Words and Music

The Pens welcome mystery writer Peggy Ehrhart today. Peggy writes mysteries about a blues-singer sleuth—and has been known to play a mean blues guitar herself. The second in the series, Got No Friend Anyhow, came out just a few weeks ago!

Elvis Costello once observed that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. In other words. . . pointless.  Every art form is its own thing, and if you want to experience music you should go listen to some. You won’t find it in a book.

It’s fortunate I didn’t come across Costello’s words ten years ago—though being from the “question authority” generation, I probably would have just ignored them. My drive to become a mystery writer overlapped quite early with a parallel drive to put into words the sensations I experienced while listening to music. Sitting in the audience while some guitar hero poured out his soul through his fingers should have been ecstasy enough in itself.  But since I have the writer gene, a voice in my head would be whispering, “You won’t be really happy until you figure out how to capture this experience in words.”

So I created a mystery series that took the reader into the grungy world of a struggling Manhattan blues band. I used all my descriptive abilities to make the reader understand why my blues-singer sleuth, Elizabeth “Maxx” Maxwell, was willing to give up the comforts of a conventional life to pursue her dream of leading her own band. I also wanted the reader to understand Maxx’s inability to resist the allure of guitar players, an allure that arises in large part from the magical sounds they spin from their fingers. My own guitar-playing habit, which started because my son was taking lessons and they looked like fun, made me all the more determined to capture in words the sounds I struggled so hard to make my fingers produce.

In defense of my efforts I’d like to try to refute Costello’s observation. Writing is a representational art, and thus it has to be about something. If it’s about a character taking a sea voyage, for example, the reader needs to voyage along with the character: to smell the salt air, feel the thud of the waves against the prow, hear the seagulls cawing overhead—not to mention see the ocean’s surface froth into little whitecaps and squint as the sun glints off the water.

Similarly, if a scene takes place in a blues club, the reader needs to smell the sweat and cigarette smoke, feel and taste that draft of cold beer as it slides down the protagonist’s throat, see the featured guitar player strut across the stage with his gleaming Stratocaster guitar, and, above all, hear the funky jangle or the sweet growl of the notes he teases from his strings.

There are lots of us out there—people who didn’t get Elvis Costello’s message or who refuse to believe it. In the July/August 2008 issue of CrimeSpree Magazine I published an article called “Musical Mystery Tour.” In it I discussed an exhaustive roster of mystery writers who set their stories in the world of popular music.  (There’s a whole parallel universe of mystery writers whose victims meet their fate on opera stages or in orchestras.) And I’ve been on a number of panels at mystery conferences devoted to mysteries with music, most recently at Left Coast Crime in 2010. There, our panel was moderated by Bill Moody, who writes the Evan Horne mystery series. Evan Horne, a jazz pianist, solves fascinating crimes that take him into the lives of jazz icons from the past. And Bill himself is a jazz drummer.

So I don’t believe that writing about music is like dancing about architecture—but, in fact, if the Alvin Ailey company announced a new production titled “Notre Dame Cathedral,” I’d reserve a seat in the front row.

Peggy Ehrhart is a former English professor who writes mysteries and plays blues guitar. She has published in the field of medieval literature and has won awards for fiction. She writes the Maxx Maxwell mystery series, published by Five Star/Gale/Cengage and so far consisting of Sweet Man Is Gone (2008) and Got No Friend Anyhow (2011). Sweet Man Is Gone is now available in Kindle and a variety of other ebook formats. Visit Peggy at www.PeggyEhrhart.com.

There's a Time and a Place for Everything

by Gigi

As the character Chef on South Park used to say, "There's a time and a place for everything: It's called College."

In college, I wore Birkenstocks on a daily basis, attended numerous Indigo Girls concerts, and played acoustic guitar.

For photography class, I took "artistic" photos of my guitar, like the two below. (Those were shot on black and white 35mm film, so I had no idea what the light would turn out like until I developed the film myself in the darkroom.)

A college photo experiment: "guitar as spaceship"

My Birkenstocks now sit next to the back door as my garden shoes, most of my folk music CDs never made it onto my computer, and I don't sit around playing music with people like I used to do in the dorms during college.

Another college photo: "while my guitar gently weeps"

These days, the biggest way music makes its way into my life is as the background music to my art and my writing.

