something creative in the midst of promoting a book.  Often book promotion brings all other creative work to a grinding halt.  This CD was my attempt to keep making things and doing creative work even while trying to let people know about The Blind Contessa's New Machine.  And it was also a way for me to say something I believe deeply: that no writer works alone.   All of us owe a huge debt to a large community of writers and readers throughout the world and throughout history.  Making an EP of Songs About Books was a way to celebrate them, and not just my own work.

When did you first start writing the songs?

I first started writing the songs when a good friend loaned me his copy of Ender's Game just before The Blind Contessa's New Machine came out in hardcover.  I started writing a lullaby for Ender on the train on the way home, and that gave me the idea for writing other songs about books.

Were you reading these books and heard the songs in your head, or did you come up with the idea for a conceptual album first and then go back to pick the stories to write about?

Writing fiction is a very deliberate process for me: I put in the time every day, no matter what.  Songwriting is almost the opposite: the songs come unbidden, based on what's happening in my world.  So the answer is: some of both.  "Ender's Lullaby" arrived on it's own, but after that I began to read books in the hope they might set off songs in my mind, which some of them did.  And in one case, "Heavenly," I began to write a song about what it was like to return to my own hometown after a long absence, and then added the details of Sweet Bird of Youth, because they seemed to dovetail with the themes that had already emerged in the nascent song.

I loved the CD package and especially the vintage photos.  These came from your personal collection, right?  How long have you been collecting photos like these?

I've been collecting these old photos for over a decade.  I first ran across them at antique stores, and somewhat shamefacedly couldn't stop myself from buying them--but also couldn't explain to anyone why I had, other than the even more nonsensical statement that I had fallen in love with the people in the pictures.  Later, the father of one of my creative writing students turned out to be a collector of real photo postcards, and helped me to focus my collection on them, rather than the vast category of all print. Over the years, the habit I couldn't originally explain has become a potent part of my own art: I've used the images in feather-boxes I make for solo art shows, and they're the foundation for the cover design for all the albums my brother and I have put out.  They're also wonderful images to spark my imagination as a writer: full of detail, but containing almost no facts, so your mind has lots of information, but also incredible freedom to interpret it. 

Who are some of your musical influences?

I listened exclusively to my parents' record collection as a child, and was allowed only minimal doses of "rock and roll"--so I'm incredibly familiar with the classic musicals (if you start singing Oklahoma at any point, my brother will continue singing all the songs through to the end), James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkle, and The Beatles.  These days I listen to an enormous amount of Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and gospel, along the lines of The Blind Boys of Alabama, Mavis Staples, Iris DeMent, and Nina Hagen.

What other albums have you and your brother recorded and released?

My brother and I have released about 80 other songs together as The Wallace Bros, and almost all of them are available for free download at www.wallacebros.org. Our first five albums came out under the title Popular Songs That Will Live Forever. Volume 1 was Lullabies, because Mark originally said that was all he was interested in as a songwriter. For Volume 2 we got a Casiotone keyboard with 16 drumbeats, so we called it Hip Hop. On Volume 3 I began to channel the voice of a 1920's backwoods preacher's wife, so it's a mostly a capella and fiddle record of Gospel tunes. Volume 4 is Country and Western, and Volume 5 is Rock and Roll. Our most recent record is called "Turning Night Into Day", and we record a Valentine's Single for our fans every year. You can hear the most recent ones here and here.

What was the reaction from your brother when you said you wanted to record this CD?

My brother was excited, because he loved the songs. You might think this would be a given since he's my brother, but in fact he's always been my most vocal critic, which is something I really value. If he likes something, I know he really likes it, because when he doesn't, he doesn't have any compunction about telling me. He was a more than full partner in this project, in everything from the arrangements to the packaging. I like to say that I write the songs, but he makes the music. I could never have done it without him.

Tell me a little more about Fount of Mercy and why you chose it as the beneficiary of profits from the CD.

Fount of Mercy is an organization dedicated to partnering with existing grass-roots organizations in Uganda to serve vulnerable women and children.  Many of my friends have been involved with global aid work, and I've heard all kinds of terrible stories of Americans doling out aid that has nothing to do with local needs: providing motorcycles in areas where gasoline is not readily available, in one simple example--or imposing western expectations in places where they move beyond absurd into dangerous.  Fount of Mercy is distinctive in partnering with organizations that Africans have already founded to meet their own needs.  I know and respect the American leaders, and am certain that they're using the funds in ways that are sensitive and respectful--and meet genuine needs.

Are there any more "Songs From Books" in your future?

