Posts Tagged ‘Off Main Street’ |  

Because a couple of folks have asked, the kidney stone story I often perform live is included in this book:

"Off Main Street" Paperback Cover

Also included: stories about truckers, truckin’, truckin’ music, Elvis, Steve Earle, manure, baldness, small-town funerals, tricky book tour moments, veterans, Aaron Tippin, giant musky statues, hot summer days, and existentialist cowboys.

P.S. The title my editor came up with for the kidney stone story was, “Rock Slide!”  I still get a little pale when I think about it.

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.

Moved the chicken panels while the sun was still on the rise.  The neighbor is up too – a stratified skein of smoke hangs over the valley below (these days turn out warm but but the mornings benefit from a wood-fired boost).  At the keyboard now, with Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown’s Back to Bogalusa on the CD machine.  Mister Brown is the “Gatemouth” in the subtitle of Off Main Street, as it includes a profile I wrote on the man.  I was due to interview him on September 14, 2001.  Got him on the phone, because he wasn’t getting on any airplanes, he said.  Never did meet him.  But we did speak on the phone at some length.  He was seventy-seven and full of crusty wisdom and sly wisecracks.  Someone once said his country licks didn’t sound country: “What country you talkin’ about?” asked Gate.

Three days after 9/11, Gatemouth said, “…when things is smooth, nobody likes one another, they hate one another’s guts.  But when a crisis happens, everybody hugs one another with all this bullshit sympathy.  I mean why can’t you have respect and concern for each other before?  It’s just like Christmas – from January to December everybody is just on your own.  But when that one day comes up…”

He’s gone now.  He was sick before Hurricane Katrina hit, and it wiped him out.  He left the music, and it sounds right this morning.  The violin on “Breaux Bridge Rag,” the feel of “Folks Back Home,” somehow it works right here in Wisconsin on a warming springtime morning.

Sometimes I get emails from people wondering what I’ve written in their books.  When asked I personalize them as the reader wishes, but in general I sign a specific thing for each book:

Population 485: Welcome to “Nobbern!” (We locals call New Auburn “Nobbern” or “Nauburn” or any variant spelling thereof.)

Off Main Street: I draw an empty thought bubble above the author photo.  You can fill in your own saying or — this is frankly more appropriate — simply leave the bubble empty.

Truck: Double Clutch! This phrase will be understood by drivers of a certain age.  Failing that, it is explained in the book.

Coop: Oink-a-doodle-doo! Meant to reflect the inclusion of both pigs and chickens in the book.  Sadly, due to my fitful penmanship, many people think I have written, Dink-a-doodle-doo.