Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 393] What If Elvis Had a Secret Son? | Joseph Coulson on The Prince of Memphis

Transcript

[EP 393] What If Elvis Had a Secret Son? | Joseph Coulson on The Prince of Memphis · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Speaker 1: What if you were the disavowed son of Elvis Presley
0:04
Speaker 1: and you were caught in this position, which is an
0:08
Speaker 1: absent father who is everywhere, an absent father who is
0:12
Speaker 1: endlessly present. And then I thought, just to make it
0:15
Speaker 1: a little bit more complicated, let's go with Elvis and
0:19
Speaker 1: a black woman, so that he is a mixed race character,
0:22
Speaker 1: which would allow me to explore issues of identity alongside
0:27
Speaker 1: the pop cultures. We're totally booked rock and Roll. I mean,
0:32
Speaker 1: I'll leave you. You're reading Little Hands this, It's time
0:35
Speaker 1: to rock and roll, roll out. I totally booked.
0:44
Speaker 2: Welcome back to book don Rock the podcast for those
0:46
Speaker 2: about to read and rock Emeric Sinach before we get started.
0:49
Speaker 2: If you'd like to support the podcast, get episodes commercial free,
0:52
Speaker 2: get sent up for the backstage pass from Patreon for
0:55
Speaker 2: just five dollars a month. You can find the link
0:58
Speaker 2: in the show notes so you can go to book
0:59
Speaker 2: down Rock for that. Now on to our guest, Joseph Colson.
1:05
Speaker 2: He is an accomplished novelist, poet, playwright, a musician whose
1:08
Speaker 2: debut novel, The Vanishing Moon was selected for Barnes and
1:11
Speaker 2: Nobles Great New Writers Series and earned forward Magazines Book
1:16
Speaker 2: of the Year Award for literary fiction. Today, we'll be
1:19
Speaker 2: discussing his latest work, titled The Prince of Memphis. In
1:22
Speaker 2: the Prince of Memphis, Aaron Beale, a musician who claims
1:25
Speaker 2: to be the secret son of Elvis Presley and a
1:28
Speaker 2: black mother, faces threats and powerful forces determined to stop
1:32
Speaker 2: him from publishing his explosive memoir. Alongside journalist o'delia Jane Phillips,
1:37
Speaker 2: he embarks on a surreal music field journey through America's
1:40
Speaker 2: cultural landscape while confronting family secrets, identity, and the enduring
1:45
Speaker 2: shadow of the King. Welcome to the podcast, Joseph.
1:49
Speaker 1: It's great to be here, Eric.
1:51
Speaker 2: We have seen so many memoirs come out from musicians
1:53
Speaker 2: over the last ten to fifteen years. Many get deeply
1:57
Speaker 2: personal and revealing. What was the original spark that inspired
2:00
Speaker 2: The Prince of Memphis. Was there a specific moment, idea,
2:04
Speaker 2: or a specific memoir that you read?
2:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, not a memoir, no, you know, I would I'd
2:10
Speaker 1: say there were two things. The first thing was really
2:13
Speaker 1: just the genesis of an idea, which was, you know,
2:18
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, you know what, what's it like.
2:22
Speaker 1: The first thing I was thinking about what's what would
2:24
Speaker 1: it like to be a child of you know, a
2:26
Speaker 1: rock star, you know, any rock star. And then as
2:29
Speaker 1: I began to muse on that a little bit more,
2:32
Speaker 1: you know, of course, I landed on Elvis. I'll come
2:35
Speaker 1: back to that in a minute, and thought about, you know,
2:38
Speaker 1: the idea of that, what would that have really been like,
2:42
Speaker 1: you know, to be the child of Elvis Presley? But
2:46
Speaker 1: then another thought occurred to me, which was, what if
2:50
Speaker 1: you were the disavowed son of Elvis Presley? Thinking I
2:55
Speaker 1: didn't want to go I mean, Lisa Marie is there
2:58
Speaker 1: right or was? And so, you know, that was a
3:00
Speaker 1: direction I wanted to go in. So what if you
3:02
Speaker 1: were the disavowed son of Elvis Presley and you were
3:07
Speaker 1: caught in this position, which is an absent father who
3:12
Speaker 1: is everywhere, an absent father who is endlessly present. And
3:17
Speaker 1: I thought, now that's something to work with. And then
3:22
Speaker 1: I thought, just to make it a little bit more complicated,
3:28
Speaker 1: let's go with you know, Elvis and a black woman,
3:33
Speaker 1: Aaron's mother, Clara may beal so that he is a
3:38
Speaker 1: mixed race character, which would allow me to explore issues
3:42
Speaker 1: of identity alongside the pop culture. Because I really I
3:46
Speaker 1: conceived of the book initially as serial comic. You know.
3:51
Speaker 1: It was my first two books were both tragedies, and
3:53
Speaker 1: I wanted to write something, you know, that would hopefully
3:57
Speaker 1: at least make people smile occasionally or your chuckle here
4:02
Speaker 1: and there, you know. But I also wanted to have
4:06
Speaker 1: a serious aspect of the book as well. I wanted
4:09
Speaker 1: to be able to say something about American popular culture.
4:13
Speaker 1: I wanted to say some things about rock and roll.
4:15
Speaker 1: I wanted to say something about American identity. And so
4:19
Speaker 1: it seemed that all of those elements were going to
4:21
Speaker 1: allow me to do that. So that was really the
4:23
Speaker 1: genesis of it.
4:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the novel couldn't exist without Elvis at the center.
4:27
Speaker 2: So yeah, what made him the right artist for this
4:29
Speaker 2: story rather than John Lennon or Jim Morrison or Bob Dylan.
4:34
Speaker 1: Well, that's where it's that's where it's a little more personal.
4:36
Speaker 1: You know. I think I'd been an Elvis fan since
4:40
Speaker 1: I was probably nine or ten years old, and you know,
4:44
Speaker 1: and I so I was watching Elvis movies on TV
4:50
Speaker 1: as reruns, you know, the nine o'clock movie or something
4:53
Speaker 1: on Saturday Night, filled with commercials, and you know, all
4:57
Speaker 1: of that kind of stuff. But that was where I
4:59
Speaker 1: first governed him, really, and that would have been sixty five,
5:04
Speaker 1: sixty six, sixty seven. You know, I was eight nine,
5:07
Speaker 1: ten years old, you know, somewhere in that neighborhood. And
5:11
Speaker 1: then and then came in nineteen sixty eight what became
5:18
Speaker 1: known as the Comeback Special, but in my time it
5:22
Speaker 1: was Singer Presents Elvis, you know, the Singer Sewing Machine Company,
5:25
Speaker 1: you know, with the Christmas Special of December third, nineteen
5:29
Speaker 1: sixty eight. And that sort of cemented my interest in Elvis.
5:33
Speaker 1: And and you know, he was already thought to be
5:39
Speaker 1: among my peers, meaning my eleven year old, twelve year
5:42
Speaker 1: old peers. He was already thought to be something of
5:45
Speaker 1: a throwback, right, you know, he's like, oh well, this
5:48
Speaker 1: is all what's that? You know? So on. But as I,
5:52
Speaker 1: as I became a musician, I had the great good
5:56
Speaker 1: fortune of starting to play with older musicians. I started
6:01
Speaker 1: playing with my brother, who's nine years older than me.
6:04
Speaker 1: He's jazz guitars. But I wound up in rock and
6:09
Speaker 1: roll bands where most of the musicians, if not all
6:13
Speaker 1: of them, were anywhere from eight to nine years older
6:15
Speaker 1: than me. So I started playing when I was thirteen fourteen,
6:19
Speaker 1: and everybody was in their early twenties, and they were
6:22
Speaker 1: the ones who gave me a richer appreciation for Elvis
6:26
Speaker 1: the musician and Elvis the innovator as opposed to know
6:32
Speaker 1: everything else that he represented.
6:35
Speaker 2: Have you had the chance to see the Netflix documentary
6:37
Speaker 2: on that sixty eight special?
6:39
Speaker 1: I have indeed, Yes, Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I
6:42
Speaker 1: like to say, I like to say I've seen them all,
6:44
Speaker 1: but there's so many of them these days that it's
6:47
Speaker 1: hard to keep up. But yeah, that was a wonderful,
6:49
Speaker 1: wonderful piece on that special.
6:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's a fascinating line in the novel quote
6:55
Speaker 2: the thing we didn't have before Elvis was a voice
6:58
Speaker 2: that could explain the two faced for show we call America.
7:02
Speaker 2: What does that line mean to you?
7:04
Speaker 3: Yeah?
7:04
Speaker 1: So that's spoken by Moses Blake, right, and in the
7:08
Speaker 1: context of the novel. So again I'll answer that two ways.
7:13
Speaker 1: In the context of the novel, he's talking to Aaron
7:19
Speaker 1: about what Elvis brought to the table that was different
7:24
Speaker 1: than as he sees it, the crooners that preceded him.
7:29
Speaker 1: And when I say the crooners, these are people who
7:31
Speaker 1: have great admiration for and I Love You, Frank Sinatra,
7:34
Speaker 1: Tony Bennett, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But as
7:38
Speaker 1: he has it, as Moses Blake has it in the novel,
7:42
Speaker 1: they were living in an easy listening world, you know,
7:45
Speaker 1: as if to say, you know, everything's great, everything's fine,
7:49
Speaker 1: let's just pick ourselves up and move on to the
7:52
Speaker 1: next day. That kind of thing. And their music, arguably anyway,
7:59
Speaker 1: was not so much of music of any kind of
8:02
Speaker 1: social consciousness, right it was. It was the Great American Songbook.
