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City, Raise a Country Boy High: Tyler Childers Live in London

February 19, 2023 / Mike

Friday 10th February 2023

Islington Assembly Hall, London, England

A pilgrimage, then. I’ve been fortunate, in the gigs I’ve attended in the last eight months – Sierra Ferrell, Charley Crockett and Nick Shoulders – that they’ve all been close to my home in the north-west of England. Since first discovering this alternative country music during lockdown, I’ve been determined to attend whatever gigs I could, but Tyler Childers’ UK tour consists of just a couple of dates down in London. At the back of my mind is the memory that I made no effort to attend a Tom Petty gig on the rare occasions he came to England, something I still regret deeply. When Petty died in 2017, I felt there would be no more great music for me to find. But though I wouldn’t be aware of it for another few years, Colter Wall had released his self-titled album a few months earlier, and Tyler Childers released the masterpiece that is Purgatory.

Determined to attend, and fresh off the disappointment of missing out on Billy Strings tickets when he came to Manchester in December, I attacked my F5 key during the pre-sale and managed to secure a ticket to the second date of Tyler’s two-day Islington residency. Still rueing the lack of effort I once made for the Tom Petty dates in similar circumstances, I take the train down from Manchester to London: two and a half hours through plain, unscenic country, and perhaps the only train journey you couldn’t write a song about.

Tyler comes on stage alone, to cheers from the 800+ people in tonight’s audience. He wears a blue denim jacket and a beanie hat and carries an acoustic guitar. While his band waits in the corridor backstage, he pulls a chair up to the microphone at centre-stage and throws his beanie hat to the floor, his closely-cropped ginger hair bleached by the shine of the venue’s spotlights. Perhaps appropriately for his solo segment, Tyler opens with the Hank Williams song ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’.

But it’s with his second song that the night truly begins. The opening lines of ‘Shake the Frost’, one of Tyler’s finest displays of lyricism, draws a roar of recognition from the crowd, who sing along to every word. It’s a special moment worthy of a special song. “And I love you like the mountains/Love the way the morning opens/To a soft and bright greeting from the sun.” The song ends to rapturous applause and Tyler grins. There’s a reason this show sold out in minutes: to hear Tyler Childers sing in that distinctive pained wail of his is a powerful experience, and he’s arguably the greatest songwriter of his generation. There hasn’t been poetry like this on a London stage since Bill Shakespeare was out here hustlin’.

Speaking of provincial artists who made their mark in London, Tyler sits and tells us how this mini-UK tour came about. When recording Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?, his most recent album – tonight is considered part of the Send in the Hounds tour, which truly kicks off in April back in the States – he thought it would be “pretty cool if we could roll some of the stuff through the plates at Abbey Road”. Due to Covid, this had to be done over Zoom, but Tyler thought it’d be cool if, “when we got the opportunity, if we could just go over and bum around a little bit and have a field trip”. This is his field trip now, and he thought, “well, shit… the whole entire band’s gonna be there, we might as well try to pick up some shows”. I don’t know how true this anecdote is, or if it’s just a bit of colour Tyler’s decided to add to the night, but it gives me a buzz. I’m as big a Beatles fan as I am a Tom Petty fan – I pondered for a whole three seconds before buying tonight’s concert poster, a psychedelic Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine-inspired piece, from the merchandise counter at the entrance, and I spy a Höfner bass – the iconic ‘Beatles bass’ – on stage tonight. But if it gets played at any point tonight by Craig Burletic, Tyler’s bass player, I’m unaware of it. I’m in the front row, but on the opposite side of the room.

“I wrote this song for my lady,” Tyler says, before launching into ‘Lady May’, the tender love song written for his wife Senora May. The audience sings along from the start, as they do for the follow-up, the tear-jerker ‘Follow You to Virgie’. Ironically – or perhaps intentionally – when Tyler reaches the line “make sense of all these strings” in this second song, he hits a bum note and has to find his way back to the rhythm. He does, his acoustic guitar singing again, and it’s a fine end to his solo set.

A note here should also be made for Tommy Prine, who opened for Tyler tonight with a strong acoustic set of his own. Talented and affable, the son of John is just starting out and hasn’t yet released an album, but his single ‘Ships in the Harbor’ is a strong piece of songwriting and gets an enthusiastic reception from the crowd. Other highlights from his set include ‘Gandalf’ – “it’s kinda like when Gandalf came back all in white” – and ‘Cash/Carter Hills’, a wistful song about soaking up the magic in a special place.

But there’s no more special place than London tonight, as Tyler’s band the Food Stamps join him on the stage. They get themselves set up behind their instruments, and the anticipation in the crowd grows. As well it might, for with a wink to James Barker on pedal steel, Tyler launches into ‘I Swear (to God)’, a fan-favourite he’s not played live in years.

As the crowd sings along, the band introduce themselves through a series of solos – first Tyler and then C.J. Cain on guitars, then Jesse Wells on the fiddle, Chase Lewis on the keys and finally James Barker on the pedal steel. Only Craig Burletic on bass and Rod Elkins on drums don’t get a solo, but their rhythm section is keeping the whole thing together. It’s a cracking song, and the shouts from the audience are particularly lusty during the line “Fire in the hole!”

Tyler and the band follow up with another song from the Purgatory album, ‘Tattoos’. A beautiful song, kin to ‘Shake the Frost’ in its lyricism, this number quietly demonstrates one of Tyler Childers’ unsung qualities as an artist. His band can rock – as they will demonstrate later tonight – but what makes Tyler perennially country is the space he provides in his songs for some glorious pedal steel. Barker has the task of providing this dreamy sound to ‘Tattoos’ tonight, and provides it well.

After this one-two punch of songs from Purgatory, Tyler moves into left-field. Picking up a fiddle, he leads the band into a four-minute bluegrass instrumental. I don’t know what the song is – setlist.fm will later claim it is ‘Ways of the World’ – but it’s a good ‘un. Tyler’s fiddle dominates, but there are some nice touches from Barker’s pedal steel, and Craig Burletic’s bass solo fits the song well. As unusual as it is to witness one of music’s most magnetic vocalists commit to an instrumental, it’s a pleasant diversion.

We’re back to normal for the next number, the fun and wholesome ‘Country Squire’. It’s impossible not to bask in the humble goodness of this song, as Tyler sings of providing for his family by buying a caravan: “It’s a 24-foot-long vessel, measures eight feet wide… Hey! Hey! Hey! Woah!” This isn’t part of the song. “Hold up? What the fuck are you doing? Hey!” The song stops – Tyler’s seen something happening in the crowd to my far-left. “What the fuck is your problem? How old are you?” I crane my neck to see what the trouble is; from the balcony above, people lean over to look.

Send in the hounds. Security staff move into the crowd, though I can’t see anything happening from where I’m stood. Perhaps provoked by Tyler’s song about honest self-improvement and domestic bliss, it seems a fight has broken out. From the stage, Tyler says security should take “the dude in the orange probably, too, and the dude in the white”. There’s a murmuring in the crowd, and I try to transform my neck into Tyler’s 24-foot-long caravan to get a look. Someone takes the opportunity to shout for ‘Whitehouse Road’, not for the first time tonight – or the last.

“Everybody good?” Tyler says, to cheers from the 800+ members of the audience, now numbering a few less. He picks up from where he left off and finishes the incendiary song. It’s something to note on the set-list: ‘Country Squire (with Bellend Interlude)’.

The band are unfazed, soon finding their rhythm again with ‘Bus Route’, which steers into ‘Deadman’s Curve’. Perhaps deciding the rowdier members of the audience need some Jesus in their lives, Tyler puts down his guitar and launches into ‘Heart You’ve Been Tendin” and ‘Old Country Church’. The experimental gospel album Hounds has been divisive among Tyler’s fanbase, for a number of reasons not worth getting into here, but its songs sound great tonight.

The band begins the backbeat to ‘Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?’, but Tyler doesn’t immediately begin the song. Instead, he formally introduces the band to the audience – a long, colourful introduction with Tyler as a sort of circus ringleader. As each band member is introduced (“keeper of the keys, Mr Chase Lewis… the Professor, Jesse Wells”), they punctuate it with a piece of flair from their chosen instruments. But they’ve already introduced themselves with their playing tonight, and they stamp their mark on the night again with a fine version of ‘Hounds’, the slower album version rather than the up-tempo version Tyler has fired up at past concerts.

After ‘Hounds’ ends, Tyler picks up his fiddle again. While he tunes it up, some members of the audience shout out more song requests. ‘Whitehouse Road’ again, of course, which is a non-starter, but someone a bit more realistic shouts for ‘Greatest Story Ever Told’, which at least is something that Tyler still plays live. There’s no indication Tyler is going to bend to these hecklers, and nor should he. I’m already irritated by them, and I’m at my first Tyler Childers concert. He must be pig-sick of it. But it’s become a bit of a meme at this point, and perhaps there’s a subset of Tyler Childers fans who don’t consider the experience complete unless they’ve shouted for ‘Whitehouse Road’, the way ‘Free Bird’ was once shouted. But still, I’m a bit surprised that the behaviour has followed him to England, like an albatross around his neck. It’s not even one of his better songs.

Tyler’s response to the requests for old favourites is clear: another fiddle instrumental. Again, I don’t know what the song is – setlist.fm informs me it is ‘Cluck Old Hen’ – but it’s another fun digression. Tyler and the Professor Jesse Wells trade fiddles nicely, and there’s room for some screaming pedal steel from ‘Bloodbath’ Barker and some powerful drumming from Rod Elkins.

The next song is ‘Creeker’, and the audience sings along as Tyler, with no instrument, gestures with his hands. He sings of “the ways that the city can bring a country boy down”, and between the incessant requests for ‘Whitehouse Road’ and breaking up a fight, he’s been provided with a few more in London tonight. It’s a blessing that the vast majority of the audience is really digging the show, and roars with approval during this rare opportunity to see Tyler Childers live in England. Back on his acoustic guitar, Tyler follows ‘Creeker’ with ‘Born Again’, characterised by some great harmonies from Craig Burletic.

The good music, however, hasn’t stopped the shouts of ‘Whitehouse Road’ in between songs, and sometimes during them, as though perhaps the reason Tyler wasn’t singing it was because he just hadn’t been asked enough. To be fair, it seems to be the same few people, and I’ve heard it so often tonight that I’ve come to recognise the individual hecklers’ voices. A new one now joins the babble. “Whitehouse Road, Tyler?”, a chipper voice pipes up, as though helpfully reminding Tyler of the song. Perhaps he’d forgotten it in the thirty seconds since it was last called for. Have people not thought that perhaps the reason Tyler doesn’t perform the song anymore is that, the cost of living being what it is, it’s now impossible to get “higher than the grocery bill”?

Rather than the old, Tyler’s response is again to launch into a new song. It’s the unreleased ‘Percheron Mules’ which, with lines about “a hundred head of goat” and “picking dill”, proves to be a fun, oddball little country number. Tyler sings it with a smile on his face, trading grins with Barker on guitar. It reminds me of the Sixties rockabilly song ‘Haunted House’, at least until Craig Burletic and Rod Elkins come in with some delicious high harmonies on the line “compost that he needs”, sounding like a ghost or two has followed them from the Abbey Road studios. The harmonies are so good Tyler pauses for a moment in admiration. Naturally, someone takes the opportunity to shout for ‘Whitehouse Road’. Twice.

The next song up is ‘Way of the Triune God’, and unlike previous songs from the Hounds album, Tyler stands behind his acoustic guitar rather than gesturing with his hands. It’s a better look for him, a better feel, even if he’s not always strumming the guitar. But it must be hard to “WHITEHOUSE ROAD!” when someone is “WHITEHOUSE ROAD!” always sh–“WHITEHOUSE ROAD!”–outing for a certain song.

Everyone is too busy having fun to be derailed by these obnoxious few hecklers. The audience begins footstomping along with the opening chords of ‘House Fire’, a pulsating song that provides an opportunity for an intense display of musicianship from the Food Stamps. It’s a song made by Chase Lewis’ white-hot organ, but the others have license to display their chops: James Barker’s electric guitar, harmonies from the bass-drivin’ Craig Burletic, and fiddle from the bald, bespectacled Jesse Wells, looking every inch the Professor. At one point in the song, Tyler sits down on the chair he’d brought for his solo set, strumming his guitar and enjoying the performance from his band.

The tinderbox ‘House Fire’ leads straight into ‘Tulsa Turnaround’, a mid-tempo Kenny Rogers song turned into a hard-rockin’ number driven by Craig’s propulsive bass and Rod’s drums, that showcases Tyler’s tearing John Lennon-esque vocals. James Barker is particularly good, and with his wailing electric guitar, check shirt, thick beard and mop of hair, it’s like he’s stepped straight off a Skynyrd stage in the Seventies directly into 2023. By the end, a gleeful Tyler is bouncing on his heels at his band’s transformation into a stone-cold, red-hot 70s Southern rock band. These last ten minutes have been perhaps the best of the night.

