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The Midwest Book of the Dead

by Wes Tirey

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  • Chapbook and Double Cassette Bundle
    Cassette + Digital Album

    The Midwest Book of the Dead in book form with companion audiobook/VHS style Double Cassette. Artwork and layout by Jon Samuels

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    Digipack Lite Gatefold Double CD. Artwork and Layout by Jon Samuels

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1.
Red corn, yellow corn Red corn, yellow corn Golden grain, summer storm See the summer storm Red corn, yellow corn Red corn, yellow corn Tractor wheel, bramble thorn Behold the bramble thorn The eye, the heart, the hand At last, the lay of the land Red corn, yellow corn Red corn, yellow corn Purple light, a child is born Finally, a child is born Red corn, yellow corn Red corn, yellow corn Coonskin cap, bugle horn Hear the bugle horn The eye, the heart, the hand At last, the lay of the land
2.
Skinny Arms 02:56
I feel good I like the houses In my quiet neighborhood Winter’s ghost People in their gloves And scarves and coats Your skinny arms Matchbook dreams The comfort of The pool hall serene Cigarettes Cum on your chin And your dress Your skinny arms
3.
Silos stand like chapels Chapels stand like graves Graves stand like corn Corn stands like waves Blue heron in my mind’s eye Stray dogs in my dreams Hard rust in my lifeline Sawdust in my seams O prairie passion! O country comedy! Bang the drum slowly! Til glory rings! Factories stand like monuments Monuments stand like trees Trees stand like ghosts Ghosts stand like me Crawdads in the creekbed Spiders in the cane God’s harvest slowly On a Norfolk Southern train O prairie passion! O country comedy! Bang the drum slowly! Til glory rings!
4.
Eighteen wheels Crooked cross on the county line The days are dark The dogs are hungry all the time River roll Like a monster on its path Past the steel And concrete aftermath Some live hard and fast Some live light and loose If love conquers all Then show me the proof Blood moon Bleeds upon the birds of prey The icy night Reflected in the huntsman’s gaze Fever dream Life lived on the run Sorrow abounds For your first born and seventh son There is honor among the righteous There is honor among thieves If love is blind Then let me see
5.
The final words of winter The first whispers of spring The blues from start to finish Life on silent wings The strong eyes of a brother The soft voice of a friend The sweet song of the sirens Where the wild waters bend Make your life a testament Make your word a sacrament Make your love a monument And rise, with everything to show Strong and comely as a colt If that water’s perfect I’m never getting out Gonna live with the frogs And the rainbow trout Somewhere there is a city In a valley full of peace With a window in the tower And a hill with wild geese Make your life a testament Make your word a sacrament Make your love a monument And rise, with everything to show Strong and comely as a colt
6.
7.
I could live as a drunkard I could live as a saint In a house disheveled In a house so quaint With riches flowing And statues built A house of brick A house on stilts No thirst Beauty ringing Flowers burst Forever singing
8.
Camel lights and whiskey sours I’m always early for happy hour Three down, one more to burn Staring at the wall for the clock to turn Life is good, life is sweet Gotta woman in Brooklyn, got one in Santa Fe Gotta woman in Dayton, she left today New Orleans is where Winonna lives I tried to visit but my car wouldn’t make the trip Life is good, life is sweet Bacon grease, egg in a hole Bread and butter can be good for the soul The day is done, the twilight’s died —I’m satisfied Life is good, life is sweet
9.
He rode through fields Of red and yellow corn Followed by hellish dreams And the coming summer storm He wore a silk bandana And a rose on his lapel And slept by wild brambles And the singing river’s spell O the wild blue yonder Son of the song The river’s wide And the road is long She rode side saddle With the medicine woman’s map She rode side saddle With a dulcimer in her lap She wore a scarlet dress Draped with feathers and furs With perfume on her breasts And crystals on her spurs O the wild blue yonder Daughter of spring Follow earth’s wonder Listen to it sing
10.
Fugitive 03:55
