Dispatch #23
On New Music Beyond the Middle Lands
What I’ve Been Listening to in October: Bill Orcutt
Read dispatchFlat Branch Press
Deep-Fried America
Dispatches from David Biddle on music, mind, and the strange currents that shaped Sound Effect Infinity — a novel 50 years in the making.
Dispatches
RSSDispatch #22
Noisemakers and the Sound of Understanding
Reasons why we developed communication
Read dispatchDispatch #21
Top 10 Life-Changing Acid Rock Albums
Listen, but only if you're willing to be altered
Read dispatchDispatch #20
Nate Hofer: Big Underground Echoes
The loneliness of the unlistening.
Read dispatchDispatch #19
The Middle Lands: Should You Stay or Should You Go Now?
The growing chasm at the center of our country
Read dispatchDispatch #18
What I listened to in August (and July and September)
Paloma by Loma Suyo
Read dispatchDispatch #17
Are You Writing the Song, or Is It Writing You?
Bedroom and back-porch players, a notebook of unfinished songs, and the mysterious Somewhere Else that art comes from.
Read dispatchDispatch #16
How Did All Those Moving Parts Become a Funky Science Fiction?
Loud guitar, CIA paranormal research, crossroads myths, flyover country, and two Columbia loners.
Read dispatchDispatch #15
How Quantum Physics Solved My Novel’s Ending
How one video on zero-point energy inspired the finale of my new novel.
Read dispatchDispatch #14
Easter Eggs and Secrets Everywhere
Hidden gems sitting right between the lines.
Read dispatchDispatch #13
Sharing your Joy and Enthusiasm
The gifts of your artistry are the ones that last.
Read dispatchDispatch #12
My Dad Told Me Not to Write Novels
Thirty years later, I finally decided to prove him wrong.
Read dispatchDispatch #11
Why Do You Think They Call it Playing Music?
Why I stopped “practicing” music 50 years ago, and why I haven’t failed since.
Read dispatchDispatch #10
Remembering the Man Who Inspired Me Endlessly
An ethnobotanist, philosopher, and psychologist (among other things).
Read dispatchDispatch #9
A Version of Infinity I’m Listening to here in July
Jack DeJohnette’s Sound Travels — piano, percussion, global jazz, and the blues standard that still shows up in warmups.
Read dispatchDispatch #8
How long before music becomes a long strange trip?
After fifty years of guitar, twenty minutes of noodling, and the mysterious natural high of waking up your own musicality.
Read dispatchDispatch #7
Creativity and Improvisational Expression as a Higher Form of Consciousness
Paul McCartney, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and the human magic of jazz, blues, and jam bands.
Read dispatchDispatch #6
Hearing vs. Listening
What it means to actually listen to music — memory, expectation, and how deep sound goes inside.
Read dispatchDispatch #5
Mongos
Mixed-race America, the limits of racial labels, and who we might become by 2052.
Read dispatchDispatch #4
Counting Sunsets
What I've Been Listening to Here in June — SUSS and the ephemeral beauty of ambient music.
Read dispatchDispatch #3
Are There Really Decommissioned Nuclear Missile Silos in the Midwest?
Myths from a Missouri childhood, Nate Hofer's pedal-steel in an Atlas silo, and the Subterranean LSD Palace.
Read dispatchDispatch #2
Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll — and Mind Control
From a bestseller pitch to CIA experiments, paranormal fringe, and the physics of sound.
Read dispatchDispatch #1
The Magic Inside Music
How a summer night in 1968 sparked a lifelong search for the magic inside music.
Read dispatch