I'm not sure! But in the meantime, if any of your readers would like to get a copy, they can find free downloads at my site, or get a hard copy by trading me for something they've made. So far I've received beautiful paintings, ceramics, cookies, translated poetry, short stories--even a container of homemade marinara sauce. I'd love to trade with any of your readers. They can just contact me at my email: theblindcontessa@gmail.com

Tuesday Tune: "Daniel" by Joshua James

I'm the first to admit Joshua James got lost in the blizzard of Joshes* which hit my iPod a couple of years ago.  Josh Rouse, Joshua Radin, Josh Ritter, Joshua James--all good folk-rockers who sing earnestly of grappling with matters of the soul.  But with so many similar names landing on my playlist all at the same time, it was hard to tell one from the other.

It wasn't long before Joshua James rose above the pack, due in large part to the careful attention he gives his lyrics.  That sensitivity has not been without its critics.  In a review of Build Me This, James' 2009 album, No Depression calls the song-writing "murky" with "gloomy quasi-religious platitudes about coming home and the sorry state of the human soul—the road leads to destruction, we’ll all be damned in the morning, hate is all we show, how painful is our fate, and on and on."  I respectfully disagree.  Where No Depression sees opacity, I find illumination.  The songs--especially on Build Me This and Sun Is Always Brighter--don a deep-sea diving suit and go to the bottom of our souls.  If there's any murk to be found, it's the dark mud he stirs up while walking around that ocean floor.  I always come away from a James song feeling both refreshed and troubled at the same time.

Joshua James strikes me as an artist who is always singing every syllable as if he meant it.  He has a voice with claw-marks scraped down the middle.  His scratchy tenor sometimes hovers around a whisper, but in the shift of a stanza, explodes into a howl.  Witness the power of "Daniel," for instance.  It's a relatively soft song until around 1:45 when he bursts into the chorus:

So you, so you say you never wanted war
So you, so you say that's what love is for
So you, so you say you never wanted war
What the, Lord what the hell is all our fighting for?

Give a look (Note: The video is not an official one, merely something put together by a fan--so you only get the album cover floating like a screensaver.  But that's okay, it's the song not the image which matters most):



"Daniel" soars, throws fists into the air, hard-pumps the heart, stops us in our tracks to wonder, "Yeah, what the hell is all our fighting for, anyway?"  I am roused by Joshua James' voice, and find myself thinking deeper thoughts than normal as I cruise down the interstate with my iPod.

"Daniel" is the song that has lately gotten stuck in my head--finger repeatedly hitting the repeat button --but I'd highly recommend other songs from his oeuvre, especially "In the Middle," "Coal War" (whose gospel-stomp refrain repeats, "I ain't cuttin' my hair til the good Lord comes"), "Dear Darcy," and "FM Radio."

If you'd like to purchase "Daniel" from Amazon, click here.

*But not, thankfully, Josh Groban

Tuesday Tune: "A Little Bit of Everything" by Dawes

I was driving I-15 between Dillon and Butte, on my way home from a meeting, when I first heard Dawes sing "A Little Bit of Everything."  It's a simple, plaintive folk-rock tune (reminiscent of The Avett Brothers) which moves from sad to sublime in the space of a few stanzas.  Here's how it starts out:

With his back against the San Francisco traffic,
On the bridge's side that faces towards the jail,
Setting out to join a demographic,
He hoists his first leg up over the rail.
And a phone call is made,
Police cars show up quickly.
The sergeant slams his passenger door.
He says, “Hey son, why don’t you talk through this with me?
Just tell me what you’re doing it for.”

“Oh, it’s a little bit of everything,
It’s the mountains,
It’s the fog,
It’s the news at six o’clock,
It’s the death of my first dog,
It’s the angels up above me,
It’s the song that they don’t sing,
It’s a little bit of everything.”

Here's the video of a live performance:



The song immediately made me think of a short-short story I wrote about a year ago.  It, too, is called "A Little Bit of Everything" and this is how it goes:


GREAT FALLS, Montana – O_____ H_____ died peacefully in Community Hospital of Great Falls on Monday, June 21, 2010, from a little bit of everything.   (The Great Falls Tribune, June 24, 2010)

It wasn’t just that bitch Cancer or the chemo or the loss of the right breast or the swollen postulating lymph nodes or the bedsores or the headaches or the embarrassment of the loose watery bowels.  It wasn’t only the surprise-birthday-party shock of getting the news from the doctor at age 68, the news that after all these years—long, long after her breasts could be rightfully called dusty dugs hanging useless and, frankly, unwanted—the misaligned cells had split and re-married in ways never intended by God.  It wasn’t the looks on all the other faces—Alice, Esther, Jill, Lor, Jack, MaryLou, and that nice kid at Western Grocers who always bagged her food with a company-policy smile—an expression like a hard pat of butter hitting a hot pan.  It wasn’t even the indignity of spending the last days in the hospice care of a stranger from Helena, a woman named Ellen with mint-gum breath, who chirped every morning and, on really bad days, asked again and again if they shouldn’t call someone, her scattered family or the pastor maybe; or the fact that now she was spending mornings and afternoons staring at a ceiling, her eyes tracing the outline of a water stain shaped like a magpie in flight; or that she could feel her body dissolving—all those years behind melting and all the years to come crumbling.