When I work on a design project, I listen to KEXP online. My favorite DJ is John in the Morning, on the air from 6 - 10 am Pacific Time, who never fails to provide an energetic mix that's a great supplement to coffee.

When I write, I listen to something mellow-yet-amazing like Brian Eno -- or sometimes rain sounds (helpful via headphones while working at a cafe when you can't quite concentrate).

When I edit, though, what I discovered is that I find myself thinking again and again of specific songs. While finishing up my first mystery novel, I decided to make a soundtrack. Here are a few of the tracks:

Chaiyya Chaiyya Bollywood Joint by A.R. Rahman -- I admit I stole this one from Spike Lee, who used it for the opening scene of Inside Man. He was so right. It's an awesome theatrical song for a sweeping scene in a book or film.

This Year by the Mountain Goats --  Angsty acoustic guitar rock for when the heroine Jaya is at the end of her rope. "I'm gonna make it through this year if it kills me..."

Catch the Wind by Donovan -- My folk music roots made me think of this song for an introspective scene along the windswept cliffs of the Highlands of Scotland.

Jogi by Punjabi MC -- Because Jaya loves Bhangra music.

Abel by The National --  Another angsty song. Novels are all about conflict, after all. "Everything has gone down wrong..."

And finishing things up: You are My Joy by The Reindeer Section. Yup, in addition to mystery, I've gotta have some romance.

A photo of one of the walls in my office

p.s. For anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area, we'd love you to join us TONIGHT at 7 pm for Rachael Herron's book launch party at BookShop West Portal in San Francisco. There might even be some music!

If Music Be the Food of Love, Martha is Seriously Screwed

Picture this.

It's 1996. The morning after prom. I float home, barefoot, dangling my plum slingbacks off my fingers.

My girlfriend calls, squealing, "How was it?"
I tell her it was nice.
She asks, "What was the first slow song you danced to?"
"......"

She is appalled. But I can't remember.

"But that's going to end up being your song," she insists. "Your song forever! It will always be the first song you danced to and it's the song you have to dance to at your wedding and your 50th wedding anniversary and now you don't know it!"

It was our second date, so she was being presumptuous. But still.

Oops.

Fast forward fifteen years.

That boy who took me to prom?

We're married. We're still together. We still have no idea what songs we have danced to - not a one.

Not a song from Prom Night. Not a song from our wedding. (There was music there...I think.) Not a song from the time we took ballroom dancing lessons. Not a song from the surprise 30th birthday party he threw me when he rented out a small dance floor in a swanky Union Square hotel.

I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Other people seemed so affected by music, by its message and its promise. They could hear a song on the radio and be transported to another time and place. Feel the swell of emotion as fresh as the day they earned it.

Songs don't do that for me.

But I remember the corsage he bought me. How he borrowed his stepfather's truck so he wouldn't have to drive me in his piece-o-crap pickup. Ordering a tuna croissant sandwich at Red Robin (oh yeah, people, this was swank.) The Paris-themed decorations that couldn't cover the scent of chlorine at the aquatic center. How we were so tired we decided to take a nap before heading to the after party. The way ESPN kicked on like an alarm at six, making us realize we'd overslept. How nervous he looked sitting across the booth from me at Dennys. How nervous I felt as to whether he'd call me again.

There isn't a song to capture it all. It's okay that I don't remember.

A Musical Portal

by Lisa Hughey

For me, music isn’t JUST music. The beginning notes of a song can completely transport me to another time and place. The memories of my life are all wrapped up in music and just hearing a song evokes all the emotions of that time.


Pachabel’s Canon reminds me of my wedding. And yes I realize that probably ninety percent of couples use this song in their wedding. I don’t care. I loved it before I got married. I loved it when I got married and I STILL love that song. It’s beautiful.



Band on the Run brings back the summer I spent in a hot, humid gym practicing high school gymnastics (for the record-I sucked. I was afraid of falling down or off of things and hurting myself.) The ceiling fans would twirl halfheartedly pushing around the sweltering air and whoever was in charge was in LOVE with Paul McCartney. I swear to God, that song would play over and over and over for three hours. I canNOT stand it.


Running with the Devil reminds me of driving to my Grandfather’s funeral in a big old boat of a Cadillac and my 18 month old son asked my dad to play Beauty and the Goldfish (Hootie and the Blowfish). When he didn’t have it (of course not), my boys sang the song to my parents and I laughed while I cried.


