Bill Mallonee: With Two New Impressive Recordings Released, Bill Catches Us Up in His Own Words

posted in: Articles, January 2011 | 0

Here at Down The Line we really enjoy having contributing writers. When it comes to great writers and musicians, Bill Mallonee still tops that list… heck, he defines that list and sets the standard. Mallonee’s output is the most prolific out of anyone I can think of in the industry. He still cranks out an unparalleled amount of songs that offer up a dusty, sweat of the brow slice of American life and history, as well as introspective songs about his life and all that encapsulates the human experience. There is poetry to Bill’s music, and it carries over into what he writes as well. Since he has just released two great recordings, Drifter Songs WPA Volume 9 and Ti Jean – Hearts Crossing the Center Line, I thought it would be cool to get Bill to talk about the music and the inspiration behind what we hear. If you haven’t already checked out Mallonee’s new website, stop by and give it a look. Make sure to check out his band camp site as well where you can purchase (at seriously inexpensive prices) all of his recordings in every format available.

DRIFTER SONGS – WPA VOLUME 9

This is the first batch of songs I’ve released since moving to Santa Fe, NM last September. Muriah and I had been homeless during a 9 week tour of the US last Summer. The southwest and high desert terrain we live in has been inspiring. But never have we felt so displaced and uprooted, hence “Drifter Songs.”

The road has always held a certain fascination and lure for me. When I was very young, I remember even then, sensing a deep unresolved melancholy in the universe every time my folks would saddle up an old Valiant station wagon, pile us kids in and take off for some destination. The play of light, speed and changing topography all lent themselves to a world that needed “filling in” with my imagination. What kind of town was this? Who worked in that diner over there? Who ate there daily? What sort of stories were told there?

And that old, abandoned farm house? How did it fall on hard times? What sort of ghosts and stories peopled it now? Things of wonder like that. All bathed in the golden light of day or the more lonely neon colors of the night.

Much later on, as a recording artist and touring musician, I began logging 180 shows a year, pushing record after record at the grass-roots level. A dingy club here, a crap-hole bar there, a late night diner, a Super 8 later on. A decade at that pace passed very quickly it seems. But I got to know America. It put real faces in the real places that previously, I had only known by my imagination. I heard (and overheard) all kinds of stories and tales; Sometimes it was news that called for rejoicing. Sometimes it was stories of heartbreak and woe that only a sympathetic ear and shoulder to cry on was all one could offer. America. She will surprise you with her resiliency.

So I chiseled these images and feelings in notebooks…and tried to sing about them in an honest, believable way. Because the folks who’ve been forced to walk a more crooked and rugged mile deserve your honor and respect. They are the “saints” who won’t likely ever have a TV camera turned on them at the 6 o’clock news, but their quiet testimonials of hard work, perseverance, kindness, and goodwill are (I believe) what “make this world go ’round.” That’s what I saw, that’s what I learned and that’s what’s here, on some level, in “Drifter Songs.”

As a “band in a van,” I think we felt an ever increasing gratitude that there was something or Some One anchoring our lil’ ship to the good earth; an earth full of all its trials, betrayals and hardships. We soldiered on, and ramped up 15 albums in 10 years. We took in the scenery and the lives of the countless folks we played for. We made friends and sensed their goodwill. Now, as a solo artist, it seems even more poignant in these uncertain days. And uncertainty is the heart of a drifter.

As a songwriter, and student of American history, I began to see the ties and similarities with the heroes of older days who forged their way across this county, made new towns, planted farms, fostered new businesses, raised families…and of course lost a great deal along the way. The losses of today’s heroes are no less heavy than those endured by the good folks of yesteryear.

These 20 years have reinforced in me the notion that we are all living in the same skin. And that “doing the best one can do with what one has,” might just be the walk we endeavor to walk distilled into a single sentence. It’s “truth,” yes, but not truth with the bull-horn of formulas. It was something possessing that Biblical “still, quiet voice.” A faith lived one-(stumbling)-step-at-a-time. People’s lives were living sermons saying that “you can be down, but not out” ,“disappointed, but hopeful.” Wounded and yet capable of “doing the right thing.”

If the very essence of a drifter’s life is uncertainty, then we are all drifter’s in some sense. Until we find our home there’s the day’s living to do…and there’s each other. And it seems to be that in that “factory of life,” a heroism is born. An individual is refined, fired and steeled against all that is potentially sorrowful and unknown. I’ve seen such heroism with my own two eyes.

