LINKS MAY BE INACTIVE

You can view whole growing gallery by clicking here.

Today's photos were posted courtesy of Lee Klancher, who writes about his work here.

  Headwinded, the music album I did with my band The Long Beds, just got its first big review.  And I quote:

Michael Perry und seine Band Long Beds treten erst auf, nachdem Perry Material aus seinen 3 Büchern vorgetragen hat ("Population:485"; "Truck: A Love Story"; "Off Main Street: Barnstormers, Prophets und Gatemouth's Gator") inkl. 2 Live-Humor CDs ("Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow" und "I Got It From the Cows"). The Long Beds sind eine sich ständig verändernde Musikergruppe. Unter ihnen Billy Krause und Justin Vernon, wie auch Mitglieder der Jaggernauts, the Mighty Bullfrogs und DeYarmond Edison. Weitere Infos unter: www.sneezingcow.com.

 Die Aufnahmen klingen eher nach Mustern, als nach ganzen Songs. Manchmal wirkt Michael Perry auch schlichtweg wie ein Ein-Mann-Orchester. Doch das soll keinesfalls abwertend sein. Im Gegenteil. Michael's Sound ist frisch und rassig, sein Gesang rauh, rebellisch und die Mundharmonika lässt an Qualität nichts zu wünschen übrig. Schade legt Michael Perry mit seiner CD gerade mal 10 Songs vor. Sie sind so gut, dass man sich mehr wünscht.

So they like it over there in Germany.  Or else they don't.  I'm not clear.

Nonetheless, it gave us a chance to revisit the idea of Toni Braxton playing Twister.

So I'm writing along and suddenly a version of "Many Rivers to Cross" yanks me sideways.  Powerful, evocative, yearning.  I'm familiar with the Jimmy Cliff and UB40 versions, but this was different.  The rhythm section had an 80's sound.  Reminded me of of Taylor Dayne.  Took me some searching and soudclip clicking, but the Web reveals it's Toni Childs, from the soundtrack to a movie released in 1989.

Sometimes when a song hits me like that, I just put it on repeat and write, write, write.  Something is tapped.  At the risk of ruining the moment, I'll say that most of what gets written during these fits of calf-eyed longing is utter detritus destined for the digital dumpster, but you get a few useful skeins.  So I've been wearing out that track.

Taylor Dayne.  Toni Childs.  Toni Braxton.  Sometimes a country boy puts aside the Waylon and Willie and lets his heart soar with divas.  There are no guilty pleasures, says a guy named Grant, just pleasures.

So.  For my pal Gene: "Un-Break My Heart." (Yes! - Toni and Tyson play Twister!)  Then it's back to real life and off to Farm & Fleet in search of a wood-splitting maul.

Also, the Colorado tour dates are set.

             "I have the hots for Irma Harding."

Because the public demands it: A picture of Irma. 

Snow today.  The first for us.  A fluffy inch or two, compared to the devastating slam so much of the rest of the nation has just experienced.  I shoveled the sidewalk with my neighbor Toots.  She broke her hip a while back but now she's back out there slingin' snow.

Well, we got'er done.  Click the photo for more.

I don't know.  You can't romanticize a life that's hard, and his life was hard.  But it's fascinating sometimes, how some people negotiate their own sort of freedom.  Today I see that nameless guy had a name, and he made it to the end of the road, a long way from here.

Thanks for the song, Mick.

- I'm scheduled to be on Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know? radio show December 16.  Man, we've had a blast the two other times.  Well, I had a blast.  Last time I got to talking about birthing my kidney stone (a story featured in Off Main Street) and at one point Mr. Feldman looked a tad sweaty and green.  Which is pretty much how I looked when I was passing my kidney stone.  But that's all water under the...y'know.  Anyway, Michael Feldman has a great show and a great following, and I'm grateful to be scheduled.  It'll be fun.

- Sometime in the next week we'll be updating the speaking engagements page to start including 2007 events.  A brief Colorado swing has been added to the Truck: A Love Story book tour.   If you're near Denver or Boulder, we're coming your way.

