If you’re reading this and you’ve ever worked with Leesa or sat in her chair, you know she will not do hair without music. Recently, we had to purchase a new MP3 player for her salon. I loaded it with some songs I had on hand, MP3s of favorites we’d purchased over the past few years. Along with those, I dumped whole jump drive of my songs on the new player, which she seems very happy about.
You know if you’ve seen me since – I don’t know – 2012, I have very little in the way of hair left on my head, and we’ve even begun buzzing that down to the scalp, just short of shaving it. Anyway, maintaining this requires that I sit down in her styling chair every 10-14 days. The last time I was there, a song came on that I had more or less forgotten. It’s called “Angel.”
I wrote the song in 1987 with Mark Chesshir, one of the lead guitarists in the band we typically called The Cody Band. Many of the songs recorded at Mark’s home studio over the years, especially those songs that don’t appear on either Cody Retrospective or Homecoming, Mark and I performed ourselves, playing all the parts or bringing in musical friends when needed or desired. I think “The Light in Your Eyes” and “I Must Have Dreamed” are good examples of this practice.
“Angel” includes the full band, I think. Mark Chesshir and Gene Ford on guitars, either Danny O’Lannerghty or Mark Burchfield on bass (can’t remember which), and Steve Grossman on drums. My guess is that Mark also played keys. I’m not sure why the song doesn’t appear on either of the albums mentioned above. If I’m remembering right, it was a powerful piece when we played it live.
I would feel the way I feel tonight forever if I could. My eyes are clear, my heart is strong, and love feels like it should. Still, the dawn cannot be held back, and this night will have an end. But as long as you stay, I know I’ll feel this way again.
O Angel, I know the sound of your wings. O Angel, I’m always listening for that whisper in the night.
When you hear me say, “I love you,” don’t feel trapped and run away. Sometimes when I look at you, I can find nothing else to say. I remember the nights that I have spent chasing ghosts and dreams. But you’re real to the touch, You don’t know how much that means.
O Angel, I know the sound of your wings. O Angel, I’m always listening for that whisper in the night.
I’ve seen so many broken hearts getting washed away at night. Come and carry me above that tide.
O Angel, I know the sound of your wings. O Angel, I’m always listening for that whisper in the night.
The front picture is of me as I looked when I wrote “Christmastime.” The performance is by me now, thirty-four years later.
As I recall . . .
It was in the spring of 1988, and I was writing songs for Ave Canora, a small publishing venture that was part of the music empire of Nashville/Broadway singing star Gary Morris. Word ran through the offices of Gary Morris Music that he would be recording a Christmas album in the near future. I’d never written a Christmas song before, but I really wanted to have a song on that album.
So, in April 1988, in the midst of that year’s Easter season, I sat down to write “Christmastime.” My main musical influences were only two: almost 30 years of hymns and carols in my little mountain church and community in Walnut, North Carolina, and Johnny Mathis’s album Merry Christmas, the Christmas album of all Christmas albums as far as I’m concerned, released in October 1958, less than two months before I was born. I was writing a lot of songs in the key of E at the time, and so, E it was for “Christmastime.”
Here’s an early recording of “Christmastime” from the home studio of my friend Mark Chesshir. It’s possible that this is the demo that I turned in to Ave Canora and the version that Gary heard.
Verse #1 is all about light, which is one of my true loves in the Christmas season. Leesa and I don’t decorate the exterior of our house, but I love the lights of Christmas. Light designs and displays–from simple to complex–are the only thing I enjoy about the extended Christmas season the Xian world developed due to the demands of capitalism.
See the world In a different light At Christmastime. See it shine In the children’s eyes At Christmastime. Let the season sparkle in me Like the moon on virgin snow Fallen some long-ago Christmastime.
We have light appearing in “shine” and “sparkle,” and we have “light” in its different connotation of understanding–to see the world in a different light. Many of us give the world a little more grace at Christmastime. Or maybe we express a little bit of righteous anger at the commercialism that isn’t as much in our faces as at other times of the year. With “virgin,” the lyric includes just a taste, an essence, a foreshadowing, of the Christian story of the birth of Jesus. And the “snow” is classic in terms of memory and desire, for me, as I’m always “dreaming of a white Christmas.”
Verse #2 is about memory. The older I get, the more precious and haunting memory becomes, perhaps especially in the context of Christmas. So much of the celebration and so many of the people I’ve celebrated with are yearly lost and fade into memory.