8:06
Speaker 1: Maybe some of that came in here and there, and
8:09
Speaker 1: they themselves may have been activists, but it wasn't necessarily
8:13
Speaker 1: apparent in the music that they chose. Elvis comes along,
8:18
Speaker 1: and he immediately because of his style, because he had
8:23
Speaker 1: absorbed black culture and black music to the extent that
8:28
Speaker 1: he had living in Memphis and listening to gospel, listening
8:33
Speaker 1: to rhythm and blues, listening to blues, you know, he
8:38
Speaker 1: immediately captures sort of the joy and discovery and the
8:46
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of abandon that that music represents
8:51
Speaker 1: for him and for others. And then and then at
8:56
Speaker 1: the same time he brings white gospel into it. He
8:59
Speaker 1: brings country music right, and and you know his voice
9:06
Speaker 1: which people early on, you know, thought he was black
9:10
Speaker 1: when they first heard him on the state on radio
9:12
Speaker 1: stations and stuff. His voice seemed to call out. It
9:17
Speaker 1: seems to me this kind of you know, here we
9:24
Speaker 1: are living in this late fifties, post war Eisenhower esque
9:31
Speaker 1: landscape in which we still are observing Jim Crow and
9:36
Speaker 1: other stuff, and Elvis is kind of trying to move
9:39
Speaker 1: that needle. You know, he's trying to say, hey, look,
9:43
Speaker 1: you know, this is the two face freak show. Is
9:46
Speaker 1: how do we reconcile the fact that black culture and
9:50
Speaker 1: black music has such a strong anchor in American culture
9:56
Speaker 1: with the fact that we're still trying to segregate it
9:58
Speaker 1: and push it off to one side all the time.
10:02
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, he was an early
10:04
Speaker 1: pioneer in this area, and I don't think he made
10:08
Speaker 1: a big deal out of it, but you know, some
10:11
Speaker 1: of his favorite musicians were black musicians, and Moses Blake
10:14
Speaker 1: in the novel as a black man. And so he's
10:17
Speaker 1: the one who's kind of pointing this out. You know
10:20
Speaker 1: that now, you know, some people have given Elvis a
10:23
Speaker 1: bad rap on that, but you know, I tend to
10:26
Speaker 1: think they're wrong. I think that he was really trying
10:30
Speaker 1: to move the needle on that kind of appreciation at
10:33
Speaker 1: least and merge things in a way that hadn't been
10:37
Speaker 1: merged before.
10:39
Speaker 2: The novel raises an interesting question. Who owns a public
10:41
Speaker 2: figures legacy, the family, the fans, the corporations, or history itself.
10:47
Speaker 2: I was curious if that was one of the central
10:50
Speaker 2: ideas you were exploring here.
10:51
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, My answer is history itself, right,
10:56
Speaker 1: you know, when you're that's I mean, of course, you know,
11:01
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of legalities involved. And in fact, uh,
11:05
Speaker 1: you know, I had to grapple with the when I
11:07
Speaker 1: was conceiving the book. I knew that if I actually
11:11
Speaker 1: made Elvis a character in the conventional sense, and you
11:16
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Eric In other words, if if
11:18
Speaker 1: if Elvis walked into a scene, you know, Elvis Presley
11:22
Speaker 1: walks into the bar and says something to Aaron, or
11:25
Speaker 1: says something to Odelia or any of the other characters
11:28
Speaker 1: in the book, and you know, and the and therefore,
11:33
Speaker 1: now he is an active fiction in the book. That's
11:38
Speaker 1: a violation of copyright. You know, I can't I can't
11:41
Speaker 1: appropriate Elvis as character. Okay, you know that's that would be.
11:46
Speaker 1: You know, if Graceland wanted to, or somebody wanted to,
11:49
Speaker 1: they could come along and try to assume me. It
11:51
Speaker 1: probably would be good for the book if they did that. Ye.
11:55
Speaker 2: But yeah, this is this is the area of book
11:58
Speaker 2: writing that can get interested but frustrating the copyright.
12:02
Speaker 1: But then I thought, but really what I wanted was
12:05
Speaker 1: he's the absent father who was endlessly present. Right, So
12:08
Speaker 1: I began to realize, No, Aaron has to experience his
12:11
Speaker 1: father the way you and I would. He experiences his
12:14
Speaker 1: father like a fan. You know, it's from that distance. Well, now,
12:19
Speaker 1: when you do that, Elvis is a historical figure. He
12:22
Speaker 1: belongs to history. You can write, you know, Yale doctor
12:27
Speaker 1: could have written a book about this era, and if
12:31
Speaker 1: he wanted to, he could report something about you know,
12:34
Speaker 1: when Elvis went to New York and was preparing to
12:37
Speaker 1: get on the Ed Sullivan Show, what's just a historical fact.
12:40
Speaker 1: You know, you can put those references into your fiction
12:43
Speaker 1: and you're not in violation of anything. So that's the
12:47
Speaker 1: way I did it.
12:47
Speaker 4: You know.
12:48
Speaker 1: In other words, what we see through Aaron's eyes is
12:53
Speaker 1: his experience of Elvis, which is not that much different
12:56
Speaker 1: than anyone else's experience of Elvis in the sense of
13:00
Speaker 1: that distance and Elvis as a historic figure.
13:03
Speaker 2: Tell us about Aaron Biale, was there a particular person, musician,
13:07
Speaker 2: or life experience that influenced the creation of his character
13:10
Speaker 2: or Having just said that, now I'm wondering, is that
13:12
Speaker 2: does he represent us the reader, the person who's reading.
13:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's for me, that's what it is. You know,
13:20
Speaker 1: you hit it. He's not based on any particular person.
13:27
Speaker 1: Now here's here, I will say, because you know, anytime
13:32
Speaker 1: you're writing a novel, you know there's all this stuff
13:35
Speaker 1: about memoir and the novel and everything. But you know,
13:39
Speaker 1: the thing is is that in any any story that
13:43
Speaker 1: you're going to tell, and this story is clearly fiction,
13:45
Speaker 1: there are things in here that couldn't possibly happen, right,
13:48
Speaker 1: you know, it's clearly fiction. But the point is it's
13:53
Speaker 1: still drawn from a certain well of experience, right in
13:57
Speaker 1: my own life. So I make a Biel. He's not me,
14:01
Speaker 1: but I make Aeron Biel my age exactly. He's born
14:04
Speaker 1: in nineteen I'm born in April of nineteen fifty seven,
14:07
Speaker 1: So I have him born in April of nineteen fifty seven.
14:11
Speaker 1: And you know that was convenient because that's how it
14:16
Speaker 1: would have worked, you know, and I wanted, meaning, you know,
14:20
Speaker 1: Elvis in New York in nineteen fifty six before he
14:24
Speaker 1: is a cultural icon or a mega uber superstar, and
14:29
Speaker 1: you know, the whole thing unfolds the Warwick Hotel in
14:32
Speaker 1: a way that seems believable. But then it worked out
14:38
Speaker 1: great because you know, Aaron's born in nineteen fifty seven,
14:41
Speaker 1: and that's the year that Elvis strings together ten gold records,
14:44
Speaker 1: you know, in one year, so it's you know, it
14:48
Speaker 1: just it works out nicely. But what it did for
14:51
Speaker 1: me was it allowed me to use experiences like my
14:56
Speaker 1: experience of viewing the nineteen sixty eight levision special, which
15:02
Speaker 1: is a fans view of it, right, but I was
15:05
Speaker 1: able to interpolate that. Or there's another section in the
15:08
Speaker 1: book in which Aaron remembers going to see his father
15:12
Speaker 1: in Detroit at Olympia Stadium in nineteen seventy. Well, guess
15:17
Speaker 1: who was there in nineteen seventy at thirteen years old
15:21
Speaker 1: at Olympia Stadium with my older brother. That would be me.
15:25
Speaker 1: So that's the way, you know, I was able to
15:29
Speaker 1: kind of draw from my own experience, my own life,
15:35
Speaker 1: the geography wherein I live, while at the same time
15:40
Speaker 1: weaving a fiction around that. And you know, that's what
15:43
Speaker 1: novelists do all the time. That's not that's not They
15:48
Speaker 1: may not admit it, but that's what they do all
15:51
Speaker 1: the time, because you know, somebody Hemingway probably said, you know,
15:56
Speaker 1: you write what you know. Well, you have to write
15:59
Speaker 1: more than what you know. That's the act of imagination.
16:02
Speaker 1: But what I think he really meant was, you do
16:05
Speaker 1: still have to write out of your experience, even if
16:09
Speaker 1: it's not autobiography, even if it's not memoir, You're still
16:12
Speaker 1: writing out of your personal experience. Otherwise you're not going
16:17
Speaker 1: to have the authenticity that you need to make the
16:21
Speaker 1: whole thing work.
16:24
Speaker 2: Did you consider having Aaron secret being revealed earlier in
16:28
Speaker 2: his life because I thought it was interesting he was
16:30
Speaker 2: the characters about my age middle age? Was it always
16:33
Speaker 2: important that this reckoning happened in middle age?
16:37
Speaker 1: That's a wonderful question, And.
16:41
Speaker 2: That's why I connected with the character too, because he's
16:44
Speaker 2: a round Yeah. I was born in seventy two, so
16:46
Speaker 2: I'm fifty four. Yeah, I think the characters like fifty
16:50
Speaker 2: one I think is that what happing.
16:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the fictional present is he's fifty three action
16:54
Speaker 1: fifty three.
