Tag: dylan thomas

BGS 5+5: Patrick Park

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Artist: Patrick Park
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Latest album: Here/Gone
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Double P, P Diddy, Paddy P

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

My favorite memory being on stage would have to be getting to play at Red Rocks. I grew up in that little town in Colorado and literally looked up the mountain at Red Rocks every single day and could hear the concerts from my room. In high school my friends and I would hike up the hill in the dark and scale the walls to sneak into shows there at least once a week during the summer. So being on the other side, being on that stage and getting to play there was almost like an out-of-body experience.

What was the first moment that you realized that you wanted to be a musician?

There were so many moments, but one that stands out was when I was probably 8 or 9. I had a guitar teacher briefly in grade school who had a cover band that had a standing gig a few nights a week at dive bar somewhere out in east Denver. Every now and again he would have a night where some of his students got to come up and play a couple songs with his band. I remember I played “Taxman” by the Beatles and “Panama” by Van Halen. Hahaha! We played to basically my parents, the bartender, and a couple regulars, but it was so fun! He let me take the guitar solos, and I remember thinking I would do it every day if I could.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career what would it be?

Working to understand my true self through music, so as to be less reactive in a reactive world and better serve others.

What is the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

There have been so many tough ones hahaha! Writing is an exercise in letting go as much as it is anything else. For example it becomes difficult anytime I find I am stubbornly clinging to an idea that I want to work but doesn’t. Songs have their own momentum. It’s when you try to control that in some way, or try to force it in a direction that it doesn’t want to go, that you feel stuck. Our lives are the same. One that I especially remember being hard to crack was a song on my third record called “Silence And Storm.” I probably worked on it for six months.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Literature probably has influenced my songwriting more than any other art forms aside from music. Dylan Thomas was really inspirational to me early on. How he often used words in ways they weren’t necessarily intended to paint a picture or express a feeling. Rainer Maria Rilke, the way his words implied and circled around something inexpressible to words, but who presence was felt in the spaces.

Photo credit: Mia Kirby

BGS 5+5: Simon Patrick Kerr

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Artist: Simon Patrick Kerr
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest album: Doldrums
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): The Potato King. I love all potato dishes. Mainly french fries. My friend’s always give me a hard time over my love for potatoes. It’s an Irish thing I guess?

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Neil Young. I’ve always loved how diverse his music was. He could go from cranking up his Fender tweeds until they’re about to blow or he could bring it down to just him & an acoustic. Harvest was my first introduction to Neil. My 14-year-old mind was blown when I heard The Needle and the Damage Done. That record made me want to write songs.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I’ve always loved literature. Dylan Thomas, Oscar Wilde, Seamus Heaney. More recently, I’ve started diving into a lot of American authors. In particular, Charles Bukowski. His one-liners are incredible, but the thing I love about his style is that it’s so conversational. I’ve always tried to approach my songwriting in a conversational manor. Sometimes I achieve it. Sometimes I don’t. That’s writing for ya! You never know what you’re going to get when you sit down to write. I used to wait for inspiration, but I’ve quickly realized that it’s more dedication than inspiration. You’ve gotta be dedicated to your craft & put the time in. It’s a grind, man.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I’d have to say watching my Dad open a run of show’s for John Prine in Ireland. I was only 6 or 7, but I still remember it vividly. The music bug definitely rubbed off on me since I’ve been around it my entire life. Once you catch the music bug it never let’s go.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

There’s a park in Nashville called Radnor Lake that I like to go to, and it’s walking distance from my house. Usually when I’m stuck on a song I’ll walk around Radnor to clear my mind. It seems to help most of the time. It’s an oasis in the middle of a congested city. My dog, Dylan, loves it too.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I would have loved to have eaten lunch with Elliott Smith at Taj, which is my favorite Indian restaurant in Nashville. I like to think of him as the modern Neil Young. His songs were so well-crafted. Lyrically dark & beautiful. In my eyes (and ears), Elliott’s album XO is the perfect record. Also, the Bhindi Masala at Taj will blow your socks off.

I’m going to break the rules here a little & choose a second musician. I’d like to share a plate of Prince’s Hot Chicken with Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. He is one of the sharpest lyricists in the game at the moment & I’ll defend that statement until the cows come home. Listen to how clean the lyrics are on the newest record, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. In particular, the title track. If you’re reading this Alex – let’s write a song!

Photo by Laura E. Partain

Guy Clark, ‘Just to Watch Maria Dance’

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This year, by so many accounts, was a terrible year. From the complete atrocities in Aleppo, to the never-ending police brutalities, to the election of Donald Trump, it's often felt like one disaster after another with no sign of stopping soon. In times of trouble, it's always helped to look to our idols for guidance — particularly in music, for me, at least — which is another way that 2016 was just so damn awful: So many of those very people passed away. Prince. David Bowie. Merle Haggard. Leonard Cohen. Phife Dawg. When the world starts to slide into the ocean like a sand castle that seemed so safe from its waves, these legends always present a certain sense of consistent solace and, once they started to disappear, it seemed like nothing, and no one, was safe.

