Demeter and Persephone in Odessa, Missouri
1918-19221918
My momma said all she needed
after her man took off
was a sack of dried beans
and plenty of split wood under cover.Then I came squeezing through
the difficult dark, too sick to cry
and hot as rolled-up rags the midwife
had…
About the Book Title: Swing State Author: Michael T. Fournier Genre: Contemporary Fiction Number of Pages: 240 Synopsis: Swing State unveils the generally overlooked decades-long economic…
A nice review of “Swing State.” Thanks to Stacie at Beachbound!
Last Thursday I was on “The Attitude With Arnie Arneson” to promote my new novel. Here’s the podcast. I’m on right around minute 43.
Listen to The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen episodes free, on demand. Part One: Big Day for Dark Money in Politics…take note and it ain’t good Robert Maquire, dark money investigator opensecrets.org with the Center for Responsive Politics Part Two: Covering the Caucus: Prof Steffen Schmidt can’t make it today but filling in today is Professor Tim Hagle political expert on presidential politics from the University of Iowa Just to get a flavor of Iowa politics, READ THIS: http://www.beeherald.com/news/king-gays-%E2%80%98i-don%E2%80%99t-expect-meet-them-should-i-make-it-heaven%E2%80%99 Part Three: A conversation with NH author Michael Fournier about his new book: Swing State. The book unveils the generally overlooked decades-long economic downturn in the rural Northeast. Novelist Michael T. Founier lays bare the dim dreams and raw existence of the lives of three residents of Armbrister, New Hampshire The Attitude is recorded in Studio A at WNHN in Concord, NH. Follow us on Twitter: @pchowder (Arnie, host) @wnhnfm (station) @susanthe (producer). Listen to over 25,000 radio shows, podcasts and live radio stations for free on your iPhone, iPad, Android and PC. Discover the best of news, entertainment, comedy, sports and talk radio on demand with Stitcher Radio.
Congratulations to Michael T. Fournier on yesterday’s release of his fantastic second novel Swing State! Michael is the author of the 33 1/3 volume on The Minutemen's Double Nickel’s on the Dime (B…
Thanks to Ally Jane and all the fooks at 33 1/3/Bloomsbury for the love.
I’m selling copies of my new novel “Swing State” to raise funds for a 2015 U.S. tour. I’d be stoked if you could contribute.
Here’s the first review for my new novel “Swing State.” Whoah! thanks to Library Journal.
Concord: me and you.
Iris Records, 10/11/2014.
Black Wine
“Yell Boss” (Don Giovanni Records)
I just read “Doctor Sleep.” I still check in with Stephen King when his books materialize on the library’s new release shelf– this one finds the kid from “The Shining” struggling to overcome alcoholism as other demons, the supernatural kind, swirl around a psychic teen in a small New Hampshire town. I can safely file this tale in the “pretty good” column, not a book in which the protagonist winds up in a mystical, imagined land speaking a semi-phonetic language to vanquish a supernatural foe.
So yeah, Dan Torrance hits his rock bottom, and starts attending AA meetings. And there it is, plopped into an otherwise unassuming paragraph:
“He’d wake up thirsty and miserable—wanting—which wasn’t.”
Ol’ Steve has professed his love for punk rock many times over the years, but goddamn, Stephen King must be into Black Flag.
Pool-pissers everywhere might beg to differ, citing coincidence: after writing so many words, it’s a near-inevitability that the guy would say something, sometime, which sounded like something else. And that’s fine. I can see it. Maybe he managed to nail the chorus Dezzo (and, later, Hank) barked out so well because the lyrics draw from the particular well of human experience from which Stephen King has experienced, and so publically discussed. It’s possible.
But why would you want to warm up a pool like this? Goddammit, isn’t it more fun to think that it was an Easter egg dropped in there? Lord knows I do that sort of thing all the time – shades of blue, in my books, are bruise-colored; the biggest jerks are always names Richard Johnson. Nods, both.