16:55
Speaker 3: That's there, you.
16:55
Speaker 1: Go, because the fictional present is twenty ten, right, you know. Yeah,
17:00
Speaker 1: but the but the yeah, I think the issue was
17:05
Speaker 1: is that, you know, the way it's kind of laid
17:06
Speaker 1: out in the novel is he thought about revealing it earlier. Right,
17:11
Speaker 1: He's in the studio with Byron Moon and he tells
17:13
Speaker 1: Byron Moon. This is when he's recording Midnight Candy right
17:16
Speaker 1: in the novel, and he tells Byron Moon that he
17:21
Speaker 1: reveals himself to Byron Moon, and Byron gives him the
17:25
Speaker 1: advice don't go there. You know, you're you're on your
17:28
Speaker 1: way on your own, and if you do that, the
17:31
Speaker 1: tabloids are going to take you apart, and so on
17:33
Speaker 1: and so forth. So that was one device I used,
17:38
Speaker 1: and I thought that that was also realistic because he's
17:43
Speaker 1: young and he's he's it turns out he's going to
17:46
Speaker 1: be a one hit wonder, but he doesn't know that yet,
17:48
Speaker 1: and so he's looking to someone like Byron to give
17:52
Speaker 1: him a kind of fatherly advice in the absence of
17:56
Speaker 1: a real father. Right, there's two fathers in the book, Right,
18:00
Speaker 1: there's there's Byron Moon, who's one kind of father, and
18:03
Speaker 1: then there's Moses Blake who's another kind of father, and
18:06
Speaker 1: then there's all of this of course, but he's kind
18:08
Speaker 1: of not there. So so at any rate, that was
18:13
Speaker 1: that was one factor involved. And then there was this
18:16
Speaker 1: issue of which I take seriously because I think it
18:20
Speaker 1: reveals something about Aaron's character, which is Byron points out
18:25
Speaker 1: to him that, you know, what's it going to do
18:27
Speaker 1: to your mother if you reveal this. You know, I
18:30
Speaker 1: understand why you may want to do it, but what
18:32
Speaker 1: about her? And she's still alive, you know, through a
18:36
Speaker 1: large portion of this story, right, And so so that's
18:41
Speaker 1: another factor that he weighs, you know about not maybe
18:45
Speaker 1: wanting to That's not something she wants, clearly, because it's
18:49
Speaker 1: not like Clara May has ever written a memoir or
18:52
Speaker 1: decided to go to the media or anything else. She
18:55
Speaker 1: seems content with you know, where she is. So that
19:00
Speaker 1: was another factor. But yeah, I think the idea of
19:04
Speaker 1: a midlife kind of crisis. You know, where we find
19:08
Speaker 1: Aaron is, you know, a guy who's a little bit
19:13
Speaker 1: down on his luck, right, you know, he's uh he's
19:17
Speaker 1: he left music relatively early, kind of outcast as a
19:21
Speaker 1: one hit wonder, and then you know, he has written
19:24
Speaker 1: a book, but now he's now he's doing but you know,
19:27
Speaker 1: there's this sense that somehow his life is a drift
19:31
Speaker 1: a little bit, and and he's looking for that direction.
19:37
Speaker 1: And that's what I think prompts him to decide, Okay,
19:40
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this. Now, I'm going to write
19:42
Speaker 1: a memoir because of the book, and not to confuse
19:45
Speaker 1: people who are listening, right, but this is a novel
19:48
Speaker 1: which is posing as a memoir because it's supposed to
19:50
Speaker 1: be Aaron Beil's memoir, right, you know, that's the kind
19:53
Speaker 1: of thing.
19:54
Speaker 2: Was his mixed race identity central to the novel from
19:58
Speaker 2: the beginning or did that become more important as the
20:00
Speaker 2: story developed.
20:02
Speaker 1: It was central central to me from the beginning, you know.
20:05
Speaker 1: And that's because I knew I wanted the and I
20:10
Speaker 1: don't want to give this part of the way, so no,
20:13
Speaker 1: you know, this will not be a spoiler alert, but
20:16
Speaker 1: that that chapter I Don't Care If the Sun Don't Shine,
20:21
Speaker 1: in which we get a flashback of Aaron's childhood and
20:29
Speaker 1: the racism that was directed against him in Detroit and
20:32
Speaker 1: so on. That was something I knew that was going
20:35
Speaker 1: to be in the book somehow, you know, And you
20:37
Speaker 1: don't like, I don't work from an outline, so you know,
20:40
Speaker 1: it wasn't It wasn't like I sat there and said,
20:43
Speaker 1: I have to have a mixed race characters that I
20:45
Speaker 1: can use that. It was just that I knew I
20:48
Speaker 1: was going to put that in the book, and I
20:50
Speaker 1: didn't know where or how, but you know that that
20:54
Speaker 1: made that whole decision about having a black mother and
20:59
Speaker 1: having a life in which he's trying to cope with
21:03
Speaker 1: being mixed race. That was going to allow me to
21:06
Speaker 1: sort of prepare the ground for that chapter.
21:09
Speaker 2: And nearly every chapter title comes from Nelva song. Right,
21:13
Speaker 2: that's right, yeah, yeah, How did you choose those titles?
21:15
Speaker 2: What role do they play in the story.
21:17
Speaker 1: Well, some of them are you know, some of them
21:21
Speaker 1: are quite literal. You know. The I Love You Because
21:26
Speaker 1: is the title of one of the chapters. And I
21:29
Speaker 1: think in that chapter, Aaron asks Odelia, why do you
21:34
Speaker 1: love me? And she says, I love you because, you know.
21:37
Speaker 1: So it's just, you know, sometimes it's as literal as that,
21:41
Speaker 1: other times it's you know, they are symbolic at the
21:46
Speaker 1: same time, right, And and so you know one night
21:52
Speaker 1: is one night at the at the Warwick Hotel, right,
21:56
Speaker 1: But then there are several episodes of nights you know,
21:59
Speaker 1: throughout that chapter that constitute you know, a kind of
22:06
Speaker 1: a sensibility of time passing quickly, you know, in that
22:11
Speaker 1: kind of nocturnal world. And the musician I believe in
22:16
Speaker 1: the Man in the Sky right as an Elvis song,
22:19
Speaker 1: And there's a moment there where Byron Moon kind of
22:22
Speaker 1: shows up out of the blue meaning the heavens if
22:25
Speaker 1: you remember.
22:26
Speaker 2: And so so you've got to be a hardcore Elvis
22:28
Speaker 2: fan because those aren't the songs that everybody.
22:31
Speaker 1: Knows, that's right. Well, a lot of them are Sun titles, right,
22:34
Speaker 1: So a lot of them, you know, Mystery Train, Baby
22:38
Speaker 1: Let's play House, yeah, you know, and Baby Let's play
22:42
Speaker 1: Houses the first chapter where we get a sense of
22:46
Speaker 1: the domestic life of Aaron and Odelia, you know, in
22:50
Speaker 1: the book, and so you know that kind of thing.
22:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool though, because those are songs that are
22:54
Speaker 2: already in your head because you know his catalog so well,
22:58
Speaker 2: and they come to you as you're right, he said, oh,
23:00
Speaker 2: that's going to be a perfect one for this, right.
23:03
Speaker 2: Joseph Colson is the author of the Prince of Memphis.
23:05
Speaker 2: I want to ask I still haven't talked about Adelia,
23:08
Speaker 2: that character. We're going to get to that, but Midnight, Candy,
23:10
Speaker 2: let's talk about the song. It exists both as a
23:12
Speaker 2: song in the novel and is a real song that
23:15
Speaker 2: you wrote.
23:16
Speaker 5: Ben Man, Ben Ma Candy, Well, I'm a honey loving man.
23:27
Speaker 2: Then I loved it.
23:30
Speaker 5: He the clarkscites well the mind Candy.
23:36
Speaker 2: Did the song inspire any part of Aaron's storier? Was
23:39
Speaker 2: that simply the perfect title waiting for a character?
23:43
Speaker 1: It's the latter. It was the perfect title waiting for
23:46
Speaker 1: a character. Yeah, this wasn't planned either. This is one
23:51
Speaker 1: of those call it serendipity whatever, He's spontaneity. You know.
23:56
Speaker 1: I'd written the song with two other musicians, you know,
24:00
Speaker 1: Bob Schlader and William Relling. Junior Bill was also quite
24:06
Speaker 1: an accomplished novelist and writer, but sadly he's not with
24:10
Speaker 1: us anymore. But you know, when I was starting to
24:16
Speaker 1: write the book, I just grabbed that title because I
24:19
Speaker 1: was like the title of the song, you know, And
24:22
Speaker 1: and I at the time you know, I asked Bob, hey,
24:24
Speaker 1: you mind if I use our song, and he was
24:26
Speaker 1: like share or whatever, you know, so we just kind
24:29
Speaker 1: of went that way. And and so you know, when
24:35
Speaker 1: I was sending the book around occasionally, I would, you know,
24:39
Speaker 1: because well, I'm getting ahead of myself here. So when
24:43
Speaker 1: we actually wrote the song, we made a demo of
24:46
Speaker 1: it because we thought it had a certain kind of potential.
