Michael Perry's Voice Mail

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 335. This one’s paid subscribers-only. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I reminisce over how reminiscing hurts my tummy. I mean, it’s a little more poetic than that, but basically…

Forward!Mike

P.S. Consistent with the theme of this week’s episode, gonna be on the road with the band some and on my own some.

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

The tots in question when I could still gather ’em up…

No true marginalia this week, but I did order a bunch of used books. Notice a theme?

Okey-doke, folks. Thank you as ever. I have much for which to be grateful.

All my books including Population 485 (recently optioned for production as a Broadway musical) and Visiting Tom are available at the Sneezing Cow store, as well as T-shirts, recordings, the PBS specials, and sneezing cow koozies.

The Sneezing Cow TikTok is here and the Instagram is here.

Upcoming live events (Mike and/or Mike and the band).

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 332. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode, I take you behind the scenes to experience the process of writing introductions to a bunch of Bob Dylan songs to be covered by Justin Vernon (some know him as Bon Iver) and then taking a chosen few of them to the stage.

Scroll down for photos and more details.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers receive advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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Forward!Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

I sat in rehearsals and just wrote (video stills courtesy Blaize Fobbe and crew):

When drummer Sean Carey sang a couple we had to decide between dubbing him Sean Iver or Bon Carey. Went with Sean Iver:

Rough draft of an intro written during rehearsal:

Compared to final draft for show:

During the actual show I tracked the set list on my iPad in real time, crossing out each song as the band played it (see screenshot below). It was exciting because although I wrote intros for every song on the setlist, I knew ahead of time Justin would only call for a couple of intros. And whenever he deviated from the set list I had to swipe left and right like sixty to find the right song. The big red “DO THIS” was my self-reminder that this intro was to be done whether Justin called it or not.

All of the Bon Dylan intros—including those not performed—are gathered here.

Brief video view from behind the “Voice of God” microphone sidestage during soundcheck:

Same view after the people show up for the afternoon show:

And then for the evening show:

Crowd viewpoint:

The man they all came to see and hear. We’ve put on some miles over the years. Despite what you may have heard, I am not his uncle.

This week’s read:

This observation remains mordant:

Cinderella & Company is available on BookShop.org and Amazon.

As ever, I continue to dip in and out of the letters of John Steinbeck. I may never finish them. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters is available on Amazon and BookShop.org.

Those are affiliate links. We get a penny in the jar.

All my books including Population 485 (recently optioned for production as a Broadway musical) are available at the Sneezing Cow store, as well as T-shirts, recordings, the PBS specials, and sneezing cow koozies.

The Sneezing Cow TikTok is here and the Instagram is here.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

You can share this episode with a friend:

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 328. This one’s paid subscribers-only. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I update my fitness situation, propose a slant rhyme, and admit I will never be a lean piece of beef. I also use the plural oxen when I shoulda used the singular ox.

Forward!Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

That hill’s a climb, no matter the season:

Me running a sub-five minute mile in 1983 or so.

In 2005 I entered the Water Street Mile. Goal was to finish in under six minutes. Ran a 5:58! It wasn’t pretty:

This weeks’ marginal annotations, from The Triggering Town:

The Triggering Town is available at BookShop.org or Amazon.

Those are affiliate links, we get a penny in the jar.

As some of you know, the hill featured in today’s episode was also a central character in the book Visiting Tom. I describe my long-running battle with the highway commissioner. He won. But I hit the New York Times list. Tra-la-la.

The Sneezing Cow TikTok is here and the Instagram is here.

Everything else is here.

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 326. This one’s paid subscribers-only. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode, I discuss tangents and hatchlings and a favorite children’s book and the sweet unreliability of memory, and then go swirling into a musical cosmos.

Forward!Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

NOTE TO NEW SUBSCRIBERS: This week there are no book annotations because Mike was busy preparing for this:

Thank you to the Eaux Claires festival for letting me be part of it, but above all to the crowds for being open to everything big and small. It was an uplifting experience.

Also did a reading in a snowplow truck (with my neighbor the novelist Nickolas Butler):

And now it’s back to music from the wrenhouse:

All my books are available at the Sneezing Cow store, as well as T-shirts, recordings, the PBS specials, sneezing cow koozies, and shirts including this one:

The Sneezing Cow TikTok is here and the Instagram is here.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

You can share this episode with a friend:

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

Above all, as ever: Thank you.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 322. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode, a number of factors converge, causing me to revisit a terrifying experience with a clown.

Forward!Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

The history of Carson Park.

Last summer I took my 83-year-old dad to see my nephew play baseball at Carson Park. Along about the 7th inning dad nonchalantly mentioned that the last time he watched a game there, this guy was playing shortstop.

The Eaux Claires festival.