Window pane– Watching a parade Through frosty lines. Memories– Bittersweet and homemade– Cross my mind. Family and friends at the door– With the laughter and the kisses pour Love and good wishes for Christmastime.
This verse is made up of images from memory. These memories, however, are only implied. They’re left vague and general so that the listener (reader) can plug in their specific memories and memory images. I doubt if I thought that at the time I was writing this lyric, but it’s the way I understand it now.
Verse #3 returns to the Christmas story a bit more directly than the intimation of “virgin” in the first verse. We have a star and a child, a call for peace and stillness, a sounds of celebrating bells and singing people and angels.
Distant star, I am not alone With you in sight. In my heart, There’s a little child Alive tonight. So, let the world lie peaceful and still While the bells ring and people sing And angel wings are whispering, “It’s Christmastime.”
I hope that I got chills, that I maybe even cried, when I completed this last verse. It’s all there, I think, all that Christmas has been to me–all that I struggle to have it still be to me. The star that guided the wise men guides me to the child that is still alive in me. The moon on virgin snow exists as part of a world lying peaceful and still. The parade, the laughter, kisses, and good wishes are echoed in the ringing bells and the singing people. And at the end, the lyric returns one last time to the original Christmas story of angels–the “heavenly host”–appearing to the shepherds.
See the world In a different light At Christmastime. See it shine In the children’s eyes At Christmastime. Let the season sparkle in me Like the moon on virgin snow Fallen some long-ago Christmastime.
Window pane– Watching a parade Through frosty lines. Memories– Bittersweet and homemade– Cross my mind. Family and friends at the door– With the laughter and the kisses pour Love and good wishes for Christmastime.
Distant star, I am not alone With you in sight. In my heart, There’s a little child Alive tonight. So, let the world lie peaceful and still While the bells ring and people sing And angel wings are whispering, “It’s Christmastime.”
Many thanks to everybody who, over the years, has said that it’s not really Christmas until they’ve heard “Christmastime”!
“Merry Christmas to all!”
Here’s some more stuff:
I’ll go ahead and say it (with some regret and bitterness, and with apologies for the latter): I have a crass commercial desire that many singers had recorded “Christmas Time” so that I could have a nice little royalty bonus every year . . . and so could Leesa when I’m gone . . . and so could Lane and Raleigh when Leesa’s gone. . . .
When I first moved to Johnson City, people used to say, “Hey, I heard ‘Christmas Time’ in K-Mart today!” I even heard it there a time or two myself. But, you know, K-Mart’s not around anymore. (There’s the bitterness again, and again, I apologize.)
Jimmy Patterson was a fellow I met years ago when Leesa, Raleigh, and I attended Cherokee United Methodist Church. He loved “Christmastime.” I heard it told that the first time I played it at Cherokee, Jimmy was standing with our pastor David Woody, and in his excitement over what he was hearing, Jimmy took Pastor Woody’s hand and squeezed it. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that “Christmastime” meant so much to Jimmy that his wife Bonnie asked me to play it at his funeral / celebration of life . . . in the summertime, as I recall.
One last thing: Gary Morris released two different versions of his album Every Christmas.
I don’t remember exactly why this was the case, but here’s my story about it. He already had the original Every Christmas album recorded and turned in to Warner Brothers Records by the time I submitted “Christmastime.” That’s the cover on the left, released in 1988. The last song–track 10 on that one–was Gary’s version of “Carol of the Bells.” Then at some point soon afterwards, no later than Christmas 1990, they repackaged and rereleased the album–new cover (on the right) and “Christmastime” replaced “Carol of the Bells.” In practical terms, just as far as publishing goes, Gary’s company would receive what was called mechanical royalties for “Christmastime” that he wouldn’t receive for “Carol of the Bells.” I doubt that was the driving force behind the change, but it was a side effect. Now, on Gary’s website, the album on the left is for sale instead of the later “blue” version. Interestingly, the side effect here is that whoever gets the money for sales of that “poinsettia” version does not have to pay mechanical royalties to me because “Christmastime” isn’t on that version. Given this, I think it’s worth noticing that Spotify, iTunes, and other platforms sell only the “poinsettia” version, so . . . no Christmas royalties for me!
O the bells ring and people sing and angel wings are whispering, “It’s Christmastime”!