- And finally, some audio updates:

In addition to being available in CD form on this site, or through CDBaby, the Headwinded album (music by me and my band the Long Beds) is now being made available as a digital download on a number of sites.  If it's not on your favorite download service, it should be soon.  You can download it from iTunes by clicking here.

The audiobook version of Population 485 is now available on iTunes.

Never Stand Behind a Sneezing Cow is now available on iTunes.  It is also available (with samples) at CDBaby.  I am told it is (or will be shortly) available on a number of other digital download sites, as well.

I Got It From the Cows is now available on iTunes.  It is also available (with samples) at CDBaby. I am told it is (or will be shortly) available on a number of other digital download sites, as well.

Time for bed.  Got a cold.  But fresh venison in the freezer.

I'm recording an interview for Wisconsin Public Television today, I believe it will air this Friday at 7 p.m.  Here's a link with more info.  [Just stepped out to do the interview...caught a shot of myself in the monitors and I look: A) bald (serious shine going); B) unshaven (it's deer season); C) gap-toothed; D) uni-browed; and E) all of the above.  I do not have a face for HDTV.]

For the record, that bad smell was a half-eaten supermarket beef and broccoli stir fry purchased somewhere after Des Moines and gone bad in Lincoln.

I lost a headlight somewhere in Illinois and kept waiting to get pulled over but nothing happened.  I locked up the binders at a red light somewhere near the Kansas/Missouri line and thereafter the left front wheel made a horrible rumbly-bumbly sound for 25 miles, but eventually the sound faded and I went back to pretending it never happened.  But later I noticed there was rusty brown dust all over the hubcap, so I'm thinking I smoked the brakes.

I'll be heading back out to do some book tour events in December, January and February (Mostly regional Wisconsin and Minnesota, but there will be Colorado events in January - specifically, Denver, Fort Collins and Boulder), but for the next week I'll be laying low, catching up on home, on writing, and on filling the freezer.  Some quiet time in the swamp.

Thank you everyone.  If you came to a reading, if you picked up a book, if you sent me a note or shared a kind word.  It all goes by mile after mile, impossible to keep track, but I am grateful and fortunate.

And I mean that about the thanks: Truck: A Love Story has made it to #7 on the Heartland Independent Bestseller List for Hardcover Nonfiction.  Not only that, Truck has hitched on to Population 485 and pulled it up to #6 on the paperback list.  It's a family reunion!

Thank you.

During the drive I also ate a few too many wintergreen lozenges, left over from a reading I did way back in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.  Seems like a year ago.  But the bag of lozenges (I mention them in Truck - my brother-in-law and I would buy them by the bagful whenever we went to get parts at Farm & Fleet and that's why the folks in Oconomoc supplied a bag for the reading) is on the floor behind the driver's seat, where I can reach them while hammering down the superslab, and they are frankly addictive.  When I hit the Kansas state line, my tongue was pink.

I must also say that after several weeks of book tour, something in the car smells bad.   I haven't located the source, but honestly I haven't looked that closely or excavated that deeply.  I don't think it's me, as so far all the Super 8's have had functioning showers and free soap.

And here's a nice review in the Oklahoman.

And today was a very big day.  I found a laundromat.  Rolled out of Omaha with a suitcase full of clean socks.  Yessir.  Good to go.

It is my understanding that you can listen to tonight's reading online.  Eventually the reading will be archived here, but if you click on "Listen to WSUI" you can hear it live tonight.

Lots of miles, lots of faces, lots of thank yous.  Thank you "T" for the care package and kind words.  Art and Bill for easing my passage through the Windy City (you can read about Bill on p. 192 of Truck: A Love Story).   The doorman at the Hyatt for not laughing out loud after retrieving my rusty Malibu, overflowing with road junk and rancid burger wrappers.  And everyone who keeps showing up to fill the seats.  I'm having fun.

Here are some photos from a reading I did a week or so ago.  Thanks Amanda.  Check out the bald guy.

If you read Truck: A Love Story, you know that the Greg Brown concert I described took place here.

And here's another review of Truck.

