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

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Archive for June, 2010

Between the Books and the Music

Sometimes people ask me if the books and the music are connected.  Sometimes, yep.  Amble Down Records compiled the following summary describing the connections from the Tiny Pilot album:

- The opening verse of “Edge of Town” is set on the highway overpasses described on pages 99-104 of Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time (HarperPerennial).

- The album’s title song, “Tiny Pilot,” was written in memory of Perry’s nephew Jake, as described in Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting (released in paperback as Coop: A Family, A Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good Egg).

- “If They Give You Wings” is a song drawn directly from scenes in “Branding God,” the essay found on page 256 of Perry’s book, Off Main Street (HarperPerennial).  The song lyrics also include a Dylan Thomas sample.

- “Harry Was Right” (bonus song available on physical CD version of album only as track #14) is a song set in a real-life bar called The Joynt.  Perry’s readers will recognize the bar and its denizens from Chapter 13 of Truck: A Love Story (HarperPerennial) and may especially enjoy singing along with the bridge, which is a direct quote from the book: No…light…beer!

- Perry wrote the first verse of “Indiana” while driving from Michigan to Illinois on his Coop hardcover tour.  The song makes specific reference to “Seven A.M.,” the Edward Hopper painting that anchors Chapter 8 (beginning on p. 138) of Truck: A Love Story (HarperPerennial).

- The lyrics of “Cissy Moan” invoke Oxford, Mississippi (home of Square Books) and the writers Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, and William Faulkner.  The main character of the song is caught stealing books at “Lemuria” in reference to the actual bookstore in Jackson, Mississippi.

Printable .pdf here.

East Coast Tour Underway

If the wings stayed stuck on the airplane and all else is well, the East Coast swing of the Coop paperback tour is underway and I’ll be easing into Buffalo, New York, sometime today.  Looking forward to hitting this side of the nation after a long stretch away.

I have been and will be meeting a lot of new folks and doing many interviews over the next two weeks, so if you’re new to the site, welcome.  The full tour info is here.  Rest of the books and music are described here.

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Tiny Pilot Songwriting Scrap

Came across a notebook page containing early notes toward the song “Tiny Pilot” from the album of the same name.

The lyrics as they were first scribbled out and marked up:

Tell me Tiny Pilot
about your short short stay
     thousand days
threads of thinning clouds
   flyin' around
thinnest thread of cloud
somewhere beneath the [thunder] of the diesel
                                & the smoke
                                is
                sound of the plow
                 rollin' the loam
oh this sharp short life
oh this thousand days
        shiny
oh that yellow airplane
fading over the curve
disappearing over the curve
of the earth

The final recorded lyrics after the jump (plus an explanation of the math):

(more…)