During a recent discussion with Nick Gulig, I rediscovered my love of Frank Stanford’s poetry. So I am excited to dive into this book:

But first, this week I finished this one:

I’ve mentioned this book in previous episodes (317, 318, and 321). My favorite piece in the collection is “Yoop Dreams.” Herewith some excerpts:

Meaghan Garvey’s Midwestern Death Trip is available at BookShop.org or Amazon.

The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford is available at BookShop.org or Amazon.

Those are affiliate links, we get a penny in the jar.

All my books including Population 485 (recently optioned for production as a Broadway musical) are available at the Sneezing Cow store, as well as T-shirts, recordings, the PBS specials, sneezing cow koozies, and shirts including this one:

The Sneezing Cow TikTok is here and the Instagram is here.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

You can share this episode with a friend:

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

Thank you, and see y’down the road.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 321. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I share how the lingering scent of smoke in my car got me to reflecting on the powerful part fire and emergency services have played in my life far beyond the calls themselves.

Thank you for listening. Scroll down for photos related to this episode, MARGINALIA section, and subscription info.

Mike

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

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MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

Back in January of 2025, I covered similar themes in the “Ambulance Karma” episode, including this and other photos:

I continue to buy more books than I can read, and continue to skip back and forth between several at once.

Yesterday I read another batch of 1960s-era letters from this one:

I enjoy New York for the exact reasons Lucia Berlin did not:

(A few paragraphs later she says New York is “pretty groovy” and “We’re relaxing with all the excitement,” which sounds counterintuitive but is exactly how I feel when I’m there—the anonymity of a teeming city refreshes me.

I don’t relate to the misery or fear in these paragraphs, but I do relate to the impostor syndrome, and relate (although with more a wry grin than drama) to the part about “Oh crap, I sold a book idea, now I gotta write it!”

Unless I’m researching a specific project, I tend to read via random selection, and that’s how I wound up reading Lucia Berlin’s letters. Regular subscribers know I read a lot of Joan Didion in the past year, which led to me discovering and reading Eve Babitz. Recently I began reading (and very much enjoying) Meaghan Garvey’s Midwestern Death Trip (currently on pause because my copy had pagination issues and a replacement is on the way) and she offered up Berlin as counterpoint/antidote to Babitz, and so here we are.

You can order Lucia Berlin’s Welcome Home at BookShop.org or Amazon.

I’m reading Berlin’s letters as a prequel to reading her short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women, available at BookShop.org or Amazon.

The book Didion and Babitz is available on Bookshop.org or Amazon.

Meaghan Garvey’s Midwestern Death Trip is available at BookShop.org or Amazon).

Those are all affilliate links, we get a penny in the jar.

All my books including Population 485 are available at the Sneezing Cow store, as well as T-shirts, recordings, the PBS specials, sneezing cow koozies, and shirts including this one:

The Sneezing Cow TikTok is here and the Instagram is here.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

You can share this episode with a friend:

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

Above all, as ever: Thank you.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 320. This one’s paid subscribers-only. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode, hummingbirds and an evening with a poet drive me to consider the concept of aesthetics as they relate to the blue collar life.

Forward!Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

Mike and Nicholas Gulig at Dotter’s Books (photo by Jeff McCabe):

Setup for the birds:

The fountain pens:

Book tour boots over the years:

The coffee cup:

Nicholas Gulig books:

Orient is available from BookShop.org and Amazon.

The Other Altar is available from Bookshop.org and Amazon.

Montaigne in Barn Boots.

All the rest of it.

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

See y’down the road.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 317. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In this episode I share how fixing my snowplow led me back to one of the most popular live humor excerpts from my book Truck: A Love Story, as well as a piece I used to perform at open mics when I was long-haired and much younger.

Thank you for listening. Scroll down for photos, marginalia, and subscription info.

Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

This little dude did the joystick trick.

Me welding with Dad’s farm truck in the background. A few years later I’d be using it to go on dates.

In time that old F-100 got a little worn out. Maybe because, as shown in the oddly deteriorated slide below, it was occasionally overworked.

The farm truck my dad got to replace the blue one. This is not a shot of it in the junkyard, this is a shot of it still in use. We got the most out of our vehicles.

Do you remember?

Regular listeners know I tend to read several books at once. I’m still a few pages from finishing Candide. I’m only about 1/8th through Steinbeck: A Life in Letters and expect to plow through that one intermittently over time. I’m underlining/circling/annotating far more of Steinbeck’s correspondence than I can share here, but having tussled now and then with editors over colloquial language now and then, I enjoyed this passage:

I’ve been looking forward to Midwestern Death Trip by Meaghan Garvey ever since I read a piece by her in County Highway and now the book has arrived.

I’ll say more when I’ve finished it, but so far I’m enjoying Garvey’s headlong pace, her attention to detail (and getting those details right) and it doesn’t hurt that she mentions Jim Harrison as one of her favorite writers. She also dives into the grittier sides of life in ways I am not built for. Bottom line? Anyone who still uses the phrase “tooling around” has my attention.

