My Chapbooks Are Not Albums But They Want To Be

This week, my very-talented, guitar-god little cousin invited me to an ensemble concert at Berklee College of Music. It was her final performance for a class, a graded exercise, and I was honored to be the only guest, a fly on the wall in this laboratory of great music.

I saw a Hendrix cover-band that leaned into Willie Dixon, a jazz-rock group (my cousin shredded Santana, Steely Dan AND Ornette Coleman), and a pop soul-soul group that opened with Sade. Heaven.

After one of the sets, a student drummer who had just played his heart out turned to his bassist and said, “We gotta talk about that set list.” He didn’t like something about it. I wish I knew what bothered him. I thought about it all the way home. I’m still so curious.

I love set lists, the art of creating relationships between disparate pieces, the opportunity to set a tone that gains meaning and depth from song to song.

I love set lists, which means I love albums. Old school records. Ten to twelve cuts. The arc and narrative of the best. The mad scientist obsessiveness of choosing the right fourth song on Side B. (“Fuck it! We need a rocker!”)

Abbey Road A Love Supreme Blood on the Tracks Kind of Blue Nebraska Violator Achtung Baby What’s Going On London Calling Innervisions Mule Variations Death of a Ladies Man Station to Station Darkness of the Edge of Town Tijuana Moods…

I thought about that drummer all the way home and I realized something. (It was a long drive home.) The album is the unit for my own work too…at least for my little books. I publish self-contained poems in journals. I’ve written novels. A novella. I love to write short stories. But my little chapbooks are like albums. That’s really the model in my head. Initially I thought of them as mix-tapes…which are a lot like albums and should follow the same rules (yes Nick Hornby)…but more often than not I find myself writing to the needs of the whole, deliberately echoing poetic fragments from section to section, and not just compiling previously-written material.

So maybe that’s what I am in the end: a frustrated guitarist with limited musical skills who is still trying to write a great record. I can’t decide if that’s a worthy or a futile goal for a middle aged man…but it may help explain my work.

Check out johntessitore.com and judge for yourself.