After the fire, Tyler gives the instruments a chance to cool down. ‘Universal Sound’ is perhaps the hardest song of Tyler’s to recreate on a stage, but the band is able to capture its restful, spaced-out feel.

We’re reaching the end of the night, and there’s only a couple of numbers to go. Could it really be ‘Whitehouse Road’? Another aggressive shout for the song draws an immediate “Nope!” from Tyler, to laughs from the rest of the audience. He bobs his head from side to side; he’s determined to have fun and the cocaine song just doesn’t do that for him anymore.

Instead, it’s ‘Honky Tonk Flame’, and the fire the band kindled in ‘House Fire’ and ‘Tulsa Turnaround’ is reignited by a screaming pedal steel solo from Barker and some powerful rock drums from Rod Elkins. Tyler says there’ll be no encore – his voice can’t take it, he says – but he goes full-bore into the vocals for tonight’s final song.

It’s a cover of the Charlie Daniels song ‘Trudy’, and it allows for some fine guitar solo trade-offs between James Barker and Jesse Wells, to admiring smiles from the watching Tyler. Bloodbath and The Professor have been vying for top-dog status tonight, and I think Barker, well-named for the Hounds tour, has edged the battle. I don’t know if it’s just because of my penchant for pedal steel, but the West Virginian’s put everything into every song, alternating between pedal steel and electric guitar when the songs require. The entire band has shone, however, and in ‘Trudy’ we’re treated to an organ solo from Chase and then a bass solo from the ever-energetic Craig Burletic, bopping his huge mass of curly black hair. The song slows down and then speeds up to a fiery finish, drawing a whoop from Tyler. It ends with deserved roars of approval from the audience.

The band leaves the stage to applause. Tyler puts on his beanie and bows. As the crowd filters out, stereo music is played over the sound system. To my surprise, the song is ‘Breakdown’, followed by ‘Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll’. Considering the failure to watch Tom Petty live was one of the things that motivated me to experience this show when I got the chance, it’s a remarkable moment of kismet. Quite unexpectedly, I find I have now – after a fashion – heard Tom Petty at a concert venue.

I find myself thinking about tonight’s increasingly rude heckling, and how we reached this almost memetic stage with ‘Whitehouse Road’. After hearing it shouted for God knows how many times tonight, between songs and even during songs, I’d be perfectly happy never to hear it again. I’ve quickly developed an aversion to it, and it’s no wonder that Tyler’s so dead-set against it; he must have it shouted at him at every gig.

But at the same time, I’d been rather hoping, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Tyler would’ve played ‘Feathered Indians’ tonight. I wouldn’t shout for it, and the lack of it hasn’t made the night any less special, but it’s my favourite song of his, and another one he regularly refuses to play live. This is a common point of discussion among his fanbase, with many speculating he won’t play the songs about drugs and drinking since he got sober, others that he won’t sing love songs that were written about women before he met his wife. But this is all bald speculation, and I find myself wondering if perhaps the reason we’ve reached the point where people can shout inanely for ‘Whitehouse Road’ at least a dozen times during a set is because Tyler is a bit too hidebound about playing his old songs, or at least in explaining why he won’t.

This comes to my mind as ‘Breakdown’ plays over the sound system. The last song Tom Petty ever played in concert before he passed was ‘American Girl’, his first hit from forty years earlier. Petty cultivated a fantastic relationship with his fanbase, and here’s what he had to say about playing the old songs, in a 2005 interview with American Songwriter magazine later reproduced in the book Conversations with Tom Petty:

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to play ‘American Girl’ anymore… But then maybe you’ll get two hours into the show, and the place is frenzied, and the vibe is so great, and the first couple chords of that song come on, and there’s such a rush of adrenaline throughout the building, that the next thing you know, you’re really digging playing ‘American Girl’. And I’ll feel, I can’t believe I’m digging this again, but I am.”

I don’t know what Tyler Childers’ full reasoning is for omitting certain fan-favourites from his repertoire. And regardless of what it might be, he certainly doesn’t deserve to be repeatedly dry-gulched by loud, arrogant shouts for ‘Whitehouse Road’. There’s been one particularly persistent heckler tonight, and I find myself wondering what that person’s reaction would have been if ‘Whitehouse Road’ had actually been performed tonight – I like to imagine they wouldn’t know what to do next.

I certainly can’t find fault with tonight’s show, and it’s been the best live show I’ve yet attended. Nor can I argue against the songs that have replaced old fan-favourites in the set-list: Tyler Childers continues to write and perform excellent songs. And yet, I can’t help but wonder how it would have felt if Tyler had strummed those acoustic chords that open ‘Feathered Indians’, and there had been that rush of adrenaline throughout the building that Tom Petty spoke of. Tyler’s got a taste of that tonight, smiling at the singalong recognition of ‘Shake the Frost’ and ‘I Swear (to God)’, but a song like ‘Feathered Indians’ would be something else entirely. Tyler never intended the song to become so big – it was never released as a single – but some songs just hit right, and its dreamy pedal steel guitar line can provide a transcendental bliss as much as any gospel song. I don’t doubt for one moment that ‘American Girl’ sounded incredible on that final night.

But it says a lot that Tyler Childers and his band can still provide the best live experience I’ve witnessed in spite of these petty misgivings of mine. The songwriting craft has been impeccable and Tyler’s voice an experience in itself. The band’s burned so hot at times I’m surprised the soles of their shoes didn’t melt onto the stage, and I’ll remember the footstomping to ‘House Fire’ and the singalong to ‘Shake the Frost’ every time I listen to those songs. The mini-tour in London is now over; I head back to Manchester, and Tyler and the band back to America. The fans over there have a firestorm heading their way, if only they’ll hold off on shouting ‘Whitehouse Road’ long enough to give it oxygen.

Setlist:

(all songs written by Tyler Childers, unless noted)

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams) (unreleased)
Shake the Frost (from Live on Red Barn Radio)
Lady May (from Purgatory)
Follow You to Virgie (from Live on Red Barn Radio)
I Swear (to God) (from Purgatory)
Tattoos (from Purgatory)
Ways of the World* (Traditional) (unreleased)
Country Squire (from Country Squire)
Bus Route (from Country Squire)
Deadman’s Curve (from Live on Red Barn Radio)
Heart You’ve Been Tendin’ (from Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?)
Old Country Church (J. W. Vaughn) (from Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?)
Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? (from Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?)
Cluck Old Hen* (Traditional) (unreleased)
Creeker (from Country Squire)
Born Again (from Purgatory)
Percheron Mules (unreleased)
Way of the Triune God (from Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?)
House Fire (from Country Squire)
Tulsa Turnaround (Alex Harvey/Larry Collins) (unreleased)
Universal Sound (from Purgatory)
Honky Tonk Flame (from Purgatory)
Trudy (Charlie Daniels) (unreleased)

* according to setlist.fm

Rakehelly Blues: Nick Shoulders Live at The York

November 12, 2022 / Mike

Sunday 6th November 2022

The York, Bolton, England

rakehelly – ˈrāk-ˌhe-lē

adj. – wild, dissolute, raucous

It’s a dark, cold Sunday evening and, like many people across England tonight, I’m standing in a pub drinking pilsner and contemplating the unhappy thought of having to go to work on Monday morning. But unlike the rest of the country, save the fifty or so people who gradually fill The York in Bolton over the next half an hour, I have something to look forward to before the weekly grind begins again. In this small, unassuming pub, with a cold wind blowing through the open door, I’m waiting for Nick Shoulders to take the stage.

Among my friends and co-workers, I’m known as the country music fan – itself a true oddity in England – and for weeks I’ve delighted in telling them that I’m going to this gig. Not in the vain hope that they’ll be turned on to the catchy melodies and intelligent lyrics of this great artist – all evidence to the contrary, country music is little more than line-dancing and ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ to them – but because I enjoy the look of confusion on their faces. “I’m going to see a guy with a mullet who yodels and makes trumpet sounds with his mouth,” I say, and they look at me as if I’ve recited a haiku in Yiddish. “Well, enjoy,” they reply, as they back away slowly and wonder whether to inform H.R. about my imminent mental breakdown.

My joy in seeing them trying to process this is surpassed only by my delight at being here myself tonight. I’ve been to two excellent gigs in recent months – Sierra Ferrell’s bewitching show in June and Charley Crockett a few days ago on Halloween, but this is the one I’ve been looking forward to the most. Despite my anticipation, I’m also slightly worried. This is a pub, not a dedicated music venue; at least one sad, heartfelt song by Gravedancer will be drowned out by chatter tonight, and there are two blokes loudly discussing Manchester United’s loss to Aston Villa a few hours earlier. Tonight’s musicians will all successfully tap into the energy in the room tonight, but it’s a fragile energy.

Nevertheless, the night has an endearingly non-premium feel to it. Rather than a “backstage”, there’s an area of the main room cordoned off for the musicians – we see Grant D’Aubin, Nick’s bass player, reclining there with an acoustic guitar as the pub begins to fill. When Nick emerges from behind the cordon of amps and merchandise boxes (presumably to go pee), he moves through the crowd to do so.

A tall, bearded man with long hair takes the stage. He strums an acoustic guitar and begins to sing in a heavy-metal growl. At first, I think he’s a roadie gone rogue, as I thought Gravedancer (a.k.a. Baker McKinney, who I’ve seen walking around) was the only support act on this tour. But the metalhead introduces himself as Mike West, a country singer from the Wirral, and he’s the first of tonight’s pleasant surprises. He has the unenviable task of being the support act to the support act, but his enthusiasm proves infectious.

West is the co-founder of Rogue Country (and consequently one of those responsible for bringing the incredible Sierra Ferrell to the north-west back in June), and he says he was only meant to be in the audience tonight, so he’s stoked to be up on the stage. He makes the most of it, delivering an energetic set. His heavy-metal singing (at one point, he mentions with pleasure that the road he took to get here tonight was called the A666) proves surprisingly flexible, and he succeeds in knitting the disparate crowd into a genuine audience. Highlights from his set include his latest single, ‘Mothman’, and a new song called ‘How to Build a Guillotine’. The latter, which West describes as “like if Ernest Tubb had been in the French Revolution”, is particularly creative. It’s currently unreleased, but hopefully not for long: it’s something of an earworm, and I want to hear it again.

At one point, West congratulates the audience. Watching Nick Shoulders live in such a small venue, he says, is something we’ll be able to brag about in years to come. He’s not wrong. It’s been a surprise to me to go to these gigs – Ferrell, Crockett, and now Shoulders – and see large numbers of people singing along to songs that I thought only I knew. The crowds might still be small – as I mentioned earlier, I think tonight’s crowd numbers fifty at most – but that’s more than the 42 who attended the Sex Pistols’ first punk gig in nearby Manchester, eulogised in the film 24 Hour Party People.

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The punk analogy is an appropriate one. The more devoted Shoulderheads will know that Nick started out as the drummer in a punk band, and there’s a rebellious attitude tonight – even the odd protest song – that sees metalheads, hardcore punk rockers and country fans all in the same room, with none seeming out of place. Tonight might not be an epoch-making moment like that Sex Pistols gig, and Shoulders is unlikely to ever push to the front of our culture, yodelling away on The Late, Late Show in an Ed Sullivan moment, but Mike West, in highlighting our bragging rights, has put his finger on something. Even before Nick Shoulders takes the stage, there’s a vibe in the air, a sense of things coming together. Heavy metal, punk, protest and country – the harmony of the revolutionary and the traditional might be just the sound we need in such crazy and divisive times.

Next up is Gravedancer, whose mix of traditional country music and heavy-metal appearance is even more incongruous than that of Mike West. Tattooed, skin-headed and with a beard longer than the A666, it’s startling when Gravedancer runs through a set of tender, emotionally-raw songs picked pensively on an acoustic guitar, including the beautiful self-penned ‘Azalea’. So complete is this effect that when he announces he’d like to sing a traditional English folk song, it receives a quiet and respectful reception from the crowd. I don’t think everyone gets the joke, but I wouldn’t want to live in a world where Arkansas skinheads can’t play ‘Mr. Blobby’ straight-faced as a wistful guitar-pickin’ song.

It is, finally, time for Nick Shoulders to take the stage. He wears a vest and a big fur hat; with his hair hanging down to his eponymous shoulders it looks like he’s wearing a Davy Crockett hat. He’s accompanied by Grant D’Aubin, his bespectacled, moustachioed collaborator from his band the Okay Crawdad, who will provide harmonies and play stand-up bass for the rest of the night.

Nick picks up his acoustic guitar and begins his distinctive powerful strumming. Backed by Grant, he launches into his first number, ‘Lonely Like Me’. It’s one of his earliest released songs and a fan favourite, so naturally the crowd begins to sing along. Nick seems touched by the reception; at multiple points in the night he’ll mention that it’s a trip to come over to the other side of the Atlantic and hear his Arkansas yodelling songs sung back at him.

There’s a lot of positivity in the set, and Nick is not only thankful for his fans but is keen to spread the love: Grant D’Aubin, Gravedancer and Mike West all receive praise from his microphone tonight. At one point, he’ll even urge people to check out his uncle, the late Pat M. Riley, a classic crooner whose music can be found online. The infectious joy in Nick Shoulders’ outlook on life is evident in every whoop, whistle and odd sound; it’s in every catchy hook and yodelled lyric of his music, delivered in that unique high singing voice.