It was also the time she fell out of the tree when she was five years old and no one was there to break her fall with one ounce of damned sympathy or even a Band-Aid.  It was the hard shoulders of her parents.  It was the cigarettes she started at age 16 and just as quickly quit at 18.  It was the bags and bags and bags of Doritos and the occasional pink Hostess Snowball.  It was the starting and stopping of a college education too many times until she finally gave up.  It was the two husbands, one of whom gave her true love while the other gave her a child.  It was the divorce of the right husband and the heart-attack death of the wrong husband.  It was the hard work of single-parenthood, putting everything into her child, only to find, when he was teenager, that it had been like pouring water through a sieve.  It was Giles’ sullen glances and the long hair that flopped across his face.  It was sitting at home alone all those nights.  It was the absorption of too many TV cathode rays from years of bad legal dramas and even worse sitcoms with tin-can laugh tracks.  It was the churches not attended.  It was Rae Lynn who’d seduced her son Giles, pregnanting him into a too-early marriage.  It was how they moved away to a foreign land called Mississippi so soon after the wedding.  It was the Christmas and birthday cards for ten years and then not even that anymore.  It was her face in front of the microwave waiting for her dinner.  It was the cats she killed with her love.  It was taking phone calls and typing dictation and daily coffee-ing for the world’s most unappreciative boss and, after nineteen years of being there on-time every day, getting nothing but an office lunch at Applebee’s when it came her time to leave.  It was garden pesticides, the accumulation of paper cuts, the sprained ankle from that brief whim for jogging in 1982, the diets, the binges, the resumption of cigarettes in 1989 and the re-quitting two months later.  It was the gas fumes each time she filled the Toyota’s tank, the holes in the ozone, Richard Nixon, talk radio, global warming, and her toxic hatred of George Bush’s War of Opportunity.  It was Giles not coming to the hospice but twice, both times Rae Lynn holding firm to her pout as she sat outside in the car, and Giles the whole while torn between filial duty of helping her sip cranberry juice through a straw and the stronger pull of Rae Lynn’s volatility which would fill their car with its own cancer the whole drive home.

It was all this and more than she could remember, had time to remember, wanted to remember as, at last at last, she slow-motion fell away from Ellen’s gum breath which was calling out in worry and the eyes which were already coming up wet.  She just fell away from everything which had once mattered too much, the edges of her sight stained with inward-flowing ink, falling back, falling back as into a deep well, the walls crumbling upon her, the thing that had been her body now starting a slow spiral, Ellen’s face dimming as in the fade-out at the end of a movie, until finally she landed soft in the merciful blank.

Tuesday Tune: "Rewrite" by Paul Simon

For me, the summer of 2011 will always be known as the Summer of Rewrite.  From May to late July, if you came to the basement of my house between the hours of 3:30 am and 7:30 am, you'd find me sitting at my desk, staring at the blank glow of my computer monitor--occasionally stabbing the backspace key and typing new words, but usually just sitting there grinding my teeth and agonizing over the process.

Some writers thrive during the revision process.  Not me.  I hate it in the same way I hate visits to the dentist, prostate exams, and eating broccoli--all necessary and, quite possibly, life-saving tasks; but if I had my druthers, I'd skip the doctor's gloved index finger up my unmentionables and go straight to the Caribbean cruise (which is where I take myself as he's digitally violating me and instructing me to turn my head and cough).

In the same way, if I could just go from first draft to final polished words in one surefooted leap, I would.  But no, first comes the word-wrestle, the cut-and-paste, the taking out of the trash.  This summer, entire chapters and characters were cut from my Iraq War novel (Fobbit), a heartless slash-and-burn in the name of trimming it down to a leaner, meaner manuscript.  It wasn't easy, but I eventually got to a point where I was happy with what remained.  And now, Fobbit is out there in the world making the rounds of editors in New York City offices who couldn't give a crap about all the words which were left behind.  They only care about what they see on the page in front of them, the "after" picture of Charles Atlas, oiled muscles all a-gleam.