24:50
Speaker 1: And and you know, the demo, like any demo, was
24:53
Speaker 1: kind of rough, and but it was but certainly good
24:57
Speaker 1: enough to send to, you know, a record label or
25:02
Speaker 1: to a publishing house or something like that, just as
25:04
Speaker 1: a model of something that might be possible. So at
25:08
Speaker 1: any rate, when I started sending the book around, every
25:12
Speaker 1: once in a while, if I saw that the publisher
25:14
Speaker 1: I was submitting it to had some interest in popular
25:17
Speaker 1: culture and so on, which was why I was submitting
25:19
Speaker 1: the book anyway, I thought, well, I'll try this, you know,
25:22
Speaker 1: I'm going to send this and see if they like
25:24
Speaker 1: this as an add on to the book. And you know,
25:27
Speaker 1: some of them were sort of like, we don't understand this,
25:30
Speaker 1: what is this? Why are you sending us a song?
25:32
Speaker 1: We publish books, we don't do music.
25:35
Speaker 2: You know that was.
25:37
Speaker 1: We're okay, so you don't get it right. So then,
25:43
Speaker 1: you know, I submitted the book to Dreamfield Press and
25:47
Speaker 1: and I sent them the demo. They loved the book,
25:51
Speaker 1: and then as soon as it was clear that they
25:53
Speaker 1: were going to publish it, then I sent them the
25:55
Speaker 1: demo and and they liked the record as much as
25:58
Speaker 1: the books. Oh, so that's what really spurred the idea
26:03
Speaker 1: of like, then we you know, we actually did a
26:05
Speaker 1: full new treatment of the song and uh, and you
26:10
Speaker 1: know it's a pretty high quality studio version that you're hearing,
26:14
Speaker 1: and uh, and we've got some incredible players on there.
26:19
Speaker 1: You know, David David Rokeach was Retha Franklin's drummer for
26:23
Speaker 1: the last ten years of his career, you know, stuff
26:26
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, so some incredible players on there. And
26:30
Speaker 1: so and that's that's mostly due I mean, I am
26:32
Speaker 1: a musician and I've had the great pleasure of playing
26:35
Speaker 1: with some great musicians. But Bob Schlader, who is my
26:39
Speaker 1: co composer on the song, he's a he's a master musician,
26:43
Speaker 1: a ranger, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
26:46
Speaker 1: And so when we decided when the book was going
26:49
Speaker 1: to get published and we decided to redo the song.
26:51
Speaker 1: He just called in a lot of favors. It's what happened,
26:54
Speaker 1: and it was wonderful, you know, and he just put
26:57
Speaker 1: together this amazing team of musicians and they really just
27:01
Speaker 1: brought the song to life. But I also give I
27:06
Speaker 1: also give Dreamfield Press a lot of credit because they
27:09
Speaker 1: saw writer. They liked this meta idea, you know that,
27:13
Speaker 1: like you could read the book. Here's the story of
27:15
Speaker 1: how the song is created in the book. And now
27:18
Speaker 1: if you feel like it, you can actually go and
27:20
Speaker 1: listen to it, you know, you can, you know, click
27:23
Speaker 1: on the you know, go to the website if you
27:24
Speaker 1: want to listen to it that way or whatever.
27:29
Speaker 2: Does a song reveal something about Aaron that maybe he
27:31
Speaker 2: struggles to express directly?
27:33
Speaker 1: No, I don't think so. You know. The the way
27:35
Speaker 1: it's described in the book is it's initially reviewed as
27:40
Speaker 1: a as two and a half minutes of sugar coated sex, right,
27:45
Speaker 1: you know, that's the way it's described.
27:47
Speaker 2: Because it was a song he wrote when he was young.
27:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, when he wrote when he was young, and so
27:53
Speaker 1: and I think it's not so much what it becomes
27:58
Speaker 1: I think later on, is Aaron trying to reclaim that
28:03
Speaker 1: same sense of innocence, you know. I mean that's here,
28:07
Speaker 1: put a little foregrounding in because I know you're gonna
28:09
Speaker 1: ask me about Odelia in a little bit. But this,
28:12
Speaker 1: but this is the thing, right, the notion of the
28:14
Speaker 1: love story. And and we'll talk a little bit more
28:17
Speaker 1: about American literature and the nation and the notion of
28:20
Speaker 1: the love story. But in any rate, I think that
28:25
Speaker 1: the song is he gets older, and he and he
28:28
Speaker 1: already we have some scenes of him, right, he's playing
28:31
Speaker 1: it later, you know, after he's a little bit older,
28:34
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, and as it continues
28:38
Speaker 1: to survive, you know, in across time for him. It's
28:43
Speaker 1: it strikes me as a song about lost innocence of
28:48
Speaker 1: something that he left behind.
28:50
Speaker 2: Like a doorway into his past. Yeah, right, I like that.
28:54
Speaker 1: I like that.
28:55
Speaker 2: Yes, And it's also how he meets Odelia Jane.
28:57
Speaker 4: Phillips exactly, And that's right, and that was the right
29:02
Speaker 4: and that she was a fan of the song, right,
29:04
Speaker 4: And that's a doorway, like you're saying, right there, see
29:07
Speaker 4: you know that when that happens, that's.
29:09
Speaker 1: An absolute doorway.
29:10
Speaker 2: And yeah, and she becomes more than just a journalist
29:14
Speaker 2: in the story. Tell us about her character, how they
29:18
Speaker 2: end up meeting, and that chemistry that develops there, and
29:23
Speaker 2: what role did you envision her playing in his journey.
29:26
Speaker 1: This is an interesting thing because she was there from
29:29
Speaker 1: the beginning, but in the earliest drafts of the book,
29:33
Speaker 1: her her part was just not as big, you know,
29:36
Speaker 1: And and what happened was, you know, as I continue
29:42
Speaker 1: to work on the book, and you know, you do
29:44
Speaker 1: a draft, you do a couple of drafts, and the
29:46
Speaker 1: book's not one hundred percent there yet. At least that's
29:48
Speaker 1: the way I work, and you hand it to somebody
29:51
Speaker 1: that you trust, and you have them read it, and
29:53
Speaker 1: they give you some feedback. Okay, I'll take some of that.
29:55
Speaker 1: I leave some of that, you know, and I do some.
29:58
Speaker 1: But she continued to grow as a character because I
30:02
Speaker 1: liked her more and more and more every every time,
30:09
Speaker 1: every time something stalled, I could bring Odelia into it,
30:13
Speaker 1: and she would immediately fire the scene and push the
30:17
Speaker 1: scene forward, you know, because and she would say things
30:21
Speaker 1: that I didn't. You know, writing dialogue is sometimes a
30:24
Speaker 1: very funny thing because I don't really know, and this
30:29
Speaker 1: is really true. You don't plan it, you know, you
30:32
Speaker 1: just kind of you're just sort of you're writing it
30:35
Speaker 1: as if you're a spectator to two people talking and
30:38
Speaker 1: somebody and she would just say things that I didn't
30:41
Speaker 1: expect her to say, if that makes any sense to you,
30:46
Speaker 1: and you know, and then that was wonderful because it
30:49
Speaker 1: would surprise me. And then so Aaron would have to
30:52
Speaker 1: respond to something, you know, so I'd be surprised, and
30:54
Speaker 1: Aaron would have to respond, you know, to whatever she
30:58
Speaker 1: said that like caught him off guard, you know, And
31:01
Speaker 1: so that was that was really how her character grew.
31:04
Speaker 1: But but they meet because, you know, Aaron walks out
31:08
Speaker 1: of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and she's coming down
31:14
Speaker 1: the street and her aunt Dolly's Minnie Cooper and Midnight
31:21
Speaker 1: Candy's coming out of the car windows, you know, and
31:24
Speaker 1: it's twenty ten and that that song is a hit
31:28
Speaker 1: in like nineteen seventy four, seventy five. So she's actually
31:32
Speaker 1: listening to a CD called Monster Hits of the seventies,
31:36
Speaker 1: right or something like that, and that all comes out.
31:40
Speaker 1: But he this isn't something that happens to him every day,
31:44
Speaker 1: you know. He just he just sort of walks up
31:46
Speaker 1: to her car and says Hey, that's me. That's my yeah, right,
31:51
Speaker 1: and she sort of looks at him like, oh, come on, man,
31:54
Speaker 1: you know, give me a break.
31:56
Speaker 2: Right, And in order to prove it, they go to
32:00
Speaker 2: have a local record store. I think that will show you. Yeah,
32:04
Speaker 2: there's I think the picture of them on there. Yeah,
32:07
Speaker 2: there's a significant age difference there. You have, their connection
32:11
Speaker 2: feels natural. What interested you about pairing these two characters
32:15
Speaker 2: with that gap and age.
32:17
Speaker 1: Well, I'm always fascinated by that dilemma. Okay, you know,
32:23
Speaker 1: if two people feel a connection but there's a large
32:27
Speaker 1: gap in age, it doesn't matter. You know, it can
32:31
Speaker 1: be an older woman and a younger man. It can
32:34
Speaker 1: be you know, an older man and a younger woman. Uh.
32:39
Speaker 1: It interests me because I just think it's there's a
32:43
Speaker 1: lot of tension and conflict that can come out of that.
32:46
Speaker 1: As you're and you know, when you're writing a novel,
32:51
Speaker 1: tension and conflict is part of your emotional engine, right,
32:55
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the things that helps drive
32:57
Speaker 1: the books. So that's something that always interests me. The
33:02
Speaker 1: other I think the other thing is is that you know,
33:06
Speaker 1: it creates this thing why what is she looking for
33:11
Speaker 1: in him? And what is he looking for in her?