Just found this, a picture in the local weekly, taken at the reading/concert in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.   Note IH logo on guitar.  Yessir.  And I see I've got that thing capo'd all the way down to the dusty bits.  The band, by the way, left to right is Chuck, me, Chris, and Billy.  We're singing songs from the new album, Headwinded.

Last night there was also complimentary wine available at the reading.  Anyone who knows me knows I don't drink (never have - I'm not on any sort of crusade, I just never got started and figure with all the time I spend on the road alone, I probably ought to stick to coffee), but there is a company in California called Red Truck Wines that posts pictures and stories about (mostly) red trucks on their website.  When they heard about Truck: A Love Story, they put a link on their site and are sending a few bottles of red wine to some of my readings (click here and scroll down to find out which ones).  I told them I was fine with that as long as they knew I was still waiting for my first drink and that my truck is green (but it's red on the inside).

Hammering around Minnesota in the Chevy.   It's got some kind of a weird noise off near the right front wheel now and then, and a slight rollicking roll at low speeds.  I won't be tearing into it myself, however.  Once, after "fixing" the left front brake on my old blue Duster, I put the tire back on, leaving the car up on the jacks while I went to lunch.   Afterward, I set out for Chetek, Wisconsin, making it roughly six miles down the road before the left front wheel departed the car at just under 60 miles per hour, which may I say does force you to devote all your attention to driving.  When I went looking for the lug nuts, I found them in a pile back on the shop floor.

If you have trouble with that link, go here and scroll down until you find Larry and me (you might have to enter search parameters) on October 17.

A big thank you to everyone (especially Larry Long and the junior singing firefighters!) in Eden Prairie.  We had a wonderful evening last night discussing Population 485 and looking at fire trucks.  Yep.  You can see photos of the event here.  It's official, my hair is "thinning."  I especially love this shot.   You can't see them in the picture, but I was juggling two flaming chainsaws and a thermal imager at the time.

I was part of a panel discussion on the Hessen-Wisconsin exchange program yesterday, and a reporter from the Savannah (Georgia) News was there.  She wrote up this piece.

Early on in the book tour, many people have complimented me on the cover of Truck: A Love Story, and while I can't claim much responsibility for it (more on the "stunt truck" we used for the cover later), I can say that the image was shot by John Shimon and Julie Lindemann.  They are Wisconsin folks, but currently have a show of their work in New York, as described here.  That's my dancer friend Barry in the photo (he is mentioned in Population 485).

Tonight at the reading someone asked me about my writing process (process is a very polite word for it), and that reminded me that I just did an interview here about that same thing.

Also, if you'd like to hear me reading bits of Truck: A Love Story to a live audience, HarperCollins has audio links.

Last night's event was packed and we had a great time.  I could tell at least one of the organizers had read the book, because they put out a big bowl of wintergreen lozenges.  That made me grin.

The Washington Post has reviewed Truck.

I'm looking forward to getting out there on the road.  We've done a couple of early events, and it's such fun to meet and shake hands with readers.  And since I like to include a lot of humor in my readings, it's very educational to discover if something I thought was funny when I wrote it at 4 a.m. last January is funny at 7:45 p.m. in a bookstore or a library.  The audience never lies.

See you out there.

Oh, and I am frequently asked if I'm touring in the truck.  Nope.  The truck is limited to speeds upwards of 54 miles per hour running downwind on the flats.   Uphill, we're talking more like 37 miles per hour.  So the truck will wait in "Nobbern" until I return, and I shall instead strike out in a '99 Chevy with busted radio knobs and a habit of hiccuping at stoplights.

In the miscellaneous category, because of the name of this site and my history of manure handling (literally and metaphorically) I am frequently alerted to cow things.   Here's a little something someone sent me that could probably be considered evening wear down to TJ's Food-N-Fun.   Yep.

I'm now going to set off on book tour, 40-some cities in my Chevy, that'll be me trying to keep it left of the fog line, especially in Iowa, where a pleasant state trooper gave me specific instructions regarding that rule the last time I passed through.

One other thing: I regret to say I have officially lost the email battle.  I read every one of'em, but can no longer keep up with answering.  I'll do the best I can, and answer as many as time allows, but please know that if you sent me an email and it arrived safely, I read it.