I enjoyed my writing life this year. Although the majority of my productivity has taken place, in confidence, between the right side of my brain and an array of hard and virtual drives, I got somethings out into the world.
Leesa says when she sees the blue screen she knows what’s happening.
A number of blog posts. I set up a monthly schedule that’s I’ve more or less kept to. First Wednesdays are for writing/reading posts (like this one). Second Mondays are for whatever I feel like writing about. Third Saturdays are song stories. Fourth Tuesdays are supposed to be posts about politics, but I haven’t been very successful with these, as everything I think of seems to be darker and of meaner spirit than I want to be.
Short stories. I published one short story this year. “Jamboree” appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of my favorite online periodical Still: The Journal (#38). The good folks at Still included it among the journal’s Best of the Net nominations. The only other bit of news worth reporting about new stories is that I finally made some good progress toward finishing–but still not finishing–a story that I’ve been holding onto for years. It has been in progress and untitled for a good while, but I’m thinking now that it will be named something like “Payne Mountain.”
Gabriel’s Songbook (Pisgah Press 2017) is now five years old. Some folks have read it recently and really liked it, which makes me quite happy. I’ve done a number of podcast appearances to talk about A Twilight Reel, but Gabriel hasn’t gotten that kind of love. Until now. Back in September, Christy Alexander Hallberg interviewed me for her terrific podcast Rock Is Lit, which profiles “rock novels.” The episode “dropped” on December 8, and I’m really happy with it. The conversation about the novel was both good and fun, and I was really pleased with the follow-up discussion that Christy had with Frye Gaillard and Peter Cooper, the latter of whom walked on suddenly two days before, on December 6, from an accidental and traumatic head injury sustained a few days before.
At the beginning of 2022, I had a work-in-progress (WiP) about a Nashville songwriter named Ezra MacRae. I’m not sure how many words I had on it at that time. I’m thinking around 20K. I’m also not sure when I attached the working title, but I’m calling it Streets of Nashville until somebody with power tells me to call it something different.
Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I had that title before I submitted some pages of it for workshopping at Hindman Settlement School’s Appalachian Writers Workshop in July 2021. Most of my classmates in the workshop fell in love with a character Benny Jack, who was in a dire situation at the end of the section they read, which ended at what is now page 41 of the novel. Somebody suggested #SaveBennyJack, and the workshop folk carried on with that. [An interesting tidbit: much of the meeting-Benny-Jack section was written for Gabriel’s Songbook but got cut for reasons I won’t go into here. Suffice to say, Benny Jack exists much more comfortably–and much more effectively–within Streets of Nashville.]
By May 2022, I had somewhere between 20K and 30K words. On the 25th of the month, I was in Durham for my granddaughter’s graduation from high school, and the night before the ceremony, I was sitting in our AirBnB watching Wiley Cash interview one of my heroes, James Lee Burke, about Every Cloak Rolled in Blood, his 40th novel. Cash asked how Burke is so productive. Burke said he wakes up every morning–that’s every morning of the year except maybe Christmas–with a scene or two in mind. Then he writes at least 750 words on the scene(s), and by the end of a year, roughly, he has a novel. I decided I’d try that method for the following few weeks, and it worked for me. By the time I left on July 4 for my writing residency at Wildacres in the North Carolina mountains, I was approaching 70K words. Then, by the time I left Wildacres on July 10, I had completed a first draft of just over 90K words.
I’d proven to myself that I could write a book of fiction in less than twenty-five years! This was the amount of time that passed between first words and publication for both Gabriel’s Songbook and A Twilight Reel.
Between mid-July and now (approaching mid-December) I’ve made four more passes through the novel, the current draft of which is at 102K words.
All along, I’d been focused on trying to tell a good story. I’d thought it might be a mystery, but then I realized I didn’t know how to write a mystery. So, I just stuck with the good story idea. After the first draft was finished, I learned from Google that I had been writing a suspense novel:
suspense: the main character may become aware of danger only gradually. In a mystery, the reader is exposed to the same information as the detective, but in a suspense story, the reader is aware of things unknown to the protagonist. The reader sees the bad guy plant the bomb, and then suffers the suspense of wondering when or if it will explode.
Just for fun, here’s what my writing screen looks like when I’m working. This is the opening paragraph of section VII.
I started writing fiction in the early 1990s, using the old WordPerfect/DOS. I got used to the look replicated above. By the time my university offices began switching me to Word, I found I didn’t like writing in black letters on a white background. So, I figured out how to get my blue screen with my white or gray letters, and I was on my way.
