Posts Tagged ‘music’ |  

Another interview for the Coop paperback tour, although we got delightfully off-track and managed to discuss Truck and Population 485 and the music as well.  I like this blog radio business.  I can yap all around the country while staring at my actual (as opposed to virtual) chickens.

It seems three lifetimes ago and in many ways it was, but once upon a time George House and I recorded some novelty songs in his basement.  I supplied the lyrics and ?lead? vocals, George supplied the band, backing vocals, and all sound effects.  Gotta say, this had all been long gone from my memory when I showed up to spend an hour live on air with George a month or so ago.  When he played some of those old tunes, I was flabbergasted.  He put them on a CD for me, so I figure over the next while I’ll leak a few out there.

Today I’m on the road, away from my home state, so I thought this would be a good place to start:

“Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cheeseheads”

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Thanks, George!

Mitch Teich talks to me about albums, airplanes, and accordions.  OK, nothing about accordions…this time.

In 2008, after twelve years as a resident of New Auburn, Wisconsin, I wound up moving to a new place with my little family.  We were headed to a farm in some beautiful country, but as I wrote on my old website at the time, it wasn’t easy to leave that old house on Main Street:

A couple of bittersweet days.  We’ve been moving the last of our things out of the house in New Auburn.  It’s been for sale since we moved to the farm, and the nice news is, a young family is about to move in.  I like to think of those rooms giving someone else a whole new set of stories.  But I’ll miss the place, too.  So much changed for me when I moved there.  I was privileged to serve a dozen years with the New Auburn Area Fire Department – easily the most important and meaningful “job” I’ve ever held.  I sat in a little bedroom overlooking Main Street and wrote this book.  I wore a path across my backyard that led to the fire hall one way and the Post Office the other.  I dug in the garden with the little girl who would become my daughter.  On and on, more than I can say.  When the last room was empty and swept, I took one last walk through, listening to the walls.  But I didn’t stay too long because I’m working on this idea that to the extent it serves honor and reflection, elegy is essential — but if the elegy exceeds a certain length it serves only to cheat the possibility of the present.

One warm evening in June shortly before moving day, my friends Billy, Chuck, John and Justin (and my brother John) (all past or present members of the Long Beds) came over to help me bottle some of the spirit I felt within those beloved walls.  I’ve just come across some photos we took that day.

Click on the photos for the story.

Listen to one of the songs we recorded that day:

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Cissy Moan is a song about a roughneck woman obsessed with southern writers.

Here are the real parts: The writer Larry Brown was a great influence on me. He wrote me a kind note once even though we had never met. He was a fire captain in Oxford, Mississippi, home of William Faulkner and the famous Square Books bookstore. The song references three of Larry Brown’s books and also a novel by the famous Oxford writer Barry Hannah. Lemuria is a terrific bookstore in Jackson, Mississippi. The Ray Nagin reference came from my brother’s experience helping clean up after Hurricane Katrina. My brother met Mayor Ray, and it did not go well.

The rest of the song (Cissy included) is straight-up fiction.

Michael Perry: Lead vocals, harmonies, acoustic guitar.

Justin Vernon: Harmonies, all additional instrumentation.

Jaime Hansen: Recording/Mixing.

Click here to listen to a streaming mp3:

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Digital download (mp3) (75 cents):

Lyrics:

I’m rollin’ out of Jackson on a Sunday afternoon
I couldn’t leave too fast, I couldn’t leave too soon
Cissy took to drinkin’, Cissy took to talkin’ mean
Cissy when she’s drinkin, do beat all you ever seen

Over there in Oxford lived a man named Larry Brown
Larry had a big bad love and he wrote that bad boy down
Cigarettes and whiskey and a fire in his eye
Cissy loved Larry but Larry up and died

And Cissy moans…

I am not a southern boy I’m Yankee born and raised
I cut for Mississippi when the last levee caved
I was lookin’ for employment paying hard cold cash
There was rumors of such business haulin’ Mayor Nagin’s trash

I run into Cissy on my way down 55
She was reading Joe in some all-night dive
I said I know Barry Hannah and she said you are my man
I said Yonder Stands Your Orphan and she jumped right in my van.

And Cissy moans…

We lost a week in a Super 8 outside of Picayune
Livin’ off each other and a needle and a spoon
Cissy read me Dirty Work between the liquor runs
We burned the time up doin’ things we shouldn’t oughta done

Cissy learned to read in the Rankin County jail
Got busted in Lemuria, she orders books by mail
She says she dreams of Tula as if it was her home
She says she dreams of Larry typing all alone.

And Cissy moans…

Paging Mayor Ray
I’ll come another day
Cissy’s up in smoke
Northbound
For Rowan Oak

Don’t never love a woman who’s loved a man of fire
You’ll be easy in the evening she’ll be hummin’ like a wire
Cissy what you doin’ here, Jackson is your home
Cissy’s in the graveyard diggin’ William Faulkner’s bones

And Cissy moans…

Long Beds music page