Also...because Mike is so busy with book tour for the next couple months, we're not making a big hoo-hah about this, but the new album is now available.

Oh, and this just in, Joanne Weintraub has written an article about the documentary in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.  I am happy to say that they used a photo that makes me look five years younger, because...well...I was five years younger when that photo was taken! (A moment of silence for my dear departed hair.) Also, if you note the column on the right-hand side, you can listen to an audio interview I did with Joanne.

I'm traveling a lot these days, doing advance readings for the new book.  As such, I rarely get time to say thanks as often as I should.  So if you've been in an audience lately, or if I said howdy quick, or signed yer book, or just cut you off in traffic, thanks, thanks and thanks.

And if you were the guy who kept clapping every time Mr. Overby mentioned Truck: A Love Story at the live taping of the Higher Ground radio show tonight, I hope you took my jokes in good fun.  As they used to say in those wine cooler commercials all those years ago, I appreciate your support.

If you're a motorcycle person, there's a new book out called The Harley Davidson Reader.  It's filled with essays and cool pictures.  I have an essay in there, and so do Hunter S. Thompson and Evel Knievel.

Oh, and an aside about my essay in there.  It's about the Vietnam Memorial Wall.  A while back a reader wrote to me and pointed out that the Wall is made of Bangalore granite, not Bangalore marble, as I mistakenly wrote.  He's absolutely right.  Trouble is, the way publishing works, once these things get out there, it's hard to catch up with them.  So if you read the piece, insert "granite" for "marble", and thanks again to the person who took the time to (politely, I might add) point this out.

Before we play, there will be a junior high game, a tailgate party (with tailgate party food for sale), a parade, and a pep rally to kick off the football season.  The pep rally is in the new gym, and oughta wrap up about 7 p.m. or a little after.  So we may start a couple minutes after 7 p.m., but that'll just give us more time to gather up door prizes (keep yer ticket stub!).  So feel free to get down there and enjoy the whole pep rally, we'll wait for ya.  We want the mighty Trojans to get appropriately charged for the season that awaits.

Oh, and the New Auburn cheerleaders will be down at our music show selling popcorn and pop, and maybe a few snacks.

As far as what you can expect for our show, think American Idol only with hair loss and songs about lumpy dogs.  There will be nearly zero butt-wiggle, and the our pyrotechnics show is limited to those moments when the bass player sneaks out back for a cigarette.  Furthermore, unless my microphone shorts out and shocks me in the kisser, there will be no melisma.

Specific concert details here.

End table: 35" + dog: 37" = opportunity

My foster dog ate your autographed copy!

I said: "Hamlet -- this isn't very adoptable behavior."

He just smiled and burped his good read.

Good dog, Hamlet, good dog.

I always try to go running in Central Park, and did again this time.  I never really know where I'm headed...in general I try to make a loop around the reservoir, but I more or less just follow the paths as they unwind.  This time I ran past this and this and this; past this; and, finally, out of the park through this (perhaps not in that order).  843 acres of green smack in the middle of that roaring, flashing, gritty city.  Marvelous.

The flight home was delayed for two hours.  Then, after we boarded, we sat on the runway for another two hours.  Then, after being taken to the "starting line" of the runway, we had to sit for another hour until a tremendous thunder and lightning storm passed.  When all was said and done, I got to the airport just before 4 p.m. Eastern time and hit the New Auburn village limits at 4 a.m.  But I was heartened by the absence of whining and complaint on the airplane.  The delays were not caused by the airline, but rather runway repair and unexpected weather that snarled the flight line.  I had this little glimmer of hope that the whole sanguine vibe could be attributed us realizing (as we always should, I reckon, but lately it's harder to miss) that in the scope of human experience, ours was the most superficial sort of inconvenience.

In conjunction with the local historical society in Marshall, Wisconsin, Greg has organized bus tours of the sites mentioned in his book. The first tour sold out, and he is organizing a second.  Authors will do pretty much anything do get a book "out there" (I have given readings atop a lowboy equipment trailer, put up a sign in a cornfield, and once sold a book from the trunk of my car during bathroom break in a class on cardiopulmonary resuscitation.), but this is the first time I've heard of a bus tour.  While we wait for Oprah to call, we do what we can...

