Back during the 2020 pandemic I got the bright idea to write a book. I would type out the lyrics to all of my songs, and then I would tell the story behind that song. To try to make it somewhat different than a simple compilation of previously recorded songs that were all available on other releases, I tried to use Live versions, Demo versions, or Remastered versions where-ever possible. A lot of this was recorded on a cell phone in a loud room. You can hear the background noise, phones ringing, glasses and bottles clinking, people talking. A number of these songs appear nowhere else:

This was all written by me. No AI, No Ghostwriters, No Editor - although a couple of people tried unsuccessfully to edit it. Fortunately, after lots of rest and ingestion of questionably legal substances, they have mostly recovered. There’s spelling mistakes in here, lots of bad grammar, missing punctuation, but it’s all real.

FORWARD

FOREWORD
There are a lot of differences between me and my oldest brother: he is half Bigfoot and I am mostly human; I bathe daily and he bathes semi-annually; I am very pretty and he is musically gifted.

We have things in common, too. We are both voracious readers, we both suffer from depression, we both take off our pants if we start drinking whiskey, and we are both too smart for our own goddamn good. We are also storytellers.

This common trait comes from the fact that we were raised by the same wolves and lived to tell the tale. Telling that tale, through any means possible, has been our main survival mechanism. We do it differently, but we both do it pretty well, if I do say so myself. Recently, I read that stories only happen to the people who can tell them. I guess God chose the right folks to ride to hell in a handbasket together and live to tell the stories.

Jeff’s version of a family story will differ from mine as there is a 12-year gap between us. We remember events we experienced differently, and we were told different versions of the events we didn’t experience. This is largely because the people who told us our family stories were liars and drunks - or both.

My whole life I was told about my father’s pet alligator, Caesar, who died before I was born. When I wrote about this, my brother asked, “What fucking alligator?” Either Caesar never was, or he was a much smaller tale than I had been led to believe. I believed the story because stories were told and believed in our family. Maybe the stories, and their believing, were a way for our kin to survive, too.

Jeff and I do not have many of that kin left and certainly none who can fill in gaps or corroborate whether Caesar really did live in our garage and guard the deep freeze. Sometimes we call each other to fact check and sometimes just to throw in a little flair, your people may call it embellishment - our people call it good storytelling.

One last bit Jeff and I share in common is that we are, quite possibly, the two sanest people in our family - which is saying a lot for a big dumb hick and his baby sister. This fact was scary while growing up and it can be intense to dwell on now, but it means that we love each other an awful lot even when we are super bad at traditional family stuff (see above - wolves, raised by.)

I invite you to read on for the stories behind the songs that my stinky, genius, smartass, somewhat sane, half Bigfoot brother writes.

They are all great and some of them might even be true.

They all definitely kept him alive.

Suzy Wall Trotta
bathed and pretty,
younger sister of the Bigdumbhick
Host of the Damn It Suzy Newsletter and Podcast
http://suztytrotta.com

PREFACE

PREFACE

Back a long, long time ago, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, there were these things called magazines. They were like a web page that was printed on paper, and it is what people used to take into the bathroom to read back before they invented cell phones. I was fortunate enough to live in this long-ago era and to be a writer for a number of these magazines. Magazines had editors responsible for the magazine's layout and appearance. They would decide which writer’s work was suitable for publication and would then “edit” this work for grammar, accuracy, flow, style, and length. This was usually done by eliminating anything of interest or value, then upon publication, the writers would be issued a check. This money was not compensation for your work, it was protection money to keep you from killing your editor in the most horrible and gruesome way imaginable, which is far more kindness than most editors deserved. I was fortunate enough to write for some editors that did not deserve to be hung by their own entrails. Editors who took the time to encourage me, to stoke my love for writing, and to try to help me improve that writing. Editors such as Chris Neal at Country Weekly, Michael McCall at Country Music Magazine, Peter Blackstock, and Grant Alden at No Depression. I am indebted to these people. Don’t tell them I said that though, I still hate editors.

I taught myself to play guitar in the early ‘80s while at sea in the U.S. Navy. Upon retiring from the Navy in 2000 and relocating to North Carolina, I started playing covers in local bars in a duo called The Hillbilly Love Gods until one day my partner abruptly died, which I thought was a rather extreme way to break up a band. If you want out of the band, just say so. With the demise of The Hillbilly Love Gods, I lost much of my enthusiasm for performing publicly and regularly.

Some fifteen years later, during a well-deserved birthday celebration, Terry Bowman, my wife Alesia, and I stopped in to catch the Winston-Salem Shuffle, a monthly original performance showcase put on by Steve “Wish” Wishnevsky. Terry and Wish borrowed me a guitar and goaded me into getting on stage and performing. I would like to humbly say that I absolutely killed it, but more importantly, the fire in my belly to be on a stage been relit.