33:15
Speaker 1: And because of that age difference, it's probably two very
33:19
Speaker 1: different things, right, you know. And and so that's another
33:24
Speaker 1: thing that I think is really really interesting. You know,
33:29
Speaker 1: I think to some extent, you know, he's looking for renewal,
33:33
Speaker 1: he's looking for, you know, a kind of redemption almost,
33:41
Speaker 1: you know, of his life, a kind of trying to
33:46
Speaker 1: save himself from some kind of middle age mediocrity. And
33:51
Speaker 1: you know, how do you how do you do this
33:53
Speaker 1: the other you know, you you you know, maybe one
33:55
Speaker 1: way you do it is you connect yourself to a
33:58
Speaker 1: much younger person, you know, that.
33:59
Speaker 2: Kind Without her youthful ambition, he may just remain stagnant. Yeah,
34:09
Speaker 2: what am I going to do? I can't I can't
34:11
Speaker 2: do anything at this point. But she's the one who's
34:12
Speaker 2: that come.
34:13
Speaker 1: On, come on exactly, that's right, yeah, Yeah, she's still
34:17
Speaker 1: got that drive.
34:18
Speaker 3: Right right, that he needed.
34:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that he and this is this
34:22
Speaker 1: is where we get into Americana a little bit, which is,
34:27
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of ascribe to the idea that
34:30
Speaker 1: the great American novel, whatever that is, is almost always
34:34
Speaker 1: a love story, and it's usually a failed love story.
34:40
Speaker 1: And you know, and you can if you if you
34:42
Speaker 1: just want to pull out a few, you know, from
34:44
Speaker 1: the hat. But you know, maybe one of the principal
34:48
Speaker 1: ones is the Great Gatsby. It's a failed love story.
34:52
Speaker 1: People say it's about the American dream. The fact that
34:55
Speaker 1: it's a failed love story might say something about the
34:58
Speaker 1: American dream. Meaning if we take Daisy and Gatsby as
35:02
Speaker 1: a metaphor for something that is either not working or
35:09
Speaker 1: problematic about the American dream, or if we if we
35:14
Speaker 1: think of that conflict is where Gatsby thinks the end
35:18
Speaker 1: justifies the means. So you know, he can he can
35:22
Speaker 1: become whatever he needs to become to win Daisy back
35:25
Speaker 1: without realizing that if he oversteps into profound hypocrisy, he
35:30
Speaker 1: might have a problem. So you know, those kinds of ideas.
35:33
Speaker 1: And I think that that's another reason why I wanted
35:38
Speaker 1: that distance, right, if that makes sense, it's a you know,
35:42
Speaker 1: in my view, he is also looking for a world
35:48
Speaker 1: that Elvis once occupied that doesn't exist anymore in his time,
35:53
Speaker 1: you see. And I think that there's something you know, essentially,
35:57
Speaker 1: you know, kind of sad about that, and you know
36:03
Speaker 1: it's sad for everyone. In other words, it's part of life,
36:06
Speaker 1: meaning the world that a world that any individual may
36:12
Speaker 1: have loved dearly or found identity and place in it.
36:18
Speaker 1: You know, that was powerful. And so I'm not just
36:22
Speaker 1: talking about nostalgic memories, right, but I'm just talking about
36:25
Speaker 1: that sense of connection in place and everything. Well, we
36:29
Speaker 1: lose those worlds, you know, everything changes, you know, we change,
36:33
Speaker 1: and that world changes. You know, I go, I remember
36:36
Speaker 1: vividly what Detroit was like in the late sixties and
36:40
Speaker 1: through the seventies and so on. I go back there. Now, Well,
36:42
Speaker 1: of course it's not anything close to the and some
36:46
Speaker 1: of that is good, that it's not even close to
36:49
Speaker 1: what it was, and some of it is not so good,
36:51
Speaker 1: and that's always the way it is, right. But Aaron,
36:55
Speaker 1: he's definitely looking for some part of himself and some
36:58
Speaker 1: part of the world that existed for him at one
37:04
Speaker 1: time and doesn't exist anymore. And somehow believes, and this
37:09
Speaker 1: is where you get into that failed business about the dream, right,
37:14
Speaker 1: somehow believes that maybe he can get it back with Odelia.
37:19
Speaker 1: But you know, you know, going back to Gatsby, you know,
37:24
Speaker 1: Gatsby says to Nick carroway or no, he says something
37:29
Speaker 1: about the past, and Nick Carraway says to him, you can't.
37:34
Speaker 1: You can't reclaim the past. I think it's reclaimed, but
37:37
Speaker 1: it may be a better better word than that. You know,
37:39
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't get it back. It's essentially what
37:43
Speaker 1: Nick Carroway was saying. And what does Gatsby says, Well,
37:45
Speaker 1: of course you can if you got enough money and
37:49
Speaker 1: you know, so on whatever. Well, you see what I mean.
37:52
Speaker 1: So that's the you know, to me, that's the rub,
37:55
Speaker 1: and that's the heart of part of what's going on
37:57
Speaker 1: in the book.
37:58
Speaker 2: See, that's fascinating because that that's something I connected with
38:01
Speaker 2: a character as well, because I have the employees that
38:04
Speaker 2: I have are much younger than me, but I feel
38:06
Speaker 2: like there's still a part of me in their youth
38:08
Speaker 2: where that I connect with. So I, you know, we
38:11
Speaker 2: have the sense of humor, will click on certain things.
38:14
Speaker 2: But then at the same time, just today one of
38:17
Speaker 2: my employees, twenty three, he goes, wow, so you were
38:20
Speaker 2: born in what year? I said, seventy two? Man, So
38:23
Speaker 2: you were the Shuttle explosion. You remember that, I said, Yeah,
38:26
Speaker 2: I was fourteen years old. I was in junior high.
38:28
Speaker 2: I remember they announced it over the su Yeah, yeah,
38:30
Speaker 2: you know, it's the whole other world that they don't know,
38:34
Speaker 2: and and but it also brings me back to those times.
38:37
Speaker 2: But anyway, that's that's I think I find that fascinating.
38:40
Speaker 2: Now there's also a Rod Serling aspect here with a
38:43
Speaker 2: haunted jukebox. I love this haunted It's a great addition
38:47
Speaker 2: to the overall story. Comes up early on and again
38:49
Speaker 2: towards the end of the book if you can talk
38:51
Speaker 2: about the jukebox, and then where did that idea come from?
38:53
Speaker 1: First of all, I love jukeboxes, so you know, I mean,
38:57
Speaker 1: I just again, I'm old enough that they were in
39:01
Speaker 1: the world, you know when I was growing up, and
39:03
Speaker 1: you know, I used to drop quarters in them and
39:05
Speaker 1: restaurants and bars later and stuff like that. You know.
39:09
Speaker 1: But even as a little kid, you know, like I
39:12
Speaker 1: could be in a clock restaurant or something in the sixties,
39:15
Speaker 1: you know, with my parents. My father would give me
39:17
Speaker 1: a quarter, you know, go go play something, you know,
39:20
Speaker 1: and I'd go over and you know, i'd be like
39:22
Speaker 1: kid in a candy shop, you know, drop the quarter
39:24
Speaker 1: and you know, looking at all the titles, and of
39:26
Speaker 1: course at that age, I didn't know what half the
39:29
Speaker 1: songs were. But it didn't matter. It was like it
39:31
Speaker 1: was incredible fun, right.
39:32
Speaker 2: All the latest hits, yeah, all.
39:34
Speaker 1: The latest hits.
39:35
Speaker 3: Right.
39:36
Speaker 1: So I always loved and I love the you know,
39:39
Speaker 1: old jukeboxes have a kind of style and engineering that
39:46
Speaker 1: in some ways not unlike old cars or something, right,
39:49
Speaker 1: you know, they really conjure up an era in a
39:53
Speaker 1: way that you know, other artifacts maybe do not so specifically.
39:58
Speaker 1: And so I love them, you know, just as that
40:01
Speaker 1: just you know, as artifacts. But I've always thought that,
40:05
Speaker 1: you know, the jukeboxes, even in their heyday, we're sort
40:10
Speaker 1: of like haunted things anyway, because you know, you would,
40:14
Speaker 1: you know, you you play these incredible songs on these jukeboxes,
40:19
Speaker 1: and and just to just to make it more literal
40:22
Speaker 1: in some sense, you know, you know, Sam Cook gets
40:27
Speaker 1: shot and killed early on, right, you know, and now
40:31
Speaker 1: here in the jukebox here is Sam Cook's you know,
40:35
Speaker 1: incredible voice. He's dead now two years and I'm playing,
40:39
Speaker 1: you know, four years or five years, I'm playing a
40:42
Speaker 1: change is going to come or something which was released posthumously, right,
40:46
Speaker 1: And so the jukebox was always filled with people who
40:49
Speaker 1: were gone, you know too. Whether it was so that
40:54
Speaker 1: so that in a very real sense they were they
40:57
Speaker 1: were holding the voices of ghosts and uh and and
41:03
Speaker 1: people living people. But it was all mixed together, you know,
41:07
Speaker 1: it was like this, It was like this wonderful salad,
41:09
Speaker 1: you know that that was always available to you. And
41:14
Speaker 1: so that's I think the genesis of that idea. And
41:18
Speaker 1: then and then I thought, I just started playing with
41:21
Speaker 1: the idea that in the Prince of Memphis, what if
41:24
Speaker 1: what if I you know, we're at Ernestine and hey,
41:26
Speaker 1: what if I made the jukebox sort of the arbiter
41:27
Speaker 1: of taste? You know, So that's nobody's you know, dropping
41:31
Speaker 1: the thing. It's just the jukebox is going to play
41:33
Speaker 1: what it feels like listening to.
41:35
Speaker 3: Right, you know.