I’ve drifted almost all my life now. Town to town. Show to show. Song by song. (For a spell, I was unconsciously reaching for my house key to open the van, presumably because I felt more “at home out there” on the road than at my Athens residence.) Singing & songwriting. “It” is still a joy and sometimes a curse. And at some point you wonder if “it” chose you, as opposed to you choosing “it.” So be it.

Like the old saying goes: “You do your best with what life gives you to do it with.”
And (of course) pray for more grace for tomorrow.
That’s what the road and the good folks I’ve met taught me.

America. It’s people. The very best part of her.
They are still the most inspiring group of folks I’ve ever known.

Bill Mallonee
Santa Fe, NM
January, 2011

“Ti Jean” (Hearts Crossing the Center Line)

11 Songs inspired by the writings of Jack Kerouac By: Bill Mallonee

OVERVIEW:

Jean-Louis “Jack” Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was a Canadian-American novelist and poet. He is considered a pioneer of  “Beat Generation” literature. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous, sensual, fractured method of writing covering topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. The “Beats” were a culture of post-war (WW II) American youth, highly educated but increasingly disillusioned. They began to find less and less in common with an America that was plunging into secularism and industrialization. The “Beats” valued literature (both old and new), jazz music, super-charged experiences and friendships.

Kerouac believed in a deeper innocence of post-war America and its people that was in danger of being lost. Often misunderstood and even misappropriated by his peers, Kerouac considered himself a “religious” writer. He was a seeker searching for contact with permanence & transcendence. He never lost his love for his French/Catholic roots. Often playing the sociologist, Kerouac, with the preciseness of an “outsider,” challenged post-war America to assess its values, its goals and even its lack of spiritual focus. He died at age 47 of complications due to alcoholism.

AND NOW, A WARNING:

Before I speak briefly of my attraction (and sometimes revulsion) to Kerouac’s work, I would like to first offer, a note of warning to Down the Line Zine readers should they take it upon themselves to delve into Kerouac’s works:

Jack Kerouac, although heralded perhaps as the most influential writer of the 20th century, can be dangerous waters for readers. He labored in obscurity over a period of almost 12 years during which time he wrote almost all his books, before finally being recognized as a writer of great passion, innovation and “coolness.” (His friend, poet Allen Ginsberg helped bring Kerouac to national attention). He wrote in a very personal, journalistic fashion.

While he always attempted to describe an ennobled America with reverence and tenderness and his place in it, much of his early life and writing was characterized by a love for experiences ranging from many sexual encounters to alcohol abuse. Yet, in many of his works (especially the “middle” period) the reader will sense a strong religious impulse & element. (Kerouac embraced a Buddhist lifestyle for a time and later in life, the Catholicism of his youth). His work and life were highly charged & controversial in every sense of the word.

Kerouac possessed a mind both brilliant and tragic. Brilliant because he was so well self-educated, using his wide ranging knowledge to forge a new way with words both in novels and in his poetry that has left a lasting impact on everything in our culture from literature, to music, to oratory, even to advertising.

And sadly tragic, because his lifestyle of sexual misconduct, misogynistic tendencies and his frequent tendency to self-medicate his doubts and depressive states with alcohol, pot, and Benzedrine, left him wasted of his brilliant powers. These contributed to his death at age 47, on Oct. 21st, 1969. And so reader, beware. Kerouac is a writer of myriad approaches. Tender and insightful, romantic and callously sensual, charitable and then alternately selfish, frustrating and exhilarating.

WHY JACK KEROUAC?

My fascination with and attraction to JK’s work began after reading a short bio on him by British poet, Steve Turner. Turner’s “Angel Headed Hipster” attempted to reassess the role of faith and religion in Kerouac’s life. Kerouac’s tenderly appreciated  a part of America that he thought was vanishing. He bemoaned that which was being lost to mass industrialization, suburbanization and the corporate takeover that began to dominate a person’s private life. He dreaded the impersonal in daily life.

His writing is deeply “immediate,” transparently personal and journalistic. He gleaned many of his experiences for his books from hitch hiking across the US with only a backpack, some notebooks and a few personal belongings. Life on the road was the crucible for his thoughts and experiences.  No doubt, in my own work as a touring songwriter, I have found the road to be a necessary incubator for my songs.