The second song is a cover of a Sixties song by Tom O’Neal, the foot-tapping ‘Blue Endless Highway’. It’s a catchy, up-tempo number with a great bass line and harmonies from Grant. At first, I think it’s an unreleased original that I mentally note as ‘Highway Patrol’ (after the lyric “lookin’ in the rear-view mirror for the highway patrol/The highway patrol”), but a Google search a few days later will correct me. Nick and Grant have combined well on it, and the only reason the crowd haven’t sung along as they have with ‘Lonely Like Me’ is because of its unfamiliarity. If it gets a studio recording, it might well prove another fan favourite.

It’s followed by another recent Nick and Grant collaboration, a cover of Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ which they will soon be releasing on a new EP with The Lostines. It has some great harmonising, and the slower swing of its music is remedied by its follow-up, the hyperactive, oddball ‘Ding Dong Daddy’, which sees Nick whistle a solo and make uncanny trumpet sounds with his mouth.

We’re offered a hint of the future with a song that Nick announces will be coming out on his new record next year. He describes ‘All Bad’ as a bit of “toxic positivity for your Sunday” and dedicates it to “everybody in here who is just doing the best to hold the fuck on for dear life”. After three cover songs in a row, ‘All Bad’ is a great reminder of Nick’s growing stable of well-crafted original tunes. Behind the punk-like energy of his music, the oddball whistles and yodelling, and the positivity and personal charm, there’s an artist of serious calibre. After the shout-out to uncle Pat, there’s a rendition of the clever original ‘G for Jesus’, another song characterised by fantastic lyrics.

It’s been a great opening salvo from Nick, but due to the nature of the venue that fragile energy in the crowd remains. The energy is there, but it’s hard to find, and needs a watchful eye when found. Nick admits he’d been worried about singing tonight as he’d caught a cold in the unfamiliar climate – welcome, Nick Shoulders, to the north-west of England in November – but he’s in fine voice regardless. Nevertheless, there remains the danger that the energy might disperse, that entropy might be a factor tonight. Nick Shoulders on stage tonight is not so much rakehelly as rakehelly blue: raucous, but with a slight apprehension. I get a sense tonight that it all might collapse at any moment if the next song doesn’t hit right, or the few dozen people in the crowd move too far apart. The music’s been propulsive, but with a nervous fragility, like a freight train held together by loose bolts.

Many shoulders on display in this picture.

“There’s a spider hanging on the ceiling!” Nick shouts, laughing excitedly. It’s been less than a week since Halloween, and the pub hasn’t taken its decorations down. Hanging from a ceiling fan directly above the audience, there’s a giant toy spider spinning round and round. Tickled by the sight, it perhaps inspires Nick to launch into ‘Turn on the Dark’, which he introduces as a “haunted house song”. It’s a magnificent number – and tonight’s only representative from Home on the Rage, Nick’s most recent album. As Nick whistles and Grant performs a solo on his bass, the spider whizzes round and round and the crowd’s heads nod up and down.

Not for the first time, I marvel at how much sound can be made on stage by two slight men possessing only a guitar and a stand-up bass. But Nick Shoulders can get a goodly amount of sound out of an acoustic guitar; his powerful strumming has become almost a signature sound. Accompanied by his high and powerful voice, the amplification of these great songs is undeniable, influenza be damned. Hopefully the next time Nick Shoulders tours in the UK he’ll have become big enough to justify bringing the whole band, but even without them he can make plenty of glorious noise. ‘Turn on the Dark’ has banished any nervousness, an act of aural feng shui. The music’s becoming so good that I begin to doubt the fragility was even there at all, and was just a figment of my agoraphobic imagination.

One song that would have benefited from the full band experience is the next number, ‘Too Old to Dream’. The studio version has the most enthusiastic lead guitar since George Harrison on the Beatles’ first album, and Nick’s whistle solo tonight only goes so far to compensate. But it’s still a great song with strong bones, a highlight in a night that is increasingly becoming full of them.

“How many of you are NOT millionaires? Raise your hands,” Nick asks, introducing his next song. He’s mentioned in the past how he feels a connection to the earth back home in Arkansas, and asks if anyone knows about the history of “the fencing-in of the commons”. He gets blank stares from the crowd and responds, “you should look it up, it’s your history, by god”. He’s referring to enclosure, by which access to the free ancestral land of England was gradually whittled away over the centuries.

As a former history student and compulsive Googler, I’m probably the only one among the yeomen and rakehelly vagabonds tonight who’s keen enough to actually look it up, b’god. Even among a harmonious crowd of heavy metal, country and punk enthusiasts, an interest in the legislative history of progressive feudal land appropriation might be a tad ambitious from Nick. Those class battles are so old and obscure, and the landscape of the north-west changed so fundamentally by the Industrial Revolution, that many don’t even know there were battlefields here.

But there’s method in the madness, and Nick’s prompting sets up the next number. Introduced as “an old cowboy ballad that we totally fucked up”, ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ is an old Roy Rogers song that Nick has furnished with his own lyrics and context. It’s something that he’s done before to great effect, with both ‘Rise When the Rooster Crows’ and ‘New Dying Soldier’ (neither of which get an airing tonight), and ‘You Won’t Fence Us In’, Nick’s new hybrid traditional/original, is another success. It’s a credit to his craft and versatility, that something once sung by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra is not out of place as a protest song sung by an ex-punk rocker in 2022.

This resolute and affirming protest song is followed by one of the best moments of the night. I’ve always thought ‘After Hours’ would be a great bar-room song, particularly that rollicking sing-along ending, and so it proves tonight. As we approach what would traditionally be last orders in this pub tonight in Bolton, Nick leads the crowd in a boisterous rendition of this fan favourite. It’s hard to imagine a song getting a better reception, but then Nick begins the oddly doo-wop-style singing that opens ‘Snakes and Waterfalls’, and the familiar notes get a similar reception.

It’s followed by ‘Bound and Determined’, which Nick says was inspired by the fact he’s always “troubled by authority”, and the song’s an emphatic conclusion to tonight’s protest element (which was kindled by Mike West’s ‘Guillotine’ song and brought to flame by ‘You Won’t Fence Us In’). It’s another great example of Nick’s intelligent and catchy songwriting, and there are at least half a dozen other songs of his that would have received a good reception tonight, if we had time.

It’s time for tonight’s closer, and there’s one song that is unavoidable. Nick Shoulders might die where he stands if he hears ‘Wagon Wheel’ again, but I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing ‘Rather Low’. Nick holds the opening “welllllll” for a long time – his head-cold now well and truly over, no doubt because of adrenaline rather than Lemsip – before launching into his signature song. He encourages the audience to “sing along if you know it” and everyone does know it. He’s saved the best till last, which is quite a thing to say when the set’s been filled with so many catchy numbers that people have been singing along since the opener.

As the crowd cheers and applauds at the end, Nick whoops into the microphone. I’ve previously described Nick Shoulders as seemingly nuttier than a shaken sack of squirrels, and even before a small crowd and nursing a cold on a cold night in England far from home, he’s delivered a propulsive, versatile set filled with whistles, yodels and a big fur hat. Earlier in the night, he introduced a song by saying it was a “mental health check” for us, and at no point had it occurred to me that this was an oddly sane thing to hear from a guy who’d been making trumpet noises with his mouth. Perhaps Gravedancer, recalling the sober reception of the ‘Mr. Blobby’ song, would appreciate how the abnormal and ridiculous has seemed normal among tonight’s crowd of Shoulderheads.

At the end of the night, I go outside and lean against the wall to make a phone call. I notice movement in my peripheral vision; behind me, Nick Shoulders is inside, collecting his jacket and his various pocket shrapnel from the cordoned-off area of the pub. I doubt he’ll remember this show – the smallest on the tour – but Mike West was right: there won’t be many more dates like this in Nick’s future. If the crowd isn’t twice as large next time round, there’s no justice in the world. This whooping, mulleted yodeller is building a devoted fanbase and backing it up with quality tunes. His fame’s growing rapidly, though it probably doesn’t seem like it to him as he packs up and leaves the small northern pub. But the night is special because it might never be like this again. I find myself hoping Nick might look back fondly on playing for a handful of drunk English misfits (and one very dizzy toy spider); I’ll certainly look back fondly on being one of them.

My lift arrives, and I’m gone, taking the A666. Take me home, Bolton Road.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album Okay, Crawdad and written by Nick Shoulders, unless noted)

Lonely Like Me (from Lonely Like Me)
Blue Endless Highway (J. R. Cheatham) (unreleased)
Heart of Glass (Debbie Harry/Chris Stein) (from Heart of Night)
Ding Dong Daddy (Traditional)
All Bad (unreleased)
G for Jesus
Turn on the Dark (from Home on the Rage)
Too Old to Dream
You Won’t Fence Us In (based on ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ (Cole Porter/Bob Fletcher)) (unreleased)
After Hours (from Lonely Like Me)
Snakes and Waterfalls (from Lonely Like Me)
Bound and Determined
Rather Low

The Possessed Jukebox: Charley Crockett Live on Halloween

November 2, 2022 / Mike

Monday 31st October 2022

The Deaf Institute, Manchester, England

It starts without much in the way of preamble; the band first, the Blue Drifters, come on to cheers and the background stereo of Ennio Morricone’s ‘For a Few Dollars More’. The spaghetti western theme is quickly replaced by Crockett’s own, played by the band as they settle in: the short ‘The Man from Waco Theme’ opening the show. The cheers turn to roars as Charley Crockett himself takes the stage.

Dressed in pale grey jeans and a white jacket – and the obligatory cowboy hat – Crockett quickly launches into ‘Cowboy Candy’, the first song from the new album. Before we pause for breath, we’re into ‘Time of the Cottonwood Trees’, another new song, one written for his girlfriend Taylor Grace.

This is followed by ‘Just Like Honey’ and ‘Black Sedan’, two more new tunes, though catchier than the two that preceded it. Not only are all the songs so far from the latest album, but astute fans will also notice they’re in roughly the same sequencing as the grooves already struck into vinyl. A moment of doubt crosses my mind: are we just going to run through all the numbers, however enthusiastically, with no thought to making the night special? The rest of the crowd doesn’t seem to share my doubt: the titular ‘The Man from Waco’ is next up, to a great reception.

There’s good reason for the frantic pace tonight. It’s Halloween, and there’s a strict 10 p.m. curfew at tonight’s venue – The Deaf Institute in Manchester – apparently to make way for another event. It’s not very rock ‘n’ roll, but we’re country tonight anyway. Crockett and the band deliver an old Tom T. Hall song, ‘Lonely in Person’, before another number from the new album, the slower-paced ‘Odessa’. But for all the solid musicianship on display and the enthusiasm of the crowd, my earlier doubts haven’t gone away. We’ve been burning through the numbers, like a jukebox has grabbed ahold of Crockett’s newest album and set it spinning. The next song is ‘Jukebox Charley’, as though to confirm me in this view.

Fortunately, I’ll soon be proved wrong. On this Halloween night, as the rain beats the roof, the jukebox is soon to become possessed.

‘Music City USA’ is up next, followed by a fan favourite, the autobiographical ‘The Valley’. The latter is the oldest original played so far, coming from the 2019 album of the same name. It seems strange to think of ‘The Valley’ as an old song, but so prolific is Charley Crockett as an artist that the song’s delivery tonight brings a more well-worn groove from the band, something not always possible on the newer songs. Most of tonight’s songs weren’t even released when I booked my ticket: Crockett has released two full albums of material since the day I set my card down in April. Even the venue’s website can’t keep up with the man: its biographical spiel is three albums old.

Crockett’s work ethic is something to be marvelled at, but there’s also a risk in it. Not only is it hard to keep up, it’s hard to savour. I’d only listened to The Man from Waco a few times before I showed up at the Deaf Institute tonight, so when the chords of those new songs are first struck by the band, there’s less of the delight and anticipation with which the crowd meets a more established number, as we’ve already seen with ‘The Valley’.

There are a lot of songs to be heard tonight; not counting the thirty-second ‘The Man from Waco Theme’ which opens the show, Charley Crockett and the Blue Drifters will run through a total of 27. With the support act, Theo Lawrence, also doing 14 tunes before Crockett takes the stage, it’s a prodigious amount of music for two-and-a-half hours. It seems Theo was even planning more: he gestures off-stage for one more at the end of his opening set, only to be denied. That 10pm curfew must be met. I find myself wondering what the final number would have been: the young Frenchman has delivered his own impressive set of original songs (as well as the Porter and Dolly crowd-pleaser ‘The Last Thing on My Mind’), characterised by strong writing and a throwback croon. Looking like a long-lost third Everly Brother who’s stepped through a wormhole into 2022, he stood solo behind his guitar and did a great job of warming up the crowd. At one point he says he’s usually backed by a rock ‘n’ roll band, and such is the strength of his set that he may well be one to watch in future. Throughout the night, Crockett is full of praise for his band the Blue Drifters, but he also makes sure to remind the audience to check out Theo Lawrence. It’s not an idle recommendation.

