BOOTLEG: Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Oakdale Theater, Wallingford, CT, February 5, 1999

The days are getting longer, but not warmer. Back in the day Dave would take a break from the band and hit a bunch of small colleges with Tim Reynolds for a series of acoustic shows. This is one of them. Perfect listening for this time of year.

Download the show at Sugarmegs.


Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Oakdale Theater, Wallingford, CT, February 5, 1999

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Disc 1 - set I
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1. Dave talking
2. Granny
3. Say Goodbye
4. Lie In Our Graves
5. Best Of What's Around
6. Jimi Thing >
7. What Will Become Of Me>Pantala Naga Pampa
8. Too Much
9. Reconcile Our Differences
10. Don’t Drink The Water (This Land Is Our Land)
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Disc 2 (set I cont.)
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1. The Stone>Cant Help Falling In Love
2. Tim Solo
3. Crush
4. Two Step
5. Satellite
6. #41
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Disc 3: (set I cont.)
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1. Lover Lay Down
2. So Much To Say
3. Tim Reynolds solo
4. Crash
5. Dancing Nancies
-encore-
6. Typical Situation
7. I'll Back You Up
8. Watchtower
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Bruce Springsteen and Friends, Convention Hall, Asbury Park, NJ, December 17, 2000

From THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK: There’s no place where loneliness feels worse than in bed. Waking up with her made me want to erase those last few lonely months, pretend like Dani and I’d been together forever. I wanted to forget about New Year’s Eve by myself. At midnight, when everybody was exchanging kisses, me and Paulie and Stu exchanged sympathies. And I wanted to forget about Christmas morning. Paulie and me in this apartment exchanging unwrapped boxes after eating leftover Kung Pao chicken and eggrolls. I got him a few bass pedals and a bottle of Jack and he got me a nice hand-tooled leather guitar strap. I outspent him, but that was beside the point.

A nice Friday download for yinz. OR, a really cheap Christmas gift for that special someone.

Download the show at Sugarmegs.

Bruce Springsteen and Friends 2000-12-17 - CONVENTION HALL, ASBURY PARK, NJ

Disc One:
01 Jingle Bells Intro (Max Weinberg 7)
02 For You
03 Blue Christmas
04 Powerhouse (Max Weinberg 7)
05 Run Run Rudolph
06 Luckytown
07 E-Street Shuffle
08 Kitty's Back
09 Rose (Patti Scialfa)
10 As Long As I Can Be With You (Patti Scialfa)
11 This Time It's For Real (SSJ, Little Steven & Bruce)
12 Good Is Gone (Little Steven)
13 All I Needed Was You (SSJ, Little Steven, Bruce)

Disc Two
01 Shine Silently (Nils Lofgren)
02 Merry Christmas Baby
03 So Young and In Love
04 Roll of the Dice
05 Bobby Jean
06 Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
07 My City Of Ruins
08 I Don't Want To Go Home (SSJ, Little Steven & Bruce)
09 Rosalita
10 Santa Claus is Coming to Town


TheBoots.net synopsis:
The material from the second album all sounded great with the addition of the horns from the Max Weinberg 7. "Blue Christmas" was done in a basically bluegrass arrangement. "Lucky Town" featured Bruce and Jimmy Vivino trading off guitar solos and the horns added some great punch to it. The Southside songs also benefitted from the horns, as did "So Young and in Love." Patti's new song, "Rose," was about her experiences working in a New York City diner, where she said she was the world's worst waitress.
Bruce's new song, "My City of Ruins," is very powerful and very gospel-esque, sounding very similar to Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready." Bruce dedicated the song to the Asbury Park Chamber of Commerce and mentioned all the charities that each night was benefitting.

More West Virginia Pictures!

From HELLBENDER: The gray came from a full moon. The silver light, so bright it cast shadows, fell upon trees as massive as Acropolis columns. It reflected off empty glass bottles, off the metal barrels of shotguns and rifles. In the forest all around me a chorus of crickets and cicadas kept me company. Time stopped moving forward in a straight line. It felt like a web, where one strand left diagonally, and always returned to the center via another strand, so I experienced the same patterns of pain and dreaming over and over again with only slight variations.

From HELLBENDER: We fled the Shavers Fork watershed and returned to the Blackwater via Otter Creek. When the old green path hit the ridge top, pine gave way to spruce that blocked out nearly all of the morning sunlight. The faint glow of headlights did little to pierce the darkness.