41:35
Speaker 1: And I just thought, and that's where the Rod Serling
41:38
Speaker 1: part comes in, that you're talking about right and uh.
41:40
Speaker 1: And then I just kind of ran with that, and
41:42
Speaker 1: you know, things get a little crazier.
41:47
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for checking out the Book Down Rock podcast.
41:50
Speaker 2: If you've just found the podcast, welcome. If you've been listening,
41:54
Speaker 2: thank you so much for your support, and make sure
41:56
Speaker 2: you tell a friend, a family member, share on social
41:58
Speaker 2: media and let people know.
42:00
Speaker 3: About Booked on Rock.
42:02
Speaker 2: And if you do like the podcast, make sure you
42:04
Speaker 2: subscribe give a five star review. Wherever you listen to
42:07
Speaker 2: the Booked on Rock podcast, We're on Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,
42:12
Speaker 2: tune In, and on YouTube music. You can check out
42:15
Speaker 2: the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
42:17
Speaker 2: episodes on the Booked on Rock YouTube channel. Find it
42:20
Speaker 2: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
42:24
Speaker 2: to the show. Byron Moon. One of the most important
42:27
Speaker 2: characters in this novel. He's a visionary producer, he's a mentor,
42:31
Speaker 2: he's a mad scientist. He's a father figure and possibly
42:35
Speaker 2: a cautionary tale all rolled into one. He calls the
42:38
Speaker 2: idea of a black woman in Elvis a rock and
42:41
Speaker 2: roll reconciliation. Is he describing Clara May and Elvis's relationship
42:45
Speaker 2: or is he describing what rock and roll itself represents
42:48
Speaker 2: at its best?
42:50
Speaker 1: Wow, man, I really like the way you read. I
42:53
Speaker 1: just say that to you.
42:54
Speaker 3: You know, I love the book, so I think you
42:56
Speaker 3: could tell you.
42:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna have to hit you up for
43:00
Speaker 1: some copy man. So anyways, Yeah, but the wow that
43:07
Speaker 1: is that's an amazing question and it's so full.
43:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we know the roots of rock and roll.
43:14
Speaker 1: Are the blues and the well that was that was
43:18
Speaker 1: the thing, right, So let's okay, let's go back to
43:20
Speaker 1: Jackie Wilson, right, you know, so great Detroit soul singer,
43:26
Speaker 1: you know, dogging around, you know, your Loves Take Me Higher,
43:29
Speaker 1: you know, all those great songs. He's one of Elvis's
43:34
Speaker 1: favorite singers, right, you know, and they actually they have
43:38
Speaker 1: a relationship through you know, their adult lives. You know,
43:42
Speaker 1: Jackie goes to visit him on the set of one
43:44
Speaker 1: of his mediocre movies, and the that is Elvis's mediocre movies,
43:49
Speaker 1: like in the mid sixties somewhere, and uh, there's pictures
43:53
Speaker 1: of him hanging out, you know, on set and all
43:55
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And and the issue is is
44:00
Speaker 1: Jackie Wilson said that, you know a lot of people
44:03
Speaker 1: put a bad rap on Elvis because they think he
44:06
Speaker 1: stole a lot of the moves and stuff from black music.
44:10
Speaker 1: He said, but actually what happened is that we actually
44:13
Speaker 1: copied him a lot. That's what Jackie Wilson thought. That
44:16
Speaker 1: was his thing. And I think you know, in the
44:20
Speaker 1: early days of rock and roll, which predates you know,
44:24
Speaker 1: a certain strain of identity politics and all the stuff
44:28
Speaker 1: that we deal with now, there was this kind of
44:32
Speaker 1: feeling that, you know, we were all in it together.
44:36
Speaker 1: Now that may sound a little bit naive, because there's
44:41
Speaker 1: no doubt that some black songwriters got left out in
44:45
Speaker 1: the cold, right, you know, because either they they didn't
44:49
Speaker 1: own the rights to their song or whatever. You know,
44:52
Speaker 1: they the record companies managed to not pay them what
44:57
Speaker 1: they should have paid them. And so you have white
45:00
Speaker 1: artists capitalizing on their work and they weren't getting their
45:03
Speaker 1: fair share. And there and that's the least of it, probably,
45:07
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, so we know that all that
45:10
Speaker 1: stuff happened. But at the same time, what you had
45:14
Speaker 1: was you had a bunch of Jewish composers in the
45:16
Speaker 1: Brill Building in New York City. I'm talking about you know,
45:19
Speaker 1: Carol Kings, Cynthia while Berry Man, Gary Coffin right, Jerry Coffin,
45:27
Speaker 1: Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller right, who write Jailhouse Rock,
45:30
Speaker 1: who write hound Dog for Big Mama Thornton. And you
45:35
Speaker 1: know they send hound Dog, it's Big Mama Thornton, and
45:39
Speaker 1: she does a nice job with it, but it's you know,
45:43
Speaker 1: she keeps it as a slow blues you know, it's
45:46
Speaker 1: a straightfour slow blues and it doesn't do anything on
45:51
Speaker 1: the charts, and then all just picks it up and
45:54
Speaker 1: he does it about four times. You know, he triples
45:58
Speaker 1: or quadruples the time Big Mama Thornton does it, and
46:01
Speaker 1: then uses his own, you know kind of vocal stylings,
46:06
Speaker 1: and suddenly Leeber and Stoller are making a fortune back
46:09
Speaker 1: in New York. And so my point is is you
46:11
Speaker 1: can make an argument that early rock and roll is
46:16
Speaker 1: written by a bunch of brilliant young Jewish composers in
46:20
Speaker 1: New York City sending their stuff, you know, to the
46:23
Speaker 1: to the coast, or to Memphis or wherever it was
46:26
Speaker 1: being recorded, along with uh, you know, people like Arthur
46:32
Speaker 1: Crudup and and you know other of the early composers.
46:35
Speaker 1: You know, he wrote That's all Right, Mama, and stuff
46:38
Speaker 1: that Alvis recorded, and you got you know, uh, oh jeez,
46:45
Speaker 1: senior moment. Well he eventually becomes a preacher, right, but
46:49
Speaker 1: he's an incredible uh little.
46:52
Speaker 3: Richard, Little Richard, Yeah, yeah.
46:53
Speaker 1: Little Richard. That's who I was going for senior moment.
46:55
Speaker 1: So so you know, you've got all of these people
46:59
Speaker 1: at the outset. You know, whether it's bb King, Little Richard.
47:04
Speaker 1: They're all working, they're all creating stuff, they're all merging
47:08
Speaker 1: different styles, and a lot of people have made the
47:14
Speaker 1: that it was more of a melting pot feel, you know,
47:16
Speaker 1: that it that it really was trying to draw on
47:20
Speaker 1: all of these traditions and and try to make something
47:24
Speaker 1: new and fresh, you know that didn't didn't quite sound
47:27
Speaker 1: like the next guy. And so I think it's a
47:32
Speaker 1: combination of those things. Was there exploitation, absolutely, but was
47:38
Speaker 1: there also kind of a spirit of like freedom and
47:41
Speaker 1: creativity and discovery that everybody was sharing. Well, a lot
47:46
Speaker 1: of those artists would argue or would have said that, yeah,
47:49
Speaker 1: that was the case. You know, James Brown certainly felt
47:53
Speaker 1: that way about Elvis, you know, and so on. So
47:56
Speaker 1: so you know, it's it's complex, it's nuanced, and it's
47:59
Speaker 1: complex and you have to kind of conceive both sides.
48:02
Speaker 1: But I think that is the spirit of rock and roll.
48:05
Speaker 1: And when he says, to get back to your question,
48:08
Speaker 1: that that rock and roll reconciliation a black woman in Elvis,
48:13
Speaker 1: it's it's symbolic, right, you know, That's the way I'm
48:17
Speaker 1: meaning it. In the book, particularly you know Elvis, you know,
48:21
Speaker 1: he had the Jordanaires up there for years, but then
48:24
Speaker 1: you know, in the late sixties he connects up with
48:27
Speaker 1: the Sweet Inspirations and they're with him until the end.
48:31
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you saw Baz Luhrmann's new
48:33
Speaker 1: movie called Epic, you know Elvis Presley in concert, you know,
48:38
Speaker 1: which is.
48:38
Speaker 2: The concert I did, the Vegas Yeah yeah, another fantastic
48:45
Speaker 2: yeah yeah.
48:45
Speaker 1: And in that film, I think you can see almost
48:49
Speaker 1: immediately his rapport and the fun that he was having
48:54
Speaker 1: with all of his musicians. And all I'm trying to
48:59
Speaker 1: say is is that, you know, I don't think Elvis
49:03
Speaker 1: himself ever thought that. There's no evidence to suggest that
49:05
Speaker 1: he ever thought of his music as some kind of
49:07
Speaker 1: segregated thing. Sure he had gospel white guys up there,
49:11
Speaker 1: but he also had the Sweet Inspirations, And on all
49:14
Speaker 1: of his big records from the late sixties and early seventies,
49:17
Speaker 1: they are front and center, and you know he was
49:20
Speaker 1: always telling them there, you know, turn them up, turn
49:22
Speaker 1: them up, which is what we did on the background
49:25
Speaker 1: vocal for Midnight Candy to the song from the book.
49:28
Speaker 2: Well Yeah, Byron warns Aaron in regards to revealing his
49:33
Speaker 2: mother is why is that.