Arizona, in the summer Searching for my children’s mother Gin & tonics, turquoise rings What I’d do to hear you sing Fugitive, fugitive Oh, my green-eyed fugitive Warm hand, inner thigh Honeybabe, sweetie pie Baby, shut up—would you please Be quiet, please be quiet please Fugitive, fugitive Oh, my green-eyed fugitive Diet Coke & Nicorette Let me remember Let me forget Fugitive, fugitive Oh, my green-eyed fugitive
11.
Wound 04:14
I got old so fast I didn’t even see it coming Twenty years of work Fifteen of cheap living Oh, to be young Full of vinegar and piss With a vision of the country And a good woman’s kiss But life gives the wound And life rubs the salt Life beats you to a pulp All of my past lives Exposed in a highlight reel The traveling troubadour’s ballad The silver salesman’s deal I never wanted nothing ‘Cept a nice and quiet life A home in the country With a baby and a wife But life gives the wound And life rubs the salt Life beats you to a pulp
12.
Brother, when your boots fill up with rain You take em off and put em on again A hole, a hole don’t dig itself You ask the world for one thing And it gives you something else A hole can turn into a pit Despair is a devil chomping at the bit Where to next, where to now Standing at the crossroads And wiping at your brow Overworked, underslept We’re all pushing back the blues With all that we got left Overworked, underslept You can’t even pay your dues With an unemployment check Brother, now you walk a country mile No bread or water, no woman or child Heart of stone, heart of steel The world on your back The hounds on your heels Now that the dogs have been loosed Now that the chicken’s come to roost Kingdom come, kingdom fall The road to Damascus The road to Arkansas Overworked, underslept We’re all pushing back the blues With all that we got left Overworked, underslept You can’t even pay your dues With an unemployment check
13.
I’m Jesus I’m Cain I’m a station I’m a train I am a song I am unsung I am one among the many I am many among the one
14.
Here in this dank and dirty kitchen I study my old man’s face The eyes give him away Denim shirt and rusty Ford Crooked hat and muddy bootlace The eyes give him away Half drunk on butchershop beer My father at twenty-two years He said, “Buddy, bum me a smoke” Forty years before the stroke Here in this dank and dirty kitchen I study my old man’s face The eyes give him away
15.
Arkansas 03:52
We were married by winter, divorced by spring She caught me in the casino betting my ring It was a hell of a wakeup call “Come back, baby, to Arkansas” I had a decent paying job, even that went south I couldn’t keep my head down and shut my mouth Hired on the spot, let go that fall They don’t treat you kindly in Arkansas I had only had a few on Saturday night I got disorderly conduct and a DUI They said, “Strip down, son—lift your balls” They don’t let you off easy in Arkansas
16.
Gonna buy a rhinestone suit Gonna buy some snakeskin boots Gonna be a sight to see Gonna buy the top shelf stuff Gonna call your Ozark bluff The good life is waiting for me You can call me the breeze You can call me cowboy You can call me daddy Call me anything Anything you please Gonna lay Arkansas to waste Gonna give you folks a taste Of a man newly freed Gonna ride that gravy train Gonna jingle like a wallet chain The good life is waiting for me You can call me the breeze You can call me cowboy You can call me daddy Call me anything Anything you please
17.
Wanda 04:46
Wanda, I am looking out a window Today with nothing to do Wanda, I am drinking Coca-Cola Wanda, I am thinking of you Wanda, there’s a fur coat waiting New shoes and a Navajo ring Wanda there’s a warm meal cooking Wanda, do not worry about a thing If the cops come If your husband comes Run Wanda, dear, when I finally meet you I’ll roll down my sleeves and take off my hat Forget the men who have failed to love you Wanda, I won’t treat you like that If the cops come If your husband comes Run Wanda, I am looking out a window Today with nothing to do Wanda, I am drinking Coca-Cola Wanda, I am thinking of you
18.
Sun tea in the summer Silent in the shade Stuck in the sweet dream Of evening’s cascade Tomatoes on the vine Dishes on the rack Thinking of your sleepy eyes And the tattoo on your back Born today, ride tomorrow I will go, I will follow Where the blues fade away Fireflies light the street Stray cats walk the lawn Kisses on your shoulder Laughter at dawn Love like a shadow Time like a wheel Freedom like a hymn All mystery revealed Born today, ride tomorrow I will go, I will follow Where the blues fade away