From HELLBENDER: My eyes strained to pierce the fog that prevented me from seeing this wilderness as a whole. Waterfalls streamed down the steep walls in stony chutes that acted more like downspouts than streambeds. White threads intertwined to make strands of lace that plunged a thousand feet from the rocky ledges near the rim. I got drunk on the cool breezes that drifted up from the river below. The speed had a narcotic effect, which when combined with the rhythm of the rails made me want to pull out my fiddle and play along to the song it was singing.

From HELLBENDER: Katy whooshed in with her boyfriend in a scream of car stereo and everybody dropped what they were doing to run over and see them. They pulled the new silver VW onto the grass in-between the fire and Jamie's house. Katy looked more polished than I'd ever seen her. Like, she went from a fern to a Pink Lady's Slipper in just a season. Her hair was colored and styled and she wasn't dressed like a thirteen-year-old girl. Her little floral patterned dress, unbuttoned way too low, made her look like some kind of revivalist rebel. She walked proud and smiled like she was posing for Vogue. Alex stood next to me, holding a kitten, and asked, "Who's that?"

Time for a year in review post? Probably not quite yet...

2011, there really wasn't anything special about you, was there? Maya apocalypse is next year, as are the Summer Olympics. AND a presidential election. 2010 was the end of a decade (and just as equally, the beginning of a decade, I suppose.) 2011 was just supposed to hang out, like Justine Bateman in FAMILY TIES.

But I liked Justine Bateman. I could never understand why she wasn't more famous than Molly Ringwald. Molly Ringwald wasn't even funny (By extension, if humor was a legit reason to be attracted to somebody, I would've been all over Anthony Michael Hall.) Whatever happened to Long Duk Dong, BTDubs?

So 2011 is another year to be filed away and forgotten. Just like 2003. Some things happened back in 03. This year is no different. Some things happened. I got on my mountain bike a lot more than I did last year, and didn't break any bones. Wrote a few songs for the book. Went to Florida and to the beach. I wrote A LOT.

So, maybe it's the writing that'll make 2011 different than the rest. Putting THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK out there was simultaneously the most gratifying and terrifying thing I'd ever done. And it opened more doors than I ever could've on my own. I've met more awesome people and made more friends than I have at any other time since Seton Hill. And now, almost 9 months later, the book has a life of its own. It's out there in the world, and there's no stopping it.

But I wouldn't say that the biggest thing to happen to me was self-publishing, and then ultimately finding a publisher for, THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK. And this is what I want to make clear as the year winds down, especially with a new flurry of self-publishing-related news (Kindle Fire. KDP Select, etc.)in the air. The stigma of self-publishing will remain as long as folks release books that aren't quite fit for human consumption.

'Published' and 'self-published' are temporary states. And the biggest thing to happen to me in 2011 was I realizing my novel was good enough to be read without waiting for an agent's approval. Stepping out of the queue and taking action--a trait I respect in my fellow self-publishers regardless of their writing ability. The capacity to take action is a permanent state, much unlike the states of 'published' and 'self-published.'

Raw Dog Screaming Press is releasing THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK next fall, so I can now check the 'published' box. Working with them has been an absolutely amazing experience, even if it did make me question my southwestern Pennsylvanian dialect. (Question--what's wrong with the following sentence: This car needs washed. Answer: Not a damn thing, jagoff.) The education I received by doing it myself taught me one thing--I learned that if you wait until AFTER you're published to figure out your marketing plan and who your readers are, and how to interact with them and on and on, it's already too late. A lot of writers talk a good game. But if they're focused on agents instead of readers, they aren't in the game.

Heidi told me I have to make sure I don't diss anybody in these little posts, so I'm not really sure how to end this. Had I been allowed to diss, you can bet there would've been some hardcore dissing right about here. Instead, I'll leave you with a Bateman family fun fact:

Because of TEEN WOLF TOO my brother, Mike Miller, hates Jason Bateman so much he refuses to watch ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

The Clash, The Lyceum, London, UK, December 28, 1978

Posted this show in honor of my guest post over at Tennessee Hicks' blog.

