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March 11, 2021
Keith Rosson's Playlist for His Story Collection "Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Keith Rosson's collection Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons is filled with haunting stories that are haunting and absurd in the best of ways.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"With this excellent collection of 15 jagged, fragmented pieces, dark fantasist Rosson (The Mercy of the Tide) subverts expectations and challenges his characters and his readers alike to second-guess their preconceptions. Evil is just as likely to spring from daily life as to lunge out of the supernatural in these disquieting tales. [...] These powerful stories will leave readers unsettled in the best ways."
In his words, here is Keith Rosson's Book Notes music playlist for his story collection Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons:
Music has always been an integral aspect of my writing process. Can’t stand silence when it comes to working; any minute noise becomes significant. Music drowns it out, and also – particularly when the song’s good and I’m in that deep, almost automatic space that comes with being enmeshed in the process – it can influence my writing profoundly. Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons gathers up nearly a decade’s worth of stories, and while it’s difficult to equate specific songs with specific tales, life being fluid as it is, here’s some rippers that’ve either influenced the collection directly or through some kind of roundabout process.
“Born In the USA” by Bruce Springsteen
A textbook example of a narrative that folks think is absolutely going to go one way, and does not wind up going that way at all. With a title like that, and Springsteen’s behandkerchiefed ass standing before a flag, clearly this must be a “rah-rah-rah” America song, right? No, hardly. And '80s production aside, this song still give me the chills 35+ years later. The Vietnam War has always been an area of interest in my stories, and this song’s always been a guiding light in that regard.
“Little Conversations” by Concrete Blonde
If I can ever distill the themes of regret, loss, and beautiful, hand-worn sorrow the way that Johnette Napolitano does in the two minutes and forty-seven seconds of this song, I’ll count myself very lucky indeed.
Anything by Greg Brown, pretty much
I feel (okay, hope) that my stories are a lot like Greg Brown’s songs – moored in a traditional foundation, but also a little wry, a little off, with some sly humor and a handful of gravel ready to fling your way.
“Ghosts of Highway 20” by Lucinda Williams
Absolutely haunting song. I grew up where Highways 20 and 101 intersected, and both have had innumerable young women abducted and murdered on their twisting paths throughout the years, and this includes friends of mine. I still think of those young girls often, decades later, and that sense of foreboding and danger and irrevocable sadness is threaded throughout this song.
“Great Expectations” by Gaslight Anthem
The genesis of a lot of these stories came from just walking around, running errands or going to work or taking long meandering walks wherever. You just turn facets of the story over in your mind as you go along. More than a few stories have been fleshed out while listening to Gaslight Anthem’s The ’59 Sound. Still a solid record 10+ years later, and this is such a great first song.
“Flowers By the Door” by TSOL
With formative punk bands like TSOL, you expect a certain thing and you usually get it. That weird amalgam of hardcore and deathrock. But “Flowers By the Door” (from 1984’s Change Today? LP), as haunting and pretty and deceptively strident as it is, is a case where you get something you were not expecting it at all. I hope some of my stories are like this in the way they upend expectations. Plus, this one’s actually pretty pretty.
“Thin Blue Flame” by Josh Ritter
Another one of those slow burner-folk songs, using only two chords and six-plus minutes and a wild and moving vocabulary. I’ve probably listened to “Thin Blue Flame” a hundred times while writing and editing these various stories over the years. Moving and sentimental and wise, it’s one of those bedrock songs that help put me in the right place.
“Quickstep” by J Church
This band, and particularly the album it comes from, One Mississippi, just puts me right in that self-reflective spot. They’re catchy but not too intrusive. It’s atmospheric enough to help me dig deep, but not jarring enough to throw me off. One Mississippi has been a part of the playlist for at least three novels and dozens of stories over the years. Pop punk done right, forever and ever, amen.
“Cops from Hell” by Hated Principles
Okay, last song, and a not technically fitting for a playlist, as I discovered this 1984 majestic blast of noise after my book had already gone to print, BUT the 67 seconds in this beauty contains a single solid reminder to those of us traversing the troubling seas of literature: verse/chorus/bridge/verse/chorus. Get in and get the hell out, man. No filler.
Keith Rosson is the award-winning author of the novels The Mercy of the Tide and Smoke City.
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