500 Miles to Nashville and Dream Country

Tennessee writer Jesse Hill Ford is most famous for his novel The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones which dealt with racial issues in the South. Once in a discussion during a workshop I attended, Ford discussed writing and the types of fiction we in the workshop were experimenting with. Ford advised us to (1) write what we enjoy reading, (2) keep the narrative flowing, (3) create believable characters, and (4) not only put our heroes up a tree but throw rocks at them. It was good advice. And that's what I try to do in my mystery novels. 


Many successful contemporary mystery novels have some sort of angle to set them apart from others in the genre, a sleuth who’s odd or different, or perhaps a specialized setting. I’m working both of these angles. My setting is Nashville, more specifically the country music industry. At present, I’m writing about two sleuths, Joe Rose and Dilly Renfro, and both have certain peculiarities that make them different from other investigators.

Joe Rose, who moonlights as a traditional private eye, is a professional guitarist, but he also works as a sideman on Nashville record sessions. His work as a side guitarist gives him an insider’s perspective on many of the stars and the industry itself, but also adds a dimension to his character. Rose, who’s the narrator in my first novel, Blood Country, is a big, rough and tumble guy with a smart mouth. He's quick to anger and has a problem controlling his violent tendencies. Rose is fictional but if he lived, physically he'd look a little bit like the ex pro football player and sports analyst Howie Long. 


But there's more to Rose than the tough guy exterior, he shows patience when dealing with his clients and has an unswerving loyalty to them. He's also a skilled and accomplished guitarist and his music artistry shows his sensitivity. 

My latest central character or heroine, Dilly Renfro, is featured in my latest novel, Dream Country. She is the daughter of a rich and legendary country singer, Doyle Renfro, as big a star in his day as Eddy Arnold. Dilly was shot in the head by a robber in a mini-market holdup a year ago which has led to some interesting changes in her life. She has become more assertive, admitted to her family she’s a lesbian, and, most importantly, discovered she has precognitive dreams. Besides using her dreams to find her half-sister’s killer, she hires attorney Harry Hardin and Private Investigator Joe Rose to help in her quest.

She too is of course fictional, but I imagine that she would look a lot like the young woman on the cover of Dream Country if she were real. That's one reason I selected this picture for the cover. Check her out in the cover pic in the right column. 

Why Nashville, why country music? In it's original and traditional forms, it's a music that is "of the people." After laboring in the hot sun all day, families in the south would sit on their porches or out under a shade tree and make music. They played stringed instruments--guitars, fiddles, banjos, and mandolins. Some of it was music they had heard their mothers and fathers sing, but there was definitely nothing commercial about it at first. Just people expressing themselves in song. And then the world heard the Carter family, Ernest V. Stoneman, and Jimmy Rodgers on records, and an industry was born. Today, people from Japan, to Germany, to Canada, to California, to Tony, Alabama, listen to and enjoy this music.


Country music deals with basic and universal human issues, that 's why it speaks to and for people around the world, as in this great song by Bobby Bare, "500 Miles Away from Home."

Another reason I like the music is that I’m a Nashville native and I grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry and Country Music on the radio. I’m not directly connected to the country music business, but I have friends who are song writers and producers. I also know three or four chords on my old Silvertone flattop (I think knowing a few guitar chords is the law in these parts). And I’ve written a song or two, just for fun and my own entertainment. 


One of my students back in the day was a session musician, and he arranged for my wife and I to cut a demo of my songs in the famous Woodland Studio, where artists as diverse as Robert Plant, Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, and Gordon Lightfoot have recorded through the years. It was late night, off the books, and the musicians were paid with a case of beer. We had a blast. And now, several years later, I've found a use for a couple of these old songs in my first two mystery novels. Funny how things you forget about still pop up from time to time and reveal themselves to be most useful.

Let the Mystery Be: Iris DeMent

Have you ever missed out on something really good?

I have. Plenty of times. But this is clearly, one very special case.

I wonder...

How could it have happened? What else was so danged important in 1993? Where was I? What was I doing?What other mistakes was I mistaking at the time?

Almost two decades have passed. Why didn't I hear it somewhere, at a friend's house, on the radio, somewhere?

It's only a song.

Only a song, you say.

No. It's more than that. It's my song.

No, I didn't write it.

Iris DeMent did.

I wish I had written it. It speaks to me, for me. It speaks my mind. It's my song.

