Heart attack

Robert Gomez wants to cut off his head and sing a song before he loses consciousness and dies. The Denton, Texas, resident and former Norah Jones bandmate is putting music to the stories in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler’s book Severance, which contains 62 “short short stories” based on that premise. While in Europe playing guitar for neighbor Sarah Jaffe, in support of fellow neighbors Midlake, Gomez emailed me about his work-in-progress and offered up a demo version of the song “Chicken,” a hushed guitar number whose extended title pretty much sums it up.

“Chicken (Americauna pullet, beheaded in Alabama for Sunday dinner, 1958″

Where’d you get the inspiration for the project?
I was walking into a neighborhood college bookstore a block away from my home in Denton, TX. I don’t know, to buy some cd mailers or something and there was a clearance bin of books. So as I was rummaging through the dr.phil self helps and teen love stories I happened upon Robert Olen Butler’s Severance. It must of gotten there by mistake! After reading the first two quotes;

After careful study and due deliberation it is my opinion the head remains conscious for one minute and a half after decapitation.-Dr. Dassy D’Estaing, 1883

In a heightened state of emotion, we speak at the rate of 160 words per minute.-Dr. Emily Reasoner, a Sourcebook of Speech, 1975

(the overall premise for the poems) I was drawn in and after a couple of cursory readings I bought it and took it home to live with it a while. I’ve been thinking for sometime it would be interesting to collaborate with a writer. To write music to another’s words pushes the music in new directions. And what great words Robert Butler has written.

What’s the timeline for the project?
I’m hoping to have it done by the end of this year. I’m currently finishing up the third song now. Its hard to write on the road these days but I’m trying to keep at it.

How important is it to have a “concept” when undertaking a recording?
This is my very first real concept album and although I’ve never made a concept record I’m very much falling in love with the idea of it all, of having a common thread connecting all the songs.

What’s it like writing music to words that already exist–with a set meter, cadence, etc.–versus being able to have the power to change up words to complement your music?

Its a challenge to say the least but it does make the music go into different directions which I love. As far as the meter and cadence I have a lot of leeway since the poems are written in a block of text; there are no real breaks or stanzas. Sort of a rush of consciousness, at least that’s my interpretation. As a result I get to make a lot of creative decisions as far as the break of the line.

How many of them do you plan to record?
I’m hoping on completing 10. And maybe even writing a severance poem of my own. My own decapitation in 240 words inspired by robert olen butler’s decapitation poem at the end of the book.

Out of Africa

Austin ER doctor Jeremy Gabrysch’s faith drives him to travel the world, helping the needy. He’s been to Haiti, Latin America, and South Sudan. He hopes to someday move to Sudan with his wife and their adopted son, and operate there for a spell.

Firestarter

Timber Timbre’s “Demon Host,” from Timber Timbre, in three sentences:

1) The church steeple will spear the fiercest of spirits.

2) A man and his guitar gently weep, until a piano and a chorus lift them up.

3) “Oh Lord, I must of heard you knock me out of bed,” begins the conversion, “As the flames licked my head/ And my lungs filled up black/ In that tiny little shack.”

“Demon Host”

The blues

Septuagenarian ol’ dirty bastard Andre Williams spent a recovery session writing Sweets, a short-story and poetry collection whose title story recalls The Wire. I talked with the man about fiction, women, and respect.

And then there was light

Yeasayer’s “Ambling Alp,” from Odd Blood, in three sentences:

1) Futurism through a rearview mirror.

2) Vulnerable falsettos, pitch-shifted bass notes that sound like cell-phone blips, and clangs of electropop in the key of reggae.

3) “You must stick up for yourself, son/Never mind what anybody else done” walks the line between refreshingly earnest and embarrassingly corny.

“Ambling Alp”

Jesus' son

Alan Graham, co-founder of the homeless-advocacy nonprofit Mobile Loaves & Fishes, has been hosting Street Retreats in Austin since 2003. The idea is to live like a homeless person for the weekend, while coming closer to God. Here’s my account.

Listen up

These are the ten albums I came across last year that I had in heaviest rotation. 1 Mother Nature. 2 Calculus. 3 American dream. 4 Skate or die. 5 Lovelorn. 6 Passive-aggressive. 7 One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. 8 Paganism. 9 Southern gothic. 10 Death.

Pain killers

Hear ye, hear ye! Another Great Depression is upon us. Let Fat Man and Little Boy ease your struggles with their Old, Weird America songs.

I swear, my last name really is Prophet

It took San Francisco slacker Chuck Prophet nine albums and a slew of collaborations to score the acclaim he deserves. His breakout, the killer ¡Let Freedom Ring!, was recorded at a $7-a-day studio in Mexico City during the height of the swine flu epidemic. Prophet rang in the New Year with cuts from that album last Saturday at the Continental Club, among them this one about a mostly silent assassin:

“Sonny Liston’s Blues”