It's impossible and irresponsible to rank the value of any one departed soul over another, but one of the losses I grieved the hardest was Guy Clark, who died in May. I was quite pregnant at the time with my second baby, and the onslaught of hormones left me staring at the computer screen in shock, tears joining with remnants of last night's mascara and forming trail-maps down my cheeks. Clark's words had always served not only as the basis of his beautiful music, but as something aspirational — even a journalist can take a lesson from the way his lyrics evoke a scene, the way he picked up on the smallest detail or nuance of human emotion. Should he have wanted to, he would have made a world-class reporter.

The last time I saw Clark, in the basement of his home for an interview, I was actually pregnant with my first child. I'd asked him before leaving if he had any advice to me as a new parent — if he knew how I could assure he'd grow up as curious about the world and the art it contains as he was. He said, simply, "Read him Dylan Thomas and play him Woody Guthrie." I took the advice to heart. A few years later, when my daughter was born three months after Clark's death, we named her Dylan. It just seemed a fitting thing to do, and a permanent reminder.

The amazing gift of such prolific minds as Clark's is that, even once they pass, there is often more music hiding in tapes and basements and hard drives, and such is the case with Guy Clark: The Best of the Dualtone Years, out in March. While most of the collection focuses on his work from the last decade of his life that had already made its way onto other records, there are a few unreleased treasures, too. One such song is "Just to Watch Maria Dance," written with Lady Goodman (aka Holly Gleason), included in a demo version. Clark was never one for artifice or studio polish, so his demos sound quite similar to anything mastered up — here, his vocals perhaps just a touch more ragged and the plucking perhaps a little more stiff, like a pair of his signature denim jeans just a hair short of worn-in.

"Empty threats and no regrets, it's time for moving on," he sings. The words are new, but the voice as familiar as ever, even though Clark has now moved on for good. This may have been a terrible year, but little treasures like this add glitter to the darkness, and true gifts, like a daughter who will never forget to read Dylan Thomas, make it still worth living.

7 Great Holiday Reads

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The holidays are an overwhelming time for everyone. There's too much to get done, too many people to see, and too many relatives running around asking when you're finally going to settle down and get married already. That makes the holiday season the perfect time to curl up (or hide out) with a good book. So, we've rounded up seven of our favorite holiday-themed reads, from Dylan Thomas's sentimental recollection of his own childhood Christmases to David Sedaris's less sentimental essays on his holiday experiences over the years. Go find a spare guest room in grandma's house and get to readin'!

A Child's Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was 12 or whether it snowed for 12 days and 12 nights when I was six.”

A perfect Christmas Eve read, A Child's Christmas in Wales is Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's ode to Christmases past. Originally written for a radio broadcast, the piece imagines the holiday through the eyes of a child, a beautifully rendered portrait that will have even the Scroogiest among us singing yuletide carols. 

A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote

“It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.”

Though Truman Capote is best known for darker works like In Cold Blood, his recollection of Christmas in Alabama is a holiday classic, at once sad and uplifting, much like the holiday season itself.

The Ecco Book of Christmas Stories, Alberto Manguel (Editor)

"Of all the millions of people in New York, I am practically the only one who has to get up in the cold black of 6 am on Christmas Day in the morning." — "Christmas Is a Sad Season for the Poor," John Cheever

Ann Beattie, Grace Paley, John Cheever … need we really say more? This is the definitive colleciton of holiday-themed short stories, offering a diverse set of perspectives on the trials and tribulations of the holiday season.

Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris

“The only bright spot in the entire evening was the presence of Kevin 'Tubby' Matchwell, the 11-year-old porker who tackled the role of Santa with a beguiling authenticity. The false beard tended to muffle his speech, but they could hear his chafing thighs all the way to the North Pole.”

Most of us will need a good laugh during the holidays, and no one delivers a humorous essay better than David Sedaris. And, while Sedaris can venture into darker territory, you're guaranteed to be laughing through your tears. 

The Twelve Terrors of Christmas, John Updike

"1. Santa: The Man. Loose-fitting nylon beard, fake optical twinkle, cheap red suit, funny rummy smell when you sit on his lap. If he's such a big shot, why is he drawing unemployment for 11 months of the year? Something scary and off-key about him, like one of those Stephen King clowns . . .

John Updike and illustrator Edward Gorey are an odd couple, if we've ever seen one, but their collaborative book of Christmas vignettes is a treat to both the eyes and the mind, and is great for kids and adults alike. 

The Faber Book of Christmas, Simon Rae (Editor)

"At Christmas, little children sing and merry bells jingle / The cold winter air makes our hands and faces tingle / And happy families go to church and cheerily they mingle / And the whole business is unbelievably dreadful, if you're single." — "A Christmas Poem," Wendy Cope

Regardless of your feelings about Christmas, this anthology of poems, essays, stories, and history has something for you. You'll learn, laugh, loathe, and love, all in the span of 448 pages.

The Nightmare Before Christmas, Tim Burton

“And I, Jack, the Pumpkin King, have grown so tired of the same old thing …”

It wouldn't be Christmas without Jack the Pumpkin King and his journey to Christmas Town. Best enjoyed with a complementary viewing of the film.

Lede photo credit: Hernan Piñera via Foter.com / CC BY-SA