Michael Perry's Blog, page 7

Tony Gets it All in One Trip

Tony the merch manager getting it all in one trip!

If you’ve been to any of my hundreds of events over the past few years and bought a book or a T-shirt or even a Sneezing Cow can koozie, you’ve probably met Tony.

My whole deal is a weird little trip. Above all, I write. Hours and hours alone, writing. Books, mostly, essays, scripts, songs sometimes. But I’ve also developed this odd little public performer/speaker/rolling store niche that fits inside a 2002 Toyota Sienna but is nonetheless just a little too big for me to handle on my own.

And that’s where Tony comes in. He regularly does the driving so I can write on the move. He shows up when he says he’ll show up. He’s unfailingly polite and conscientious. He has a fascinating personal background and is thus a great conversation partner when the road gets long. He’s fine with a nice hotel room or a short-term couch. When we’re in some midwestern town all day and I have to hole up and write, he amuses himself.

Tony, folks. How fortunate I am to work with him.

P.S. He’s obsessed with keeping those book stacks all squared up, so don’t be putting things down off-kilter.

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New Band Photo, New Recordings, Hear The New Songs at The Pablo Center 1.25.25

New band photo!!!

Fresh off a recent recording session, which included three new songs, the Long Beds will be performing those songs, along with the classics, at The Pablo Center Saturday January 25th, 2025. Grab your tickets here.

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Full Moon Forty Acres Deep

When I walked outside to close things up last night the air was subzero still, the moon was bright even through clouds, this view the source of this scene:

Beneath the brightness of the moon, he followed them, wading until he hit the trough of their common tracks. The light was such that he could see the general shape of things, although in a color-blind way. The trail led through scrub and brush and into a pine copse so thick very little snow had fallen through to the understory, leaving instead a blanket of shed needles. He knew the deer had yarded here before. After a tough winter you could hardly see the needles for all the poop marbles. He knelt, and between the trunks he could see them all around him, silent and still save for the puffs of blued fog out their nostrils. Now and then one would flick an ear or stomp a forefoot, still spooked but loath to leave this sheltering space.

— From the novella Forty Acres Deep

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Join Us for New Long Beds Music

Holed up at Pine Hollow for three days working on three new Long Beds songs and shining up some of the standards. If you wanna know when the new stuff is finished and out there, please sign up on the mailing list or Mike’s Voice Mail Substack. If you want to hear those new songs live, they’re on the set list for our show at the Pablo in Eau Claire January 25. We’d sure enjoy sharing the evening with you. Meanwhile, Mike is back in his little room above the garage, typing, typing, typing.

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Michael Perry’s Voice Mail Episode #245 (Archive Dive #7): Firsthand Football

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 245. In honor of the final week of the NFL football regular season, this one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. To listen, click here.

In this episode I explain how the very first time I attended a professional football game, I was on the field with the team. As has often been the case with my career, I got there by coming at things from an angle.

And thank you for listening.

Forward!
Mike

Still waiting to be drafted…

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Tour Vans and Midwest Nice – Voice Mail Episode #243

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 243. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. If you enjoy the episode and want to get a couple free weeks on us, please email orders@sneezingcow.com.

Click here to listen.

In this episode I start out to wax poetic about my snow plow truck then detour into talking about my tour van instead. There is also a hubcap update.

The subject of today’s marginalia, the book Daughter in Retrograde (by Courtney Kersten), is available from BookShop.org and on Amazon. (Law requires me to let you know we catch a little commission if you order through those Amazon and BookShop links. Are we good, law?)

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School of Nursing, Class of ’87

UW-Eau Claire School of Nursing, Class of ’87. These folks and those four years have had a lasting and meaningful effect on my life despite my brief nursing practice (happy tangents arose). My one regret, besides that mustache? The Ricky Gervais pose.

 

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Never heard of ‘im

Never heard of ‘im.

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Michael Perry’s Voice Mail – Episode #242: Scavenging Dookie

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 242. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click here to listen.

Ten years ago I wrote a book called The Scavengers. Then I started the sequel. And then…well, as you’ll hear in today’s episode, some life came up. But I’ve kept pecking away at it, and am currently powering through, bound and determined to hand it in before my editor retires.

Also in this episode: A couple of sneak peeks into the sequel, including a passage written after I discovered the nickname I had quite innocently given one character had some other…connotations.

Lotsa photos and marginalia.

As ever, thank you for listening.

Forward,
Mike

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Made the Paper In Iowa

Countless times per year (well, I guess you could count’em, but I ain’t got the time) I climb in the ol’ 2002 Toyota van loaded with a bunch of boxes of books and CDs and T-shirts and can koozies and whatnot and mailing list signup sheets (and here the past couple of years as things have slowly gotten mildly out of hand, the man who helps me keep track of it all on the road, our merchandise manager Tony) and I drive some place to meet a bunch of strangers–some who know me, some who don’t–and tell them some of the old favorite stories, and some new ones, and sometimes in the instant something off the cuff like improv–and when the evening is over we feel like we’re not so alone in the world, and man is it ever worth it.

Did this a couple weeks ago in Knoxville, Iowa, and Marshalltown, Iowa, and a reporter from The Times-Republican took the time to attend and do a great little write-up, which you can read here.

There’s a lotta ways to do this thing, and they ain’t all on Instagram.*

Almost 60 and still looking like the kindergartner showing off his three-legged cat drawing.

Me and Tony at a gig in South Dakota taking a selfie next to a hail-riddled Ford Flex for our ongoing “toaster” collection (some will understand).

*I mean, we do have an Instagram.

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