Benjamin Percy (The Wilding) also knows the exacting toll of rewrite.  In his contribution to Largehearted Boy's "Book Notes" series, he wrote:

Revision is careful carpentry. Revision is where I sand away all the splinters, caulk the cracks, tighten the screws. And I'm in a much different mindset, no longer following my heart but my head. I pace around. I do pushups. I chew on pens. And I listen to music to put me in the mood of a scene.

One song that might help is Paul Simon's "Rewrite" off his new album So Beautiful or So What which was also released during my own Summer of Rewrite.

I've been working on my rewrite, that's right
I'm gonna change the ending
Gonna throw away my title
And toss it in the trash
Every minute after midnight
All the time I'm spending
It's just for working on my rewrite
Gonna turn it into cash

Our national troubadour knows a thing or two about writing and rewriting.  More than a few pens have been chewed over the course of his career.  Here he is performing the song on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon":



If you'd like to order "Rewrite" from Amazon, click here.

Tuesday Tune: "Calamity Song" by The Decemberists

Despite the critical hoopla showered on The Decemberists' new album The King Is Dead, the folk-pop failed to move me.  The songs weren't bad and certainly they were sung with full-throated earnestness...and yet I felt short-changed.  I'd been expecting something on the order of Fleet Foxes or The Head and the Heart.  True to their name, The Decemberists left me chilly.

BUT...

But then their video for "Calamity Song" made me sit up, take notice, and re-evaluate my bad attitude.

For starters, it's a slickly-produced and well-performed video with lead singer Colin Meloy showing some acting chops.  It tells a story and makes a moral point--which is the goal of art, isn't it?

However, the most important, interesting aspect of the "Calamity Song" video, and the reason it makes it to this book blog, is the nature of that story.  Hold on to your bandannas, boys and girls, because you're about to get a heaping wallop of David Foster Wallace this morning.  The Decemberists (Meloy in particular) decided to film a scene from Infinite Jest in tribute to the late writer.  As Meloy tells NPR's All Songs Considered blog:

I wrote "Calamity Song" shortly after I'd finished reading David Foster Wallace's epic Infinite Jest. The book didn't so much inspire the song itself, but Wallace's irreverent and brilliant humor definitely wound its way into the thing. And I had this funny idea that a good video for the song would be a re-creation of the Enfield Tennis Academy's round of Eschaton — basically, a global thermonuclear crisis re-created on a tennis court — that's played about a third of the way into the book. Thankfully, after having a good many people balk at the idea, I found a kindred spirit in Michael Schur, a man with an even greater enthusiasm for Wallace's work than my own. With much adoration and respect to this seminal, genius book, this is what we've come up with. I can only hope DFW would be proud.

Because he was such a complicated individual, it's hard to say whether or not Wallace would be proud, but there's no denying the appeal of the video to a larger audience--one which might be inspired to go check out IJ after watching "Calamity."  See for yourself:



P.S.  Did you catch the sly DFW reference with Jenny Conlee in the pink wig and headband?

P.S.S.  Further literary linkage: Colin Meloy is the brother of novelist and short story writer Maile Meloy (Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, Half in Love).  Their aunt Ellen was also a writer (Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild).

P.S.S.S.  Colin and Maile both have children's books coming out this year.  I'm less interested in Colin's Wildwood than I am in Maile's The Apothecary.  Here's the book trailer:

Tuesday Tune: "Calgary" by Bon Iver

Bon Iver's new self-titled album is a hypnotic soundtrack for the moments of our lives when pain rises, love blooms, wars rage, peace recedes, bugs crawl, birds soar, volcanoes rumble, waves crash, planets crack.  It should be played with discretion.  It should be played without cessation.  Led by Justin Vernon, Bon Iver is a falsetto dream, one which soars like a kite on a string.  Higher and higher.  And higher still.  It does not stop until it reaches the clouds.  And then a gust of wind whirls it a few hundred feet higher.  Bon Iver sends normally-earthbound critics into orbital rhapsodies (TIME: "a creamy falsetto," Pitchfork: "the music moves like a river").  It's an album that is as simple as the single-word titles of its tracks (place names: "Perth," "Calgary," etc.) but as complex as a synthesizer bath washing through your ears with poly-notes.  It visits the ghost of Steve Winwood of the 80s, waves at Bruce Hornsby in the 90s, takes a rest stop with Moby in 2002, but arrives fully dressed in 2011.  It is intimate, it is expansive.  It sings of love, of war, of being broken, of finding the whole once again.

It is, cohesively and collectively, the best album of the year.

Give a look-listen to "Calgary."



Click here to buy a copy of Bon Iver.

Tuesday Tune: "Come Fly Away" by Jeremy Fisher

I've been a fan of Canadian popster Jeremy Fisher ever since the day I heard "Scar That Never Heals" zydeco-bopping from my car stereo speakers and thought, "Oh cool, a new Paul Simon song."