“Yell Boss,” the new full-length by Black Wine, is a dynamic record, but not a record which relies solely on dynamics. Take “No Reason,” which starts off hammering down math for just long enough to trick you into thinking it’ll be a syncopated neck acher – and instead, a snaky lead as backdrop to drummer Miranda Taylor’s fuzzed vox. It’s a neat trick: the juxtaposition of parts and personalities winds up being more jarring and effectual than the intro duh-duh-duhduh threatens. Plus, you know, it rocks.
“Rime” trumps “No Reason” in terms of sheer whip-snapping oomph: the chug contained in the opening salvo “Komrades” is reprised, daring you to look up from your phone and headbang – to have fun, the way band obviously is, with their three-part vocal harmonies. Its heft gains velocity after propelling out of a weird, gentle feedback intro, vocals subdued and sing-songy, better suited to the nursery than the pit.
And to end the record, the tom-heavy verses of “Love Chain” form a backdrop for downright spooky Faith-era Cure guitar before the band gleefully pushes the atmosphere aside to bash out a kickass ascending two-ton figure. Then it ends. The song, the record. Over. Awesome.
I thought these cats were at the height of their craft even before the second-to-last song spun under the needle. Again: heavy, with great poppy vocals and Superchunk-y guitar leads straining through the din. Thing is, the prechorus rolled in, and a vocal line sent me back to age eight, driving around in the back of my parents’ Rabbit, listening to the radio. “No Time” – of course. The Guess Who. Bad rock critic!
But their cover, in my zillion subsequent listens, reinforces what I think is the overall point. The signifiers are all there, the little nods and full-throated howls to the band’s many influences. I remember the first time I saw them play, acoustic in a New Jersey basement—they played another song I know from driving around with my parents as a kid: “Windy,” by the Association. Of course, they nailed it.
Such is the way of Black Wine – each of the three band members brings their particular sonic palette and blueprint to the table, add their own contributions, sand off (or, to be fair, tack on) rough edges, and the alloyed final product is set loose. Sometimes the nods are there. And who the hell knows whether the bits that I’m hearing in there are intentional – maybe these cats don’t even like the Cure, you know? But I believe this band, and I trust them. And even if you’re peeing in my pool, telling me that they can’t possibly be as smart and musical and intentioned as I think, it’s more fun to believe. Especially now, when everyone is too worried about being cool and well-versed to actually like stuff. To be a fan. Fuck that. I’m in. And if you’ve got beef, I won’t invite you to listen to “Damaged” with me and Stephen King.
Michael T. Fournier
Cabildoquarterly.tumblr.com
Ten ten, Book Thug Nation.
Sho-do
The Way of CalligraphyThe testing of pens
must be my first work
today—which ones flowwith ink, which nibs leave
only faint scratches,
small hints on paper,which wait to be cleaned
since the last words jammed
in dried-up channels.Once words flooded in,
an unruly stream—
my pens now…
A Dream of Books #2, by DJ Frederick
The way it used to be is the way it still is, at least in the case of DJ Frederick. By ‘the way it used to be’ I mean a strong connection through shared interests, rather than a tertiary interest and ‘yeah, I (saw/read/heard) that’ about everything, every…
Three Rooms Press book release party: me, Ron Dakron and Richard Katrovas, 10/20 at Le Poisson Rouge. Get psyched!
ha!
July 10: Three Rooms Press invades Maine.
What’s your damage?
The artistic process is a driven one, and often, the driver is some trauma. The particular driver of Slint — the legendary Louisville quartet that spawned as many bands as it did hyphenated attempts at finding a genre to explain its particular brand of precise, lurching,…
Black River
Lying in the bathtub with the water on so it never
gets cold, this is where my thoughts go –
bridges, rivers, the sea, the bathtub in a pinch.
I didn’t watch It’s a Wonderful Life this year and have
my cry when the pharmacist boxes
his bad ear. My laugh when he piles on the…
Just in time for tomorrow’s reading is Cabildo Quarterly issue #6, early spring 2014. With new poetry by Bruce Pratt, David Lawton, Karen Lye-Neilsen, Kathleen Ellis and Leonore Hildebrandt, and new fiction by Jeffrey Schroeck.
Available for free in and around Belchertown and Pittsburgh, and/or from Issuu and .pdfcast.
