Michael Perry and the Long Beds

About This Episode

For this episode, we hear the music of Tent Show Radio's host
himself, Michael Perry, joined by his band The Long Beds.


"First time I ever heard Waylon Jennings," says Michael Perry,
"was on an 8-track tape in a four-wheel drive truck doing sixty
miles an hour down a Wyoming hay meadow. We were running late for
Bible study." The songs on Tiny Pilot (Perry's latest musical
release with his band the Long Beds) are a direct reflection of
that experience. Ranging from straight-up twang to churchly
harmonies and populated by characters drawn straight from rural
and small-town America, they launch from places like the overpass
outside Perry's beloved hometown of New Auburn, Wisconsin
(population currently 562), a gospel service in a granary, and
the kitchen floor of a woman about to drop a world of hurt on her
drunken husband. "I was raised by farmers and preachers and tough
country women, and I suppose my songs reflect that," says Perry.
"Then again, certain wisdoms are available only from whistlers,
frauds, and sinners, so I try to slide them a line or two as
well."


Raised in a church so austere that hymns were sung with no choir,
no accompaniment, and no church (the congregation met in a
farmhouse and sat on straight-backed wooden chairs) Perry and his
brother learned to sit side-by-side and work out harmonies on the
fly. Those Sunday mornings instilled in Perry a love of singing
"clear and pure" that can be heard throughout Tiny Pilot – most
especially on the songs, "842 Miles," "If They Give You Wings,"
and "Sweet Edge of Time." Conversely, anyone introduced to Ol'
Waylon by means of a four-wheeling 8-track is bound to shoot for
some boogety-boogety now and then, as Perry and the Long Beds do
on "Undone," "Somewhere South of Sunday," and (in a respectful
nod to Ol' Hoss himself) "After Waymore's Blues."


Perry began writing songs in the early 1990s during long nights
when he was struggling to survive on prose (he is the author of
numerous books including: Population 485, Truck, The
Scavengers,and the New York Times bestseller Visiting Tom). With
no arts background (he has a nursing degree) he found himself
drawn especially to the work of poets and singer/songwriters. (In
interviews Perry tends to list his greatest literary influences
as Dylan Thomas and Steve Earle – and not necessarily in that
order.) "I remember writing late one night and hearing a Kevin
Welch song with the line, 'I whiskey'd up my coffee cup… sittin'
here tryin' not to call you up,'" says Perry, "and I was floored
by the rhythm and the story in that single line…" He began
writing songs as a way to break up all-night typing sessions, and
eventually he had enough of them that a musician friend invited
him to play a coffee shop. "I'm not saying I was nervous, but I
ripped out a sixty-minute set list in thirty-two minutes flat,"
says Perry. By 2004, he had begun recruiting Long Beds. In 2006,
he released his first album, Headwinded.


While the music made by Perry and the Long Beds has been
variously described as 'country folk,' 'roughneck folk,'
'folk-twang,' and Americana, they prefer the description given by
an audience member after a benefit concert in Perry's old high
school gym: "You sound just like Gordon Lightfoot… only zippier!"
Nice – but there are limits. "Zippy or not," says Perry, "when
'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' comes on the radio, we sit
down, shut up, and listen."
About Michael Perry

Michael Perry is a New York Times bestselling author, humorist
and radio show host from New Auburn, Wisconsin.


Perry's bestselling memoirs include Population 485, Truck: A Love
Story, Coop, and Visiting Tom, and his latest, Montaigne in Barn
Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy. His first book for
young readers, The Scavengers, was published in 2014 and first
novel for adult readers, The Jesus Cow, was published in May of
2015.


Raised on a small Midwestern dairy farm, Perry put himself
through nursing school while working on a ranch in Wyoming, then
wandered into writing. He lives with his wife and two daughters
in rural Wisconsin, where he serves on the local volunteer fire
and rescue service and is an intermittent pig farmer. He hosts
the nationally-syndicated "Tent Show Radio," performs widely as a
humorist, and tours with his band the Long Beds (currently
recording their third album for Amble Down Records). He has
recorded three live humor albums including Never Stand Behind A
Sneezing Cow and The Clodhopper Monologues.


Learn more about Michael and where to get his publications at
www.sneezingcow.com.


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