It's true that Fisher could be a clone of Mr. Graceland, from the opening "She's my polyrhythm" right down to the Sandinista-cool chorus of "She runs guns, everyone wants guns."  But a second-generation Paul Simon is not a bad thing, as far as my ears are concerned.

"Come Fly Away" from his recent Flood album doesn't have the zippy lyrical punch of "Scar That Never Heals," but there's still an infectious ukulele drive to the tune that makes it a prime candidate to show up someday soon as the background music in a TV commercial for JetBlue or the next line of Ford Escapes.

Come fly away
Through the clouds into the sun
Far away from everyone
Come fly away
When we get above the rain
They are both sunny days

Fisher is also earning a reputation for his DIY music videos, like "Scar That Never Heals" and the one for "Shine a Little Light" which he made with his iPhone for around $20.  "Come Fly Away" continues that tradition with one of the best uses of a Lite-Brite I've seen since the day in 1970 when, up in my bedroom, I made a narrative diorama of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" out of the little plastic pegs.  I especially like the climax of "Come Fly Away" when the Lite-Brite explodes into movement at the 2:30 mark and the pegs start popping off the board, as if they couldn't contain themselves with all the joy of Fisher's song.



If you'd like to purchase "Come Fly Away" from Amazon, CLICK HERE.

Tuesday Tune: "3 Chords" by Fools & Horses

And now, one of the best rock bands you've never heard of: Fools & Horses.  They're the next big thing coming to rock and roll.  (Actually, they've already arrived--they're just waiting for you to show up and listen.)

I'll talk about their latest hit "3 Chords" in a minute.  But first, a personal flashback.

Three years ago, a hot summer night.  Ram's Head tavern in Baltimore.  Smell of dried beer and active sweat.  My wife and I were early to the Cowboy Mouth concert, forced to stand around for hours at those impossibly-small and uncomfortably-tall toadstool tables.  We were sucking back brews and already bemoaning our tired, throbbing feet.  The place was practically empty when we showed up, but we'd staked out a spot and didn't want to leave.  We wanted to be front-row center when Cowboy Mouth took the stage.

The concert crowd gradually shuffled in, the beers made us feel logy rather than buzzed, and we talked about stopping on the way home to pick up an Icy/Hot patch for our lower backs.

Then the lights dimmed for the opening act, sticks started beating a low jungle rhythm on drums, and a guitar snarled.  Lights up, cue the lead singer, and away we go!

In a matter of minutes, we forgot about our feet, ignored the two bitchy couples next to us arguing over possession of one of the toadstool tables, and even pushed back some of our jazzy-blood excitement over seeing Cowboy Mouth for the first time.  Something very wild and thrilling was happening before our very ears.

At the time, we'd never heard of these young kids who were leaping and wailing and flailing around the stage, but we were caught up in the energy and their obvious love for singing power ballads.  In that moment we became instant groupies of Fools & Horses.  Ever since that day, we've followed the band's progress (they've cranked out two major albums since that night in Baltimore): we've subscribed to their email updates, we've voted for them in best-band competitions online, and we've had them on constant iPod playback.  Now that we've moved out of Maryland (F & H's homebase), we feel like we're carrying around this really cool secret.  Very few people outside the Northeastern Seaboard have ever heard of Fools & Horses and we keep waiting for the day they'll finally catch a lucky break and make it big.  Until then, we're happy just as long as they keep going back to the recording studio every nine months and emerge with a new album of fresh tunes.

"3 Chords" is one of the better tracks off their latest release, the self-titled Fools & Horses.  The video is a little gooey for my tastes, but it gives you a good idea of the band's style and physical energy it brings to live shows.  Lead singer Matt Hutchison drives the band forward and he's powered by the big sound of his brother Tim on drums, Kent Warren on bass and Steve Herrera on guitar.  Fools & Horses sings about love--winning the girl, losing the girl, standing in the rain holding a boombox above your head to win the girl back, etc.--and it's probably nothing that you haven't already heard on Adult Contemporary stations.  But there's a sincerity to F & H's voltage and in a matter of a few songs, if you're anything like me, you'll agree this is ear candy of the finest kind.




If you'd like to purchase "3 Chords" from Amazon, CLICK HERE.

Tuesday Tune: "Yours Truly, the Commuter" by Jason Lytle

Nobody likes to work (and if you do, you're either a nymphomanic prostitute or the senior taste-tester at the lollipop factory).  But what's worse than working?  Driving to work every day, the same tire treads digging a monotonous rut on your morning and evening commutes.