 I've added something new to the Road Bans Page.

Due to the illness of an old friend, I just spent a week at the ranch walking miles of irrigation ditches, helping to "scatter" the water.  You start at dawn by cleaning brush and other organic trash (no plastic junk to be found that far up the river) from the headgates, adjusting the discharge levels, and then you just walk and walk (with some assist from a four-wheeled ATV) (we used to use horses), clearing the ditches, adjusting the little rock dams stone-by-stone so that just enough water spills out to seep across the land, which in general slopes away to the north.  Sometimes you cut a new notch in the earth to see if you can get the water to a dry spot.  Essentially, you spend the whole day beneath the open sky, trying to read the land and give it moisture using no propellant other than gravity.

Every day for a week I worked in view of Elk Mountain, as stolidly familiar today as it was 25 years ago.  The mountain is the first thing you see every morning; it bulks against the blackening horizon every nightfall.  Weather forms at the eastern tip of its peak.  When the rain clouds gather enough bulk, they release and roll off the side of the mountain, right down into the valley.  I used to climb the mountain on Sunday afternoons.  Up in the high rocks, the air smells of pine needles and lightning strikes.  In the 1950s, a passenger plane slammed into the rocks, resulting in one of the worst air disasters of the time.  Local ranchers helped pack bodies off the peak.  In the late 1800s, a man named Big-Nose George took to the mountain and waylaid two brothers – deputies – killing them.  When they caught Big-Nose, they hung him and made an ash tray from his skull.  The ash tray is still on display in Rawlins.

After a week of running a shovel, dipping my hands in and out of rushing ice water, and handling rocks, my soft typist's fingers are cracked and rough.  I like this.  It reminds me how lucky I am to mostly just write.  My friend is out of surgery and doing well.  I hope when he comes home he sees the green grass coming on.

In other news, the new book (due out from HarperCollins in October) has an official title: Truck: A Love Story.  Mmmm.  Pickup trucks and love. 

Well sure it is.

My other favorite poster from the conference: "Heliobacter Pylori - Friend or Foe?"  I intend to ponder this conundrum and will post my decision once I remember where I parked my bacteriophage bicycle.

Above all, I was reminded again of how we owe so much of our health and happiness to the work and study of people we never meet and rarely consider.

Some nice news today.  When I was in nursing school, I took a creative writing class taught by Bruce Taylor.  I loved the class, although when it ended, I went back to my nursing studies and didn't really think about writing again until I was out of school and working as a nurse.  But when I got serious about typing, I was often guided by things I learned in that class.  Among other advice Taylor gave aspiring young writers was this gem: "I don't care if your grandma died -- everybody's grandma dies."  Harsh on the face of it, but true, true.

Later, when I was hungry for any and all talk about words and reading and writing, Taylor was one of the people at the corner table of The Joynt who shared the names of poets and writers and talked about words and thinking in a way that ruined me forever, and am I ever glad for that.

Now there is word that Taylor has been recognized for his lifetime of work.  I simply wouldn't be writing today if it wasn't for this guy, so I'm pleased for him.  It's been a good year.  "Pity the World", his collection of new and selected poems came out this year, also.  I happily endorsed them by writing, "These poems are wisdom purchased with the wages of sin."  In typical Taylor style, he autographed my copy of "Pity the World" with the inscription, "Actually, it's the minimum wages of sin."

I see Dave Moore is playing the Tainter the following night.  I've been listening to "Breaking Down to 3" lately as I write.

Lambing is an around-the-clock thing, but my favorite time comes in the wee hours past midnight.  The sheep are settled then, resting like woolly boulders with their feet folded beneath their bodies.  I like to sit atop the hay bales and listen as they chew their cud.  Last thing you'd think you'd want to do, listen to an animal chew (human chewing noises drive me nuts), but the sound of a sheep working the cud between its jaws is subdued and rhythmic.  It conveys contentment.

