The Voice Mail page. (This is the weekly podcast — for free samples, click on the episodes without the miniature padlocks.)
Mike’s ability to spin his 20+ books and wide range of life experiences into humorous and heartfelt live presentations have put him in great demand as a public speaker. In addition to his one-man theater shows, Mike has delivered entertaining keynote addresses at conferences for software companies, hospitals and health care organizations, fire and EMS providers, farming and agricultural groups, national and regional utility cooperatives, business and economic development entities, governmental agencies, mental health organizations, dental hygienists, faith-based organizations, logging conventions, book festivals, MFA programs, libraries, and countless others. If you’re interested in retaining Mike for your event, please contact his booking agent here.
The mailing list signup (explained very specifically). We hope you’ll consider joining; it’s old-fashioned but way more loyal than social media. It’s also the best and most direct way to know when Mike’s got something new or is performing near you.
Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 332. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click this link to listen.
In this episode, I take you behind the scenes to experience the process of writing introductions to a bunch of Bob Dylan songs to be covered by Justin Vernon (some know him as Bon Iver) and then taking a chosen few of them to the stage.
Scroll down for photos and more details.
“Michael Perry’s Voice Mail” is subscription-based but once a month or so there is a free episode. For ease of access we have collected all the free episodes to date in one spot here. Please click on any or all of the links below to listen to any and all of the free episodes. If you enjoy the episodes and would like to listen to the paid episodes for a month free on us, please send an email to [email protected].
You can share this episode with a friend by clicking this link.
“One of the things I’m yearning for when I write is just to share the vast, chromatic experience that we can have if we allow ourselves.” — Michael Perry
Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Good Word Podcast: Wisconsin Writers in Conversation! Hosted by Max Garland, this show strives to engage Wisconsin writers in lively conversations on writing’s unparalleled power to nurture, nourish, and cultivate common ground—one good word at a time. Like, subscribe, spread the word, and give it a listen at the links below.
Unless I slip and fall and break my larynx, I’m about to record the 300th episode of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail. We fired the first episode into the atmosphere on July 31, 2020, and have been putting one out pretty much once a week ever since. What is it, exactly? A mini-podcast? An email? A photo album? An audio essay? I know when I first conceived of it, I named it Voice Mail because I wanted it to come through like a call a friend left on your answering machine (the pioneer version of voice mail). Informal and relatively brief (10-15 minutes, give or take some either way), yet still worth your time. I wanted some of it to be polished, and I wanted some of it to be off the cuff. I wanted to include some behind-the-scenes stuff that gets at the day-to-day of what life as a self-employed writer/yapper/whatever-this-might-be is like. And I also wanted it–for lack of a more artful term–to be “value-added.” That is, sharing material that doesn’t appear in my books or on our other social media platforms. Sometimes that’s a peek at early drafts of a book or an essay in progress. Sometimes that’s a phone recording of a new song that’s still in the “figuring it out” stage. Sometimes it’s me digging into a box in the pole barn and revisiting a poem or a magazine piece or a pizza commercial I wrote back when I was still “Michael Ryan.” Over time we’ve also added what I call the “Marginalia” section, where we drop annotated excerpts from books I’m reading, or photos related to the audio or the essay, or just random moments of goofiness or peace.
At the end of the day, I’m a writer. No matter what form it takes, none of it happens if I don’t sit down alone and practice that craft. The Voice Mail project grows from that, and I hope serves to both uplift and expand the experience of the folks who subscribe and listen. Each week when I sit down to the microphone I imagine we’re at the kitchen table or cafe counter together, visiting.
Links to all the free episodes below, but first an example of recent Marginalia:
Thinking about highlighting random bits and pieces to suit/inform my reference and feeling dumb or inadequate that I do not/cannot pull it all together and present in whole form as does the scholar, I realize that is not my forte nor my ability but that my child-eyed granular take may be the way in for other non-scholars like myself who nonetheless hunger for & value these knowledges and insights*. (This after a Packers game and the woodstove with my little family that is so kind to me despite all my distant headspace.) *self-cultivation
“Michael Perry’s Voice Mail” is subscription-based but once a month or so there is a free episode. For ease of access we have collected all the free episodes to date in one spot. Please click on any or all of the links below to listen to any and all of the free episodes. If you enjoy the episodes and would like to listen to the paid episodes for a month free on us, please send an email to [email protected].
Note from Mike: When my friend RT first showed me the cover he designed for my book Peaceful Persistence,I told him I thought it looked a little too dated. A little too 1970s or something. But in the end I decided to go with RT’s instincts. And since then, I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve approached the book signing table, pointed at Peaceful Persistence, and said, “I love the cover on that one.” It got to happening so often, we decided to make a T-shirt version. And we’ve been printing them ever since. So here’s to RT, here’s a big thank you to Trinity Lutheran Church, here’s to Spike Carlsen, and here’s to me being wrong again.
Recently, Trinity Lutheran Church in Stillwater, MN put on a great event with the author Kao Kalia Yang as part of their “Refugee Voices” series. The event was co-presented by the church’s Missions Team, the Stillwater Public Library, and the Stillwater Public Library Foundation. For those who were unable to attend in person, the program was livestreamed and broadcasted by Valley Access Channels (VAC). Valley Bookseller sold the books.
While Michael was not able to be in attendance that day, the event volunteers sported their Peaceful Persistence Leaf t-shirts. You can grab yours here in either Leaf or Asphalt. You can also grab the long sleeve version here.