about

“One thing that’s maybe particular to the Midwest is a sincerity that can be mistaken for melodrama,” says Wes Tirey. “I don’t think these are Southern songs. I obviously don’t think it’s a New York album, an LA album; not a Nashville album. I think these songs and these characters really exist in the geography of the Midwest.”

Tirey’s 10th release — his first for Dear Life, is an intimate study of the Midwestern condition. A double album, it tells of silos like chapels, spiders in the cane, of drunkards and saints and fugitives; it speaks of wild geese, and the good life, rhinestone suits, Coca Colas, and dishes drying on the rack. That sincerity and melodrama resides in the candor and weight of these songs — its playing and arrangements, rich but unfettered, and Tirey’s voice grown several feet deeper and more sonorous. It is a sublime expansion of a trademark style he has come to call “rustic minimalism”.

Tirey is well-placed as a chronicler of the American Midwest. He was raised in Farmersville, Ohio, a small village some 20 minutes southwest of Dayton, where the landscape of corn and wheat and wide skies “has always been something that’s been part of me.” He bought his first guitar at 14, and soon began to explore the world of Americana, though his tastes were not wholly in keeping with the place, or the times. By senior year in high school, Tirey felt “like I was the only person in Farmersville, Ohio who knew who Wilco and The Old 97’s were.” Undaunted, he soon became a regular face in the Dayton songwriter scene — playing regularly at the famed Canal St. Tavern, who once booked the likes of Townes Van Zandt and John Fahey.

Following a move to North Carolina, he dedicated himself afresh to writing, playing, recording. He went on to share the stage with artists such as Kath Bloom, Tyler Ramsey, Steve Gunn, Daniel Bachman, Ryley Walker, among many more. There have been releases via Tompkins Square, and Scissor Tail, Noumenal Loom, Full Spectrum, and Patient Sounds; EPs, full albums, split records, instrumentals, all distinct and diverse and compelling. “The parallel for me is some albums are kind of like a novella, and some albums are like a short story collection,” Tirey says. “Some are a novel, some are flash fiction. It just depends on the kind of aesthetic world the song, in some cases songs, ends up existing in, and finding the right way to present it.”

There was something about Midwest’s 18 songs that lent themselves to a double album — though the two sides are in fact separated by time and geography. The first was recorded in late 2019, at a cabin in Sandy Mush; the second set down last December, after-hours at Bagatelle Books, in Asheville, both in the company of Tirey’s longtime friend and collaborator, Ryan Gustafson (Hiss Golden Messenger, Phil Cook, Charlie Parr).

It was a quite different process for Tirey — looser, more exploratory, more collaborative. “Ryan and I recorded it like every song was its own open canvas for us to work on,” he says. “I think it sounds loose and raw in all of the right ways, and even when it has a lot more instrumental ornamentation, it sounds like it’s all supposed to be there.”

The new resonance of his voice Tirey credits largely to the steadiness of experience. “I think I needed time for my voice to find itself,” he says. “I was always in a place of singing where I wasn’t exactly sure what my voice was supposed to sound like, or be doing. But I think it finally landed in someplace.”

A similar timelessness has also settled over his songwriting. “I think the grand arbiter in terms of judging your own work is simplicity,” Tirey says. “Whether I try to be conscious of it or not, it’s a matter of simplifying the material, whether it’s the lyrical content, the structure, the arrangement. It’s making sure that there is enough material in there, without giving too much away.”

The collection of songs on Album One, recall the landscape of Tirey’s early years. These are songs of both “Tractor wheel, bramble thorn” and “Bacon grease, egg in a hole.” “I think of songs like Red Corn, Yellow Corn and Bang the Drum Slowly as very Ohio-world landscapes,” he says. “Part-rural, part industrial, even at some points part-strip mall, mixed in with some bar-room type songs.”