If you have to drive, then I suggest plugging in Jason Lytle.  He'll make the route fun to traverse.  The title track from his first solo album, Yours Truly, the Commuter, never fails to make me start tapping the steering wheel right from the start:

Last thing I heard, I was left for dead.
Well, I could give two shits about what they said.
I may be limping, but I'm coming home.
All work and no play might have done me in.

Lytle was the principal singer and songwriter for the band Grandaddy until he got tired of touring and gave up the band life up for a solo career.  His biography on this Anti Records page documents the flame-out:

If Jason Lytle learned anything from nearly 15 years at the helm of Grandaddy--the Modesto, California quintet whose celebrated five-album run started as a project in Lytle's bedroom and took him around the world--it's that he's just not cut out to be a 21st-century pop star.  There were triumphs, no doubt--they toured the world, created a technological dystopian classic with 2000's The Sophtware Slump, shared stages with Elliott Smith, and talked shop with David Bowie when he turned up at their shows.  But Lytle was a poor fit for life in a breakthrough indie rock franchise.  Touring was endured more than enjoyed, and he often found himself wishing he was biking or skateboarding, staring into hiking magazines while the band was trapped in the cycle of sitting on cigarette-stained couches, filling sweaty clubs, and hauling ass to a new city every night.  By the time he was writing 2006's Just Like the Fambly Cat, he knew it was over, that the machine had simply lost its momentum, its gears too clogged with years of frustration, substance abuse, and diminishing returns.  His choice became clear: he needed to go somewhere else and start over completely.  He needed to go to Montana.

Like all sensible people (myself included), he limped home to Big Sky Country.  Now he lives less than two hours away from me, just over Homestake Pass and across a stretch of ranchland.  The mountains and clean air have cleared his head and his lyrics are sharper than ever.  Judging by the spring in the step of this song, it isn't hard work at all.  In fact, it sounds like he's taking a day off and keeping it to himself.  If it weren't for the necessity of a paycheck, I would be, too.

(Click on the YouTube icon for a larger video)

If you would like to purchase "Yours Truly, the Commuter" from Amazon, CLICK HERE.

Tuesday Tune: "I Remember" by Yeasayer

My daughter and I were driving in the dark through Montana.  The grey road, the cone of headlight beams, the broken lines of the passing lane, the star-pricked sky, the deer startled from her midnight snack on the shoulder of the interstate: these are what I remember.

I also recall my daughter saying, "Hey, turn it up.  I love this song."  I fingered the volume knob and, as it turned out, I loved this song, too.

Apart from her unfortunate love of Bob Dylan which we definitely don't share (I know I'm in the minority here, so you don't need to send all that hate mail), I think my daughter has pretty good taste when it comes to music.  She's turned me on to Kings of Leon; I, in exchange, have brought The Airborne Toxic Event to her attention.

But on that summer night on I-90 in southwest Montana, it was Yeasayer and the dreamy "I Remember" from last year's Odd Blood album.  The Brooklyn-based rockers are a huge hit on the music-festival circuit, which is where I'm sure my daughter first heard of them.  She's plugged in to that scene.  She'll go around dropping names lie "Shpongle" and "Amberland" and "Bassnectar" and I'll be all like, "Translate, please."

When it comes to Yeasayer, however, I need no interpreter.  I know good when I hear it.

"I Remember" floats like a layer of mist through the mind, Chris Keating's falsetto driving the song and making it one of the catchiest tunes I heard last year (on dark interstates as well as bright city streets).  If Wikipedia is to be believed, "Keating wrote 'I Remember' as a love song about a woman—later to be his wife—he met and kissed on a plane."

No word on whether or not that's the same girl who likes to lick handlebar mustaches in the video.

(Click on the YouTube icon to see a larger version)

If you'd like to purchase "I Remember" from Amazon, CLICK HERE.

Tuesday Tune: "Poison & Wine" by The Civil Wars

Tomorrow marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the War Between the States when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter and began a very uncivil four-year struggle over ideology and territory. Today, we turn our attention to a man and a woman who, in their own modern microcosmic way, sing songs about that same kind of disunion between the sexes. Call it the War Between the Sheets.

Like 130,000 others of you, I first came to The Civil Wars through their free EP Live at Eddie’s Attic which showcased the duo’s harmonic blend and, during the between-songs chatter, sense of humor and self-deprecation. The overwhelming response to that free download proved Joy Williams and John Paul White had an instant fan base when it came time this year to release their full-length debut Barton Hollow.  I liked Live at Eddie’s Attic and I liked Barton Hollow.

But when I fell in love with The Civil Wars was one particular moment. Last night, in fact. I knew I wanted to feature them on this week’s Tuesday Tune and so I did the usual YouTube search, found “Poison & Wine,” then clicked Play. As the video progressed, something stirred inside--the hot, wet prickle of emotion. For starters, the music vid is itself an evocative mini-movie that tells a story as succinctly as Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” Strip away the modifiers, pare down the dialogue, cut to the chase.

