(Pen & ink; click to embiggen).

Fantastic show with the Memphis legend JACK OBLIVIAN this Friday at MorningBell. Only a few weeks old & this great store is already doing amazing things.

Jack Oblivian on Facebook
Jack Obivian Myspace
MorningBell Records & Studio of Jackson, Miss.

[ink on paper]

BLOODBIRD ON FACEBOOK
May 26 // Ole Tavern // with RUNAWAY SUN

(click to embiggen)

11×14, ink on cardstock, Feb. 24-28, 2012

Title: LA PRINCESSE S’ENNUIE
Art: GORJUS REX
Bands: LIVER MOUSSE
BLACKFOOT GYPSIES
Locale: OLE TAVERN

Hey Leonard Cohen
You look good in the picture frame
up on the wall
in this cold tile bathroom.

Don’t think me rude, you’re in
good company—Tattoo You & a
velvet King. I used to have a
photo of Roy’s but the shower’d
wrinkle it in the summertime.
Now it’s always wrinkled.

Nice chinos, Leonard Cohen, you
don’t know it but you’d blend on
the Square after the LSU game,
even with that crewcut.
(We’ll say you did it
on a dare).

I didn’t banish you here for spite &
it’s not that I don’t wanna hear
you live from ’72 (in Brussels,
London, Paris, Berlin, Isle of
Wight, and ‘Room in Tennessee’)
it’s that the sleeve didn’t have
the damned LP when I picked it up
at the Salvation Army.

It’s done me enough good over the years,
holding down the wall by
the towel rack, you smoking that
ragged cigarillo. Won me $26 in a midnight
bet at a Living Better Electrically show
at Martin’s, because damn right you had
Charlie Daniels playing fiddle in yr band in
1972, in Brussels, in London,
and in Paris, too.

Ahoy! The legendary BOY of Austin heads back to Jackson this Wednesday, January 11, with the ILLLS of Oxford. Won’t you join us?

Alt “newsrack” format:

Friday, January 13th, at the Ole Tavern in Jackson, Miss.—Oxford’s finest THE UNWED TEENAGE MOTHERS, JXN’s finest LOS BUDDIES, and the fabulous E-METERS.

Eudora don’t surf, y’all.

The seventh volume of the Sandusky Review is about the one true royal son of Tupelo: how he lived, who he loved, and how he died. (And how he got his teeth fixed).

Five poems and four illustrations featuring the Blue Moon Boys and the Memphis Mafia. Available at Sneaky Beans in Jackson, Miss. & by mail order from yours truly. 130 copies, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Yuck, s /t
Wye Oak, Civilian
Bon Iver, s/t
Hammers of Misfortune, 17th Street
Furrows, Malcontent & Adored
tUnE-YaRdS, w h o k i l l
Widowspeak, s/t
Overnight Lows, “Slit Wrist Rock Rock N’Roll” b/w “I’m Gonna Be Everything”
Bass Drum of Death, GB City
Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Here We Rest
Tennis, Cape Dory
Davila 666, Tan Bajo
Big K.R.I.T., “Country Shit” (remix)
Lykke Li, “Sadness Is a Blessing”
Missing Monuments, Painted White

THEM OLD TOPS (pre-2011 releases I just got into/got real back into)

Joni Mitchell’s jazz catalog (Hejira, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, The Hissing of Summer Lawns)
Mastodon, Crack the Skye
R.E.M. catalog
David Dondero, Number Zero with a Bullet
Dio, Holy Diver
Megadeth catalog
Black Sunday, various 7”s
Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
Stryper, To Hell with the Devil
Black Sabbath, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue
Reigning Sound, “Funny Thing”
Liver Mousse, Sans Pants EP

Best Live Shows
Vivian Girls, Widowspeak, Los Buddies (Sneaky Beans)
Venice Is Sinking, Wooden Finger, a. Fox (Blaylock Studio)
Taylor Hildebrandt & Passenger Jones, Wooden Finger, Johnny Bertram & the Golden Bicycles (Martin’s Bar, St. Patrick’s Day)
Liver Mousse (Ole Tavern, March 2011)
Furrows, Liver Mousse (Eudora Welty Commons)
Horse Trailer (Hal & Mal’s)
El Obo, Dead Gaze (Hal & Mal’s)
Mr. Kid & the Brothers Fox, Spacewolf, Mark Roemer (Hal & Mal’s)

Eye Candy
Josh Schooler (of PAPER DAGGERS)
Justin Schultz (of the Flying Chair).

Rest In Peace
Poly Styrene
Bebop Record Shop

Here’s the scratchboard cover for my new all-King zine RIP IT UP. A clutch of poems about the Hillbilly Cat & drawings of Scotty, Bill, Sonny & Red.

Coming along slowly but surely—aimed for November but kept finding things I wanted to write about—like M-16s in garbage cans and Big Boy Crudup calling him Elvin Preston.

The Overnight Lows at Sam’s Lounge, Jackson, Miss.