It's a song that reflects part of my (work in progress) soul.

A song that simply, eloquently nails the point --  the one I've been trying to make or discover for probably 50 years -- to the wall.

A song that now I've heard, tonight, for the first time, I won't ever forget.

Don't say, "better late than never."

I really don't want to hear that.

Not right now.

I'd much rather hear the song again. "Let the Mystery Be" by Iris DeMent.

Let the Mystery Be by Iris DeMent
(Lyrics copied from Cowboy Lyrics site)


Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Some say once you're gone you're gone forever, and some say you're gonna come back.
Some say you rest in the arms of the Saviour if in sinful ways you lack.
Some say that they're comin' back in a garden, bunch of carrots and little sweet peas.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Instrumental break.

Some say they're goin' to a place called Glory and I ain't saying it ain't a fact.
But I've heard that I'm on the road to purgatory and I don't like the sound of that.
Well, I believe in love and I live my life accordingly.
But I choose to let the mystery be.

Everybody's wonderin' what and where they all came from.
Everybody's worryin' 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.
But no one knows for certain and so it's all the same to me.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.
I think I'll just let the mystery be.

Rank Stranger

Have you ever been back to the town where you were born and lived for awhile as a child, say from birth to your 7th or 8th year? Back to the place where you were in the early dawn of your youth?

What a strange feeling it is.

Because you've grown up and your perspective has changed, everything that once looked so big, is now much smaller. And, since fifty or sixty years have passed, everything is different.

You remember the funniest things.

There's the little frame house on Richland you lived in back in the '40s. It was raining and you sat on the porch swing playing a cardboard horse race game where you spun a little needle around and you moved each horse piece accordingly. Citation always seemed to win. You can still smell the clean rain and hear the soft rumble of summer thunder.

Out on Main, there's another old house you remember. You were sitting astride your bike back in 1945 when Jerry's Mom came out of the house crying and said the war was over. You'd never seen anyone cry because they were happy before. The old house still stands, but its paint is peeling and the porch sags.

The highway bridge on Main, right by the shirt factory hasn't changed. The thick concrete top rail is still rough to your hand, but you have to bend down now to see between the short concrete cylinders supporting it. The creek looks smaller than it did in the '40s. You remember that you and Kenneth sometimes slipped under the metal rail at the edge of the bridge, climbed down the rocks, and walked on the smooth brown stones to a spot under the bridge where you could see the crawdads and minnows swimming in the shallow water.

Uptown now, on the square, there's the old insurance office where your Aunt Lellye used to work. You spent a few afternoons in there spinning around on her wooden lean back desk chair, watching the ceiling fans, or watching Mr. Smith play with his straw boater hat. He was a skinny guy who wore seersucker suits and bow ties and made you laugh.

The little wooden bandstand in the center of the square is gone now and probably forgotten. That was where they had a radio set up back in 1948 and you and your grandma were in the crowd listening as the presidential election returns came in. You remember the smell of cigars and cigarettes. The crowd seemed happy, yet quiet, listening carefully to the words on the radio. Occasionally, when the radio announcer said something, a few people would clap or cheer or sometimes laugh.

Scott's drugstore where you drank your first milkshake stands empty now, its brick facade faded and worn. Blind Mr. Adams' little market where you sometimes bought Double Bubble or Super Bubble gum was torn down long ago.

All of the older people have passed away, and the young ones you knew moved on long ago. If you see someone on the street or perhaps you stop in a store for a coke, the people look strange, you don't recognize anyone. And they look at you the same way, like you're a complete and utter outsider, a stranger, a rank stranger.

Guitar Lust and Fiction Love

I may have written a post about my guitar before. But I'm too lazy to check this, and I have CRS anyway, so it's possible that this first part of the post is redundant. If I've told you this before, bear with me. I own a Silvertone 1220 jumbo flat top guitar, manufactured for Sears by the Harmony corporation. My wife Joyce gave it to me as a birthday gift back in 1968 when I was 28 years old.

I think my old Silvertone cost about $69 or $70 when new. It's in pretty good shape for its age and for all the rough treatment it has received over the years from grandkids, cast party participants, etc. I don't have a good picture of it, but here's one that looks just like it, color, pickguard, bridge, nut, tuning pegs, and everything else as well.

