Mixtape: S1
Brown Hound Press Mixtape: S1
Editor Josh Boldt pairs every story with a song based on a number of factors including lyrics, tone, theme, setting, and mood. These songs are the Story Tracks.
This mixtape features all twenty of the Story Tracks included in Season One.
1. John Prine - Angel From Montgomery
I paired Bob Johnson’s “The Train to Union Station” with John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery” because of the similarities between the two narrators. Both women are unfulfilled in life. Both long for something they can’t quite name. “If dreams were lightning and thunder were desire…”
2. Alice in Chains - Rotten Apple
If you had a pulse in the 1990s then you remember the Jar of Flies album from Alice in Chains. “Rotten Apple” leads off the record. Not only does the song’s tone match Libby Cudmore’s “The Pantry,” but so do lyrics like “arrogance is potent” and “sustenance is stolen.” Then there’s the whole canning jar connection. This song hit me like a strike of Emily’s lightning–I’d picked it for the story before I even finished reading.
3. Waylon Jennings - You Asked Me To
The concept of blind devotion is both romantic and destructive. Our culture often idealizes a kind of devotion that plunges headfirst with reckless abandon. And, sure, there’s something to be said about pledging loyalty without reservations, about being willing to do anything for those we care about. But devotion without rationality is easily exploited by, well, anyone who seeks to manipulate us.
Waylon Jennings’s “You Ask Me To” explores this romantic ideal of self-sacrifice and the potential risks inherent within it. I like how the song’s theme can be applied both to the relationship between the con men and their marks in Chelyen Davis’s “Kenforth’s Baptism,” and also to Kenforth’s devotion to his brother as he decides whether to stand up for himself or to, yet again, quietly resign to Durley’s demands.
4. Queen - I’m in Love With My Car
The title says it all for the song pairing with Judy Penz Sheluk’s “The Last Detail.” Queen’s “I’m in Love With My Car.” Neighbor Carl has an unhealthy relationship with his automobile. If you spot him lurking in your driveway, you better cover that tailpipe!
5. Cardi B - Pretty & Petty
It took me a few days to come up with a song pairing for Damieka Thomas’s “Nepo Baby.” It was tricky because Nepo Baby is by no means a sympathetic character, but somehow I still kind of like her. I wanted a song with a character who was…let’s say, loveably obnoxious. Hat tip to Gwenda Bond for helping me settle on what I believe is the perfect match in Cardi B’s “Pretty & Petty.” Also, I realize it’s not what Cardi B means when she says “you’re built like your dad,” but the parallel still makes me smile.
6. Taylor Swift - seven
Like Deb Blenkhorn’s story “Do You Remember Hamish O’Malley,” Taylor Swift’s “Seven” remembers a childhood friend whose “house was haunted.” The imagery swings from youthful innocence to buried secrets. Both stories tell of pain and hope intertwined, of girls (later women) overcoming dark histories and moving forward the best they can. Even as Swift’s narrator wonders if the world can possibly contain “beautiful things,” she wishes for her friend to know that she still loves her “to the Moon and to Saturn.”
7. Pink Floyd - Mother
Pink Floyd’s “Mother” is an allegory, but at its most basic level, it’s also a story about, shall we say, questionable parenting strategies. A mother who wants the best for her child, even if it means hampering the child’s development in order to keep him “safe” and well-behaved. In Christopher McCurry’s “Bila,” Sila’s parents, similarly, have good intentions; however, like in the Floyd song, things fall apart in the execution.
8. Sigur Rós - Samskeyti
The ethereal nature of Soramimi Hanarejima’s prose in “Minding Yourself” combined with the concept of vestigial telepathy brought to my mind the music of Sigur Rós. The track “Samskeyti” employs the band’s signature sound: sequences of gradually-layering, syncing patterns, similar to the thoughts of the story’s narrator. The song’s Icelandic title roughly translates to “seam,” as in connecting or joining seams–kind of like the mental connection between the two telepathic characters.
9. Mazzy Star - Into Dust
Mazzy Star’s “Into Dust” is a song about impermanence. Every living thing–from a fish to a father–eventually disappears, (re)turns to dust. Gyotaku creates art from a living creature. It is an act of preservation. A remembrance of what was. Dean Crow’s narrator in “Gyotaku” preserves the life of her father as she explores his workshop and solves his mystery. His art and the memory thereof will stay with her long after his physical body has returned to dust.
10. Dire Straits - Money for Nothing
“Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits is about a guy who figures out the secret to working life: get paid to do what you enjoy. I have a sense the band has taken some shit over the years, and this song is their answer to the critics. They’re heckling the working stiffs who doubted them. “That ain’t working, that’s the way you do it.” I can see that attitude in Aurora Bodenhamer’s character, Rod, in her story “The Heckler.” He’s found something he likes that he’s good at. All he has to do is sit in the audience, drink beer, and make jokes. Money for nothing. Throw in the importance of television (“I want my MTV”) to both Abby and Rod, and we’ve got ourselves a Story Track.
11. Muthoni Drummer Queen - Power
I took a deep dive into Kenyan music while researching for Merceline Ochieng’s “Running Against the Shadow.” And, wow, did I find some amazing musicians. Muthoni Drummer Queen is now one of my top artists on Spotify. Track after track of her music found its way into my library. The song that feels most appropriate for Merceline Ochieng’s story is “Power.” You’ll know what I mean when you hear the lyrics. And that beat! Muthoni Drummer Queen uses an appropriate word in the song: tumechoka, a Swahili phrase that means "we are tired.”
