Winner of the Etchings Press Book Prize, Wes Blake’s novella Pineville Trace is as poignant as it is imaginatively told.
SmokeLong Quarterly wrote of the book:
“This is the hollow heart of Frank’s magic, and provides a powerful indictment of the American Dream – what does one become if one can embody and enact all of one’s desires? Blake’s answer to this is captivating, sophisticated, and utterly haunting. This was an utterly compelling read. Blake’s prose is sparse and simple, whose short, almost broken, sentences sing with enormous power.”
In his own words, here is Wes Blake’s Book Notes music playlist for his novella Pineville Trace:
The Kinks: Misfits
The bare piano chords and spare acoustic guitar riff would make a perfect introduction for the main character, Frank Russet, as he rides along on the bus to the minimum-security prison on Pineville mountain. Later, as he and his cat Buffalo make their way along the edge of society, the song’s lyrics become apt: “You’ve been sleeping in the field, but you look real rested.” Ray Davies’ chorus cuts to the core of Frank: “You’re a misfit, afraid of yourself, so you run away and hide”. And at many moments in the book, Frank must feel that his “summer has gone” and “winter is crawlin’ in”.
Cat Stevens: The Wind
With its airy balance between seeking redemption and surviving damnation, this Cat Stevens song belongs in Pineville Trace. We won’t even dwell on the album cover for Teaser and the Firecat on which the song appears, with its cartoon drawing of a boy and his cat—a younger mirror for Frank and Buffalo. Frank Russet also listens “to the wind of [his] soul” and where he’ll end up “only God really knows”. And Frank knows what it’s like to swim “upon the devil’s lake”.
Van Morrison: Into the Mystic
This buoyant song is playing in the Canadian diner hidden in the wilderness where Buffalo and Frank get their first good meal in a long time. After being lost in the wilderness, the joyful bass line, the blissful sound of guitar chords, and the desire—for home and everything else—at the heart of the song perfectly fit the moment.
Bruce Springsteen: Blood Brothers
Frank Russet and his cat Buffalo are blood brothers and do achieve the level of friendship described in Springsteen’s song. The closing lyric resonates: “But the stars are burnin’ bright like some mystery uncovered, I’ll keep movin’ through the dark with you in my heart, My blood brother.”
Kurt Vile: Walkin’ On A Pretty Daze
The breezy sense of freedom in this song conjures the feeling of spring arriving to a cabin in the wilderness after a long winter. In his best moments, when Frank finds himself “wakin’ on a pretty day,” he might think to himself: “Don’t know why I ever go away”.
Tom Petty: Wildflowers
This song could appear throughout the book as Frank makes his way, seeking—and trying to hold onto—a sense of peace, searching for “that home by and by” and wanting to belong “among the wildflowers” far from his “trouble and worry”.
Velvet Underground: I’ve Been Set Free
The silvery sound of this track and the opening lines describe Frank’s state of mind and spiritual condition as he oscillates between his past and present: “I’ve been set free, and I’ve been bound. To the memories of yesterday’s clouds”. And when the ecstatic chorus breaks out declaring, “I’m set free” it sounds and feels like the truth.
Cracker: I Want Everything
“All things beautiful, all things beautiful, I want everything” repeats the chorus of this song, written by David Lowery. Frank is haunted by a story that his Native American friend says sums him up. And the story can be boiled down to the chorus or title of this song. This is Frank. It’s what drives him. He wants everything. And is there a better guitar solo than the one Johnny Hickman pulls off with his Gibson Les Paul in the midst of this acoustic guitar and piano ballad?
Jackson Browne: Late For the Sky
This song plays when Frank is sleeping in his car in a parking lot by a plasma donation center. He is down in a valley looking across the road at a church his brother has built and reflecting how his brother was able to settle down in ways that Frank never could. And the song captures the feeling of the scene in the way that the sweeping organ, tasteful electric guitar lines, and piano chords congeal around a swelling chorus that asks, “How long have I been sleeping? How long have I been drifting alone through the night?”