From my post:

And anybody who’s going to spend thousands of hours embarrassing themselves, losing respect and credibility learns one thing by doing it themselves. They learn whether or not they love it, and if they’re willing to fight for it, even if it means going against the grain and being the unpopular kid.

And THAT’S how I got my deal. By bleeding for it. By hustling. By losing sleep and popping ibuprofen and swallowing a little pride. By taking a risk even though it meant career suicide. In other words, I got my deal by being a little stupid.

Read the rest here: http://www.tennesseehicks.com

Download the show at Sugarmegs.

The Clash
Flash Bastards Remastered
The Lyceum, London, UK, December 28th, 1978

Setlist:
01. Safe European Home
02. I Fought the Law
03. Jail Guitar Door
04. Drug Stabbing Time
05. City Of the Dead
06. Clash City Rockers
07. Tommy Gun
08. (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
09. English Civil War
10. Stay Free
11. Cheapskates
12. Julie's In the Drug Squad
13. Police and Thieves
14. Capital Radio
15. Janie Jones
16. Garageland
17. Complete Control
18. London's Burning
19. White Riot

The Tweets 2 Lennon Project

31 years ago this week.

Think of all the stuff he would've loved. iPads and Pixar. eBooks. Just a few guesses.

In my book, THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK, John Lennon becomes a father figure for a character who had none of his own. Ironic that Preston would choose John Lennon, who spent a childhood pining for parents who were never there. Maybe that's why John Lennon chose to contact Preston via text:

     I got another text. This game had lost a lot of its intrigue. I just wanted to know who'd been messing with me. The message sounded like something John Lennon would say. everything's proven until it's disproven, isn't it? who's to say your dreams aren't real?
     I deleted it.
(from THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK)

And again:

     My phone buzzed, and since Dani was busy primping in the other room, I figured it had to be Pauly. The text said music belongs to everybody. It doesn't always have to be a suit who decides how much it should cost. Remember what we talked about last night.
     I stared at the text. I knew who it was from, and it wasn't Father James.
     I hit REPLY and thought of a way to ask without coming across as crazy. When I realized there was no easy way to do that, I typed 'JOHN?' and hit send.
(from THE DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK)

--

When I wrote the novel I liked the idea that technology possessed magical qualities. That the chips and circuits were no different than a shaman's beads and bones. The idea that I could have a conversation with somebody who was long gone intrigued me. In a way, it kept them alive.

So what I'm proposing is that we all send our messages to John Lennon over the next week. Well wishes, favorite bits of lyrics, questions. Something tells me he already knows, but is going to be just as happy to get them.

Leave them in comments below, or Tweet them, using the hash tag #tweets2lennon

THE MUSIC AND PRESTON BLACK: Joe Strummer, Filmore, San Francisco, July 6, 1999

"When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don't learn nothing, cause hey, it's not your fault, it's his fault, over there."
-Joe Strummer

I owe a lot of what I got going on this year to thinking like Joe thinks. Thanks, man.

Download the show at Sugarmegs.

Disc 1
Intro
Diggin' The New
London Calling
X-Ray Style
White Man In Hammersmith Palais
Tony Adams
Straight To Hell
Rock The Casbah
Yalla Yalla
Brand New Cadillac
I Fought The Law

Disc 2
Techno D-Day
Tommy Gun
Junco Partner
Forbidden City
Bankrobber

A little something for John Lennon after a lot of bourbon and whiskey.

John says it's time to come together and he's holding down that same old chord. I kind of want to go with him, but I know it's not possible. He's already gotten to where he's going. I'll always be wondeing how to get there.

"We all shine on," is just something he says to make me feel better. Like, those words make it okay that he's not here. Like, I'm supposed to forget that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and he isn't. John also said, "I know what it's like to be dead," something I know nothing about.

And maybe that's what all the records or for.

For the benefit of...

Don't let me down...

Living is easy...

She said...

Across the universe...

All you need...

More Wild and Wonderful West Virginia!

      Even though sun fell at my back, the sky ahead was still thick with rain. Through the scent of wet concrete and stinky neoprene I could smell my mountains.
      My Appalachians.
      For better or worse, like how a dog belonged to its fleas.

      All this happened as the sun slid across the sky and dipped toward Canaan Mountain on the other side of the valley, four or five miles away. It was a circus of pink and gold that lingered the way that only a summer-bound sunset can.

