Michael Perry's Blog, page 22
August 2, 2023
LIVESTREAM AVAILABLE: Michael Perry and the Long Beds at Big Top Chautauqua Sunday August 6, 2023 at 7:30 PM.
Michael Perry and the Long Beds are heading up to perform under the Big Blue Tent at Big Top Chautauqua Sunday August 6, 2023 at 7:30 PM.
Can’t make it up to the Big Blue Tent? The Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua folks are making the event available via livestream for $14.99. Click this link for more information. [NOTE: the livestream is under the care and direction of the Big Top, please contact them here with any technical/connection questions.]
This will be a fun one. The Big Top is a welcoming venue, and the Long Beds are a collection of top-notch players. Mike writes the songs and sings them, but his favorite parts of the show come when he can step back and let them rip.
Every Long Beds show is built on roughneck ballads and freight train rockers interspersed with hilarious off-the-cuff tales from Mike’s diverse experience as a Wisconsin farm kid turned cowboy turned nurse turned best-selling author. Michael Perry’s original songs are a direct reflection of his life experiences. Raised in rural Wisconsin by farmers, preachers, and tough country women, his songs reflect certain wisdoms available only from whistlers, frauds, and sinners. Ranging from straight-up twang to churchly harmonies and populated by characters drawn straight from rural and small-town America, they launch from places like the overpass outside Perry’s beloved hometown of New Auburn, Wisconsin, a gospel service in a granary, and the kitchen floor of a woman about to drop a world of hurt on her drunken husband.
To prepare for the show, have a listen to the band’s most recent singles:
“Forty Acres Deep” (same title as Mike’s new novella ) “Little Bird”
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August 1, 2023
Micahel Perry and the Long Beds at Big Top Chautauqua this Sunday August 6 at 7:30PM
A hot-shot crew of musicians and one special backup singer will be performing my songs up in that Bayfield-area Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua this weekend. I’ll be out front just trying to keep up. It’s a Sunday evening show so we’d sure enjoy your company. Can you hear that cat?
Get your tickets here.
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July 31, 2023
Still Sturgill
Wrote this spur of the moment Twitter flurry late last night after a long, good day:
This book. It just keeps quietly finding its way. I hoped it would go some way toward conveying what farmers are up against. What we’re all up against, in a sense. And that’s been happening. But I also wrote it to relive the love of why I loved writing in the first place. Go for poetry, go past the easy meat to the bone, set the jokes aside for a bit, risk overdoing it. Tell ya what helped…right when I thought I better not, folks might not go for it, I might lose a reader or two (and I have), I listened to Sturgill Simpson’s “Sound and Fury” over and over late one night. That was the tipping point. I was never cut out to be a so-called “badass” writer. I like doing what I call “cow jokes.” It’s fun to share laughter. I like writing 500 word bits that provide light relief. Toilet reading, if you like. But in the pandemic I was driven back to the late-night hammer sessions this all sprang from. Those days decades ago when I just wrote because I had to, not because it paid. Not because it sold. Out of that came this book. And how glad I am that I ignored the wishy-washy in me, that I just went ahead and hit repeat on Sturgill and got to typing. It’s late. G’nite. [EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s not late, it’s the next day, but y’know…] (photo by Lee Butterworth Photography)
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July 28, 2023
This Week’s Tent Show Radio: Steve Earle & The Dukes
Check out Mike (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: @SneezingCow) hosting Tent Show Radio (Twitter: @BigBlueTent). This week’s episode features Steve Earle & The Dukes (Twitter: @SteveEarle).
This week on Tent Show Radio, enjoy a high-voltage hour featuring the rough-neck poetics of troubadour Steve Earle and The Dukes. He has run a lot of roads and run ragged, but the singer-songwriter has never run out of things to say or songs to sing. Over the course of twenty studio albums, Earle has distinguished himself as a master storyteller, and his songs have been recorded by a vast array of artists, including Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, the Pretenders, and more.
Earle’s 1986 debut album, Guitar Town, is now regarded as a classic of the Americana genre, and subsequent releases like The Revolution Starts…Now (2004), Washington Square Serenade (2007), and TOWNES (2009) all of which received Grammy Awards.