The thing you're looking for is a ewe getting ready to deliver.  She may be pawing at the straw, or circling, or just looking a little pained.  Or things may be well underway - the water broken, the ewe on her side and straining.  Your job is to hang back and observe, watch for trouble.  You're hoping to see the soft tips of two pair of hooves cradling a little lamb snoot.  Standard delivery.  Mostly you just stand back and let nature take its course.  When the lamb finally plops out wetly on the straw, shakes its ears loose and you clear its nose and mouth so it can take those first hacking breaths, you can never really believe it.  How the whole deal works.

Sometimes if they have trouble, if they get hung up, or there is a foot back, or they are backward, you help them along.  Over the years, my father has relied on my mom - with her obstetrics nursing background and delicate hands - to take over when there is real trouble.  The other night I watched her sort out a reverse tangle of legs and ease out a little lamb that would have otherwise perished, and I recalled watching her do the same thing way back when I was only half as tall as her.

The last night I helped, I went out at 2 a.m. and found a young ewe with a fresh-born lamb beside her and another one on its way out.  The second one came fine, and then I saw another pair of hooves, only these were dewclaws-up.  Bad sign.  Back legs first, breech delivery.  I headed in and woke Mom.  But when I returned to the barn, I found the ewe on her side and the lamb half out, with the head, shoulders and front legs still in the birth canal.  Mom wasn't out there yet but it appeared there was no time to wait, so I grabbed the lamb and pulled it the rest of the way out.  Its head was still inside the amniotic sac.  I cleared the nostrils and mouth, but there was no breath.  I gave a couple of pushes on the ribs and raised the lamb by its back legs, which drains fluid from the air passages.  When I placed it back on the straw I saw its flanks heave, and heard the familiar crackle of air working into the lungs for the first time.  He was off and running.  Two minutes later he gave a high-pitched bleat, and I was just plumb happy.  With Mom's help I got the new family into a pen, and we headed back in.  The sky was deep black, the stars pressing down brilliantly all around, and I was reminded that we are not beneath them, but among them.

One of my favorites is "The Kansas City Song," in which you can hear Buck and his crew creating an entirely new sound by having Don Rich finger the chords on his Telecaster while the drummer tapped the guitar strings with drumsticks.

My new computer is currently visiting its mother(board) in California.  It developed some sort of centrifugal freakout deal where it began shutting itself down and restarting, in a cycle that went faster and faster until it wouldn't even complete the reboot before crashing and restarting again.  It was like watching a dog chase its tail in a tighter and tighter circle, except I would never say the things to a dog that I said to that computer.  Oops.

I can't whine too much, though.  My computer guru Trygve made me buy an external hard drive about six months ago and I had backed everything up 24 hours previous to the tail-chasing freakout, so it could be so much worse.

Kinda jealous of that computer, though, sunning itself in California while here we have 30 degrees and grainy windblown snow.

Updated the speaking engagements page again.  Doing a couple of local radio interviews in the next couple days.

Spent Monday with the photo duo Shimon Lindemann shooting photos for the cover of the next book.  This consisted of finding abandoned L-Model International pickups and getting permission to photograph them from all angles.  We owe a special thanks to Dennis and Karen, and Al.  When a guy comes wandering up your driveway and asks if he can take pictures of that truck out there in the brush or in the cow pasture, I don't know why anyone would say yes, but those folks did, and we're grateful.  Gosh, I like them old Internationals.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I like to look at those rusted mustache grilles and imagine them all fresh-painted and speckled with their first coat of splattered spring mosquitoes.  How fine that must have been, to pull off the lot in one of those babies, with the Sweepsight windshield all clear and crack-free.  Never mind that they rode like a tank.

The goal of hiding out in Panama was to finish the next book.  I'm happy to say it worked.  The book is on track to be released in October of this year.  There will be more info (release dates, book tour, etc.,) as we have it.  (The book has nothing to do with Panama, by the way...it's about old trucks and love).

Speaking engagements page has been updated.

My other projects are updated down below.

Some folks contacted me about speaking dates I'm not showing up for...but those were 2005 dates.  "2005" was in small type way at the top of the page, so it wasn't clear.  I apologize and have cleared the speaking engagements page and will update in early March.

All is well, just typing full bore.