I’ve sent Streets of Nashville to a couple of agents and a couple of publishers, but I think I’m going to put off going further with that process until after the first of the year. But a couple of folks have it in hand right now who could just blow me away if they said yes to representation and/or publication.
Avalon Moon
In the meantime, I have no time to sit on my nonexistent laurels, so, while I begin sending Streets of Nashville out into the world, I’m over 25K words into the next novel, which I’m calling Avalon Moon. I like where it’s going, and those who’ve read some of what I have seem to like where it’s going, too. I’m trying something different this time out, with a handful of different points of view, one of which is my old friend Gabriel Tanner. Like A Twilight Reel, this one hangs pretty close to Runion. The story will include wolves, a river island, preproduction work for an adaptation of a Ron Rash novel, a mysterious document over two hundred years old, and many of the Runion folks I’ve worked with before.
Cover and spine of A Twilight Reel: Stories: design by Jamie Reeves, photo by Joey Plemmons, photo concept by Raleigh Cody
My new book, A Twilight Reel: Stories, is set for publication on May 25 by Pisgah Press in Asheville, NC. The collection is made up of twelve stories, each set in a different month of 1999. The physical setting for all is my imagined town of Runion, North Carolina, which is on the French Broad River between Marshall and Hot Springs in Madison County.
Here’s a list of the stories included:
The Wine of Astonishment
The Loves of Misty Sprinkle
Overwinter
The Flutist
Decoration Day
Conversion
The Invisible World around Them
Grist for the Mill
A Poster of Marilyn Monroe
A Fiddle and a Twilight Reel
Two Floors above the Dead
Witness Tree
I thought I’d share some writing I did a few years ago about the setting, the use of place, in these stories.
When “place” is mentioned in relation to fiction, the first thing that comes to mind is physical setting. This is the world of the story. It may be anything from a solitary room to an overcrowded neighborhood, from Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, to “dear dirty Dublin.” If the fiction is fully realized, we as readers will be able to enter this world, to see its colors and shapes, to hear its noises and silences, to smell its aromas and stenches, to feel its textures.
However, a sense of place in fiction is not achieved by the depiction of a physical setting only–its topography and wildlife and climate, its antebellum homes and filthy streets and glittering skyscrapers. There is a spiritual element to setting that is not inherent in the place itself but rather exists according to human experience of the place: an experience built up over time with thick layers of cultural, communal, familial, and individual histories.
I have chosen to place the following four stories in the environs of the fictional Appalachian town of Runion, North Carolina, “my own little postage stamp of native soil.” Appalachia is, I believe, a fertile subject for fiction that remains far from being exhausted. Jim Wayne Miller, a poet native to mountains not far from my Runion, says, “the Appalachian region of America, being neither north nor south exactly, neither east nor west, but a geographical, historical, cultural, and spiritual borderland, has an interesting and complicated past (and present)” (86). This quote implies that even though North Carolina may be considered part of the same “South” as Faulkner’s Mississippi, there is a sense that life in its western mountains is something other than life in what is traditionally known as “the South.” In fact, the spirit of the place, especially that of the more sparsely populated areas like Madison County (where I grew up and where I locate Runion), seems to make it as much the southern region of what some have imaginatively tried to create as “the state of Appalachia” as it is the western region of North Carolina. [Jim Wayne Miller was born in Leicester, NC, although he spent much of his creative life in Kentucky. Also, at the time I wrote this, I think I was unaware of the early American proposal for an actual State of Franklin that would have included at least some of western North Carolina.]
The idea that Runion is a part of some borderland has colored my intentions in writing all of these stories. In addition, I have sensed in Runion the “interesting and complicated past (and present)” to which Miller above refers. All of the stories are set in contemporary Runion (the late 1980s, the early 1990s). This time of stressful change–when the portions of mountain culture not capable of being made “quaint” for tourists are being absorbed into the world at large–highlights the lines of difference between generations and individuals as well as within generations and individuals. The conflicts that necessarily arise in such a situation are what the stories included here attempt to portray. [By the time I completed the collection, its twelve stories had settled into a single year: 1999.]
It was once upon a time in the Appalachian mountains that accents could change from hollow to hollow and hill to hill. Once, the answer to the question “‘Whose boy are you?’ coupled with the name of the branch on which one lived was sufficient to give one a sense of person” (Sprague 23). And again, a person born in this county or that remained a native of that place no matter how much of his or her life was spent elsewhere.