I'm absolutely not an accomplished guitarist. I just make the basic 5 or 6 chords and can pick out a few (very few) melodies. But I've really enjoyed this old acoustic AXE over the years. It increased my love of music and in particular helped grow my love of (and lust for) all guitars. My old Silvertone led me to appreciate the fine quality and workmanship of factory made instruments like Martin and Gibson, and those smaller independent operations like Forbus Hand Made Guitars for example, whose shop is in Belfast, Tennessee, about 70 miles from Nashville. Follow the link and take a look at some of John Forbus' creations.

One of my other passions is reading fiction.

Since I was about ten years old, I've loved to read, especially fiction. That year my uncle Sid gave me a copy of the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I was hooked. I began to read other stories about baseball players and cowboys and soldiers. By the time I was twelve or thirteen, I was totally immersed in Science Fiction, particularly the juvenile stories of Robert Heinlein, such as Space Cadet and Time for the Stars. I liked Asimov too, and Clarke, and anyone else who could spin a good yarn.

 I began trying to write fiction myself in the '80s and finished a couple of manuscripts, one spy thriller and a mystery. The spy novel was at first conditionally accepted by Zebra but then three months later, the imprint was taken over by another publisher and my manuscript was returned. Que sera.

I finished some other mystery manuscripts in the '90s and when I retired, began and finished a couple of political satires (one of those was Liberalstein). After that I spent several months revising the manuscript that became Blood Country.

When I put together Blood Country, I made use my love of guitars. I gave my musician characters guitars that I couldn't afford but had heard or read about. Fiction works that way for the reader and the writer. A writer imagines something and it becomes semi real for him and for the reader. In a story you can go anywhere and do anything--even own and play some very expensive guitars.

To start with, the cover of Blood Country features a classic Gibson SG solid body electric guitar. (That's a picture of a Gibson SG below and if you look over to the left column near the top you'll see a picture of the book cover.) Even though the novel is set in Nashville and its country music industry, the SG is usually associated with rock musicians.

But I loved the shape of the guitar and I found an image that I felt meshed really well with my cover color scheme. As you can see, my cover SG is a black one with special gold humbucker pickups, gold knobs, and gold fret inlays up the neck. The background color of the cover is red and the main title letters are gold outlined in black. The subtitle, A Nashville Sideman Mystery, is in black. I believe a cover image and title should tell the reader at a glance what the book is about. What do you think, does the Blood Country cover work in that way?

There are some other guitars in the book as well. My private eye, Joe Rose, is also a guitar sideman. He owns several guitars but the one he uses in several scenes is an old 1940 Martin D-18. Why a '40 model? It's kinda silly but 1940 was the year I was born. Maybe my hidden motive was to suggest that something made in 1940 could still make good music, or in my case, a good mystery novel.

An old Martin like this is also probably way too expensive for me, but it's not too much of an investment for a pro sideman. By having Rose own and use it, I get to vicariously enjoy it myself.

Here's a You Tube video of a guy playing a 1940 Martin D-18, like the one I imagined Joe Rose would play in my novel. Notice that though the color is different, the shape and pick guard look a lot like my old Silvertone. The video guy is a pretty danged good picker too.

One of the main characters in the book is Vern Hamlin, a super star country guitarist, songwriter, and publisher. At one point he's playing on a Gibson Dove flattop. He tells Rose that it's one of many guitars that he owns but this one is extra special in that it was once owned and played by Elvis. Never in my wildest dreams could I own a guitar Elvis owned. But in the novel I get to do that vicariously again through Hamlin. It's pretty easy to imagine a character like Hamlin, whose superstar status has made him very rich, not only owning the Elvis Dove, but playing the hell out of it.

There are some nice pictures of the Elvis Gibson Dove guitar here but image downloading at the site was blocked which prevented me from putting in a picture of the guitar I had in mind for Vern. So, I found this You Tube video of a guy playing Japanese manufacturer Aspen's copy of the Gibson Dove. This one is the Aspen Dove DH32. It looks almost exactly like Elvis' Gibson and the guy playing it makes it ring like a bell. Listen closely and you'll hear a little "House of the Rising Sun" creep in there.

I have lust in my heart for these fine guitars (even the Aspen copy). But this stuff is kinda like a marriage to me. I'm still happily bound and committed to my old Silvertone 1220.

By the way...I'm still selling the Kindle edition of Blood Country for $.99. You can also buy a paperback copy for $17.95.

Click on the copy of the book near the top of the left column and you'll be linked to my amazon page where you can choose either the Kindle or the paper copy of Blood Country.