In his middle years, Kerouac began to describe himself as a religious writer. Still, even though he continued to perfect and employ his distinctive “beat generation” style of rhythmic words, fractured images, and stream-of-consciousness, he did not part with his emphasis on experiences. (Later attempts to live by a self-imposed code of abstinence in regards to alcohol, drugs and sex seem to have been spotty in their success at best.)

Kerouac’s forging of a new language to help him describe and tap into the “God-ness” he felt was within each person bears strong resemblance to much Catholic natural theology. He could be brutally honest at times with himself and just as much living in denial the next, engaging in escapist behavior such as abuse of alcohol or casual sex. Here was a man, a seeker, struggling to find himself in God or God in himself. Many books (particularly Vision of Gerard, Desolation Angels, Dharma Bums and Tristessa) are punctuated with prayers to Christ. Kerouac’s heart seems to have been one of chronic yearning to realize or find himself realized) in a way that was personal and meaningful. To me, these cries and yearnings and insights, echoed the deepest desires of all those who ever sought mercy and friendship with their Creator.

Often, it seems, at least to this songwriter, that his friends were the worst influences. They recognized his genius but failed to see his deeper needs. His starvation of spiritual reality eventually saw him returning to the Catholicism of his youth. He spent his last years in his hometown of Lowell, MA caring for his mother, Gabrielle, a devout Catholic. (It was she who nicknamed Jack “Ti Jean” at an early age.) She maintained strong ties with Jack throughout her life and he with her.

ABOUT THIS RECORD:

Except for “HARD LUCK AND HEART ATTACK,” all of these tunes were written over the last 3 years. As I said, Jack’s writing is deeply personal and journalistic. I began to keep road journals when touring with VoL around 1994.

“HARD LUCK & HEART ATTACK,” the intro song, was inspired by Kerouac’s work entitled “Desolation Angels.” It was the first “Kerouac tune” I wrote and appeared on 1999’s Audible Sigh. It opens with Jack atop Mount Desolation in Washington State, where he took a job doing fire watches for the U.S. Forestry Services. The book (and song) touch on his self destructive lifestyle, trips to San Francisco to hang with his friends, and his excursions to Mexico City to visit his friend a “beat writer,” William S. Burroughs.

(Thoughts on his relationship to W. S. Burroughs are continued in the song/hymn “All the Junkies & Exiles.”)

Above all, on this album, I wanted to highlight Kerouac’s reverent belief in the potential nobility of the American spirit, his tender way of seeing people, and his hunger for spirituality reality. Because of my work on the road as a touring and performing songwriter, I have identified a great deal with much of his rendition of the displaced artist, in search of a home here and in eternity. Therefore, I think all these songs are imbued with a certain spirit found in Jack Kerouac’s writings.

A few summers ago, I went to his birthplace, Lowell, MA. I saw (and read some of) the “On The Road” manuscript, toured the Kerouac museum, spoke with the staff there. Visitors were invited to type a message to Jack on an old Underwood there at the museum. I quoted the first two lines from this song and addressed it to “Ti Jean,” (Little John) Jack’s mother’s term of endearment for her son.

“Things clear for a moment, when you’re coming off Desolation; ‘Frisco’s you’re appointment…just the way you were before.” -Pax, Ti Jean”

Tenderness was one of Kerouac’s overlooked qualities, I believe. It is my hope that by listening to these songs, some of that virtue of his tender spirit might be restored to his legacy.

Bill Mallonee
Santa Fe, NM Jan. 2011

Musician credits:

“Ti Jean” Hearts Crossing the Center Line was released 14 January 2011 at:

Bill Mallonee on BandCamp

Personnel on:

“Buddha,” “Skin Intact,” “All the Junkies & Exiles,” “When Your Heart Gets Broken (It Just Keeps on Breaking),” “Bakersfield,” “Western Skies,” “Going Down,” ” Pillow of Stars,” & ” Nomenclature”

Bill Mallonee: vocals, guitars, bass drums on

Muriah Rose; vocals, keyboards

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Personnel on SOBER UP:

Bill Mallonee: vocals, guitars

Muriah Rose: vocals, keyboards

Seth Hendershot; drums, smiles

Robbie: bass

(produced by Tom Lewis & Bill Mallonee)

____________________________________

personnel on “HARD LUCK & HEART ATTACK”

(produced by: Buddy Miller & Bill Mallonee)

Bill Mallonee; Vocals, guitars, harmonica

Ken Hutson: guitar, bgv’s

Jake Bradley: Bass

Brady Blade: drums

Bill Mallonee on BandCamp

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