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Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

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Archive for September, 2009

Fire Department to the Rescue

Long day of recording yesterday (Sunday).  Long Beds guitarist/keyboardist/MENSA-head Chris stayed overnight but forgot his suitcase in St. Paul.  Fortunately, I have a lot of extra fire department t-shirts.  The guy who gave us this one knows who he is…Thanks, Barry!

Was This In the Contract?

Long Beds recording sessions continue.  Billy was inside recording an acoustic guitar part so Chuck and I took the opportunity to gather acorns for my porkers.  What you see here is an eminently talented bassist scooping up free pig food with a child’s snow shovel.  This is a pretty relaxed crew.

Chuck gathers acorns

Still in Studio

Not a lot of blogging as we are recording steady.  I do my mundane chords and single rhythm, sing the way I do, then my musician friends do the real work.  Honestly, it’s like putting Shrek in Cinderella’s carriage.

Rolling Tape

Spending most of the next week in the recording studio.  Put down some basic vocals and acoustic guitar yesterday.

ColtraneColtraneColtraneColtrane…

Tweeted about jazz yesterday.  Jazz being one of those things I can appreciate while simultaneously admitting I do not understand much of it.  It seems I am genetically programmed for three chords and a touch of twang.

But.  I still enjoy a taste now and then.  And so when my friends Bruce and Patti gave me the gift of A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album, I read the accompanying book first.  Thus educated, I sat down at the writing desk and put the CD in the player.  The first track built slowly, and built some more.  I started writing and listening.  And I really hit the groove, the music and the typing meshing perfectly.

I mean really hit the groove.  At one point I paused, heard Coltrane (“…a love supreme, a love supreme…”) and thought, man, this song just builds and builds.  Then I looked at the clock and realized an hour had passed.  I’d inadvertently left the CD player on one track repeat and hadn’t even noticed.

So my jazz appreciation is kinda like my classical music appreciation – sincere, but shallow.  I knew enough to know Coltrane’s album was a big deal.  I didn’t know enough to realize I was listening to the opening track overandoverandoverandover…

Back on the more mundane three-chord front, I’m taking the Long Beds into the studio today for a week of plunking, see if we can get some of the new songs on tape/vinyl/chip.

Another Wake

When I was a youngster, a family from Chicago moved into the place around the corner.  Thirty-odd years later and we’ve lost another local patriarch.  The thing that got me at the visitation was when I told the family how much Mr. H meant to my brother.  My brother’s had a tough walk, and Mr. H would just show up now and then…  No hugging, no big to-do, just a constant peripheral presence.  That steady everyday we so long for in the wake of catastrophe.  Mr. H knew how to provide that.  I wrote about him in Coop, how he stopped by one day with Big Ed and it comforted me to know my brother and his family were supported by roughnecks capable of great gentleness.

Been a stretch here where I’ve posted about deaths of several elders significant in my life.  I don’t share these things for pity’s sake nor am I fishing for condolence.  Rather, I wish to remove the seed corn cap for just a moment to recognize the trail that has been blazed (or more often: quietly trod) and check my own path.

Funny FAQs

After my stint at the Big Top the other night, I was able to watch some of the other acts, including standup comedian Mike Mercury.  Sometimes folks tell me I should be a standup comedian (my wife, hardly ever) and I always thank them but then explain that I cheat, because if people turn up to hear a writer talk and it turns out he’s funny, they’re pleasantly surprised.  A standup comedian, on the other hand, has been previously announced as professionally funny, and must prove it.  Much tougher hurdle.

Anyway, I enjoyed watching Mike Mercury – especially how he adjusted his material on the fly as the audience reaction dictated.  Also, as a guy whose background has rendered me terminally polite to the point of spineless, I got a kick out of Mr. Mercury’s FAQ page.

Country-Style Apple Sauce

So you’re in charge of both daughters for the evening.  They require entertainment.  You have a pig pen.  And a large accumulation of windfall apples.  You get yourself a bucket full of acorns, a stick, an aluminum baseball bat, and a lawn chair.  You place the bucket of acorns next to the pig pen, jab the stick in the acorns so it stands straight but has some “give”, jab an apple atop the stick, give the nine-year-old the bat, sit back in your lawn chair with the two-year-old, and enjoy.

Applesauce, pending

When it was all over, the pigs smelled like cider.

Capitola Review Event

Due to a previous commitment, I will not be able to attend, but if you’re anywhere near Spring Green, Wisconsin, this Saturday the 19th, I hope you’ll consider stopping by the White School Studio for the launch party celebrating the autumn edition of The Capitola Review.  Details here.  Artists will be presenting their work, and there will be a fiction and poetry reading.

Special thanks to Richmond Powers, who got me to hit the poetry shelves, dig around in old boxes, and put pen to paper (yes, the keyboard too, but mostly the pen) until I had a poem he and the other editors judged presentable.  It was good to work in verse again.  Furthermore, we were given an excuse to convene for literary purposes at the Red Rooster Cafe.

I am told this issue of the review includes some Mary Gauthier lyrics.

Old Saudade Post

Started a saudade tag a while back, and just found this in the Sneezing Cow archives:

Made it to Wichita.  That’s quite a stretch there, driving down from Lincoln.  Lots of time to think.  Lots of weatherbeaten farm buildings.   Windblown farmsteads always make me yearn.  You wonder about the history, about the days when that siding was fresh-painted, when the barn stood straight, long before the four concrete lanes plowed through.  I think what I was feeling was saudade.  In Truck: A Love Story, I write about saudade as it relates to my feelings upon viewing the original version of this image in the Whitney Museum of American Art.