     "That’s why I’m here." He took an old pistol and a box of rounds out of a shoebox and threw them into the pack.
     I had to look away. "Ben...."
     "For snakes. Let’s go." He tossed the old pack over his shoulder.

     By the time we hit Seneca Rocks the sun was halfway into its trip to noon. Shadows stretched out from the mountains, hiding coolness in their breeches. At the climbing school guides sipped coffee and stretched their ropes. Ben pulled right up to the porch. Tourists lingered by their cars, as far from the guides as was proper. The stoners were slack-lining, their gear littered picnic tables. One had dreadlocks and a shaggy beard. I could smell weed as soon as I got out of the Jeep. Say what you will about raft guides, but at least they got wet once a day.

     We strode over the gashed earth where skidders and bulldozers had torn through the soil. Past smoldering piles of ash that used to be tsuga canadensis, kalmia latifolia. Indian pipes, whorled loosestrife, and flowering raspberry were little more than smoke signals now. A first-hand account of the destruction.

Download Hellbender for you Kindle at Amazon.com or for other devices at Smashwords.com.

HELLBENDER is here!

Here it is in the Kindle store http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006AHKFRU

For other eFormats try Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106486

I've also made Hellbender part of a bundle with The Devil and Preston Black for a special price on Amazon and Smashwords.

My Wild and Wonderful West Virginia!

     The hair on my neck and arms stood when she kissed me. Her breath was cool, like the wind that twisted the spruce on the huckleberry plains above. When she said my name I couldn’t tell if I was hearing words or the arrival of summer.

     Alex didn’t say anything until I pulled up to the old Jenkinsburg Bridge. This was much higher than the bridge over the Big Sandy. The old steel trestle spanned the V-shaped Cheat Canyon quite dramatically. Big pines buttressed each end and a rocky rapid flowed below. Occasional rock outcroppings punctuated the steep, green slopes.

     I slowed as we came through the village of Thomas. Old company stores hemmed us in on one side, the Blackwater River on the other. The Miners and Merchants Bank was the only non-tourism related business left on the whole street. Exiting town took us up still higher, through white pines and past the ball field where I played Little League. Canaan Mountain loomed high in the background; the spruce along the top was visible even from here. We passed the entrance to Blackwater Falls State Park and a chill fell upon us. It was so cold Alex dug for my fleece in the back of the Jeep.

Girls loved raft guides like rabbits love clover...

The ground twisted and slithered. A sea of snakes pulled themselves from chilly crevasses to seek the warmth of the heavy, dark ties. Timber rattlers, too sleepy to be excitable, kept their distance from the heavy wheels. Feisty copperheads coiled and feigned aggression.

The power of the ancient forest was apparent from the moment the sun passed overhead.

The quiet meadows along the road were about to erupt with the greens of wild bleeding hearts and tiger lilies. Some dark pocket on the backside of the ridge probably hid the last painted trillium of the year.

All around the green walls of Mozark Mountain, Otter Creek, and Blackwater Canyon muffled any shouts of assistance to the outside world.

     "Hungry?" I asked. But her reply didn't matter. I was starving, and drifted to a stop in front of Sirianni's. Almost like I'd followed the smell of garlic right to the front door.

     North Fork Mountain kept people out of this part of the world; it was the first ridge in a series that ended at the Shenandoah in Virginia. Where Spruce Knob was capped with its namesake vegetation, North Fork Mountain had rocky fins of Tuscarora Sandstone crenellating its long, narrow expanse. Wanderers and outcasts gave in to the pull of West Virginia's secret border, a place the rest of the country ignored. But the exposed rock nestled in a bed of white pine finally broke my silence. It made me smile.

HELLBENDER Less than 24 hours until the brood hatches!

Get your Kindles ready, because they ain't going to be the same after this. Are your Nooks waterproofed?

The eVersion and a bundle are ready to go live first thing tomorrow morning, so you'll be able to jump right into HELLBENDER, or start at the very beginning with my man Preston Black in a specially priced bundle. All I can say is you're going to get dirty.

Hellbender Scrapbook.

     The smell of the spruce had ignited crazy dreams all night long. They weren’t memories though. I knew because the dream-forest was more climactic than any I’d ever seen. Spruce trees, three hundred feet tall and ten feet across at the base, rested on a bed of humus so thick I nearly sank. Laurels dense enough to confound a team of trackers kept intruders at arm’s length. The laurel hell went off in all directions, like a green quilt. When I opened my eyes, I expected to be in the center of a large, primeval forest, the kind of place that died long before I was born, but the old green was gone.
     Killed by axes and steam trains.