All that is changing. Life in Appalachia is slowly moving from its traditional isolated state to a backwoods version of the global community. For example, satellite dishes pimple the hillsides behind weatherbeaten mobile homes. They stand among the mossy gravestones of hilltop family cemeteries, eyeing the heavens. They perch on the ridgepoles of dusty barns. They function as a sign that the isolation of the past is being stripped away, and along with it the traditions which it nurtured and preserved.
My purpose in writing these stories is to attempt to capture in fiction some portion of this far-reaching transition. As the older generations try to hold on to what their world used to be, the younger generations are trying to transform that world or escape from it altogether. Those generations in the middle simply seem lost. Connected to the old and attracted by the new, they either freeze and wait for what is coming or run to meet they know not what. The conflicts that exist among all these generations are the stuff of which stories are made, and it is my hope that I am able to write some of the “true” stories taking place among the hills and hollows and communities that surround my fictional Runion.
Such fertile fictional ground is incredibly attractive for a writer who feels strongly toward the real ground upon which it is based. In the early part of this century, the actual town of Runion hung on a hillside above the French Broad River between Marshall and Hot Springs in Madison County. A sawmill town of over sixty houses, it died when the mill shut down with the rest of the country in the early 1930s. Today some scattered concrete foundations, the ruins of a one-room wooden schoolhouse, and a single line of jonquils blooming in what once was somebody’s yard are all that remain of Runion. This collection attempts to recreate Runion as if it had never faded out of reality, piecing it together with certain characteristics of the real Madison County towns that surround it–the river town personalities of Hot Springs and Marshall, the small college town atmosphere of Mars Hill–as well as other places that are better labeled villages or hamlets. I realize that four stories cannot create a complete town–Anderson gave twenty-two to Winesburg, Joyce fifteen to Dublin–but I feel I have made a good start.
A view from an elevated vantage point of the lumber and pulp mill nestled along the river with a hill in the background; ramps in the foreground leading to buildings.
The ruins of a Runion house, probably that of a mill owner, on the ridge overlooking the French Broad River, December 2019
Place is the basic point of reference upon which the stories in this collection are built. Every layered aspect of each story is affected by it; the fictional modes of “conflict, symbol, tone, style, etc., are all intimately related to Place and mutually interpenetrated” in a “unity” that “can only be intuitively grasped” (Foster 76). The experience of these characters and their stories would not be the same–in fact might not exist at all–without Runion. However, as Leonard Lutwack says in The Role of Place in Literature, “the qualities of [Place] are determined by the subjective responses of people according to their cultural heritage, sex, occupation, and personal predicament” (35). Thus, Runion would not exist without the characters and their stories; they are its living elements, defining its qualities and making it visible.
In his poem “Anecdote of Men by the Thousand,” Wallace Stevens writes,
There are men whose words Are as natural sounds Of their places As the cackle of toucans In the place of toucans. (51-52)
Stevens concludes with these lines:
The dress of a woman of Lhassa, In its place, Is an invisible element of that place Made visible. (52)
It is the people of a place that make this invisible spiritual element visible: their language, the interconnected colors and themes of their lives that are the visible manifestations of that place. Consequently, it seems to me that fiction attempting to take these invisible elements and make them visible for us as readers must necessarily be fiction of the place as opposed to fiction about the place. It is the fiction of Runion and of an Appalachia-in-transition that I have attempted to create in these stories.
The author at the graffiti ruins of the paymaster’s vault, December 2019
Works Cited
Foster, Ruel E. “Sense of Place in James Still’s River of Earth.” Sense of Place in Appalachia. Ed. S. Mont Whitson. Morehead: Office of Regional Development Studies, Morehead State University, 1988. 68-80.
Lutwack, Leonard. The Role of Place in Literature. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1984.
Miller, Jim Wayne. “I Have a Place.” Sense of Place in Appalachia. Ed. S. Mont Whitson. Morehead: Office of Regional Development Studies, Morehead State University, 1988. 81-99.
Sprague, Stuart S. “Inside Appalachia: Familiar Land and Ordinary People.” Sense of Place in Appalachia. Ed. S. Mont Whitson. Morehead: Office of Regional Development Studies, Morehead State University, 1988. 20-26.
