Songs about Books

I was recently fortunate enough to receive a grant from the CityArtist program of the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.  This grant will go towards a project that I came up with that I am calling “Songs about Books.”  Put quite simply, the idea of Songs about Books is to get five different songwriters (myself included) to write sets of songs about five different books (one book each).

In devising this project, I thought it important that an unaffiliated party, well-versed in both literature and local music, be the one to assign each of us our books.  As luck would have it, we in Seattle are very fortunate to have just such a person in our midst: The Stranger‘s Books Editor, Paul Constant, was the natural pick.  I approached him to ask if he would fill this role, and he very graciously accepted.

After a painstaking process of deliberation, I picked Ryan Barrett (The Pica Beats), Alex Guy (Led to Sea), Johanna Kunin (Bright Archer), and Joshua Morrison to be my fellow songwriters on this project.  I’ve been lucky enough to have music by each of them on Ball of Wax over the years, and I think the five of us together will make for a lively, diverse offering.

So now we have our group.  How will this thing actually work?  Paul has interviewed all of the songwriters about music and books – what we think about them, how we approach them, what we like, what we don’t like.  Once he got answers from us and meditated on them appropriately, he then assigned us each a different book.  I told him that he had carte blanche on what kinds of books to assign: they could be novels, non-fiction, essays, poetry . . . anything at all. We’ll announce the books selected and who got them soon, but it’s a very interesting group.

Now that we’ve gotten our assignments, we will take our books and read them, of course.  Following that, each of us will write five songs inspired by our book, and choose three of those to record.  The resulting 15 recorded songs will comprise Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly Volume 25 (Summer 2011), which will be released with a performance on August 19th at the Fremont Abbey.  At the show you’ll get to hear all 25 songs that resulted from this project, and take home the 15-song CD to listen to and cherish forever.

All of this – the songwriting, the recording, the CD production – will be supported by funds very generously granted by the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.  We are incredibly lucky to live in a city that realizes that the arts have value and is willing to pay artists to create new work.  Thanks to the OACA for their support, to the songwriters for their sense of adventure, and to Paul for generously donating his time and energy to the cause.

Paul and I (and, I hope, some of the other songwriters) will be posting about our experiences with this project here on the blog as Songs about Books progresses, so make sure to check back from time to time for behind the scenes details and updates.