Michael Perry's Voice Mail

Howdy folks:

Welcome to the Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 45. This one’s free for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

Included in today’s installment: The one about the farmer who got kicked by a dead cow. In the Roughneck Reflection Mike reveals how his brother told him he’d been telling the story wrong for years, and how—even when we have no interest in spreading disinformation—we can still wander off the path. And how we’re all looking for the spot where our stories overlap. (We do agree the dead cow kicked the very much alive man.)

“The Way the Story Goes” is from Mike’s book Roughneck Grace available in print and ebook here. He also told the dead cow story in From The Top, available in print, ebook, and audiobook here. The general store for everything else from Sneezing Cow can koozies to the original Sneezing Cow T-shirt is here.

We also have two new DVDs available.

Thank you for continuing to check our Voice Mail.

For subscription options, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

Howdy folks:

Welcome to the Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 40. This one’s free for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

Included in today’s installment: A rooster, offering background commentary throughout because Mike forgot to close the window over the garage before he started recording this episode about truck troubles, truck happiness, and above all, truck snacks. In the Roughneck Reflection Mike reveals his favorite gas station treat of all.

“Truck Snacks” is from Mike’s book Million Billion, available in print and ebook formats here. The general store for everything else from Sneezing Cow can koozies to the original Sneezing Cow T-shirt is here.

We also have two new DVDs available.

Thank you for continuing to check our Voice Mail.

For subscription options, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

Share this episode with somebody:

Howdy folks:

Welcome to the Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 35. This one’s free for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

Included in today’s installment: Mike explores the section about Harley’s khakis in The Jesus Cow as a metaphor for the ambivalent relationship between art and pitchforks. Or something like that. And then in the Roughneck Reflection Mike delves deeper into the discomfort and gratitude borne of operating in disparate milieus (or milieux).

The Jesus Cow is available in hardcover, paperback, and audio. The general store for everything else from Sneezing Cow can koozies to the original Sneezing Cow T-shirt is here.

Thank you for continuing to check our Voice Mail. It’s a nice way to connect. You can listen in khakis or Carhartts. Side note, when Mike recorded this one he was wearing embarrassing shorts, because he was due for the treadmill.

For subscription options, 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 the Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 30. This one’s free for subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.

Included in today’s installment: Mike thanks readers and listeners for their notes and emails. In fact, it was a reader who suggested this episode’s “Roughneck Rewind,” in which Mike revisits and reflects on an essay about mercy from the book Peaceful Persistence.

You can listen to the Mary Gauthier song “Mercy Now” right here.

Mike also wrote a book about Montaigne. And the Peaceful Persistence shirts are out there...

Thank you, everyone.

For subscription options, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

P.S., It’s Tink’s (not Tick Tink’s, like Mike flubbed it) and their logo is not subtle:

Howdy folks:

Welcome to the Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 26. This one’s free to all, and to all a good night. Click the player above to listen.

Included in today’s installment: Mike doesn’t mention it, but he knows he really oughta hook up the snowplow. In this episode’s “Roughneck Rewind,” Mike revisits and reflects on a piece he often shares this time of year, about how he went from Christmas-tree-free to leading the bucksaw charge.

The essay originally appeared in the book From the Top, currently on sale here and available as an audiobook here and pretty much everywhere else audiobooks are available.

It’s been a daunting year. I (Mike when not speaking in third person) take nothing for granted. Least of all readers and listeners. I thank you, and my family thanks you.

Mike

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Came out of the woods this morning thinking about a passage in Visiting Tom that isn’t about Thanksgiving but invokes Thanksgiving. Whatever the state of your heart, mind, and table, thank you for being thoughtful and thankful.

Mike

P.S. Just in case you think I’m unceasingly reflective and morose, here’s my favorite Tom video ever.

For subscription options, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

A few words.

Thank you,Mike

One of my favorite Tom pictures. He just finished telling one of his stories, and he’s enjoying my reaction as much as he enjoyed telling it. Love this informal snapshot, and how much it conveys of what we miss these days—dropping in to eat a little something, shoot the breeze, pass some time.

Howdy folks:

Welcome to the Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 13. This one’s free to one and all. Click the player above to listen.

Included in today’s installment: From his window Mike sees squash curing in the sun, and provides a brief intro to truck-bed trailers. In this episode’s “Roughneck Rewind,” Mike revisits and reflects on the dating scene from his book Visiting Tom, and why Tom’s 1948 Harley-Davidson didn’t pan out when it came to getting a date. The book is available in hardcover, paperback, and audio. The audiobook is also available as part of this bundle.

This is a free episode of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail. For subscription options, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):

For all of Mike’s books, audiobooks, music and recorded humor, plus Sneezing Cow T-shirts, stickers, can koozies and other merchandise designed to keep ink in the printer and gas in the van, please visit the SneezingCow webstore.

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Art by Andrea Worthey

Back before the pandemic I was having a bad day. Felt I was failing as a husband. Had a daughter in distress far from home and calling for comfort. Another daughter on the edge of change. I needed sunlight. I stepped outside into a beautiful summer afternoon. First thing I saw was an indigo bunting, dead in the grass. So I headed back into my little room above the garage and wrote this song. It’s about trying to do better. About how memories can sustain us. About letting daughters fly.

Someday if time and circumstance allow, we’ll record this song properly. The version here is just me and my younger daughter—many of you know her as Jane—sitting down in front of a single mic, having a go at it to see if we can find some harmonies. A scratch vocal, they call it. Because you start from scratch. You do the polishing and perfecting later. I like these rough versions because no matter where you end up it’s good to remember where you started.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel things the way I do. Wish I was tougher. Thicker skinned. But I’m also grateful when a few chords and a handful of words can free me up, get me back on track. And that I have daughters to sing beside me.