Crockett, meanwhile, is soon to bring that crowd to boil. After ‘The Valley’, he launches into three James Hand songs from the 10 for Slim cover album: ‘Midnight Run’, ‘Lesson in Depression’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me That’. The slick Fifties rock ‘n’ roll energy given to these three Hand numbers mean they’re perhaps the most crucial part of the night for Crockett. From here on out, Mr. Jukebox becomes a man possessed. He reaches that sweet spot he’s been searching for with the frantic pace all night: that blissful moment in a night of live music when energy turns into momentum.

‘Borrowed Time’, a song co-written with Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours, is next, and its energy is maintained even in the slower swing of the following song, ‘I Need Your Love’. When the next song strikes up, it gets one of those roars of recognition from the crowd: ‘Welcome to Hard Times’, from the album of the same name. By this point, both band and audience have found the night’s groove, and the number is a high point of the night. When it’s followed up by ‘Name on a Billboard’, another from The Man from Waco album, the new song shares the familiarity of the songs around it, rather than the jukebox delivery from earlier in the show. The night is becoming special.

The next song, ‘Jamestown Ferry’, is a special moment. The fan favourite is given a warm, singalong welcome and is enlivened by a surprise trumpet solo from Blue Drifter Kullen Fox. It’s a great reminder of how Charley and his band seamlessly incorporate other American sounds into their country music, a fact then confirmed by their bluesy cover of ‘I Feel for You’. Reportedly Matthew McConaughey’s favourite Charley Crockett song, it sees Charley without his guitar as he takes the microphone from the stand. Pressing his bejewelled hand against the silver phoenix hanging around his neck, he delivers the slick lines of Jerry Reed.

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A post shared by Charley Crockett (@charleycrockett)

The growing confidence and looseness of the night is becoming apparent, and we stray a bit further from the well-honed country sound with the Sixties groove of ‘Travelin’ Blues’, before snapping right back with the folksy ‘Lilly My Dear’. Sounding like a traditional song unearthed from the dirt, ‘Lilly’ is in fact an original co-written with fellow Texan artist Vincent Neil Emerson. It’s the second song from Welcome to Hard Times performed on the night – and it’ll be the last. To my disappointment, there are no more songs from my favourite Charley Crockett album. At the very least, it seems like a missed opportunity to not play ‘Rainin’ in My Heart’ when in Manchester (of course, it’s raining outside). But Charley’s stable of strong tunes has grown so fast that it’d be impossible to play everyone’s favourite. The frantic delivery of such catchy songs tonight reveals a hidden truth: the music might seem disposable at first, until you realise you can’t bear to throw it away.

The banjo which Charley donned for ‘Lilly My Dear’ serves well on the next number, the quick tempo of ‘Round This World’. The lyrics speak of a “banjo-pickin’ man”, but it’s the electric guitar of Blue Drifter Alexis Sanchez which steals the song. The Blue Drifter provides a tasty Tex-Mex solo which takes the song to another place, and he’s certainly a bigger hit than the last Alexis Sanchez to rock up in Manchester. ‘Round This World’ is a raucous number, and the perfect lead-in to what will prove the finest moment of the night.

The band continues the beat between songs and then, to another anticipatory roar from the crowd, Kullen Fox begins the mariachi horn riff that announces ‘Trinity River’. ‘Trinity River’ is a jewel stolen from Charley’s first album and re-recorded for The Man from Waco, but neither version is as good as the one performed tonight. It’s the perfect number to play live and puts the night at fever-pitch: Charley in his groove, the crowd enrapt, and the Blue Drifters able to show their musical dexterity in moving from country to blues to Tejano and Louisiana soul. It’s Charley embracing the ‘Gulf’ part of his distinctive ‘Gulf and Western’ sound: ‘Trinity River’ might not be country, but it’s got so much soul you want to tell the purists to go hang.

Charley revels in this new soulful groove, following up with ‘I’m Just a Clown’. This new tune is arguably out of place among the country songs on The Man from Waco, but with its Bill Withers-style vibe it’s perfect for where Charley’s found himself at this late point in the night. The momentum is carrying us all now, and while Charley’s enough of a professional to thank Manchester for coming out, it’s Texas where his heart is. In the final number, ‘Goin’ Back to Texas’, he’s the consummate showman. The music’s as good as it’s been all night and Charley’s dancing; foot-stepping carefully across the small stage, twirling in place and going down low to move spaghetti-legged before the front row of the crowd. The fierce, soulful end to the show proves the jukebox was never broken, not even in that slow, steady sequence of The Man from Waco numbers at the start of the night. Charley Crockett’s played it perfectly.

He leaves the stage with his band to cheers, cheers which continue so passionately that an encore is unavoidable. Charley returns alone, behind his guitar, to sing one of his new pure country songs, ‘July Jackson’. The band also deserves an encore, and they return for the Seventies soul vibes of another original, ‘In the Night’.

It’s been a heady, breathless sequence of music from Charley and his band. It’s been far removed from my previous concert experience, the mesmeric aural spellcasting of Sierra Ferrell in Liverpool, but Charley’s hard-and-fast approach has provided an experience no less memorable.

“I’m Charley Crockett – that’s Charley with an ‘E-Y'”, he says before he leaves the stage, an honest hustler to the end. But the hustle would be for nothing if the music didn’t back it up. And it does, emphatically: tonight has been a potent cocktail of showmanship and musicianship. The merchandise table is busy as the room empties; it’s where the real tour money is made, and why the showman is an important part of the artist. But it’s the music that proves most memorable. As I leave, I hear someone humming that horn riff from ‘Trinity River’. The jukebox’s possession is spreading, out into the Halloween night.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album The Man from Waco and written by Charley Crockett, unless noted)

The Man from Waco Theme (Crockett/Kullen Fox)
Cowboy Candy
Time of the Cottonwood Trees
Just Like Honey (Crockett/Fox)
Black Sedan (Crockett/Fox)
The Man from Waco (Crockett/Fox/Taylor Grace/Bruce Robison)
Lonely in Person (Tom T. Hall) (from Lil G.L. Presents Jukebox Charley)
Odessa (Crockett/Nathan Fleming)
Jukebox Charley (Johnny Paycheck/Aubrey Mayhew) (from Jukebox Charley)
Music City USA (Crockett/Mark Neill) (from Music City USA)
The Valley (from The Valley)
Midnight Run (James Hand) (from 10 for Slim)
Lesson in Depression (Hand) (from 10 for Slim)
Don’t Tell Me That (Hand) (from 10 for Slim)
Borrowed Time (Crockett/Evan Felker) (from The Valley)
I Need Your Love (Crockett/Neill) (from Music City USA)
Welcome to Hard Times (from Welcome to Hard Times)
Name on a Billboard
Jamestown Ferry (Mack Vickery/Bobby Borchers) (from Lil G.L.’s Honky Tonk Jubilee)
I Feel for You (Jerry Reed) (from Jukebox Charley)
Travelin’ Blues (Eddy Owens) (from Lil G.L.’s Blue Bonanza)
Lilly My Dear (Crockett/Vincent Neil Emerson/Colin Colby/Tyler Heiser) (from Welcome to Hard Times)
Round This World (from Music City USA)
Trinity River*
I’m Just a Clown
Goin’ Back to Texas (from Lonesome as a Shadow)
Encore: July Jackson (Crockett/Grace)
Encore: In the Night (from In the Night)

* ‘Trinity River’ is from The Man from Waco but was originally recorded on 2015’s A Stolen Jewel

“I Want to Talk About Black Holes” – Some Thoughts on Horizons Live with Brian Cox

September 26, 2022 / Mike

Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman

Thursday 22nd September 2022

Manchester Arena, Manchester, England

It’s a strange homecoming that takes a man to the farthest reaches of the universe. But strange things are the stock in trade of Oldham lad (and internationally renowned physicist) Brian Cox, whose Horizons Live tour winds down with a return to Manchester. Galaxies, suns, quantum mechanics and, of course, black holes – oddities that, when delivered by Professor Cox on stage tonight, seem as natural as the air outside.

I was sceptical of the Horizons Live tour before booking my ticket. I passed up the opportunity to see the Manchester show when it was originally scheduled and it was only because of its Covid-induced cancellation that I was given a second chance on this Thursday night a year later. I wondered what it would involve: it would be a visual treat, no doubt, but would such an extravaganza turn it into a circus? Would its discussion of astrophysics be too complicated or, in trying to reach laymen like myself, would it be dumbed down to the point of insult? I read popular science, listen to podcasts, even write my own science-fiction; what, I asked myself as I opened my wallet, would I be getting out of Horizons?

🌃🔭This evening, we're lucky enough to explore 'Horizons' with @ProfBrianCox!

ℹ️ Useful information ahead of your visit: https://t.co/SA5M2ObdPM

🎫 https://t.co/3sMflW5Pdj pic.twitter.com/Z0pwu1Nfma
— AO Arena (@AOArena) September 22, 2022

Professor Cox, too, is aware of the strange dimensions of his show. On stage tonight, he remarks with warmth on how so many people have shown up for Horizons in an arena usually reserved for concerts. There are mathematicians in the audience. Cox mentions that his support act, the comedian Robin Ince (who also co-hosts his podcast), told him not to refer to the show as a lecture, “not at these prices”. It’s a joke, of course (though an inaccurate one – have they not seen the current level of tuition fees?) but it addresses the elephant in the room. Horizons Live is an astrophysics lecture, but in the best possible sense. It’s a lecture delivered by a charismatic and knowledgeable lecturer at the top of his game, augmented by powerful cinematic imagery far beyond what you’d find in a university lecture hall.

It is this imagery which, with all due respect to Professor Cox, is the main selling point of Horizons Live. As Cox leads us through a two-hour tour of the universe and our knowledge of it, covering gravity, spacetime, black holes, quantum physics and the origins of life on Earth, this backdrop shifts between various interactive images of stars and galaxies to match his script. The visuals on the screen are incredible; some use the same technology used to create the black hole in the film Interstellar (as Cox acknowledges); others I recognise from the inspiring short film Wanderers. For one brief moment, Cox’s iPad fails and he appeals to an IT geek off-stage (IT being the only vocation that deals in witchcraft more than an astrophysicist). Otherwise, the display is in perfect rehearsed synchronicity with Cox’s delivery, punctuating his points as he makes them.

At its best moments, this is awe-inspiring. The most striking moment comes when Cox presents one of those high-resolution images of the universe captured by space telescopes, but moves us through it in 3D. All the galaxies shown in the image are calculated at their correct distance from one another, and we move forward through them as through a flock of fireflies. I’ve been sitting quietly throughout the whole show, but at this moment I’m also quiet in my soul. I can’t think of anything that has impressed upon me so greatly the sheer scale of the known universe. Any residual scepticism I have about Horizons Live has vanished.

A new image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, similar to the one Cox pulls a rapt audience through in 3D. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI.

Another welcome feature of the show is the contribution of Robin Ince. Recognising the intellectual heaviness of the lecture, Professor Cox turns the stage over to his companion during various intermissions, in which Ince has the daunting task of delivering some science-based stand-up comedy, but in such a way as to make our return to Cox’s serious lecture seamless. This Ince carries off with aplomb, remarking on our collective furrowed brows and equation-induced headaches, and contrasting his own looks with the similarly-aged Cox’s rock-star features (“time ages us at different speeds”; “a man who declines to follow the law of entropy”). It’s a valuable part of the show: when Ince emerges to provide relief during a later intermission, it’s a crucial intervention at a point when our minds have begun to unspool in following Cox’s discussion of quantum mechanics.

I cannot provide a full review of Horizons Live as that would involve discussing in depth the ideas Professor Cox unpacks. And, as Ince might say, that would require me to have some understanding of what’s going on. But it’s to Cox’s great credit that he can summarise his key points without talking down to the audience, and lead us on a tour through the universe and its hidden trails without us ever feeling lost, or needing to grip his hand more tightly. There’s a confidence to Cox’s lecture and a naturalness to how it unfolds. From Einstein’s equations, he explains, there emerged so many questions and inquiries, and he weaves important but lesser-known luminaries like Karl Schwarzschild and John Wheeler into his scientific tapestry with skill.

There is, however, one concept which dominates the evening, just as it dominates our imagination when we think about the universe. “I want to talk about black holes,” Cox says. He has a book about them coming out in a couple of weeks, and clearly they are on his mind. They are the “Rosetta stones” for understanding our universe, he says, and he talks us through their emergence in post-Einsteinian theory, the scepticism and then acceptance shown towards the idea of them, before talking about Hawking radiation and the black hole information paradox. When the big screen behind him shows the famous photograph of a black hole, captured in 2019, it’s an image no doubt familiar to everyone in the audience, such is our fascination with them.