In the video, Williams and White enter a house after attending what could be a wedding or a funeral (another subtle nod to the song's theme of divisiveness--it implies the idea of coming together and the need for departure). Or, even more likely, perhaps they’ve just returned from their attorney’s office. They don’t look at each other and you sense we’re witness to the silent aftermath of an argument, one that’s been building for a long time. As they each start singing their lines, they go to separate rooms, their faces pinched with sadness.

Your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine
You think your dreams are the same as mine
Oh I don’t love you but I always will

....

Oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise
I don’t have a choice but I still choose you
Oh I don’t love you but I always will

What starts as a somber meditation on the brutally honest things you can’t tell your lover rises to a mutual cry of pain. Each partner in this relationship is building their own wall, brick by bitter brick. Then, in a brilliant moment of editing around 2:45, they are together in the same frame, nose to nose and still singing “I don’t love you but I always will.” I was coughing on a throat-lump at this point. This, then, this was the moment my admiration for The Civil Wars turned to love. The dichotomy of emotion in the climax of the song nearly shattered my computer monitor in half.

Everything about the pair’s songwriting partnership seems to speak to the tug-push tension of all relationships (because, let’s not kid ourselves, even the most hunky-dory marriage has its moments of misunderstanding and petulance and hurt). Starting with their very name and continuing down to the lyrics of some of their songs (but especially “Poison & Wine”), the White and Williams sing as if they were on opposite ends of a room with their voices meeting and twining together in the barren middle space. Even the cover photo of Barton Hollow, shot through the window of a diner, makes it look like the two of them are sitting in a booth with a pane of glass reflected between them.

Their voices are another matter altogether, blending and complementing with timing and harmony (calling to mind the great duet between Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, “Falling Slowly” from the Once soundtrack). Their repartee on Live at Eddie’s Attic shows they have a warm, respectful rapport with one another. It all adds up to a beautiful contradiction between lyrics and melody--and it’s that intersection between North and South, Him vs. Her, that makes me lean closer to the music and fall in love.

(to see a larger version of the video, click on the YouTube icon)

Tuesday Tune: "Walking Far From Home" by Iron and Wine

"Walking Far From Home" by folk troubadour Iron and Wine* (from the album Kiss Each Other Clean) is so lyrically potent, so sonically pure, so breath-stealing, so heart-stopping, so much like the most beautiful sound you ever heard which plays on an endless looping figure-eight caroming off the walls of a room you've just entered by mistake at your best friend's party thinking it was the bathroom but it turned out to be this blank white room like something out of the mind-tripping end of 2001: A Space Odyssey and even though it doesn't have a floating fetus the effect is still the same because there's that hypnotic ribbon of sound pulling you in and you step over the threshold without your space-helmet and the door closes and locks behind you but that's okay because you don't really want to leave the living breathing presence of this hymn that swirls and floats before you in all its glory forever and ever amen.  Yes, it's so very, very good, I won't offer any commentary this week, but let the lyrics and the music speak for themselves.

I saw sickness, blooming fruit trees
I saw blood and a bit of it was mine
I saw children in a river
But their lips were still dry, lips were still dry
I was walking far from home
And I found your face mingled in the crowd
Saw a boatful of believers sail off
Talking too loud, talking too loud
I saw sunlight on the water
Saw a bird fall like a hammer from the sky
An old woman on the speed train
She was closing her eyes, closing her eyes
I saw flowers on a hillside
And a millionaire pissing on the lawn
Saw a prisoner take a pistol
And say, "Join me in song, join me in song"
Saw a car crash in the country
Where the prayers run like weeds along the road

If you would like to purchase "Walking Far From Home" from Amazon, CLICK HERE


*aka Samuel Beam

Tuesday Tune: "It's Ok...It's Ok" by InAshton

This one goes out to every guy who has ever been dumped by a girl and put in a trash can, literally- and figuratively-speaking.

I certainly had my share of romantic rejection in high school--in fact, you could say I was "down in the dumps" for the better part of four years.  But hey, it all worked out because I ended up marrying America's Next Top Model, yo!

When I listen to "It's Ok...It's Ok" by InAshton, I immediately trip back to 1980, otherwise known as the Year of Sweaty Palms, when it seemed like I spent more time looking at the phone and thinking about asking [redacted] out on a date than I did actually dialing her number.  Given the fact that I eventually took America's Next Top Model as my lifelong soul-mate, it's probably best that I never dialed and [redacted] never answered.