Stevens, Wallace. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: Knopf, 1954. New York: Vintage-Random, 1990. 51-52.
It’s a very old tale—boy meets girl; boy trades girl for a shot at fame; boy comes to regret that last part. Gabriel’s Songbook, a debut novel by Johnson City author Michael Amos Cody, is a love song to music—creating it, performing it, and generally being passionate about it. What it is not is a love song to the music business.
Twenty-one-year-old Gabriel Tanner leaves his new wife, Eliza, and his little hometown near Asheville for the chance to prove himself in Nashville. He’s hoping for a big break, but reality sets in as soon as he arrives: “Young men with guitars awaited country music stardom on every corner, warbling songs about trucks and alcohol and mamas and cheating hearts, guitar cases opened at their feet. Grungy kids Gabriel’s age or younger, looking both frightened and defiant, one moment weaved and bobbed through the starry-eyed sidewalk crowd like the children they were, the next disappeared into some black hole of a bar.”
Gabriel’s Songbook chronicles the talented-but-naïve young musician’s ups and downs with a vast array of music-business figures: managers, producers, label executives, promoters, engineers, disc jockeys, contract lawyers, marketing consultants, bandmates, writing partners, hair stylists, and wardrobe consultants. They all have big plans for him, but eventually he comes to understand that they’re all working their own angles, which are not necessarily to his benefit. Through it all, Gabriel works hard to remember why he’s doing all this, and what he’s given up along the way. He goes back to the night he saw the new girl at their high school in the crowd at one of his shows:
In the purity of that moment—filled with music and Eliza—I discovered a light. A guiding star, as I’ve always imagined it. Over the years, even in times when I felt most earth-bound, I kept sight of that star in the heavens. When I sat in some darkened room with my guitar in my arms, trying to fit words to music, it hovered above me like a muse invoked. And when I finally got a real stage and an audience made up of more than friends and family, it became a spotlight, or the spot-lit reflection of myself in some pretty woman’s smiling eyes. I followed that star … without question, through a great wilderness and some of my wildest dreams.
Such dreams don’t always survive the trip, though Gabriel’s love for music endures: “This part, the writing of lyrics, I loved most of all about songwriting, even on this edge of exhaustion,” he remembers. “The soul churning. The stirring up of memories and feelings and dreams. The strange sensation that I was a bystander watching as the page filled with these things put into words.”
Through flashbacks, dream sequences, song lyrics, and even ghostly visitations, readers can watch Gabriel learning lessons the hard way, as he is transformed from a romantic idealist into a hard-drinking, hard-living “almost was,” often at odds with family and friends. Cody brings to life Gabriel’s passion for his art and his ambition to succeed in music, deftly portraying the anguish of unrealized dreams made even more bitter by regret.
A graduate of Auburn University, Tina Chambers has worked as a technical editor at an engineering firm and as an editorial assistant at Peachtree Publishers, where she worked on books by Erskine Caldwell, Will Campbell, and Ferrol Sams, to name a few. She lives in Chattanooga.
Now that the 2018 spring semester is over and I’ve gotten past the always-surprising empty feeling of not knowing what to do with nothing much to do, I’m starting to think about what’s next.
Teaching: That’s easy. This summer I’ll teach ENGL 2110: American Literature I in Summer I and ENGL 3956: Fairy Tales for the Ages in Summer II. Then in Fall 2018, I’ll teach ENGL 4012: American Novel (Gothic Edition), ENGL 5500: Nineteenth-Century American Poetry, and ENGL 5950: Methods of Research. I’ll also direct one honors thesis. So, that’s the rest of the year taken care of as far as teaching goes.
Academic Writing (Scholarship): Co-editors Robert Battistini and Karen Weyler and I will, I hope, complete the editing of The Literary Magazine and Other Writings, 1801-1807, Volume 3 of The Collected Works of Charles Brockden Brown. I have a number of projects that I’ll eventually go ahead with, but I don’t feel pressured to do so in the immediate future. I want to write an essay on a little known early American poet named Samuel Joseph Smith. I will complete (and attempt to publish) an edition of a little remembered nineteenth-century American novel by Catherine Ann Warfield titled The Household of Bouverie; or, The Elixir of Gold (1860). I would eventually like to write and publish a significant essay or a monograph on American Indian literature.