12. ART-SCHOOL - Scarlet
You can just feel the longing in “Scarlet” by the Japanese rock band ART-SCHOOL. A deep ache, a yearning for something lost. The lyrics go so well with Norie Suzuki’s story “Perchance.” Lines like “I'm thinking it's someone else’s fault that we changed / And that we have made a mistake” and “Why do I want to touch you now / I want your body when I can't see you” parallel both Misa’s memory of her time with Hinata and her present with Itsuki. They all shared an experience that changed everything and sent their relationships on a course that would be forever altered.
Was it a mistake, as the ART-SCHOOL line suggests, or perhaps the outcome was as it should be? And don’t we all sometimes wonder how our lives would look if we’d made that one different decision? Like Misa, we gather ourselves, shed our skin, and continue on the best we can.
13. Chromatics - These Streets Will Never Look the Same
The Kill for Love album by Chromatics is one of my top records of the past twenty years. Brooding and heavy, it kicks off with a haunting Neil Young cover and keeps that ghostly tone throughout. The track “These Streets Will Never Look the Same” is a fitting match for Suvajeet Duttagupta’s “The Digital Familiar” with its eerie synth and lyrics like “spent my life inside this room / and disappeared some more each day” and “the screen stayed flashing in my mind.” I can feel in the music as Sylvie is gradually overcome by Bree, as she sinks deeper and deeper into digital dependence.
14. Jimi Hendrix - Little Wing
“When I’m sad, she comes to me with a thousand smiles she gives to me free.” So say the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing.” In Nivara Lune’s “Emily’s Birthday,” Mrs. Kowalski’s butterflies are a physical representation of the memory of her daughter. The act of releasing them resembles a seance, a conjuring of Emily’s spirit so that her mother can again and again experience those thousand smiles. Like the butterflies, Mrs. Kowalski wishes Emily (and herself) to be free. “Fly on, little wing.”
15. Justin Johnson - Ghost of the Mountain
I listened to dozens of songs about ghost towns and hauntings and conspiracies, but none of them were hitting right for this story. The lyrics were either too on-the-nose or didn’t match Carolee Anita Boyles’s writing in “Ghost Town.” I finally came across a new musician to me: Justin Johnson. His track “Ghost of the Mountain” needs no lyrics to convey the tone I was looking for. Imagine the noirish blues guitar as the characters sneak around the hills, spying on the abandoned town below them and searching for their missing friend.
16. Talking Heads - Girlfriend is Better
This was a week where the Story Track came to me easily while I was reading. The quirky lyrics and catchy beat of “Girlfriend is Better” by Talking Heads fits with Ronald Coleman’s “Cappuccinos and Crime.” And, besides, Tom should be humming this song because he’s clearly hit the jackpot with his date, Maggie the jewel thief. Here’s hoping they “never get caught.”
17. The Chicks - Goodbye Earl
Okay, bear with me on this one. As I read Shelly Jones’s “Bloom” I realized the plot reminded me of the song “Goodbye Earl” by The Chicks–right down to the method of disposal. As a teenager growing up in the South during the nineties, I heard The Chicks first albums a lot. Around here, there was even a bumper sticker about this song. Leave a comment on our social media if you remember what that bumper sticker said. Anyway, I loved the song back then, and I had just as much fun pulling it back out twenty-five years later. Oh, and Earl, those black-eyed peas tasted alright to me!
18. Townes Van Zandt - Flyin’ Shoes
“Flyin’ Shoes” is one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite songwriters, Townes Van Zandt. Larry Sheckler has reached the end of his rope in Josh Boldt’s “Good Things Take Time.” He’s “so tired of these same old blues.” His march to the interstate is a final attempt to escape his mental prison, a hail mary to the gods of the highway, that great American portal that promises redemption, renewal, and reinvention. “It won’t be long till [he’ll] be tying on [his] flyin’ shoes.”
19. Lucinda Williams - Side of the Road
The mother in R. Hunter Whitworth’s “Graveyard of the Atlantic” (who is curiously never named) is a watcher, an observer of people. She watches Paradise Dave as he lectures her. She studies the guests of the resort through windows as she cleans their cabanas. And, whether her kids know it or not, she is always keeping an eye on them—when they’re at the beach with their secret cooler, or while they tell each other stories among the crashing waves. She even follows them on their clandestine adventure and hides in the shadows without alerting them to her presence.
Although the lyrics of Lucinda Williams’s “Side of the Road” aren’t an obvious match (sometimes the Story Track is more about the vibe), the woman in Williams’s song reminds me a lot of Whitworth’s protagonist. Something about the idea of wanting to know how it feels to be alone but still in the company of those she loves, even if just for a few moments. It’s more about the way she longs for some sweet moments of agency, for a taste of autonomy, in a life that is consumed with the need to care for others.
20. Patty Griffin - Shine a Different Way
Patty Griffin’s “Shine a Different Way” is a song about releasing the urge to control the narrative–both for ourselves and for others. It’s about allowing people to be who they are. About breaking free from our mental ruts so we can “shine a different way tomorrow.” The mother and daughter in Ellen Birkett Morris’s “Baggage” both wish each other were different. Both of them assume the other is wrong and refuse to see the opposite side until it is too late. We should all, while we can, heed Griffin’s advice and “let it start again…let it chase the wind.”