The first time I heard InAshton, lead singer Morgan Clamp's voice sounded like it was coming through the holes of my kitchen colander, but the more I listened, the more I appreciated the nasally strain.  Eventually, I came to love just about everything this band laid on my iPod (up to and including their fresh cover of Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There").  There's a definite1980s vibe to the group--and if this video doesn't immediately whisk you away to 1984, then:
a) You were born in 1985, or
b) Your parents never allowed you to watch MTV as a kid



It’s hard to open up when you’ve been burned before
You let somebody in, and then they’re out the door
But when they walk away you never feel the same
You’re changed, rearranged, with a heart that feels estranged
She really did it to me but I’m sure I’ve done it too
They say what goes around comes back around on you
I’m trying to remember that’s just the way it goes
It’s up and then it’s down
It always spins you round and round and round

So all I ask is do the best you can
I’ll put this fragile heart into your hands
And then say “It’s Ok… It’s Ok”
It’s just a chance that I have to take

If, like me, you've put your fragile heart in someone else's hands and felt the pain when they squeezed....then, my brother, this one is most definitely for you.

To download "It's Ok...It's Ok" from Amazon, CLICK HERE.

Tuesday Tune: "Salt in the Wound" by Delta Spirit

From week to week, I know I tend to slide into hyperbolic enthusiasm when it comes to the Tuesday Tunes I post.  Judging by the spittle-flecked intensity of my praise, you'd think every tune was "the best song EVER!!"  (That's partly true, because why else would I interrupt a books blog to wax giddy about music unless they were songs that hammered my heart with love?)

I don't know if Delta Spirit's "Salt in the Wound" is the Best.  Song.  Ever.  But it sure struck a chord with me when I heard it for the first time five days ago.  I was driving through the streets of Helena, Montana when it came on my iPod's random playlist.  I had to pull over to avoid an accident.

"Salt in the Wound" is a powerful, haunting meditation about finding our place in the world of good and evil and the in-between moral territory where most of us live.  From the start, lead singer Matthew Vasquez's voice trembles with longing and uncertainty.

I want to get an answer
To why I was even born
No one here can tell me
What's been haunting me all my life
Well this rat race has left me limping
As I balance on the edge of the knife

Why am I here?
Oh what should I do?
Well is this the point I'm trying to prove?

Three seconds before the song ended, I was hitting the Repeat button on my iPod.  The song filled my car, entered my head, and lodged in my heart.  It ended, I hit Repeat again.  And again.  And again.  Even by the fifth consecutive time through, I wasn't sick of it--but, in the interest of keeping traffic flowing through Helena, I moved on to the next song.

I have other Delta Spirit songs buried on my iPod (including "Bushwick Blues" and "Trashcan"), but none of them grabbed me with such immediate insistence as this one.  The band hails from Southern California, but you'd swear they came from the edge of the backwoods of the worlds populated by the likes of Flannery O'Connor and James Dickey.  Not that they're rednecks by any means--no, that's not it.  But when I listen to them, I get a down-to-earth folk vibe that calls to mind "Jesus Saves" signs tacked to the trunks of kudzu-choked telephone poles.  In an interview from three years ago, Patrol Magazine said of the band: "With a clear cutting sound born out of everything right in Americana folklore, Delta Spirit wields words with a prophetic precision that evokes comparisons to Cash, Springsteen and the omnipresent Dylan."*  I'd also suggest that Delta Spirit revives U2 at the Joshua Tree peak of its career.

The spiritual wrestling match of "Salt in the Wound" reaches its apogee in this stanza as Vasquez sings,

If there's a god in my head
Then there's a devil too
How can I tell the difference
When they both claim to be true?
Maybe God is God
Maybe the Devil is me
Well I just throw my chains on
And tell myself that I'm free

"Salt in the Wound" reverberates inside me in much the same way I felt the first time I read Flannery O'Connor, James Dickey, Richard Hugo, and John Updike.  Like those writers--pillars in my literary education--the song finds no easy answers to Why We Are Here, but the journey along that switch-backed road to understanding is beautiful to behold every step of the way.

Well the earth is so tender and cruel
Well if you're not there it's still so beautiful

Give a listen (like last week's Tuesday Tune, this is a bare-bones video):



If you'd like to purchase "Salt in the Wound" from Amazon, CLICK HERE.


*That interview, which I read after I'd written this blog post, reinforces my suspicions about how the band purposefully infuses its lyrics with spirituality ("God is [a] great mystery that’s beyond our comprehension and we’re all at different places in understanding him, we haven’t made a basic structure for what we all believe as a band.  We are haunted by him though, and he appears in places we don’t expect him to be.").

Oh, and Flannery O'Connor makes a cameo, too.