When my daughter was five, she and her pals would come with me on errands after I picked them up from kindergarden. We would belt out Sheryl Crow’s Soak Up the Sun while driving to Costco and then move on to Push by Matchbox 20. Years later, we still turn up the radio and sing loudly but now it’s likely to be Cee Lo Green and Lady Gaga. Singing along with them brings me joy, every single time.


Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas singing Smooth plunges me right back into elementary school age children and rotating summer Happy Hours on Friday nights because we couldn’t afford to get a babysitter and go out to eat. Instead the kids swam and the parents drank margaritas and danced on the grass.


And Teena Marie’s (RIP) Lovergirl ports me right back to college and having fun with my girlfriends, shoes off, dancing on chairs and singing into our fists at the top of our lungs. We were young, happy, carefree and life was FUN.



My life is a lot different now (not better or worse, just different), but for four minutes and 26 seconds I remember exactly how I felt back then. And it rocked.

The Best Bad Music Weekend Ever

L.G.C. Smith

I’m writing this in the Nashville airport after the best weekend I’ve had in a lot of stressful months. One might think, considering where I am, that my days and nights had been filled with wonderful live music. The live part is fairly accurate, but wonderfully unique hits the mark closer than an unqualified wonderful.

The inn where I stayed with my group of Very Special Writer Friends had a music room with a grand piano, an acoustic guitar, a mandolin, a folk instrument I’ve forgotten the name of, a big harp and a little harp. That’s as technical as I can get at this point in my life. Deb brought an electric guitar that her husband built to sound like a 1966 Strat. I heard that phrase a lot. The guitar had a nice tone. Not that anyone present had the chops to do much with it. That wasn’t the point.

The point was to have fun, and Mary has been taking guitar lessons for a year. She deemed the rest of us a supportive audience for her public premier. I felt honored and proud of her as she played four or five Eagle’s songs. Even with a broken finger on her right hand, she acquitted herself well. It was fun. That was the point.

Jules played the piano and a bunch of the rest of us sang, and I use that word loosely, show tunes. I know very few show tunes. Not my genre. Again, not the point. Nor was it the point to discover the exact limits of my out-of-voice range though I now know I can’t reliably hit an E anymore, and a lot of the Ds were downright wobbly. No, the point was that we sang pretty badly, and it was still fun. No judgment. Just doing. Not unlike preschool in some respects, except that I’m a lot less worried about other people’s opinions now than I was when I was four.

As we sat upstairs in a cozy library filled with comfy sofas and armchairs, loads of snacks, coffee, and tea on hand, a mandolin lesson went on down in the music room. Now there we heard some wonderful music, wild, climbing melodies that seemed ready to leap into the treetops and dance on up to the sun. But they came in fits and starts, as lessons are wont to do. I loved them better for that.

There was canned music, too: Elvis snapping out “Jailhouse Rock” in the ladies room at the BrickTop steakhouse; the soothing bluegrass our hosts put on the house music system. Then some of us wanted to hit the honkytonks.

We ended up in Tootsies Orchid Lounge that just happened to have the worst band in America on show. After half an hour of desultory warming up, they launched into the crappiest country rock imaginable. And again, that it was crap didn’t matter as much as just going and seeing what we could find. Plus, I got a good reminder that I don’t go to small, crowded clubs that draw a lot of bachelorette parties for several reasons besides being old enough to receive AARP junk mail. Public vomit, crowd farts, anonymous groping, screeching feedback. All endurable once a decade or so, and possibly worth it had the music been good.

I used to think music had to be at least marginally good to be enjoyable. Ha. In my life, music hasn’t been about performance for a long, long time. It’s about participating. Listening. Playing. Singing. Sharing. When it all works – yay! When it falls a little short of ideal – well, that works, too.

Nicole Peeler belly dances, listens to baaad music, and still teaches at a prestigious university

So one day Rachael and Sophie and I were talking about great bloggers and --swear to God-- we all stopped, gaped at each other, and said, why hasn't Nicole Peeler blogged for the Pens? WTF? Do you think she could take time out of her busy schedule of belly dancing and molding young minds and writing smut to be our guest on Pensfatales?

Nicole said yes, of course, because she is all kinds of awesome and her superhero quality is to be funny and creative and genius on demand.

Check out her Jane True series of Urban Fantasy novels -- you'll thank me. Really. Nicole is h-o-t hot, and so are her books.