49:35
Speaker 1: Well, because I think he you know, I think he
49:38
Speaker 1: says in that section, right, you know, it's nineteen seventy four,
49:44
Speaker 1: and you know, the Klan is still fighting the Civil War,
49:49
Speaker 1: and you know they this is not going to sit well,
49:52
Speaker 1: particularly with the what was then, you know, sort of
49:57
Speaker 1: religious conservatives and so on and so forth. Or because
50:01
Speaker 1: part of that, part of the whole text of this book,
50:03
Speaker 1: right is this notion of Elvis religion and the you know,
50:07
Speaker 1: what is the sacred text of Elvis religion and what
50:10
Speaker 1: that means, and as part of Elvis's iconography, and so
50:15
Speaker 1: the warning is you're messing with forces that are way
50:19
Speaker 1: beyond your control, you know. And if you if you
50:23
Speaker 1: want to go there in nineteen seventy four and say
50:26
Speaker 1: that you are the mixed race son of Elvis Presley, Okay,
50:30
Speaker 1: that's going to get a lot of attention, But you're
50:31
Speaker 1: also going to get some attention from some people who
50:34
Speaker 1: might want to kill you, you know. And that's that's the
50:37
Speaker 1: warning about the clan. And and then you know, I
50:41
Speaker 1: work that out a little differently as we go forward
50:43
Speaker 1: in time, right, but yeah.
50:44
Speaker 2: That same idea, Yeah, that's the Verus Rex, Verus Rex Rex. Yeah,
50:51
Speaker 2: we'll get to that, but real quickly before we get
50:53
Speaker 2: to that, the radio station w aa X, it feels
50:57
Speaker 2: almost mythical when we first hear about it. And then
51:00
Speaker 2: this DJ who works there, Moses Blake. Early in the novel,
51:03
Speaker 2: Aaron says to Odelia that he was my reason for
51:09
Speaker 2: being here until you came along. What made him such
51:12
Speaker 2: an important figure in Aaron's life?
51:14
Speaker 1: Well, Moses was the engineer on Midnight Candy, right, That's
51:18
Speaker 1: how he first meets him. And so he's the engineer
51:22
Speaker 1: that Byron brings in to get the cruising mixed sound
51:25
Speaker 1: in the in the record, right, So that's that's where
51:30
Speaker 1: he first meets him. But for Moses, I mean for Aaron,
51:36
Speaker 1: Moses kind of represents a father's figure who is generous
51:42
Speaker 1: and open, open sould and and not potentially crazy, not
51:54
Speaker 1: to put to find a spin on it, right, but
51:56
Speaker 1: he's not potentially crazy. And and so Moses sort of
52:02
Speaker 1: represents in Aaron's world, even though this seems kind of
52:06
Speaker 1: odd in the construct of the novel, he does represent
52:10
Speaker 1: a certain kind of stability, right. You know, he's he's
52:13
Speaker 1: still there in Memphis, He's still playing the old songs
52:18
Speaker 1: in this kind of mythical station, as you say, and
52:23
Speaker 1: and he refuses to stream, right, you know, No, We're
52:26
Speaker 1: just gonna go analog all the way. And he hopes
52:30
Speaker 1: for good weathers because on good nights, his you know,
52:33
Speaker 1: his voice goes from Miami to Mexico, right, you know
52:36
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So so that that's what I
52:40
Speaker 1: think he represents for Aaron, But he also is a gatekeeper, right.
52:45
Speaker 1: The way I set it up is, you know, one
52:48
Speaker 1: of the books that one of the influences for me
52:50
Speaker 1: as a writer that I can never shake is Joseph
52:53
Speaker 1: Conrad and Heart of Darkness. And so I'm not saying
52:58
Speaker 1: that Byron Moon is Kurts exactly. That's not what I'm
53:01
Speaker 1: aiming for. He may be a thinly veiled phil specter,
53:06
Speaker 1: but I don't know that he's Kurts in you know,
53:09
Speaker 1: Heart of Darkness. But but the way I set it
53:12
Speaker 1: up is that if you remember in Heart of Darkness, Marlow,
53:16
Speaker 1: the character who's going down the river to see Kurtz,
53:20
Speaker 1: he has to stop at a series of stations on
53:23
Speaker 1: the way, and there's sort of these supply stations and
53:26
Speaker 1: so on where bizarre stuff is happening, and things get
53:29
Speaker 1: more and more bizarre. The closer he gets to Kurtz
53:33
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm alluding to us something of that. There's
53:37
Speaker 1: something of Conrad and everything that I write, because you
53:41
Speaker 1: know this idea of the genius at the end of
53:44
Speaker 1: the river, you know, the genius at the end of
53:46
Speaker 1: the journey who is Byron Moon. And the closer you
53:49
Speaker 1: get to him a little, the world becomes a little
53:52
Speaker 1: stranger and stranger everything gets tilted right, you know, the
53:55
Speaker 1: closer you get to him, and Moses is the gatekeeper.
54:00
Speaker 1: He's a safety zone, you see. You know, he's a
54:02
Speaker 1: safety zone. And so that's what he represents to Aaron
54:06
Speaker 1: as well.
54:09
Speaker 2: Find the Bookdo on Rock website at booked on rock
54:11
Speaker 2: dot com. There you can find all the back episodes
54:14
Speaker 2: of the show, the latest episode in video and audio,
54:17
Speaker 2: links to all of the platforms where you can listen
54:19
Speaker 2: to the podcast, plus all the social media platforms were
54:22
Speaker 2: on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and x. Also check
54:27
Speaker 2: out the Booked on Rock blog. Find your local independent bookstore,
54:31
Speaker 2: find out all the latest hot rockbook releases, and before
54:34
Speaker 2: you go, check out the Booked on Rock online store.
54:36
Speaker 2: Pick up some Booked on Rock merch. It's all at
54:39
Speaker 2: booked on rock dot com. He doesn't face legal scrutiny alone.
54:44
Speaker 2: You got the near religious backlash and the death threats.
54:47
Speaker 2: That adds real stakes to this story. Talk about this
54:50
Speaker 2: religious group Unis Verrus Rex, and what do those threats
54:55
Speaker 2: reveal about the power of belief and identity?
55:00
Speaker 1: Great question again? Okay, yeah, so well, you know there,
55:05
Speaker 1: they are essentially a cult, Lunis Verus Rex. I don't
55:09
Speaker 1: know that I refer to them quite as I think
55:11
Speaker 1: o'delia refers to them as that at one point. But
55:15
Speaker 1: I don't make a huge issue of that. But they're
55:17
Speaker 1: essentially a cult. But they started, and this is the key,
55:22
Speaker 1: they started as something much more reasonable, which is they
55:26
Speaker 1: started as a a fan club essentially, now maybe a
55:32
Speaker 1: rather eccentric and extreme fan club, but a fan club. Nonetheless.
55:36
Speaker 2: You know it's Latin for true king, right, you.
55:40
Speaker 1: Know, they start out as this fan club. But you
55:44
Speaker 1: know what ends up happening is that the guy who
55:48
Speaker 1: is essentially in charge of the fan club, he takes
55:52
Speaker 1: more and more extreme positions about what he sees as
55:57
Speaker 1: the sanctity of the Elvis story and the Elvis religion
56:02
Speaker 1: and the idea of you know, Elvis almost as a
56:07
Speaker 1: christ figure, and one of the things that is not
56:12
Speaker 1: allowed in that particular according to the leader of unas
56:17
Speaker 1: Verus Rex is you know, we certainly can't have an
56:20
Speaker 1: illegitimate child. And even though I'm you know, I think
56:25
Speaker 1: i'd have to believe Elvis had a few, I guess
56:28
Speaker 1: I don't want to make any accusations, but it's hard
56:30
Speaker 1: to believe it never happened. But we'll leave that where
56:33
Speaker 1: it is. You know, not only can't there be an
56:37
Speaker 1: illegitimate child, but there certainly cannot be a black mother,
56:41
Speaker 1: and so that that's in complete violation to the Elvis
56:43
Speaker 1: scripture as far as he is concerned. So what you
56:47
Speaker 1: have is this idea of religious fanaticism. And partly what
56:50
Speaker 1: I'm doing is a send up, you know, of the
56:53
Speaker 1: way I see extreme evangelical expressions and so on in
56:59
Speaker 1: our culture, sure, and the condemnation that they bring upon people,
57:05
Speaker 1: and the fact that when when things become increasingly extreme,
57:10
Speaker 1: they come and become increasingly increasingly absurd and ugly and
57:15
Speaker 1: dangerous and destructive. And so that's, you know, that's the
57:21
Speaker 1: serious critique on it. And then of course all this
57:24
Speaker 1: absurdist stuff happens around Unis Varius Rex, which you know,
57:31
Speaker 1: so you've got this. I'm hoping some kind of a
57:33
Speaker 1: balance between the social criticism and the entertainment value of
57:38
Speaker 1: the of the story itself, right, you know that kind
57:40
Speaker 1: of thing.
57:41
Speaker 2: Well, they break into the apartment, right, there's the chapter
57:44
Speaker 2: where Aaron and O'delia find out their Detroit apartment was
57:48
Speaker 2: broken into by somebody from the group. The intruder doesn't
57:51
Speaker 2: steal Aaron's manuscript or valuables. He steals a specific Elvis record,
57:56
Speaker 2: his Christmas album. Right, How is that detail important?
58:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, he steals the loc ten thirty five, which in
58:06
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, the year Aaron is born. It's it's
58:10
Speaker 1: issued as a gatefold for only one year. The next
58:15
Speaker 1: year they'll change the cover and it'll be a single
58:17
Speaker 1: pocket LP. But the gatefold in nineteen fifty seven has
58:22
Speaker 1: like a booklet of photos from jailhouse Rock inside. But
58:28
Speaker 1: the reason that they take that album is not only
58:31
Speaker 1: because that is a kind of perennially rare album, particularly
58:37
Speaker 1: in great condition. I mean, you can look it up
58:40
Speaker 1: on eBay if you want. You'll see them. Most of
58:43
Speaker 1: them are trashed. You know. The spine is a mess
58:45
Speaker 1: and you know everything else. But to get one in
58:48
Speaker 1: really really good condition is difficult. But that's not the
58:53
Speaker 1: reason they take it. They take it because side B,
58:56
Speaker 1: you know, Side A is the kind of secular Christmas music,
59:01
Speaker 1: white Christmas, et cetera, et cetera. Side B is the
59:05
Speaker 1: gospel side, and essentially, you know, religious songs, you know,
59:10
Speaker 1: Piece in the Valley and so on, but you know,
59:13
Speaker 1: within the context of Christmas. And so the idea is
59:17
Speaker 1: is that they sort of take that record, as I
59:22
Speaker 1: think O'delia says it in the book. She says, you know,
59:25
Speaker 1: they want you to know that they can get they
59:28
Speaker 1: can get to the things that you love best whenever
59:31
Speaker 1: they want, which is this very rare record. But also
59:35
Speaker 1: it's the one that signifies what they're after, which is
59:39
Speaker 1: the purity of the Elvis scripture. No, this is the
59:43
Speaker 1: this is Elvis at his spiritual best, you know, so
59:47
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and so that's so it's there's
59:49
Speaker 1: a kind of dual symbolism there about why I chose
59:52
Speaker 1: that record.
59:53
Speaker 2: And let's get to the final question, which is the
59:56
Speaker 2: end of the novel where Aaron is remembering the people
59:59
Speaker 2: who shaped Moses. Byron Moon Claire May, Elvis, and Odelia.
1:00:06
Speaker 2: And it ends not with answers, but with Aaron thinking
1:00:09
Speaker 2: about the people who shaped him. Yeah, and we'll leave
1:00:12
Speaker 2: it at that. We don't want to give away too much.
1:00:13
Speaker 2: But it is our identity ultimately built not from facts
1:00:17
Speaker 2: but from relationships and memories.
1:00:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, now that's beautiful, Eric, and I think that's right.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how I think our identity is absolutely built.
1:00:27
Speaker 1: I mean, sure, there's I mean, there are facts in
1:00:30
Speaker 1: your experience, right, you know, something you're let's just make
1:00:35
Speaker 1: it very concrete. You're in a bad car accident when
1:00:38
Speaker 1: you're sixteen years old or something. You know, that's a
1:00:41
Speaker 1: fact of your experience, and it's probably something you're always
1:00:44
Speaker 1: going to remember, right, you know, and that becomes part
1:00:47
Speaker 1: of your identity. And we have many things like that
1:00:50
Speaker 1: as we go through life. But in the end it
1:00:55
Speaker 1: those are not the things that if you strung together
1:00:59
Speaker 1: a whole list of facts from your life, those would
1:01:02
Speaker 1: not be the things that you would count necessarily as
1:01:06
Speaker 1: central to the formation of your identity. I think it's
1:01:08
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. Those experiences play into it, but
1:01:12
Speaker 1: it's going to be you know, who those influences were,
1:01:16
Speaker 1: You know, like, if I'm going to speak for myself,
1:01:20
Speaker 1: I was. I was very blessed with the fact that
1:01:22
Speaker 1: from a very young age, my father was not very accessible.
1:01:25
Speaker 1: You know, he's born in nineteen seventeen, he's depression era,
1:01:31
Speaker 1: and you know, he was not a man who spoke
1:01:34
Speaker 1: much about his feelings. He had a lot of feelings,
1:01:37
Speaker 1: trust me, but he was not a man who spoke
1:01:39
Speaker 1: about them very much. And so I was very blessed
1:01:44
Speaker 1: with having teachers from a relatively young age who seemed
1:01:51
Speaker 1: to think I had some kind of potential to do something.
1:01:54
Speaker 1: You know, it was, whatever it was. And they became
1:01:59
Speaker 1: sort of at various intervals in my education. You know,
1:02:05
Speaker 1: father figures to me very often, and not exclusively, but
1:02:11
Speaker 1: a couple of them for sure. And you know, see
1:02:16
Speaker 1: it's that kind of thing, right that is makes it
1:02:19
Speaker 1: more complex, because I would not be the person that
1:02:23
Speaker 1: I am had I not met Steve Tudor, who was
1:02:26
Speaker 1: a professor at Wayne State University when I was an undergraduate,
1:02:29
Speaker 1: and he taught me how to sail and he basically
1:02:33
Speaker 1: taught me how to be a writer ultimately and a poet.
1:02:38
Speaker 1: And you know, and there were others in graduate school
1:02:41
Speaker 1: the same thing, John Logan, Robert Creeley, others that I
1:02:44
Speaker 1: had who were amazing, amazing teacher. They were so incredibly generous.
1:02:50
Speaker 1: And that's why a character like Moses Blake exists in
1:02:53
Speaker 1: my book because very often what I'm doing from my
1:02:55
Speaker 1: own experiences, I'm like, Moses Blake is the teacher. He's
1:02:59
Speaker 1: the he's the generous one. He's the one who actually
1:03:03
Speaker 1: cares what happens to aaron, you know, and and you know,
1:03:09
Speaker 1: great teachers, that's what they do. Actually, you know, they
1:03:13
Speaker 1: actually care about what happens to their students, and so
1:03:19
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's all of a piece in
1:03:21
Speaker 1: my mind.
1:03:25
Speaker 2: The Book Down Rock podcast is part of the Boneless
1:03:27
Speaker 2: Podcasting Network. If you're a fan of classic rock and
1:03:30
Speaker 2: classic film like I am, go to Boneless dot Lovable
1:03:33
Speaker 2: dot app to find over twenty great shows there that's
1:03:37
Speaker 2: Boneless Downlovable dot app, or just go to book down
1:03:40
Speaker 2: Rock dot com the Boneless podcasting network. It is what
1:03:44
Speaker 2: you want to be Listen with confidence. He's determined to
1:03:50
Speaker 2: publish this explosive memoir. What becomes of that memoir find
1:03:55
Speaker 2: out September fifteen. Is that the release date.
1:03:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, the release date is September fifth.
1:04:00
Speaker 2: Can people pre order now?
1:04:02
Speaker 1: I think pre orders are going to be available around
1:04:07
Speaker 1: what we are August first or early in August will
1:04:11
Speaker 1: be pre orders will be available, Yeah, not too far,
1:04:13
Speaker 1: I'm told by the publisher anyway.
1:04:15
Speaker 2: Okay, but what people could do in the meantime is
1:04:17
Speaker 2: go to your website because pretty much everything is there, right,
1:04:20
Speaker 2: you got end the song Midnight Candy.
1:04:22
Speaker 3: Is there the.
1:04:24
Speaker 2: Information on the book, So they could go to Joseph
1:04:27
Speaker 2: Coolson dot com.
1:04:28
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, And they can also go to Dreamfieldpress dot
1:04:31
Speaker 1: com because there's a lot of information there. Some of
1:04:34
Speaker 1: it's duplicated, but you know, there's a lot of there's
1:04:36
Speaker 1: some additional information there as well. So either either way
1:04:40
Speaker 1: is going to work.
1:04:41
Speaker 2: Right, put both links in the show notes and that's
1:04:43
Speaker 2: Joseph c O U L S o N dot com. Joseph,
1:04:47
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on. Really enjoyed the
1:04:50
Speaker 2: book and look forward to hear what people think about
1:04:53
Speaker 2: it when it comes out in September. But well we'll
1:04:56
Speaker 2: end this episode. We'll play some more of your song
1:04:58
Speaker 2: Midnight Candy, and Joseph thank you.
1:05:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great and thanks so much for having me
1:05:04
Speaker 1: and and thanks for being such a careful reader of
1:05:07
Speaker 1: the book. You know, I'm not sure people realize, but
1:05:11
Speaker 1: when you're a writer, it's an incredible privilege to be
1:05:14
Speaker 1: read well. And to be read well is by someone
1:05:18
Speaker 1: who's asking me questions that reveal immediately that they've read
1:05:23
Speaker 1: the book deeply and that they get a profound sense
1:05:27
Speaker 1: of the book's intention. And it just leads to this.
1:05:31
Speaker 1: You know, it's exciting for me because it's like it's
1:05:33
Speaker 1: like this wonderful affirmation. So I just I just want
1:05:36
Speaker 1: to thank you for that, and for being good at
1:05:40
Speaker 1: what you do, really good at what you do.
1:05:44
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
1:05:45
Speaker 2: It means a lot to me because I know how
1:05:47
Speaker 2: how hard it isn't the time put into writing these books,
1:05:50
Speaker 2: So I really appreciate it, all right, Joseph, thank you.
1:05:54
Speaker 1: You bet you take good care.
1:06:00
Speaker 5: From me. By can dea.
1:06:04
Speaker 3: From from my mind?
1:06:05
Speaker 5: I can.
1:06:09
Speaker 3: Love holy love me.
1:06:11
Speaker 5: Then to name.
1:06:13
Speaker 6: In your hondy man in your hondy by Yeah, gotta
1:06:20
Speaker 6: love it on my mother, Just let it, Betty, love
1:06:31
Speaker 6: it on my mind, Honey, love it on my mind.
1:06:44
Speaker 3: That's it.
1:06:45
Speaker 1: It's in the books.