Cox’s anchor in this discussion is the Penrose diagram, which is used to explain the relationship spacetime has to black holes. It remains on the screen as Cox discusses the event horizon, singularities, world lines and the multiverse – it’s a marvel that Cox is able to lead us down this path without losing us. The use of diagrams might sound off-putting to one who has not seen the show, but they are used sparingly (earlier, Cox unpacks an equation he has put up on the screen, something which, in a nod to the Arena’s more usual musical acts, he calls an “equation solo”). The more powerful visuals mentioned earlier dominate, and the show as a whole is well-balanced between popular science and providing glimpses of the cutting edge.

The Penrose diagram used by Professor Cox in Horizons Live, also available as a t-shirt at the merchandise counter. Spacetime bulges in the middle when I wear it.

It has indeed been a strange homecoming for Cox. I’ve been to the Manchester Arena multiple times, both before and after the attack in 2017, but no visit has been as peculiar as this: thousands of people listening intently to an astrophysics lecture. For all the spectacular visuals, the night has essentially been one mild-mannered man talking on stage. It’s been a great display of human intelligence and inquisitiveness, not only from Cox but from the audience who have eagerly followed him on his path. Even the comic Ince returns to the stage to deliver a profound poem he has written.

Our curiosity has been indulged, but rather than sated, the show has inspired us to ask more about the universe. Cox quotes the physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who wrote that beauty is that which resonates with us on the deepest level, and certainly the night and the stage has produced plenty of beauty and resonance. Even black holes, which in the popular imagination are imposing destroyers of stars, are shown to be key to our future understanding. They are phenomena that link universes together in a web of Penrose diagrams; the eddas of black holes which proliferate throughout the universe perhaps not holes but stitches of repair.

One of Professor Cox’s stated aims for Horizons Live is for audiences to leave with a greater sense of wonder at their world, and to go out into the night and look at the sky a bit differently. But in thinking back on the night I have a moment of understanding before even leaving the Arena. And as I drive home through the Manchester night, fog settles on the road, yet the thought becomes even clearer. At the start of the show, after the stage lights ebbed and the arena went dark, and the professor emerged to begin his tour of space and time, members of the audience who had not yet reached their seats used the light of their smartphones to find their place. Searching in darkness, with small lights used to illuminate their path; while, before them, the story of the universe is already unfolding.

[Author’s Note: The collective noun used here for a group of black holes, an ‘edda’, is my own invention. It is inspired by the Poetic Edda that speaks of Ragnarok, the assembling and the twilight of the gods.]

A Pretty Magic Spell: Listening to Sierra Ferrell Live

June 30, 2022 / Mike

Monday 27th June 2022

Future Yard, Birkenhead, England

It is hard to write about music because it is an elemental thing. Even among artists and other creative types, musicians occupy a special sphere. There is a line attributed to Walter Pater that all art aspires to the condition of music, and even an ordinary musician can, with a few strums of a guitar and some simple lyrics, bring forth the harmony that is in the world much more effectively than a great writer. Certainly, writing about music often ends up destroying the magic in it, turning the experience of sung gold into mute and lumpen lead.

“My hands are little, but they’re strong,” Sierra Ferrell says at one point on Monday night, in between songs, and on that stage those small, dainty hands touched upon the casual magic that music has but which is much harder to find in other art forms. She is certainly no ordinary musician. To hear Miss Sierra sing for the first time is an experience, whether on an album or a video online. To listen to her live is to witness one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World (others include the Empire State Building, the International Space Station, and how Pete Davidson is attractive to women). It is hard to describe her voice, not only because of the problem of writing successfully about music, but because its qualities shapeshift elusively as you hear it. To describe it as earthy misrepresents its femininity; to describe it as tender or melodious undersells its power. It is note-perfect, and yet with a ruggedness that stays true to Sierra’s West Virginian roots. It is like an angel who has decided to no longer serve, but has not turned away from the light either, and instead chooses to sing according to what it feels truly shines.

I have travelled the thirty-five miles from Manchester to Liverpool precisely to experience this wonder, and the show does not disappoint. In the last couple of years I’ve become a fan of this new country scene – much to my own surprise – and the old iPod I’ve loaded up for the car journey is full of Sierra’s music, mixed with Nick Shoulders, Colter Wall, Charley Crockett and Tyler Childers, among others. The first song on shuffle as I pull away from home is ‘Silver Dollar’, and whether by coincidence or kismet, it’s the first song Sierra plays after I arrive at the packed, dark Future Yard in Birkenhead. After a strong opening act by Josh Beddis, filled with slow songs and including a rolling closer called ‘The River’ – “sinners, won’t you find your way back home” –plenty of goodwill has been generated in the crowd by the Welsh picker’s genial stage presence. The atmosphere is further enhanced when Sierra arrives on stage and throws what appears to be confetti or petals into the crowd. They don’t reach beyond the first row, but unless she deployed a t-shirt cannon they wouldn’t have found me anyway. I’m standing at the very back of the room, near the bar, though I’m not drinking tonight (I’m driving home after the show). If I was any more of a wallflower, I’d be singing ‘Sixth Avenue Heartache’.

The venue, the Future Yard, is the perfect size for the performance that Sierra and her band – Oliver Bates Craven on mandolin and fiddle and Geoff Saunders on stand-up bass – are about to deliver. It is large enough to generate an atmosphere but small enough to emphasise the power in the songs, whether that’s the tender intimacy of ‘Whispering Waltz’ or the raucous energy Sierra finds in ‘Fox Hunt’ or ‘I’d Do it Again’.

On stage, Sierra places her small frame behind her acoustic guitar. She has a crown of flowers sown into her wheat-gold hair – a striking array of pinks and reds and oranges and yellows. She looks like she has stepped out of an Alphonse Mucha painting. And when she begins to sing, the effect becomes otherworldly. Her body sways as she sings and strums on her guitar, and she won’t break the spell she has over the room for the rest of the night.

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A post shared by Sierra Elizabeth Ferrell (@sierraelizabethferrell)

The opening ‘Silver Dollar’ is followed by ‘Give it Time’, with Oliver and Geoff harmonising on the chorus to give it a throwback bluegrass feel. It’s a sign that, for all of Sierra’s unique ability, she is also supported by formidably talented friends. The third song, ‘Why’d Ya Do It?’, features some great fiddle from Oliver; the first sign that while the crowd may miss the incredible Josie Toney – Sierra’s regular fiddle player who, for whatever reason, has not travelled for the UK tour – they need not mourn her on the night.

The performance reaches another level with the fourth song, ‘Bells of Every Chapel’. Sierra introduces it in her tender Southern accent, saying it was inspired by watching the Netflix show The Crown with a friend. It’s a reminder that she hasn’t stepped out of one of Mucha’s art nouveau paintings, or a Roaring Twenties honky-tonk, but exists in the here and now. The song was co-written by Oliver Bates Craven and he leaves another mark on it with a mandolin solo. Not to be outdone, Geoff Saunders delivers a solo on his stand-up bass. Solos from both artists will become a regular and welcome feature of tonight’s set. A high note at the end of this song, held by Sierra for a long time, gets the crowd whooping. The trio on stage will maintain this level for the rest of the night.

A release is provided by the slow and intimate ‘Whispering Waltz’, showcasing Sierra’s vocals on a night when that could be said about every song that’s heard. It is followed by a reprise of ‘Silver Dollar’ – a surprise, particularly as there later proves to be no place on the setlist for ‘In Dreams’, another signature song. The seventh song of the night is the lesser-spotted ‘Littlebird’, from the 2018 album Pretty Magic Spell. Its warm reception from the crowd returns an almost shy thank-you from the artist, as though Sierra is surprised that people respond to her music.

As though to shake off this bout of shyness, Sierra and her band launch into the best song on the night, the as-yet-unreleased ‘I’d Do it Again’. She plays up the cuteness of the lyrics, selling it with a wink here and there, and displays great control of her voice as she hits all the right beats without pausing for breath. Even after solos from each of the three players – including a brief one from Sierra’s acoustic guitar – I’m still surprised when the song, which in its versions online has a charming Cole Porter vibe, reaches a raucous end that gets the crowd going again. Sierra roaring “I’d do it again – three times!”, refusing to let the song end, shows how the versatility in her vocals is matched by the flexibility in her songwriting. ‘I’d Do it Again’ was the most unexpected performance of the night.

Matching the earlier effect of following ‘Bells of Every Chapel’ with ‘Whispering Waltz’, Sierra changes pace after the frenetic end to ‘I’d Do it Again’ by singing the sweet and accepting ‘Made Like That’, followed by ‘Lonesome Feeling’, an Osborne Brothers song introduced as an “old bluegrass number”. Talk of West Virginia in between songs leads to an apparently impromptu rendition of John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’. Seemingly suggested by someone in the front row, the audience is only too happy to sing along.

Sierra is not yet ready to leave her home state, and begins to sing ‘West Virginia Waltz’. It is another impressive vocal, holding a long note on the word ‘flame’ as the song builds. Her voice proves the strongest even when harmonising with two men, though for the next song Sierra stands alone on stage. She plays ‘Rosemary’ from her 2019 album Washington by the Sea, a murder ballad that is intriguingly followed by the unreleased ‘Fox Hunt’. Sierra plays fiddle on this song, with Oliver also on fiddle and Geoff switching to acoustic guitar. This was the song I anticipated most before the show, with the versions I had seen online finally convincing me that I had to see Sierra live. I don’t expect the new verse she delivers, which suggests that this crowd-pleasing foot-stomper may also morph into something of a murder ballad or outlaw song itself. It’ll be interesting to see what its final form will be when it’s finally cut for an album, but, as Sierra says when the song is finished, “don’t ask me when that is”. It will be quite a task to replicate the live energy of this song in the studio.

Sierra follows up ‘Fox Hunt’ with two other unreleased numbers, ‘Lighthouse’ and ‘Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down’. The three musicians harmonise on one mic for ‘Lighthouse’, and the song hints that Sierra is far from finished in building her stable of quality tunes. Despite the relative unfamiliarity of these two numbers, she still has the crowd in the palm of her hand and has them waving their arms in an arc during the chorus of the next song, the hopeful ‘At the End of the Rainbow’.

The sight of swaying arms also proves appropriate to summon the next number, ‘The Sea’. Though Sierra has returned to a familiar song here, she still has a surprise or two in store. ‘The Sea’ starts as expected, a slow, jazzy piece, but then gets unexpectedly high-tempo. Oliver and Geoff perform some now-signature mandolin and bass soloes to complement the song’s new swift current.

The band and the room are still full of energy, but we’ve reached the last song of the night. Sierra launches into ‘Jeremiah’, and the song seems all the sweeter for knowing it is the last. Another welcome surprise of the night: Miss Sierra begins to howl like a wolf on the final verse of the song, much to the delight of the crowd. Perhaps she’s been spending too much time with Nick Shoulders, her yodelling and whistling sometime-tourmate who seems nuttier than a shaken sack of squirrels.

Sierra and the band leave the stage, bowing to the cheers and the applause of the crowd, before returning for a brief encore. “You guys like honky-tonk?” Geoff says, before they sing the old bar-room song ‘Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music)’. As a nod to the British audience, a line is changed to “that pub down the street”. It can sometimes feel like country fans from outside West Virginia or Texas or the Bluegrass State, particularly those in other countries, are excluded in the name of protecting the genre’s authenticity, but the music never sounded as natural in England as it did tonight. The spell cast is complete.

It is unlikely that Sierra or the band will remember this night. Pretty soon they’re travelling on to London, and then Europe, and there’ll be stages and festivals and honky-tonks aplenty when they head back home to the States. If there remains any natural justice in art today, Sierra Ferrell will be in high demand. She proved tonight, if it needed to be proved, that she can do it all. The high notes and the low, the raucous songs and the tender ones. The voice is the thing that alters you when you hear it, but what is clear throughout the night is that the songcraft is also strong. Old favourites and new soon-to-be-favourites have been played, and ‘The Sea’ and ‘I’d Do it Again’ in particular have changed form without being diminished. It requires a feat of musicianship to bring all this together. It’s most noticeable, of course, in the stand-out moments – the high held notes of Sierra’s singing, the solos from Oliver and Geoff – but also in the night’s smaller moments – the light touches on Oliver’s mandolin, the backbeat of Geoff’s bass, the inflections in Sierra’s voice as it rolls over certain lyrics.