Nicole:

Well hello there, Pen Fatales and Readers! I am stupidly excited to be here. I haven’t had the chance to meet all of the Pens, yet, but if I were to begin waxing poetic about Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, and Rachael Herron, I would have to write an EPIC. An epic, people. Because that’s how much I adore them.

So when Juliet asked me to guest blog here, I was super excited. I also knew I had to really dig deep, and really share. Nothing else would do for the Pens but brutal honesty. And so that’s what I did.

I like a lot of music. In fact, I would say that, for the most part, I’m pretty hip, pretty happening, pretty “in the now” when it comes to music. Except for one secret I keep buried . . . a secret so dark, so painful, I keep it hidden for fear of reprisal.

I freaking love Roxette.

I love them. I’m sorry. I know that’s like claiming allegiance to Twinkies, or to Hanson, but it’s true. I love the saccharine gooey sweetness that is Roxette. And here’s what I love about them:

• I love that I can take a power stance, and sing along with their songs in a REALLY dramatic way. The way I might, in other scenarios, herald the impending apocalypse, or sing of my lover having fallen on the battlefield, or announce that Sarah Palin has become our President.

• I love that the lyrics often mean absolutely nothing when you actually think about them. Roxette presents us with a philosophical conundrum akin to Schrödinger’s cat: If a song is sung about nothing, but with tremendous passion, does that song actually come to mean something?

• I love all of that spikey, spikey hair.

If you’re still not convinced, try it out. First, take a power stance--legs apart, arms akimbo, and head back so you’re READY TO WAIL. Now play this song and sing along as loudly as you can:

Enjoy the drama and the meaningless, all while imagining your own hair in all its potentially spikey glory. It’s infectious! Granted, it’s infectious in the same way that sexually transmitted diseases are infectious (caught doing things we know we shouldn’t be doing, with people we certainly shouldn’t be doing them with) and yet it’s SO MUCH FUN.

At least it is to me.

Stop judging, meanies.

Cuz I bet y’all have your own secret sin music! But who is brave enough to share?


Bio: Nicole Peeler writes the Jane True series of Urban Fantasy for Orbit Books. She’s also an assistant professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Seton Hill University, where she mentors up and coming writers in SHU’s MFA in popular fiction. In her spare time, she travels compulsively and belly dances badly, but with great enthusiasm. You can find out more about Nicole and her books at http://nicolepeeler.com.

So I Married A Musician

--Adrienne Miller

I don't have great deal of musical talent. And that's probably being generous. I can't say that I don't have any. About a year ago I discovered that I have a knack for the harmonica and there are a couple of lullabies that, if I sing them really softly, my kids will settle down. So, hey, that's something. But other than that, I've got nothing.

I can't sing. I can't keep a beat going on my own for more than thirty seconds. I tried to play the clarinet when I was in sixth grade and was politely asked at semester's end by the music teacher to find another elective. (Which reminds me, I should totally do a post some time about all the things I've tried and been asked to never do again. The list is surprisingly long. When I fail, I do it spectacularly.)

But I love music. It's my go-to inspiration, my muse. Drop me in the middle of nowhere and as long as I have my ipod, I'm good. Some people need silence to create, but not me. Just about everything in my life plays to a soundtrack. Stories, car trips, even laundry day, they all have their own playlist. 

So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I married a musician, and a really good one to boot. Tom is the opposite of me in so many ways. He's a self taught musician who can play just about anything with strings-guitar, bass, piano, ukulele. Oh, and drums too. He writes music. He improvises. He has a freakin' degree in jazz theory. I didn't even know there was a theory behind jazz, let alone a degree you could earn in it.

It became apparent pretty early in our relationship though that we did not hear or experience music the same way. I listen to a song the same way I look at a painting like Van Gough's Starlight Over The Rhone. I see it as one thing. I feel frenzy in it, the crazy. I'm moved by the visceral reaction I have to it.

Tom, on the other hand, sees each individual stroke, each little brush of paint. There is no totality. It's not a painting, it's a thousand touches of paint. He might see them as cleverly applied, but they don't fill him with abstract inspiration. 

This has led to a couple of polite disagreements about music in our household. We each have the bands and playlists that can only be turned on when the other one is out. There was the time I told him we had to leave a Dream Theater concert at intermission if there was going to be any hope of saving our marriage, or the time that I drank my way through a night at a combo jazz club just to keep my sanity. 