Album Two finds its footing in Arkansas, a tip of the hat to the poet Frank Stanford, whose poem, Sudden Opera, Tirey uses to open Midwest’s accompanying chapbook of lyrics and prose-poems: “In Arkansas the liquor costs,” it begins. “The wind lifts a finger/ And that is all”.
“Stanford changed my life,” Tirey says. “He seemed like everything that I loved about French surrealism, and minimalist poetry, mixed with the Blues, and American Southern Gothic; this spellbinding combination of worlds in one poetic experience.” Tirey stresses the word ‘experience’. “You don’t understand a Frank Stanford poem, you just absorb it, and I think my music, too, is more of a listening, absorbing experience than an intellectual exercise.”

The album is also somewhat indebted to Raymond Carver, a writer Tirey has been “reading and re-reading since I was 21 years old.” Carver’s influence is there in the unflinching simplicity of Tirey’s lyrics, and in the half-borrowed line “would you please be quiet, please be quiet, please” in the track Fugitive. But also elsewhere — the exquisite My Father at Twenty-Two Years, for example, is something of a direct homage to Carver’s poem Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year.

Like Carver and Stanford, Tirey’s songs have long shown a keen eye for character. When he speaks of his songwriting process, it is often these characters that lead him: “You get an idea for a song with a character in mind who you know, very specifically, is going to be the main character,” he says. “And other times you’re writing a line, or a verse comes, and you start to think ‘Who is it that’s telling this story?’ Sometimes it’s not so much a character as a narrator. Or sometimes it’s really just a voice that’s not your own, but a voice that you have to construct to filter the material.”

He cites as an example the song Life is Good, Life is Sweet, its narrator satisfied by Camel lights, whiskey sours, and women: “I always imagine that character to be an Applebee’s happy hour visitor, a salesperson, maybe.” Or the two riders of Wild Blue Yonder in the throes of what Tirey calls a “midwest prairie romance.” Or the narrator of Wanda, a track inspired by the 1970 movie written, directed and starring Barbara Loden, about a woman from Pennsylvania who accidentally goes on the run with a bank robber. In Tirey’s hands, it is part American love song, part alibi, part complicity: “If the cops come,” he sings, “If your husband comes/ Run.”
The recurring voice through the songs of Album Two he regards as “a kind of Jack Nicholson character in Five Easy Pieces, a kind of gentleman recluse, but kind of an asshole at the same time.” There he is in the song Arkansas, betting his wedding ring at the casino, racking up a DUI and a disorderly conduct. “He’s probably the kind of guy who would be fun to hang out with,” Tirey notes. “But you wouldn’t want to spend too much time with him.”

This assemblage of strangers and stories and snapshots of lives, Tirey likens to “the book of photographs that you find at a Goodwill” — perhaps in Dayton, or Fayetteville, or in any of the stops on the highways that separate them. And while there are clues laid out across these lyrics, he believes there is an open-endedness to these songs. “I think it’s up to the listener to decide who these characters are,” he says. “And what they’re doing. And what’s happening to them.”

Still, the clues carry us on, into this land of high corn and pool halls, of farmboys, rusty Fords, and fathers like Elvis. Blue herons, hearts of steel, vinegar and piss; a land where people might "rise, with everything to show, strong and comely as a colt.” They are songs told straight and sincere, but that are nonetheless beguiling; the work of a master songwriter, a craftsman, an artist; a man who will always be part of the Midwest.

-Laura Barton

credits

released April 30, 2021

Wes Tirey: Vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica
Ryan Gustafson: Electric guitar, lap steel, bass, banjo, keys, fiddle, tambourine
Tyler Hoskinson: Drums
Liliana Hudgens: Backing vocals
Production: Ryan Gustafson
Mastering: Andrew Weathers

Artwork by Jon Samuels
Photo by Bow Smith

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Wes Tirey Asheville, North Carolina

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