Creative Writing: I’m three short stories away from completing a twelve-story collection tentatively titled A Twilight Reel. The collection is a made up of often interrelated stories that take place over a year in Runion, Madison County, North Carolina, my “little postage stamp of earth.” Each of the twelve stories takes place in a different month in 1999. I’ve completed drafts of the stories for January, February, March, April, July, August, September, October, and November. So, most every day this summer, I’ll be working on the stories for May, June, and December, each of which is in some stage of drafting.
I have some significant work done on two different novels: A Summer Abroad and Antaeus. Although the latter is the more advanced — at over 230 pages so far — I recently realized that this should probably be the third in a group of novels featuring a character currently named Ezra MacRae. As a result of this realization, I’m also beginning another novel — tentatively titled Chart Hits — to be the first featuring MacRae. Not sure how that will play out. The other piece, A Summer Abroad, is based on the summer of 1979, which I spent traveling around Europe with AESU 616.
Finally, I have a batch of (mostly) new songs that I hope to recored together as a new album sometime in the next year. One song, “Freedom, Love, and Forgiveness,” is older — from the 1990s — but in recent years it has been revitalized as Leesa and I sing it together. A new song that seems to be grabbing people’s attention is “Complaints.” A couple of songs grew out of lines that Gabriel Tanner writes in Gabriel’s Songbook; I liked the fragments I wrote for the novel, so I fleshed them out in to full songs: “Siren, Sing” and “Catch That Train.”
I guess I’m planning like I’m in my thirties, even though I’ll turn sixty this year. I’m certainly happy to have accomplished all I have so far, but chasing all these other projects seem to keep me vital and happy.
April 22 is the anniversary of the 1983 release of my one-and-only 45 rpm single. It was “Fiesta.” This year’s anniversary was the 35th. I find it difficult to realize that at fifty-nine years old, thirty-five years was over half a lifetime ago for me.
My aunt Ernie (aka Ernestine Plemmons) made this cross-stitch piece for me sometime after the release of the record, probably for my November birthday or for Christmas in ’83. It sits on my home desk (although not in this exact position). The artwork is that of the record’s cover sleeve. A similar rose also appears on the record’s label.
A few years ago I was playing at Good Stuff in Marshall, in its original location, and a forty-something-year-old girl, whose name I don’t remember and whose self-control was beered-up and loose, started calling out for “Fiesta.” (She called out other things as well, but I’ve chosen to forget them.) Anyway, I started the song and got a few lines into it, when suddenly my memory ran out of the chords. I couldn’t remember it. My only actual record release . . . and I’d forgotten how it went.
That night I could only shrug and move on to another song, but within a couple of days, I’d relearned it. Now I usually include it in all my solo shows, and it’s fun to play. And I know of at least one person for whom it’s a favorite.
In my novel, Gabriel’s Songbook, the story of the writing of the song “Lacy” is the story of another of my early songs called “Daisy.” (I was looking for something that worked like the word Daisy and used Lacy long before I knew somebody by that name.) But the novel’s story of the record release of “Lacy” is the story of the release of “Fiesta” and the non-release of the album that was to follow.
Given that I probably wrote the song a year or two before its release on 22 April 1983, the song is maybe thirty-seven years old. And while the recording is nostalgic and out of date, the song has held up fairly well, I think. I can only hope that its writer has done so as well, but then again, I’ve got about twenty-two years on it!
Gabriel’s Songbook has now been out in the big wide world for three weeks or so, and folks are beginning to read and respond. So far, responses have been good! And in the name of shameless self-promotion, I thought I’d share a few comments:
(1) Last week I went to Michael’s book reading in Asheville. It is always special to have the author read & discuss his book, but even more so when parts of the book are sung! I really enjoyed the reading & discussion that followed. . . . I have been snuggled up with the book all week. It is great! As you can imagine, his writing is very lyrical. It is also very vivid, bringing to life the town, scenery and people in the book. I was expecting a story about being conflicted between art & business, but to have a love story as well? It’s a very enjoyable easy read. You won’t be disappointed! Thank you Michael Cody for sharing this touching story.
(2) It’s difficult to put down. Exceeding descriptive expectations. But not surprised by how great it is. The reviews on the cover are spot on!
(3) I’m starting Chapter 14. This is one of the best books I’ve read in years. The story is a page-turner. The writing is remarkable.
(4) This book was a page turner for me! I recommended to all my friends!
(5) A fantastic book! It’s real. It’s heartbreaking and yet full of life and love. Michael Amos Cody paints the scenes with words that place you in the middle of it as if you were there. Just like his songs…it captures your heart and you are changed for the better.