It goes both ways, of course. There are bands of mine he outright hates - Foo Fighters,  Kate Bush, Counting Crows - all for things he sees as 'musical sins'. And here you didn't even know there was divine morality in notes, did you? He teases me mercilessly about my love for Damien Rice. After seeing on iTunes that a song of his was twenty-one minutes long, he commented, "What is it, five minutes of singing and another sixteen of him quietly weeping in the corner?"

Will we last? Probably. But where some people advise that separate bathrooms or bank accounts make for a happy marriage, I advocate for separate playlists.

Cheer Up Sleepy Jean: The Deep Philosophyical Underpinnings of the Monkees

by Juliet

I know what you’re thinking. This blog post should have been in the religion section.

No? All right, maybe you're thinking that Juliet is FAR too young to have listened to The Monkees as a child. And you're right, of course -- they were before my time.

But I’ve always been out of step. When my older sisters went on to listen to Abba and the Bee Gees and the Eagles and Journey on the stereo, I inherited the Close-n-Play record player along with their discarded albums -- the Monkees among them.

(I still insist I am a better person for having skipped right over some of the hits of the late 70s. If I never have to hear Hotel California EVER again in my life I'll die happy.)

But The Monkees...these guys were a revelation. The spoke about Real Issues, like suburban angst. I give you Exhibit One: Pleasant Valley Sunday. Just listen to those lyrics for a moment. Rows of houses that are all the same, and no one seems to care.

This was heavy stuff for someone who happened to live in such a house.

Later one of my sisters, in a fit of pique and older-sibling piousness, pointed out that The Monkees were a soulless group put together by corporate forces to make money. It didn’t matter.

I closed and played the Close-n-Play and listened, glassy-eyed and mouth agog, to Zor and Zam. Remember that one? There are these two kings, see, the King of Zor and the King of Zam, and they called for a war...But nobody came.

I’ll give you a moment to really think that one through. What if everyone saw through all the war stuff and just didn't go? My best friend Diane and I pondered this for days. We couldn't believe no one had thought of it before. We could have saved the country from the debacle of Viet Nam, if only we'd been older and had our Monkees albums tucked under our arms.

Of course the Partridge family had David Cassidy, and he was cute, so I watched the show without fail. But their music somehow lacked the…gravitas of The Monkees. (Recently I was told the Mondrian-inspired Partridge family bus was bought by porn producers. Can't wait to see what they do with it.)

The Beatles were classic, of course, but even my sheltered twelve-year-old mind could tell they were often referencing drugs and/or sex, which made me uneasy. The Monkees kept it in the comfort zone. They spoke about middle class ennui and the stultifying air of the suburbs. They spoke about how we should all have fun and be nice to each other. They spoke to my soul.

Years later I confided the secret Monkees fetish to my then-husband, and he decided this accounted for my absolute lack of sense when it came to anything political. I insisted people should grow up and be polite to each other, and then at least we'd have something to build on. He pointed out that the world was motivated by money, pure and simple. The marriage didn't last all that long.

Ah well. Guess I'm just a Daydream Believer.

Rachael Serenades You

I'm from a musical family. My mother played the piano beautifully, and my dad plays anything stringed you set in front of him. When I was little, he'd tuck us up in bed with a song of our request -- I usually chose The Peanut Butter Tree (which was a Dad original).

We grew up singing together and not finding it weird. We three girls, when we sing at karaoke or Christmas caroling, usually shock the hell out of people -- our voices work together like one, and we LURVE some tight harmony. We keep saying we'll form a band, but out of all of us, only Christy knows how to actually play anything (the bass, guitar, and drums). I can play chords on the guitar, badly, and can play piano a little, but nothing to write home about. I didn't play anything when the family sang together, out camping at bluegrass festivals, and I kept my hands busy with knitting while everyone else jammed.

So a while back, I tried picking up the ukulele. Four strings! How hard could it be? (Hint: Not hard.) I bought a crappy one, loved it, and then sold some yarn to the knitters to fund a new, nice uke. I posted this video the night I got my new one, so I wasn't good at playing it (or changing chords) yet, but I think it shows how I love it.




Certainly won't win any awards -- except for the FUN award, perhaps, which is a really important one. I love my uke. (There's another little song here, with friends, and a primer to starting to play the uke yourself!)