To continue to participate in the Shuffle, I was going to need original material, but I had no idea how to go about writing songs. Fortunately, I know a lot of songwriters, so I asked for help. Friends Dallas Wayne and Peter Cooper, both told me to go pick up “The Songwriter’s Handbook” by Tom T. Hall and in it I would find everything I needed to know about becoming a songwriter. I did as they suggested and suddenly, in my mid-50s, I was a songwriter.

As of this publication, I am 61 years old and have written close to 100 songs. The musical companion to this book will be my 6th or 7th released project of original music (one is a remix, so it got counted twice.) I have played hundreds and hundreds of live shows, and I have uploaded countless videos to Facebook and YouTube. However, none of these recordings or videos can adequately capture the manic energy or the personal, intimate connection between performer and audience which takes place in a live performance.

Playing live is where I thrive, where I shine. Since 2015 I have played all sorts of parties, porches, living rooms, garages, hotels, farms, fields, art galleries, festivals, resorts, beer joints, dive bars, taverns, cafes, biker clubhouses, wineries, breweries, boutiques, listening rooms, radio shows, restaurants, and stages - venues large and small. The truth is I’m simply a whore with a guitar. I need the attention, as well as the money. It’s how I stay sane and how I pay my bills.

While looking for new ideas for things to sell at the merch table, I came across mention of a song and picture book that Flatt & Scruggs used to sell at their shows. I thought, “I could probably do that. I could sell a book of my song lyrics.” People had been encouraging me to write a book for years. I have several performer friends who have published books: Wes Freed, “The Art of Wes Freed – Paintings, Posters, Pin-ups and Possums”; Tommy Womack, “The Cheese Chronicles”; Peter Cooper’s excellent “Johnny’s Cash and Charley’s Pride”. Hell, I had been a paid, professional music writer at one time, there was no reason I couldn’t do it too. However, a book of nothing but lyrics would be boring as hell unless you were a Bob Dylan, Mickey Newberry, or Kris Kristofferson. Then it came to me, what is it people liked so much about performers such as Steve Goodman, John Prine, and Todd Snider? The stories. People want to hear the stories as well as the songs. So how about a book composed of lyrics as well as the stories about the songs? The Lyrics half is already written, all I would have to do is write the stories part.

I really should do that… someday.

Then my sister, Suzy, (http://www.suzytrotta.com) started a blog and a podcast containing short stories about her childhood, Funny, cynical, often heart-breaking stories, much in the vein of David Sedaris, with the intention of someday eventually compiling them in a book, which just further inflamed my desire to tell MY stories.

It was starting to feel like the universe was conspiring to tell me to get off my ass and finally write a book.

So, I wrote a book.

I hope you enjoy it.

Who knew I could write a book?

Who knew that I could even read a book?

Jeff Wall
http://bigdumbhick.com

01. 1968 Lebanon Tennessee
02. 40 Days and 40 Nights
03. 90 Miles an Hour
04. A Little Bit Weird
05. Ain't Nobody in Here Listening to Me
06. All of My Heart
07. Battery Operated Boyfriend
08. Be Your Dog
09. Bodies in the Basement
10. Check Out Time
11. Choices
12. Chokehold on my Heart
13. Drinking Whiskey
14. Drinking With the Devil
15. Erectile Dysfunction Blues
16. Every Bone in her Body
17. First Cup of Coffee
18. Get Your Shit and Go
19. Gotta Wear a Mask
20. Granddaddy was a Railroad Man
21. Guitars and Titties
22. Hard to Love Sober
23. Heart Broke and Lonesome
24. Hell at 30,000ft
25. Help me Mama - I Can't Breathe
26. Holding Up a Sign
27. Hungry Anymore
28. Hurry Up and Die
29. Ravens and Crows
30. Everything You Wanted
31. I Ain't Afraid of Dying
32. I Don't Know Where I'm Going
33. I Saw Your Name
34. I Started Drinking Again
35. It Ain't Really Church
36. It Could Have Been Me
37. It Wasn’t There
38. Look Out Jesus
39. Love Everybody
40. Move Back to the Country
41. New Wayfaring Strangers
42. Old Black Snake
43. One is Too Many
44. Outlived My Dick
45. Riding Around Naked
46. Santa Got Busted
47. Searching For a Rhyme
48. See You Naked
49. She Ain’t Letting Go
50. Something is Wrong with My Baby
51. Staring Out the Window
52. Storm a Coming
53. Street Corner Preacher
54. The Family Plan
55. The Fuck-Up Fairy
56. The New Golden Rule
57. The Other Side
58. The Silent Treatment
59. The Sweetest Boy
60. Three on the Tree
61. Too Fat to Fuck
62. Trading Time for Money
63. Unicycle
64. Up Here on the Ledge
65. Viagra Prescription
66. We’re Gonna Die Someday
67. What We Ain’t Got
68. Will I Ever Get Laid Again
69. You Can’t Trust a Fart
70. You’re Making My Head Hurt

I’m not posting the entire book here. You can download it though…..

FOLLOW THIS LINK AND SELECT BUY DIGITAL ALBUM.
(You don’t have to pay anything)

You can download both the ePub and the PDF version FOR FREE