It’s these small moments that return to me after I leave the venue and start the late-night drive back to Manchester. I missed an opportunity to have a photo taken after the show – Sierra and her band mingled with fans at the bar – as it seemed awkward to stick around when I was alone and could not drink due to the need to drive home. I remained a wallflower to the end. But I clutch a black Sierra Ferrell t-shirt with ‘the bee’s knees’ on it, and smile. It seems absurd to purchase a memento when the night itself has been unforgettable, and perhaps it was the final symptom of the spell Miss Sierra had cast. I remember a song from earlier in the night. “Little bird,” she had sung. “Now won’t you sing to me. I know you’ll sing for free. I’m right where I wanna be.” I don’t expect her to sing for free, but on Monday night in Liverpool I was right where I wanted to be.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album Long Time Coming and written by Sierra Ferrell, unless noted)

Silver Dollar (Ferrell/Nate Leath)
Give it Time
Why’d Ya Do It?
Bells of Every Chapel (Ferrell/Oliver Bates Craven)
Whispering Waltz (Ferrell/Craven)
Silver Dollar (reprise) (Ferrell/Leath)
Littlebird (from Pretty Magic Spell)
I’d Do it Again (unreleased)
Made Like That
Lonesome Feeling (Billy Henson) (unreleased)
Take Me Home, Country Roads (John Denver/Bill Danoff/Taffy Nivert) (unreleased)
West Virginia Waltz (Ferrell/Leath)
Rosemary (from Washington by the Sea)
Fox Hunt (unreleased)
Lighthouse (unreleased)
Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down (Traditional) (unreleased)
At the End of the Rainbow (Ferrell/Leath)
The Sea
Jeremiah
Encore: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music) (Joe Maphis/Rose Lee Maphis/Max Fidler) (unreleased)

Wanderer now available on multiple platforms

October 10, 2021 / Mike

A number of frustrating technical issues have meant I’ve been unable to deliver further news on my writing in a timely manner.

For some months, my novelette Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog has only been available on Amazon Kindle and on Gumroad in epub, mobi and pdf formats. I’ve wanted to upload it to Smashwords for a while, because they also distribute it to a number of other selling platforms, but I’ve struggled to find the time to undertake the formatting required.

Now, after some delay, I’m pleased to say that Wanderer is now available on all the major ebook platforms. You can now find it on Smashwords, Apple Books, Kobo, Scribd and Barnes & Noble. It is still available, as before, on Amazon and Gumroad.

I hope to have more writing-related news soon.

– M.F.

August Updates

August 26, 2021 / Mike

August has been a hectic and frustrating month for a number of personal reasons not worth going into, and it means I’ve not had time to compose a feature blog post here. Instead, I have a few updates perhaps worth mentioning:

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is now available on Gumroad.

After experimenting with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service for a few months, I have decided to expand the availability of my literary sci-fi novelette Wanderer to other platforms. While still available on Amazon Kindle, the ebook of Wanderer is now available in epub, mobi and pdf formats on Gumroad. It has already recorded its first sale there (a generous £6, against the £1.50 RRP, under Gumroad’s voluntary “name a fair price” principle), with more platforms to follow.

The Amazon experiment was worthwhile, but constricting: its Unlimited service requires exclusivity, but it doesn’t really do anything to elevate the visibility of its titles. The only real engagement through Amazon came when I used one of my designated promotional periods to offer the ebook for free for a limited time. Speaking of which…

**The first reviews have been coming in for Wanderer.**

During the afore-mentioned promotional period on Amazon, I promoted the offer on various social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads and Reddit. Despite its reputation as hostile to self-promotion (which is usually well-deserved), Reddit proved to be the most productive of these. The subsequent traffic to my Wanderer story saw it spend the weekend atop a few of Amazon’s bestseller lists.

People like free things, it turns out. That's good to know, but I wish I knew a way of turning this into genuine sales/traffic/interest. Hopefully I'll get some positive reviews. #scifi #amwriting #BookMarketing #selfpublishing #readingcommunity #newwriting pic.twitter.com/ZuUM8P0DnT
— Mike (@SalfordSamizdat) July 24, 2021

I was brought down from these heady heights by some of the usual Reddit frustrations, but I also got good feedback from a number of Redditors. It also led to some of my first Amazon reviews, which were uniformly positive and can be read here. Suddenly, with the addition of verified customer reviews and star ratings, Wanderer’s lonesome posting on Amazon began to look respectable. So too the Goodreads listing.

A special long-form review on LibraryThing.

LibraryThing is a Goodreads-style website that I’ve been using regularly to post book reviews for years, and it led to my first unsolicited review for Wanderer back in May. However, I was delighted to receive a review this month from the LibraryThing commentator known as Waldstein. Alex is perhaps the best long-form reviewer on the site and someone who has provided gracious feedback on a number of my own long-form reviews since he read my review of Lolita back in 2017. I posted excerpts from his astute review of Wanderer on my Instagram account, but the full text is beautifully composed and is worth reading in its entirety here.

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Hopefully reviews will continue to come in for Wanderer – and hopefully they will continue to be positive.

Updates on Mick’s Café.

One of my other projects has been the subreddit Mick’s Café, a place I set up to find and post hidden gems in contemporary literature, music, fine art and film. I posted its mission statement on my blog here. However, after some promising initial growth and engagement, it has now stalled. I’m not sure how else to get the word out, or how to encourage engagement from its current membership (which stands at 68).

Reddit’s hostility to self-promotion even extends into mentioning your subreddit on other subs, and it’s wearying to source opportunities, and compose posts and comments (for both Wanderer and Mick’s), only to see them removed, shadowbanned or downvoted, even when I’ve followed the byzantine and often-contradictory rules many subs possess. At the moment, it seems that, with Mick’s Café, I’ve created the only corner of the internet where people don’t feel inclined to offer their opinions. I suppose that’s a feat in itself.

My own book reviews.

I continue to write reviews of everything I read, and while August might appear to be a leaner month than others (five or six books, where I might usually read a dozen), this is in no small part because I decided to tackle Anna Karenina, the huge novel by Leo Tolstoy. This has long been on my list to read, as I’m sure it has been for many others, but I didn’t want it to be just another title crossed off my list. I tried to give it the attention it deserved, and I composed my thoughts on the book here.

I’ve always written these reviews for my own edification, often not realising precisely what I’ve enjoyed or disliked about a book until I’m writing my own review of it. Nevertheless, I’m always surprised whenever someone mentions they’ve read them, whether this is another user, like Waldstein above, or another author.

I had cause to be particularly surprised this month, because a review I wrote last year, on the contemporary novella Milton in Purgatory, had come to the attention of its author, Edward Vass, and he posted excerpts from my review on his Instagram. This unexpected interaction reinforced a point I’d like to make to my own readers and prospective readers: as a writer, it’s great to see reviews of your own stuff. Not only for the sales it might encourage, but because writing (particularly self-published writing, like in my case) is often a very lonely and futile endeavour, and good reviews can often make the struggle seem worthwhile.

So anyone who is interested in Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, please check it out – and reviews are particularly encouraged!

– M.F.

Mick’s Café: Where Nobody Knows Your Name (Yet)

July 13, 2021 / Mike

You are walking blindly through the dark streets in the middle of the night. A fog has settled and nothing seems to be happening. The world seems empty. You wander off the beaten path and realise you are lost. Then you hear some music coming through the mist from up ahead. It sounds good. Damn good. The sort of thing you’ve always been looking for but didn’t have the words to express. You see lights. The fog clears and a bar appears ahead of you. The sign says “Mick’s” and the door is open. You go inside.

Mick’s Café is a sub I recently created on Reddit. The intention was to establish a place to find and share the creative gems hiding in our contemporary culture. It hopes to amplify artists who ought to be better known, to try and counteract a culture that seems to gaudily push superhero movies, autotuned music and superficial fiction into our faces.

If you feel that our popular culture doesn’t offer up much of worth, Mick’s is the place for you. If you’ve ever told a friend about a great book or band or film and been met with indifference, here’s the place to find receptive ears.

The subreddit was founded on 4th July 2021 and has been steadily growing its membership since. The idea behind it came about for two reasons. The first was when I realised that whenever I came across an artist I liked, it had always happened through serendipity. The things that were promoted in the media were always corporate, superficial, juvenile, but every so often I would stumble across something by chance and think “there should be billboards dedicated to this”. There would be – if our culture still had a healthy appreciation for art, instead of platforms manipulated by money, hustle, networking and the general decline in standards. I wanted to find a happening place where I could be introduced more reliably to the stuff I only really found infrequently and by blind chance.

The second reason was a more selfish one. Much earlier, I had realised there didn’t seem to be much genuinely literary writing around. I wanted to provide some, and so I wrote a novel. However, when I finished the manuscript, it was rejected repeatedly by the publishing industry. They said (those who replied, at least) that the book was good – but not commercial enough. I increasingly noticed articles and tweets from literary agents and publishers who glibly mentioned that they’d found great writing in their slush piles, but had rejected it because it was “too difficult to sell”. I read these tweets and thought, “I’d want to read that book”, but a gatekeeper had decided I never could.

I came to suspect that perhaps one reason there weren’t many impressive books around was because they were being nixed at source. Regardless of whether my own writing was of any worth, it seemed the industry was prioritising pulp that could be sold easily, and then blaming “market forces”.

The good stuff must surely be out there, but the people creating it aren’t being backed by the shot-shy creative industries. Where are our contemporary Dylans, Hemingways and Van Goghs? Perhaps they’re toiling away without an audience. Meanwhile, celebrities and vloggers get multi-million-pound book deals, and there’s a deluge of derivative, formulaic fiction.

I decided to self-publish some of my own writing but, as I suspected might happen, I found it just about impossible to find an audience. For writers, it’s a hostile environment. Good writing can’t stand out amid that same deluge of formulaic trash, and honest artists are drowned out by those who shout the loudest. I found that my promotional efforts were unfocused and ineffective. Social media in particular seemed a mess, pandering to outrage, short attention spans and the lowest common denominator. Even on Reddit, for which I initially held out some hope, I discovered most of my posts had been shadowbanned – even, ridiculously, from subs that explicitly said writers could promote their work without fear of being shadowbanned.

My suspicion is that many people are yearning for art with integrity, but don’t know where to go. Creatives lose confidence and are distracted from their art by the exhaustion of the self-promotion hustle. Audiences are starved of real, sustaining art to experience and they lose faith in their own culture. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, the sound from the noise. People can’t connect. That’s when I realised that if I wanted to find a happening place I needed to make one myself.

Mick’s Café takes its inspiration from Rick’s Café in the classic film Casablanca. I hope the subreddit will, in time, generate its own vibe and culture; a place to find hidden gems, cultivated by a community that has standards. I also hope it will become a place for sincere artists to find a platform and, in this respect, Mick’s is inspired by the dissenting force of the French Impressionists. When Monet and artists like him were prohibited from displaying their work at the official Salon in Paris, they set up their own exhibition instead. It changed the course of art history.

It may seem too ambitious, even hubristic, but it’s hoped that the sub will become an influential hub for the sort of creative endeavour that has integrity, purpose and meets a certain artistic standard. A place for things that are dying out of the world, that aren’t really amplified elsewhere in our society. If you’ve ever thought that the films released today don’t match the standards of previous decades, that musicians or writers don’t compare with those of the past, this could be your opportunity to try to change that. At Mick’s, you can join a community of people who are trying to find those artists who do compare: exciting new films which don’t get the box office returns; musicians who invest in melody and musicianship; writers who work for years on an original manuscript instead of weeks on a formulaic thriller.

If this sounds appealing, you might want to head over to this obscure corner of Reddit and take a look around the Café. Come up to the bar and tell us about the hidden gems you’ve found: the books, the bands, the films.

And if you leave and you pass any recommendations on to others, let them know you heard it at Mick’s.

You can visit Mick’s Café on Reddit by clicking here.

‘Night Shadows’ by Edward Hopper is a public domain painting accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

10 Books and Artwork That Inspired ‘Wanderer’

June 26, 2021 / Mike

‘The Sea of Ice’ by Caspar David Friedrich (1824)

After I had finished my story Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, I realised an odd thing. The story was set on the distant moon of Europa, one of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, and yet I hadn’t really been influenced by any sci-fi in the writing of it. Despite the story’s literary aspirations, it was most definitely a piece of science-fiction.

I don’t tend to read much dedicated sci-fi, though I suppose I ought to. I read a lot of standard literary fiction and plenty of popular science, and the amalgam of those two when I’m writing becomes, well, science-fiction. I felt like an imposter, not only because I had self-published a piece of sci-fi without “paying my dues” to the genre, but because I was promoting the story in various sci-fi forums online.

To illustrate this curious “no sci-fi” situation, I’ve decided to compile a list of the 10 main influences on the writing of Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. This should give readers a taste of how an original story can sometimes be constructed from rather strange and disparate elements. If a writer has a truly open mind, they can find inspiration in all sorts of places.

For those who have already read Wanderer, the list should also provide some insight into the author’s intentions, and the various themes and techniques developed. (Those who haven’t read the story can find it here.) Hopefully this deeper dive will enhance the reward that comes from reading a piece of literary fiction. Such rich influences certainly enhanced the writing of it.

1. Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich (1818)

*Detail from ‘Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog’ by* Caspar David Friedrich (1818)

Let’s start with an obvious one. My story uses the same title as the 19th-century German painter’s most famous piece – a striking composition that I also used for my front cover. Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is perhaps the most well-known representation of philosophical contemplation and wanderlust in Western culture, and I tried to reflect some of the feelings it evokes in my own story of David Casper (the name is no coincidence), the freewalker wandering across Europa moon.

Friedrich was an extraordinarily vivid artist, and his Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog was not the only painting to inspire my story. The Sea of Ice (1824), shown at the top of this article, served as a general mood piece for the icy landscape of Europa moon, which is known to astronomers as “chaos terrain”. Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (1824) inspired the flashback scene where David Casper and Lucy Ortega roam across the American landscape in spring. Cairn in Snow (1807) and Cabin in the Snow (1827) inspired the ‘Casper’s Cache’ shelter the two construct on Europa.

2. Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway (1925)

Detail from ‘In the Forest of Fontainebleau’ by Paul Cézanne (1879)

Hemingway, the master of the short story and an immaculate prose stylist, is perhaps the single biggest influence on my writing. This will no doubt prove to be folly on my part, for the path to literary glory is littered with many writers who have tried and failed to imitate this great artist.

Influence, however, is not the same as imitation. I believe many of those imitators are led astray by the masculine, adventurous “Hemingway myth”, and forget the man’s understated ‘iceberg’ writing style. ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ is a prime example of this style; it is, on the surface, a simple story of a young man interacting with nature on a fishing trip in the American hinterland. The key to appreciating it, however, comes in a letter Hemingway wrote to Gertrude Stein, saying that he was “trying to do the country like [Paul] Cézanne” did in his paintings. And, certainly, when you read the story you get that same rich, restful feeling you get from contemplating a fine landscape painting.

I attempted the same in my own story, with Friedrich’s Wanderer painting in place of Cézanne. A key motif of Friedrich’s painting is the “Rückenfigur”, or ‘figure seen from behind’. Consequently, the raison d’être of my story was the contemplation of David Casper, the Galilean, from the point of view of Mr. Reeve as he stands with his back to him among the water jets of Europa moon. It was what I wrote towards from the very start. That entire scene was my attempt to recreate the deluge of thoughts which emerge when contemplating Friedrich’s remarkable painting.

Some of my thoughts on Hemingway can be found in my various reviews of his books on my Goodreads profile. For my assessment of the writer and his legacy, my review of his Selected Letters is perhaps not to be overlooked.

3. The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku (2018)

Detail from ‘*Artist Concept of Europa Water Vapor Plume’ (2013). Credit: NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI.*

Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist and, to my mind, one of the most potent science popularizers alive today. His 2008 book Physics of the Impossible was recommended to me by a friend and inspired a number of technologies in a science-fiction novel I wrote (which, unfortunately, remains unpublished at time of writing).

The Future of Humanity sees Professor Kaku write engagingly and accessibly about, well, the future of humanity in outer space. His speculations are fascinating and his discussion of transhumanism helped to scope out my Wanderer story in its earliest stages. In fact, in an early draft one of my characters was named Dr. Crisper, in light of Kaku’s discussion of the gene editing technology known as CRISPR. I ultimately decided this was too on-the-nose and he was renamed Dr. Verdmann.

4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin (1969)

Detail from *‘Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion’ by John Martin (1812)*

I introduced this article by stating I hadn’t been influenced by any sci-fi in the writing of my Wanderer story. There was one exception, however, in the earliest genesis of the idea. Years before I put pen to paper on Wanderer, I read Ursula Le Guin’s classic sci-fi novel The Left Hand of Darkness.

One passage midway through the book led me towards a fruitful tangent. What would it be like, I thought, to have a technology that would allow you to walk around an alien planet and breathe the air without a spacesuit? This planted a seed which eventually became the sensory experience of the Galilean in Wanderer, as he allows the water jets of Europa moon to burst over his skin.

5. Give Your Heart to the Hawks by Win Blevins (1973)

Detail from *‘Sierra Nevada’ by Albert Bierstadt (1871*)

Immediately after I read Kaku’s book, I read Win Blevins’ open-hearted tribute to the mountain men, those larger-than-life adventurers who were the first white men to roam the rawland of the American West. I began to conceive of the Galilean in my story as a legendary mountain man, only this new frontier is the surface of the ice moon Europa. This allowed me to ground my story in authentic character and setting, rather than the often-absurd flights of fancy that can sometimes characterise science-fiction.

The Western influence would perhaps become even stronger than the scientific element in creating Wanderer (see also number 9 on this list). A. B. Guthrie’s novels The Big Sky and The Way West were also influences on the direction of the story. I was inspired by Guthrie’s boldness in allowing his story to proceed at a leisurely pace, rather than pandering to those readers who are conditioned to a short attention span. You breathe his air and it fills your lungs as you read.

6. From Giotto to Cézanne: A Concise History of Painting by Michael Levey (1962)

Detail from *‘Hunters in the Snow’ by Pieter Bruegel (1565)*

I have already mentioned the influence of European art on my story. However, when writing Wanderer I realised that blind inspiration would not be enough. I needed to learn more about the techniques and principles behind some of the finest paintings ever created. Rather serendipitously, I soon came across Michael Levey’s book. It proved to be a fantastic introduction.

This lucid, illustrated art history not only helped me understand basic principles of visual art, but also introduced me to a number of other paintings, beyond those by Caspar David Friedrich already mentioned. These other paintings inspired certain scenes and ideas in Wanderer. Levey’s discussion of John Martin’s Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion gave me the name ‘Sadek Martin’ for the corporation that creates the Galilean’s bio-tech (a typo in Levey’s book names Sadak as ‘Sadek’). Pieter Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow served as a mood piece for the arrival at Emmaus Station in my story, as well as the final scene where the Galilean leaves again. Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus and Rembrandt’s painting of the same name inspired the journey to the Station, discussed further in number 7 below.

7. The King James Bible (1611)

Detail from *‘Supper at Emmaus’ by Caravaggio (1601)*

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is not a religious story. I don’t know how far I can be considered an atheist (I have detailed this part of my intellectual journey in my review of the King James Bible here). I had a secular upbringing, but I became interested in the Christian stories due to a long-standing fascination with Greek mythology, and I saw similarities in how they could be used for allegory and allusion in literature. If my writing displays any Christian sensibility, it is only because I continue to explore and utilise these fascinating ideas.

My Wanderer story begins with a quote from the Book of Genesis: “There were giants in the earth in those days” (Genesis 6:4). I initially chose this out of a mysterious artistic hunch that it would set the tone, but it soon became apparent just how appropriate the quotation was. A large part of my story had begun to address the role of ‘giants’, not only the role of massive Jupiter with regards to the moon of Europa, but also the relationship between the Galilean freewalker and those under his charge, the ethics of scientific progress (with regards to the Isaac Newton line about “standing on the shoulders of giants”), and the giant redwood trees mentioned in number 9 below.

Another significant Biblical influence on my Wanderer story came from the New Testament story of the Road to Emmaus. Prompted by the paintings of Rembrandt and Caravaggio mentioned in number 6 on my list, I recognised the similarities between my plotline in Wanderer and the story tropes from the Gospel of Luke. In this story, Jesus travels with his disciples on the road to the town of Emmaus, but they do not recognise him (this is after his crucifixion and return). This theme of perception influenced Reeve’s path towards understanding the Galilean in my own story, and when the Galilean reflects on those individuals who move humanity forward, he is also commenting on the often-thankless role played by artists. Jesus, after all, was a storyteller, and the Galilean can be seen as a Christ-like figure: voluntarily wounded, an imitator of Christ – that is to say, a Christian.

8. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)

*Detail from ‘The Contemplator’ by Ivan Kramskoy (1876)*

This is the hardest influence on the list to explain. Unlike the others on this list, Dostoevsky’s masterpiece did not inspire any specific ideas for Wanderer. Instead, I happened to be reading the book during the most productive period of writing my story. The painting detailed above is The Contemplator by Ivan Kramskoy, and is discussed by Dostoevsky in chapter 6 of Book Three of The Brothers Karamazov.

The Brothers Karamazov not only saw my head swimming with various philosophical thoughts, but the writer’s cadences and sentence structure in these discussions began to supplant my more long-standing Hemingway influence (mentioned in number 2 on this list). In particular, Dostoevsky’s narrative voice was dominant in my head when I wrote what is perhaps the most important passage in Wanderer. Standing amidst the water jets of Europa moon, the Galilean ponders the nano-technology coursing through his blood:

“… the realisation, for those who carved the path, was the hell of knowing it would never satisfy. The nano could cure, but it made you aware of the great curse; that if all ailments were resolved, then all the distractions of the world were gone, and such a man was confronted more completely with the fragmentary horror of the mind, the thing that truly terrified and which men went out into the world to avoid. The wanderer, the outlier, the Galilean – he was unnatural, but not because of the nanotech which streamed in his blood and made a home for foreign air in his lungs. He was unnatural, he was shunned, because he had come to realise that one of the reasons man wandered was to seek his own destruction in the world. Man always needed a cross to bear, and did not always want to see the end of that road.”

9. Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck (1962)

Detail from *‘Redwood Forest, Yosemite Valley’ by Gilbert Davis Munger (1885)*

Unlike some of the other books on this list, John Steinbeck’s late-career travelogue, in which he goes on a cross-continent road trip with his faithful dog Charley, is just plain fun. The author is astute and draws his characters well, utilising all the literary skill he had built up over a long and stellar career, but the joy in the book comes from its vivid, ambling romp across the American landscape.

Though I have not yet been to America, the American landscape has always fascinated me. As already mentioned, the Hemingway story ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ was a huge conceptual influence on Wanderer, as were the stories of the mountain men who roamed the unsettled West. Travels with Charley developed this love further, and after Steinbeck wrote of visiting the giant redwood trees of northern California (Charley pees on one), I decided to use the great sequoias for a flashback scene in Wanderer. In the initial draft of the story, David Casper and Lucy Ortega were found in a copse in New England during their field tests, but the giant redwoods of California made more poetic sense. Not only were they more iconic, but they tied into the ‘giant’ theme I had been developing (see number 7). They also allowed me to deploy a forest fire to further illustrate the characters’ imperviousness.

In the course of my research, I learned that these giant redwoods are replenished after forest fires by the wet fog coming in from the Pacific. This was perfect for my story’s theme – and its title – as the Galilean, the long-lived ‘giant’, finds himself restored in part by contemplation at the water geysers of Europa moon. Such moments of literary serendipity can only come about when a writer keeps an open mind, and recognises that stories can be constructed from very disparate elements.

10. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (1885)

Detail from *‘Morning in the Giant Mountains’ by Caspar David Friedrich (1811)*

This final influence on my Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog story sees the list come full circle, for Nietzsche’s work is often considered in the same tradition as the earlier paintings by Caspar David Friedrich.

I didn’t in fact read Thus Spoke Zarathustra until after I had written and published Wanderer, though I was familiar with many of Nietzsche’s ideas second-hand – most notably the cultural crisis caused by the “death of God”. I was acutely aware when writing Wanderer that my main character – a genetically-enhanced man – could be seen as one of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch”, or ‘supermen’.

Now, Nietzsche’s ideas were later intolerably corrupted by the Nazis, and he still unfairly carries the stigma of this unwelcome association (Nietzsche actually spoke against anti-Semitism in his time). But those who are bold enough to banish the stigma find that Nietzsche’s ideas are remarkably potent and prescient – and great to wrestle with. His ‘superman’ idea wasn’t an Aryan race-fetish but instead a response to the “death of God”, speculating that Man could resolve this crisis by transcending Christianity and creating his own morals.

I decided to read Zarathustra in part out of a sense of obligation, for my own story’s premise had evolved into a perspective on the Nietzschean ‘uber-man’. I felt I ought to have at least read the book which posited the idea – for my own self-respect, if nothing else. When I did, I was pleased to find that the conclusions I had reached in Wanderer survived the confrontation with Zarathustra.

In my story, David Casper, the Galilean ‘uber-man’, is redeemed by the part of himself that remains human (see also the Christ analogy in number 7 above). This conclusion proves to be in line with some of the contemporary criticism of Nietzsche. The popular psychologist Jordan Peterson, for example, is himself influenced by Nietzsche, but has recently written a partial refutation of this ‘superman’ idea. In Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, Peterson argues that, in light of discoveries in biology and science, “only a fool would now dare to claim that we have sufficient mastery of ourselves to create, rather than discover, what we value” (Peterson, pg. 164).

It is a subtle difference, but an important one. I created a story, but I could only discover what values it held.

These, then, are 10 of the most significant influences and inspirations for my Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog story, a 12,000-word science-fiction novelette available now on Amazon. Every writer, of course, is influenced by a wide range of art, media and personal experiences. There are far too many to count – or even recognise.

The 10 cited above helped ensure the story on the page was as close as possible to how it was in my head. Something is always lost in an idea in its journey from the brain and out through the fingers onto the keyboard, but a healthy stock of fine writing, artwork and philosophy as inspiration can ensure a story retains its qualities during the transition.

Newton (and Dr. Verdmann) remarked that “if I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. Anyone can see, by the calibre of the books and artwork I have detailed above, that I too have stood on the shoulders of giants.

But have I seen further, or have I only left a dirty and unwelcome footprint on those shoulders? You can read the story, and let me know.

The image used in number 3 of the above article is ‘Artist Concept of Europa Water Vapor Plume’. Credit: NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI. Original ID: PIA17659. All images have been used in accordance with relevant guidelines and their use in no way implies endorsement of this website or its content.

The other images used in this article are public domain paintings accessed via Wikimedia Commons.