(6) This is the best book I’ve read in several years. The story is compelling and touching. It was hard to put it down the three nights it took to read it. Not only is it a great story, but the writing is brilliant. One of my favorite, though little known, authors is Robert McCammon and one reason is that his prose is magical. I got the same feeling with Michael Cody’s storytelling. The wordsmithing itself is just incredibly good.
Are you a songwriter or an author? Or do you just love music and/or great literature? Have you ever aspired to be successful as a musician? Or have you wondered why some people “make it” and some don’t? Have you ever played in an original or cover band? Have you ever been involved in any way with the music industry, with managers, promoters, promisers, game players….? If so, you will LOVE this book.
I wish I could write as well as the author so that i could better express how much I enjoyed this book. This is a MUST read for anyone who has ever been involved in or infatuated by drama that is the music industry.
P.S. And wait until you meet the Turrenok brothers in Chapter 13.
(7) LOVE the book!
As you can imagine, I’m really tickled with these reactions. And I’d be tickled with yours, if you have a chance to read the novel and will take a moment to post a word or two about it. Even if you don’t like it, I’ll still be tickled at your having read it.
Photo by Ed Huskey, c. 1979.
Just follow one or all of the links below and let me know what you think:
My first novel, Gabriel’s Songbook, will be available from Pisgah Press on 1 December 2017. You can imagine how thrilled I am about this! It’s something that I’ve long hoped for, and soon I can cross it off my bucket list. But that doesn’t mean I’m finished, because the next item on my list is “publish short story collection,” then record new album, then “publish second novel” — you get the idea. You can go to the website Pisgah Press if you’re interested in preordering (I’ll sign your copy) before the 1 December publication date. (You might want to look at other Pisgah Press titles as well.)
Thanks for reading!
Gabriel’s Songbook is a living portrait of the artist as a wayward musician, the story of a musician whose talent carries him from the hills of Appalachia to the grime and glamor of Nashville and back home again. Gritty and lyrical, rock ’n’ roll and old-time country, it transports the reader deep into that age-old dream of making the big time, and shows us the beauty and pathos that lurks underneath.
Here are kind words from those who’ve read the review copy . . .
What a wonderful book! Artistic ambition, first love, small-town Appalachian life, the image-obsessed machinations of the Nashville music industry: all ring so authentic, so true. Michael Amos Cody’s first novel is gripping, poignant, and unforgettable.
—Jeff Mann, author of Country
I came to care for these characters so much I wished I could step into the book and warn Gabriel and Eliza of the perils ahead of them, or to sit in the audience and hear the searching songs Gabriel sings. Michael Amos Cody shows a care with how his characters speak, and how they interact with one another, that gives the novel both a poetic charge and a lived-in authenticity. Gabriel’s Songbook resonates like a great ballad, a song of love and struggle that keeps chiming in the ears long after the final note is played.
—Jesse Graves, author of Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine and Basin Ghosts
Michael Amos Cody writes with the vivid clarity of one who has made it through the punishing Nashville grind and survived, and the passion of a true believer in the power and beauty of the music itself. Behind the glaring lights of Nashville, the late nights, seedy managers and bad deals, is a beautiful tale of redemption and a love story that will stick with you long after the novel is finished. . . . Cody is not just a wonderful writer but a top-notch musician and songwriter as well, and that musicality is in evidence on every page—from the heartfelt lyrics that occasionally punctuate the action, to simple moments like a haircut shared between estranged lovers. This is the best novel of the music business I’ve come across in a very long time.
—Mark D. Baumgartner, Editor, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature
Michael Amos Cody writes with a strong, authentic voice about the Appalachia I know. There is no posturing or exaggeration here. Instead, this is a book that strives after Hemingway’s maxim to write one true sentence, and Cody does that without fail. Gabriel’s Songbook is a novel full of heart and longing and it deserves its distinguished place on the shelf with some of the best stories of the region. I hope it is the first of many more books about Runion, North Carolina.
—Charles Dodd White, author of A Shelter of Others and Lambs of Men
Gabriel’s Songbook by Michael Amos Cody
300 pp. / $17.95
Release date Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 9781942016366 / LCCN: 2017946781
Pisgah Press, LLC / PO Box 9663 / Asheville, NC 28815
A graduate of Auburn University, 