"Belsnicklers came to our farm every Christmas, dressed in sackcloth with coal dust all over their faces. Scary sons of bitches. Us kids had to just stand there while they threw candy on the floor. If we fidgeted they whipped us with switches. I've even seen elder spring from the frozen ground on Old Christmas Eve—"

The remains of an old brick pump house sat between us and the mine. The old machine house looked rough, but it still had four walls and most of its roof. Red dog and ash from old coke ovens paved the yard all around it.

HELLBENDER Creepin' up on ya.

Today I locked down the formatting for the Smashwords Edition eBooks. Kindle's next. Witches, whiskey and revenge--you ready?

HELLBENDER Coming Monday, November 21!

"And this was how shit like this always went down. Late at night. Middle of nowhere. Not a credible witness in the bunch."

Henry Collins HELLBENDER

New Writer's Social Media Toolkit

This is brief list of the ideas and tech discussed Thursday, November 17 with the Scottdale Writers.

Blogging at www.blogger.com--your hub. Your online business card. This is what people see, and remember, when they 'meet' you online. Blogs are free, easy to update and design, you can experiment without any expense. Feedjit is a way to monitor traffic to your blog.

Twitter.com and Facebook to drive traffic to your blog. These are you 'handshakes.' Facebook will be mostly people you know, Twitter will be people you haven't met yet.

To manage your Twitter followers--Twitter Karma and Twit Cleaner. If the goal is to foster and maintain real relationships, then these two services help separate out spammers and bots.

Goodreads targets readers. It's a more specific approach to making friends. Amanda Hocking, anyone?

Klout, to measure the effectiveness of your social network.

HELLBENDER IN 5 DAYS! And a new excerpt.

Nov Excerpt

Hellbender in 6 days!

Appalachian Fantasy? ROMEO AND JULIET with witches? And what's a SATOR Square?

Find out Monday, November 21.

Raw Dog Screaming Press signs Jason Jack Miller

Here's the announcement from Raw Dog Screaming Press's journal:

RDSP is pleased to announce a multi-book deal with author Jason Jack Miller for his Murder Ballads & Whiskey series. The first book to be released, Hellbender, will come out in March 2012 with The Devil and Preston Black to follow at the end of the year. "We're particularly excited about this deal because it represents the next step in the evolution of publishing," says editor John Lawson. With the rise of self-publishing and spread of ebooks traditional publishing models are obsolete. "We see the role of publisher in the future as an information hub and support network driven by the author's vision and enthusiasm. Jason Jack Miller is the perfect candidate because he's got plenty of both."

RDSP, like many other small publishers, has always had a more collaborative approach to dealing with authors. The hope is to forge a working model where the author has unprecedented input into both the product and the way it's marketed while also sharing much more of the promotional workload. "Raw Dog represents what’s best about the new face of publishing. They adhere to the Gen X ethos of pursuing passion and individualism over corporate culture, meaning they release books they love. They’re risk-takers, which, in my opinion, are rare in publishing."

Jason Jack Miller hails from Fayette County, Pennsylvania, as in, "Circus freaks, temptation and the Fayette County Fair," made famous by The Clarks in the song, "Cigarette." He is a writer, photographer and musician who has been hassled by cops in Canada, Mexico and the Czech Republic. An outdoor travel guide he co-authored with his wife in 2006 jumpstarted his freelancing career; his work has since appeared in newspapers, magazines, literary journals, online, and as part of a travel guide app for mobile phones. He is currently writing and recording the soundtrack to his novel, The Devil and Preston Black. Find him at http://jasonjackmiller.blogspot.com. Tweet him @jasonjackmiller.

Top 9: Yellow Submarine Clips

In honor of YELLOW SUBMARINE'S 1968 New York City premier.

YELLOW SUBMARINE'S Trailer.


9. YELLOW SUBMARINE


8. NOWHERE MAN


7. ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE


6. LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS


5. ONLY A NORTHERN SONG


4. ELEANOR RIGBY


3. SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND


2. IT'S ALL TOO MUCH


1. HEY BULLDOG