Midwestern Death Trip is available at BookShop.org or Amazon.

You can get Candide at BookShop.org or Amazon.

Steinbeck: A Life in Letters is available on Amazon and BookShop.org.

Those are affiliate links, we get a penny in the jar.

Mike’s books and recordings and miscellany are here.

His TikTok is here and his Instagram is here.

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (most recently paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

You can share this episode with a friend:

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

Above all, as ever: Thank you.

*Kinda their real names kinda not. But definitely my real brothers.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 310. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen (and be sure to watch the related video in the marginalia section below).

In this episode I acknowledge the ?spring? melt and revisit memories of my friend Ricky by reading and expanding on some passages from Coop.

Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

The uncropped photo of me with Ricky and my brothers:

As you can see it is melt season. Ricky and I both have tin shovels in our hand. We carved our own river. Even built our own bridge. The white truck was a Tonka tow truck:

What it looked like new (it appears we’d converted our to just a truck):

We’d make “fields” and till them. When the top bit of sand dried out and turned white, we’d skim it off and haul it away with our Farmall toys.

I almost missed it, but in the back there you can see our…well, I’m not sure what we called it, but as I recall you dumped sand in the top and it flowed down through a series of rockers.

Here’s the post I wrote in 2009 when I uncovered some forgotten details about Ricky’s graveside service (it included firecrackers).

And finally, here’s the video in remembrance of Ricky. Credit to Andy Moore and Wendy Woodard and Wisconsin Public Television.

Regarding actual book marginalia, my reading continues to be omnivorous (or whatever you call it when you hippety-hop from one book to another). But after years of thinking I oughta, I’ve started this one:

And made a few more notes in this one:

Intent of my scribble: Write a book about a truck, sneak some existentialism (or poetry, or…) in there.

As a prolific author who has never drawn a check from a university, I owe a significant debt to a wide range of academics. I have my reservations, but jeepers, Kierky—TAPEWORMS?

You can get The Existentialist’s Survival Guide at BookShop.org or Amazon.

You can get Candide at BookShop.org or Amazon.

Those are affiliate links, we get a penny in the jar.

All of my prolixity is here.

We respect budgets (both financial and time) but if you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (last episode’s paying subscribers got advance news about an exciting new project involving Population 485), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

You can share this episode with a friend:

You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:

Above all, as ever: Thank you.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 304. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

In today’s episode I return to a piece I wrote about my daughter and the music of Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Thank you for listening,Mike

MARGINALIA

(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)

Here’s the version of “Shaggy Dad” my daughter danced to:

The following exerpts are from a much longer and excellent piece from Sonic Cocktails.

The stories of Lightnin’s chord changes are profuse and legend. The late singer/songwriter Eric Taylor (who once bought me a ticket to his own show in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, because I drove three hours to get there and forgot my wallet) used to play bass for Lightnin’ and claimed he had a “tell” in which he’d stomp his foot slightly differently before a chord change…so Taylor spent the entire gig staring intently at Lightnin’s boot heel. Whenever Taylor told the tale, he quoted Hopkins as saying, “Lightnin’ change when Lightnin’ want to change. You just gotta be there when I get there.” I imagine my own band members nodding along (my guitar player has famously said I keep excellent time “but it’s never divisible by four”).

Below, my elder daughter right around the time I wrote today’s essay:

In 2013, I was asked to write the liner notes for the Blind Boys of Alabama album I’ll Find A Way. My daughter, by then a teenager as tall as I, accompanied me to one of the recording sessions, a profoundly moving experience I wrote about in the book Roughneck Grace and spoke about in Episode #145 (paid subscription required). Then we attended the album release concert together in St. Paul.

Been continuing to read the paper versions of Devouring Time, the new Jim Harrison biography, and continue to dip in and out of The Power of Myth, but I’m on the road and traveling light this trip so starting this one on my Kindle:

I read it way back in the mid-1990s when I was trying to figure out how to make it as a writer from the middle of nowhere with no connections. I’m reading it again now towards a piece I’m working on about folks you’d never guess were inspirational to me—the punk singer Henry Rollins among them. Later I would detour from a magazine assignment to see him perform spoken word in Seattle, one more step on my path to taking my books from the page to the stage.

I’ve barely dipped into it yet, but already made these three highlights:

My most recent book didn’t include Henry Rollins, but it coulda.

Devouring Time is available from BookShop.org and Amazon.

The Power of Myth is available at BookShop.org and Amazon.

Get in the Van is available at BookShop.org and Amazon.

Those are affiliate links, we get a penny in the jar.

To keep up to date between episodes, follow Mike on Instagram. His daughter also finally got him set up on TikTok.

The Sneezing Cow webstore has all of Mike’s books, recordings, T-shirts, and merchandise (including the bestselling koozie).

If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

You can share this episode with a friend:

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