This episode features recordings from Earle’s 2022 performance under the tent.
During intermission Michael Perry shares a humorous or heartfelt (or both) story drawn from his beloved books and offbeat life experiences.
Follow this link for all the available viewing options.
Stream it here along with other Tent Show Radio episodes.
Tent show Radio is broadcast each week on many fine independent stations, which can be found here: https://sneezingcow.com/ten-show-radio-stations/.
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July 25, 2023
Took a header off that oil rig in 1982. Tripped on the t...
Took a header off that oil rig in 1982. Tripped on the top step, woke up bleeding on the bottom step. Returned to the scene this weekend and discovered the incident has been immortalized by a historical marker. (Some say it’s just the well cap, but I’m the narrator here.)
The post appeared first on SneezingCow.com.
July 22, 2023
This Week’s Tent Show Radio: Charlie Parr and The Depot Jazz Quartet
Check out Mike (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter: @SneezingCow) hosting Tent Show Radio (Twitter: @BigBlueTent). This week’s episode features Charlie Parr (Twitter: @theCharlieParr) and The Depot Jazz Quartet.
Charlie Parr is an incorruptible outsider who writes novelistic, multi-layered stories that shine a kaleidoscopic light on defiant, unseen characters thriving in the shadows all around us. With a sound deeply tied to the blues and folk traditions of an earlier era, Parr has released 14 studio albums and tours the globe performing at legendary venues like Newport Folk Festival, The Kennedy Center, The Troubadour, and Bowery Ballroom. But he hasn’t moved to LA or Nashville; he’s stayed in the cold grey north of Minnesota, because that’s his home.
The Depot Jazz Quartet features legendary piano player Paul Ierino, John Thorene on bass, Rick Bruner on drums, and Randy Lee leads the group on various woodwinds. An accomplished musician, Randy Lee’s various professional bands and associations have found him accompanying artists including Wayne Newton, Riudus Reid, Paul McKee, and the Mills Brothers to name of few. Notably, he has performed and toured alongside legendary superstars of Motown the Four Tops and the Temptations.
This episode features recordings from both acts’ 2022 performances under the tent.
During intermission Michael Perry shares a humorous or heartfelt (or both) story drawn from his beloved books and offbeat life experiences.
Follow this link for all the available viewing options.
Stream it here along with other Tent Show Radio episodes.
Tent show Radio is broadcast each week on many fine independent stations, which can be found here: https://sneezingcow.com/ten-show-radio-stations/.
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July 17, 2023
New Episode of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail on Substack – Free to All
Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 168, is available to free and paid subscribers alike. You can listen by clicking this link.
Michael Perry’s Voice Mail is an audio and text mix of low-key news, notes, behind the scenes photos, and a “Roughneck Reflection” from New York Times bestselling author Michael Perry–think of it as a voice mail from a friend.
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Book Tour Laundry Memories
Did that book tour laundry post a couple days ago and now a reader’s comment reminds me I had completely forgotten (I’ve written a lot of things I’ve completely forgotten at this point) the opening lines of “Off Main Street“:
I am a stranger in a strange town, and the man standing beside me has just removed his pants. There are mitigating factors—he is well-kempt, we are in a Laundromat, and as a registered nurse I have seen this sort of thing before—but they fail to completely dissipate the tension inherent in sharing close quarters with a pantless stranger. I am in Seattle, on Day Seven of a paperback book tour that will have me on the road for twenty-nine of thirty-one days in October.
Always carry a little packet of laundry soap. And an extra pair of pants.
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July 16, 2023
Forty Fathoms Deep
Mike’s career has taken him all over the world from mountain tops to laundromats. Mike’s merch likes to travel the planet, as well, but it ain’t no landlubber. A big thank you to the fan who sent in this photo sporting a Peaceful Persistence t-shirt forty fathoms (we’re not really sure it was forty fathoms) deep.
You can grab your own merch here and send us a photo of where it ends up, be it right here in the great state of Wisconsin or Kathmandu.
See ya down the road,
Sneezing Cow Crew
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July 15, 2023
Exciting Old Books In the Mail Today
Discovered De Staël while reading an Emerson biography last week. Throw it into the brain mix, see what sticks.
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