LITTLE BIRD

Little birdDead in the grassFlew too farFlew too fastDo you rememberGave you my wordI used to call youLittle birdYou no longer singBut I still hear your wingsBeating in the blackBeating in the blueBeating back to me and youLittle birdAt the edge of the nestCrazy little heartBeating in your chestDo you rememberOur bedtime prayerWherever you goI’ll meet you there

NOTE FROM MIKE: We release “Voice Mail” once per week to subscribers. We also release a few oddments like this free into the wild. For subscription options, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you confirm):

For all of Mike’s books, audiobooks, music and recorded humor, plus Sneezing Cow t-shirts, stickers, can koozies and other merchandise designed to keep ink in the printer and gas in the van, please visit the SneezingCow webstore.

To let someone else know about Mike’s Voice Mail, please hit the “share” button.

Got a message the other day: “WPR tonight had your intro to Greg Brown, would love the transcript of that.”

The transcript is below. I was introducing Mr. Brown for his final appearance at the Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua. If some of my words sound familiar it’s because they drew upon what I wrote about him in Truck: A Love Story and in a profile I wrote of him included in Danger: Man Working.

If you’d like to hear the intro delivered live as well as Part One of the concert, click here. Part Two is here.

NOTE FROM MIKE: We release “Voice Mail” once per week to subscribers. We also release a few oddments like this free into the wild. For subscription options, click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you confirm):

For all of Mike’s books, audiobooks, music and recorded humor, plus Sneezing Cow t-shirts, stickers, can koozies and other merchandise designed to keep ink in the printer and gas in the van, please visit the SneezingCow webstore.

To let someone else know about Mike’s Voice Mail, please hit the “share” button.

TRANSCRIPT OF INTRO:

Sometime in 2006 a magazine called No Depression sent me to Iowa City, Iowa, to interview Greg Brown. And I met Greg Brown in downtown Iowa City, we sat on a park bench, that’s where I conducted the interview.

For the first five minutes of the interview I kept gettin’ distracted because every once in a while this strange vibration would pass through the park bench. It felt like when you’re in New York City and a subway car goes underneath. And I thought, I know there’s been a lotta changes in Iowa City, but I don’t think they put in a subway.

And then I realized about ten minutes into the conversation that it was every time Greg spoke the bench vibrated.

So about a year later I was out on book tour. One of those 29 cities in 30 days book tours, high glamour situation, me in the van stayin’ at the Motel 6, and I was probably a little fuzzy and worn out when I stopped to sign books at a little independent bookstore in Kansas City called Rainy Day Books.

There was not an event, I was not appearing, I wasn’t speaking, I just stopped to sign whatever books of mine they had in stock. And I’m signing a books and I look over and I see a fella standin’ over there, and I thought to myself, that looks like Greg Brown. I’m pretty sure that is Greg Brown.

And then I looked again, and saw he was readin’ Dostoevsky, and I said, Yeah. That’s Greg Brown.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t wanna be that guy. I just wanted to leave him be with his Dostoevsky. But he looked up at me, and all of a sudden I could see in his eyes he recognized me.

And he said, “Dude.”

And I got back in the van, and I admit at that point I fan-boyed. I thought, “Oh my gosh, Greg Brown knew me!” And then I looked down, and I realized I was wearing the exact same t-shirt I was wearin’ a year earlier when I interviewed him in Iowa City!

So he was probably just thinking, “Man, times are tough for that kid.”

Pause

I am a Midwest boy, I am a big dumb man. I was raised in strictness and scripture. I was raised on the thee and the thou, the shalt and the wilt. I was, in short, a clodhopper with religious overtones who did a whole lot of yearning. And I didn’t really know what to do with that yearning. With those artistic predilections.

And then along came Greg Brown.

Greg Brown taught me you can like dirt and fishin’ and slant sixes and John Deere B tractors…and also yearn. And read poetry. And listen to Dylan Thomas Caedmon CDs in your pickup truck. Read Dostoevsky in your deer stand. And no matter where you wound up on the thee and though and the shalt and the wilt, you can wake up any country morning day and say, “Hallelujah, hallelujah anyway.”

Greg Brown’s voice sounds as if it was aged in a whiskey cask cured in an Ozarks smokehouse, dropped down a stone well, pulled out damp, and kept moist in the palm of a wicked woman’s hands.

I think if he says “G’mornin’” across his coffee cup, it raises ripples.

The voice is a perfect match to his lyrics. Biblical and barstool and garden-loamy as they are, all Rexrothian and as easy-rollin’ true as a brand-new ’64 Dodge. A Greg Brown song doesn’t make me wanna whoop and holler, it makes me wanna sift barehanded through the dirt for repentance, and then go lookin’ for a woman who doesn’t mind a few chickens.

And I found her, Mister Brown!

And one of the first dates I ever took her to was here in the Big Top Chautauqua for a Greg Brown concert.

Folks, I don’t really get to introduce Greg Brown. He’s introduced himself to each and every one of you for years and years now. We all owe him in our own private, deep-flowing ways for the art that he’s created. And no words, no matter how hard I scribble, can thank him in a manner commensurate to all that he’s given us.

There’s really only one way to thank him. And that is to receive him with our ears and the love of all our beating hearts.

Ladies and Gentlemen, one more time under the Big Top canvas, Greg Brown.