Old Country Drinking Songs: The Alcohol of Fame

You push through the door and head toward the bar. The light is low and warm and the bottles look like little gods of forgiveness on the glass shelf. There's a pungent smokey smell in the air and you see a guy sitting alone at the end of the bar who's bent over his drink. A half smoked cigar rests in the ashtray in front of him and smoke curls up toward the ceiling. Two men at a table behind you suck on their brown beer bottles like a baby sucks his mother's milk.

You order a shot of whiskey and a beer and sit there thinking about her. How many months have passed now, how many years? And still her face. The bitch. What'd she have to go and do that to you for? It was all her damn fault.

There's the sound of change being fed into the jukebox on the side wall. A guy makes his selections slowly, deliberately, like the fate of the entire world hangs in the balance. After an eternity, the music starts.

But you ain't in a hurry, you're just gonna sit here and drink.

You tap the bar by your shot glass and the bartender pours. You remember that night. Her face pops up now into your consciousness like the triangular fortune on one of those black eight balls you had as a child. Her face, your fortune forever, says, "no, not now, not ever." That was the night she couldn't take any more.

It's as clear in your mind as yesterday or clearer since you can't remember yesterday at all. The clock on the dash of your old Ford said four a.m. The bars had all finally closed. You leaned forward and put your head on the steering wheel. The horn blew. Lights went on across the street at the Johnsons. Yeah. You were home drunk again.

 
You tap the bar again and the bartender gives you another. You toss it back and take another hit on the beer. A woman comes in, a redhead. Her dress is a pale green and it hangs on her skinny frame like a faded and worn out tent. She's in her late forties and her wrinkled face looks like the saddest map you've ever tried to read. She sits at a table in the corner, lights a cigarette, and orders a bottle of cheap wine.

You throw back another shot and wipe your mouth with your sleeve. Then you think about the pint you had earlier. Was that at lunch or later in the afternoon? Or was it just before you came in here? You're not sure. Hell. Maybe you've already passed the Pint of No Return.

You kill the rest of the beer. You look around. The place is empty. Bartender stops polishing a glas and points to his watch. Yeah, you think, I could be that guy, they oughtta put me in the "Alcohol of Fame."

Lonestar Blues

Here's a good one for whatever ails you. Lubbock, TX native Delbert McClinton and Lonestar Blues.

Death and the Purple Robe

In the sophomore literature classes I taught, we used to read a play called Everyman. This play, from the late 15th century in England, is categorized by scholars as an allegorical morality play, a play that uses personifications to teach a lesson about life. A morality play is in effect a dramatized sermon with the purpose of getting Christians to live their life in a moral manner that will ensure their salvation. Though it sounds foreboding and a bit morbid, the play actually has quite a bit of humor.

This link will lead you to a good study guide if you want to get the complete plot and other information.

In the beginning of Everyman, the central character, Everyman (that would be all of us at some point in our lives), is confronted by a mysterious character named Death who basically says, it's time for you to come with me (die). Everyman is allowed some brief time to get anyone he can to go along with him. He asks his friends, his relatives, and his material goods to go with him. When they discover where he's going they all offer excuses, some of which are lol funny. In the end, only Everyman's Good Deeds will accompany him on his final journey.

The personification of Death is a technique that's been used in other literary and musical works. One of my favorite bluegrass songs is Ralph Stanley's "O Death," in which the singer (Stanley does it A capella) directly addresses Death, who has come for him. Like Everyman, the singer-narrator in this song tries to talk his way out of Death's invitation. The song gained a larger audience after Stanley performed it in the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?).

Gospel has been a significant part of bluegrass music from its origins. The Stanley Brothers (Ralph and his brother Carter) had many excellent ones in their repertoire, including "Rank Strangers," "In Heaven We'll Never Grow Old," and "Angel Band." This tune is by Odell McLeod and is called "Purple Robe." It describes the scene from the Bible where Jesus is falsely accused and brought to trial before Pontius Pilate.

The focus in the song is on the inhumanity of the mob and the suffering and innocence of the accused. I first heard this song on The Vanderbilt University radio station back in the early '80s (they had a bluegrass show on Sunday afternoons at the time) and spent a few of those pre-internet days trying to learn the chords on my guitar. I really like the fine, clear guitar picking on this one, as well as the great harmonies (that mix of the high tenor and the resonating bass voice is simply outstanding).