A Giant on the Earth in These Days: Bob Dylan at 80

May 22, 2021 / Mike

Whenever I am unimpressed by the latest hyped novel, film or musical act – which is something that seems to happen increasingly often – I find myself lamenting that there do not seem to be any artistic greats among us nowadays. I begin my own novelette, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, with a well-known quote from Genesis: “There were giants in the earth in those days”. Regardless of what the Nephilim truly were in the Bible – fallen angels, an ancient race, or heroes among men – the verse continues to resonate. As our culture falters under the weight of economic depression, societal deconstruction and artistic philistinism, we find ourselves looking desperately for icons who could explain it all. But whether they died out or we drove them away, the giants who could stand astride a culture seem to have vanished from the earth.

However, with Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday arriving this Monday, it is well to remember that one such great is still among us. Dylan’s legend is gigantic but, remarkably, his talent keeps pace with it. From the astonishing lyricism of the freewheelin’ folk songs of the early Sixties to last year’s remarkably fresh Rough and Rowdy Ways album – which contains the song ‘Murder Most Foul’, a show-stopping meditation on American decline and hope – Dylan has always been there to provide genuine artistic insight into our world. “I contain multitudes”, as Walt Whitman wrote – and Dylan is one of the rare few who has not only faced the yawning cultural pit, but has proved equal to the task of filling it with courageous art.

This adventure hasn’t always been smooth, and there are plenty of failed experiments in Dylan’s career that people use to try to diminish his achievement. Some criticisms are merely ignorant and superficial – his supposedly ‘nasal’ singing voice, for example, is in fact remarkably adept at interpreting songs – but others carry more weight. With that in mind, I have decided to comment on an underappreciated aspect of Dylan’s career: his forays into the written word.

In 2016, the announcement that Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature was scoffed at in some quarters. Certainly the prize was heavily influenced by Dylan’s genius lyricism in his songwriting, but at the time I had already read both of Dylan’s published works and had been impressed by both, and I saw the scoffing as unwarranted. What follows are two book reviews from my Goodreads profile: a reappraisal of Dylan’s much-maligned 1966 novel Tarantula, and a further review of his 2004 autobiography Chronicles: Volume One. I hope these two pieces of writing go some way towards paying tribute to just one of this giant’s multitudes.

“Like the animal of the same name, you’re instinctively scared of ‘Tarantula’…”

Bob Dylan, Tarantula (London: Harper Perennial, 2005), 116pp. Originally published 1971.

It’s not that bad, you know. I mean, sure, when the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in October 2016 they probably didn’t have Tarantula, the songwriter’s only published ‘novel’, in mind as an example of his excellence. It is a rambling, nonsensical stream-of-consciousness piece of absurdity and only for the most patient or obsessive of Dylan fans.

It does have a certain rhythm to it, even if it doesn’t always make sense, though we can’t blame the usual precariousness of translating song lyrics to prose for the strangeness of Tarantula. Whilst Dylan’s imagery does suffer from the lack of the “dobro’s F hole twang & climax from disappointing lyrics” (pg. 14), there is a lot of stuff in here that’s just plain baffling. A magazine article once highlighted the ‘unintelligible’ line, “now’s not the time to act silly, so wear your big boots & jump on the garbage clowns” from page 2 of Tarantula. I assume they chose this early example because they didn’t want to read any further; there’s certainly plenty of other choice absurdities (my favourite is “little girls hide perfume up their shrimps & there are no giants – the warmongers have stolen all our german measles & are giving them to the doctors to use as bribes” from page 58). There’s also evidence that Dylan didn’t want the book published at all, so we shouldn’t judge him too harshly for it. But, clearly, anybody looking for a fearsome piece of poetry along the lines of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ or the eloquent phrasing of ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ (both written around the same time as Tarantula) is going to find slim pickings.

That said, some nuggets do emerge from the stream-of-consciousness style. The book defies rigorous analysis, but “if youre going to think”, Dylan advises, “dont think about why people dont love each other – think about why they dont love themselves – maybe then, you will begin to love them” (pg. 109). Riffing on Woody Guthrie, Dylan writes “this land is your land & this land is my land – sure – but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway” (pp75-6). Such thoughts are in short supply here, but the rampant procession of song lyric snippets and literary references and the usual mid-Sixties Dylan stuff of lawyers and senators and mayors and garbage men all makes you realise just how much stuff we’ve got swimming around in our brains. In the introduction – or rather, the disclaimer – we are told the book is “about Bob Dylan thinking aloud” and there is more to this than apologia. As early as page 2, Dylan is talking of “bombing out your young sensitive dignity just to see once & for all if there are holes & music in the universe”, an image the streaming prose returns to on page 68, when in the “vast desert” of his head he “lets yokels test bombs in his brain”. There’s certainly value in letting a talent like Dylan use your head as a nuclear lyrical testing ground, banging away like Curtis LeMay. Like the animal of the same name, you’re instinctively scared of Tarantula, but a calmer and closer look reveals it’s rather more graceful than you first thought. But you still wouldn’t like to get too close to it.

I’m not inclined to be harsh on the flailing, hit-and-miss Tarantula because it’s clear Dylan doesn’t take himself too seriously (“Take it easy & dont scratch too much” is his life advice on page 109). The book is mischievous, playful – not artsy or pretentious. There’s a Loki vein of mischief in Dylan’s book (as in much of his music), challenging and ridiculing those who would define or label or analyse him. “To my students”, he addresses on page 107, “i take it for granted that youve all read & understand freud – dostoevsky – st. michael – confucius – coco joe – einstein – melville – porgy snaker – john zulu – kafka – sartre – smallfry – & tolstoy – all right then… now i’m giving you my book – i expect you all to jump right in – the exam will be in two weeks”. Here, Dylan is remarking on the disposability of his book. Why the hell, he asks impishly, are we reading this when we’ve still not read Sartre? You’ve got to admit, he has a point.

“[Dylan] stands astride the divide, while also hoping people with dirty feet don’t use him as a bridge…”

Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One (London: Pocket Books, 2005), 293pp. Originally published 2004.

“I know that he wanted to understand me more as we went along, but you can’t do that, not unless you like to do puzzles. I think in the end, he gave up on that.” (pg. 218)

One of the few artists of the 20th century who truly stands apart, it is difficult to pin Bob Dylan down and drag him back to the more regulated cultural strata where we can understand and quantify him. This is the case even when he is speaking directly and disarmingly, as he is here, in the first (and, to date, only) volume of Chronicles, his autobiography. Like the producer Daniel Lanois, whom Dylan is referring to in the lines I’ve quoted above, eventually we give up. We cede the ground and, without irritation, just let this singular artist do his own thing.

Chronicles: Volume One is an unconventional memoir. Its five chapters deal with three different periods of Dylan’s long career: the first two with 1961, before he became famous; the third in 1970, during a fallow period; a fourth in 1989, as he tries to engineer a new sound; and then finally a fifth back in 1961-2, with Dylan on the cusp of his unique fame. The content and sequence betray in part the origins of the book (it started with Dylan writing liner notes for re-issues of the relevant albums – Bob Dylan in 1962, New Morning in 1970 and Oh Mercy in 1989), but you also get the feeling that Dylan wouldn’t have it any other way. We get nothing on the insane run of creativity from 1963-66, or on the Blood on the Tracks album, but he does briefly discuss his time rapping with Kurtis Blow in the Eighties, of all the things (pg. 219). Like Lanois, you want to understand him more as you go along, but you do have to puzzle it out.

Nevertheless, Dylan manages to cover an astonishing variety even within these peculiar parameters. I first read Chronicles about ten years ago and, thinking back on it, I seemed to remember a powerful piece of writing about Dylan’s encounter with Harry Belafonte; that barely struck me this time around. In contrast, I had all but forgotten that Dylan discussed his tour with Tom Petty (even though I was then, and remain, a huge Heartbreakers fan); this time around I found that discussion fascinating. Dylan manages to touch upon, at natural points in the narrative, various personalities he met over the years, whether trifling encounters with the likes of Jack Dempsey, Robert Graves or John Wayne, or with those who had a deeper influence on him, like John Hammond, Dave Van Ronk and Woody Guthrie.

Dylan is particularly good at explaining the influence of various musicians on his own creative outlook; Guthrie especially, though Chronicles also ends with an energizing one-two punch combo about Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Robert Johnson. He’s less good at explaining his own creativity, particularly as it appears so feverish (a passage in the chapter on Oh Mercy, where Dylan tries to explain the new songs and vocal techniques he is developing, is clearly reaching for something ineffable but struggles to reach the reader). I’ve long been trying to formulate an adage that the difference between great writers and average writers is that average writers are trying to explain simple things in a complex way (through big words, fancy techniques, etc.) whereas great writers are trying to explain complex things as simply as possible. I felt something similar in reading Dylan as he tried to express his creative direction: normal artists are trying to be special, whereas Dylan, feverishly atop the strange artistic hierarchy, is a special one trying to be normal.

Certainly, one of the most striking aspects of Chronicles, and Dylan’s personality in general, is his determination to be normal and conventional. In conversation, I often use “catch rainbow trout”, a lyric from ‘Sign on the Window’, one of his New Morning era songs, as a byword for the sort of domestic contentment Dylan is striving for. He wants out of the “rat race” (pg. 114) but is also “fantasizing about… a nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard… That was my deepest dream” (pg. 117). In the Eighties, he buys ‘World’s Greatest Grandpa’ mugs (pg. 209). He never wanted to be a countercultural icon in the Sixties – “I had no ambitions to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick” (pg. 35) – and bristles at the attempts to get him to lead a movement (pg. 119). By 1970, he’s completely fed up with the hippies and gatecrashers: “I wanted to set fire to these people” (pg. 117). While never a reactionary or a get-off-my-lawn type, he’s also not the rebel agitator, “the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest”; “whatever the counterculture was, I’d seen enough of it” (pg. 120). He stands astride the divide, while also hoping people with dirty feet don’t use him as a bridge – or set fire to said bridge.

For someone with such a strange position in our culture, and who remains so enigmatic even as he carries us across the pages of a dedicated autobiography, Dylan is remarkably self-aware. He says it’s “nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough” (pg. 147). It says a lot that, even on a second read, his legend takes on new and ever more inscrutable dimensions – most ‘legends’ don’t even stand up to a single glance. Chronicles can sound like a performance at times (“The last time I’d seen her, she was heading West” (pg. 60)), but when this happens it never appears to be out of conceit, a desire to wow the audience with stream-of-consciousness verbosity. Instead, whenever he eludes discussion of more conventional memoir topics like his family (his wife is mentioned but never named) or his relationship with Suze Rotolo (the lady on the cover of the Freewheelin’ album), it has the appearance of practiced shields and well-oiled countermeasures. He’s been throwing up these puzzles and magic signs to bamboozle interlopers for a long time now.

And why not? The interest in Dylan ought not to be in his Minnesotan hometown or his children, but in his unique creative take on things. The literary quality of Chronicles is rarely overt (an exception being “sometimes all it takes is a wink or a nod from some unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence” on page 43), but it takes technical skill to establish this voice and maintain it during a non-linear narrative. To do so with some occasional genuine insight, and maintaining the reader’s interest, is impressive. When someone comes into writing from a different artistic realm – music having its own unique language – and proves capable of writing well, it’s always an experience to be grateful for. When the world’s most renowned songwriter describes songs as “like strange countries that you have to enter” (pg. 165), you sit up and pay attention. When he describes his legendary image as “a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows” (pg. 147), you realise he’s been to so many of those strange countries which nobody knows, and has been crowned there. Our enduring fascination with his remarkable far-off conquests is never puzzling – how could we not be fascinated? – even if, partly by design, the man behind the legend remains so.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy some of my other book reviews on my Goodreads profile. I have also written a novelette called Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, inspired in part by the Genesis verse with which I opened this post. It can be found here.

The image of Bob Dylan used at the top of this post is in the public domain and was accessed via Wikimedia Commons. The book covers of Tarantula and Chronicles: Volume One are the property of their respective publishers and are considered fair use for purposes of review.

Mike Futcher

Page 5 of 6

City, Raise a Country Boy High: Tyler Childers Live in London

Rakehelly Blues: Nick Shoulders Live at The York

The Possessed Jukebox: Charley Crockett Live on Halloween

“I Want to Talk About Black Holes” – Some Thoughts on Horizons Live with Brian Cox

A Pretty Magic Spell: Listening to Sierra Ferrell Live

Wanderer now available on multiple platforms

August Updates

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is now available on Gumroad.

**The first reviews have been coming in for Wanderer.**

A special long-form review on LibraryThing.

Updates on Mick’s Café.

My own book reviews.

Mick’s Café: Where Nobody Knows Your Name (Yet)

10 Books and Artwork That Inspired ‘Wanderer’

1. Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich (1818)

2. Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway (1925)

3. The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku (2018)

4. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin (1969)

5. Give Your Heart to the Hawks by Win Blevins (1973)

6. From Giotto to Cézanne: A Concise History of Painting by Michael Levey (1962)

7. The King James Bible (1611)

8. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)

9. Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck (1962)

10. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (1885)

A Giant on the Earth in These Days: Bob Dylan at 80

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