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Soul to Squeeze
Frank revisits a place in Mexico that carries a lot of emotional resonance. A place where his life came to a crossroads. He’s visited by ghosts from his past and searches for meaning in his vanquished life. The bassline in this song moves along melodically contrasting with the lyric of the chorus in a way that is a mirror for Frank’s mind state and spiritual state in the scene: “Where I go I just don’t know, I got to, gotta, gotta take it slow. When I find my peace of mind…”.
Counting Crows: Perfect Blue Buildings
Darkness descends. Frank finds himself hiding out in a motel room. The dire sound of this song crawls along and builds to its chorus, its narrator desperately seeking escape: “Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby. Try to keep myself away from me”.
Lou Reed: Underneath the Bottle
Reed’s lyric and vocal perfectly captures the heavy drinking life: “Things are never good, things go from bad to weird. Hey, gimme another Scotch with my beer. I’m sad to say, I feel the same today, as I always do. Gimme a drink to relax me”. Frank can relate.
Robyn Hitchcock: The Ghost in You
Ghosts visit Frank often. Ghosts of the living and ghosts of the dead. Ghosts of the past. I’m choosing Robyn Hitchcock’s insightful interpretation, an acoustic cover of this haunting Psychedelic Furs song. Robyn sings over his bright rustling guitar chords: “Inside you, the time moves, and she don’t fade. The ghost in you, she don’t fade”. And for Frank, this rings true.
U2 with Johnny Cash: The Wanderer
This has always been one of my favorite U2 songs. A track tacked onto the end of U2’s Zooropa album. With Johnny Cash on lead vocals. Johnny Cash’s unmistakable voice starts this journey out boldly, announcing, “I went out walking with a Bible and a gun. The word of God lay heavy on my heart. I was sure I was the one” but softens later and admits that “Yeah, I left with nothin’, Nothin’ but the thought of you. I went wandering.” The narrator of the song confesses, “I went out there, In search of experience. To taste and to touch, And to feel as much, As a man can, Before he repents”. And along the journey he passes by “a thousand signs, looking for my own name.” These could be Frank’s words.
Townes Van Zandt: Nine Pound Hammer
Townes covers this song written by Kentucky songwriter Merle Travis and makes it his own with his precise but laidback fingerpicking style and honest, down to earth drawl. So, this song sprung from Kentucky, just like Frank’s journey in Pineville Trace. Townes slows the pace, and draws out new, universal tones of exhaustion, escapism, and existential ennui from lyrics like, “I’m goin’ to the mountain, Gonna see my baby. But I ain’t comin’ back, No, I ain’t comin’ back. Roll on, buddy, Don’t ya roll so slow. How can I roll, When the wheels won’t go?” I imagine this song playing over the credits at the end of Pineville Trace.
The Longlist: Songs that almost made the cut:
- Van Morrison: Philosophers Stone
- Pink Floyd: Pigs on the Wing
- Social Distortion: Ball and Chain
- Pixies: I Wanna Live on an Abstract Plain
- George Harrison: Run so far
- George Harrison: If Not For You
- Neil Young: Birds
- Everly Brothers: Stories We Could Tell
- George Harrison: Behind that Locked Door
- Beck: We Live Again (Nighttime chapter)
- Big Star: Nighttime
- Matthew Sweet: Smog moon (When pushing car into lake)
- Guy Clark: Dublin Blues
- Nanci Griffith: Comin Down in the Rain
- Jackson C. Franke: Blues Run the Game (Motel room)
- Leonard Cohen: Take this Longing
- Simon and Garfunkel: Keep the Customer Satisfied (Magic City chapter)
- Sun Kil Moon: Never Ending Math Equation
- Ramones: Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy
- Warren Zevon: Splendid Isolation
- R.E.M.: Losing My Religion
- Bob Dylan: Shelter from the Storm
- Bruce Springsteen: Local Hero (Magic City chapter)
- Beck (covered by Johnny Cash): Rowboat (When he’s rowing back into America)
- Sparklehorse: Morning Hollow
- Harry Nilsson: Many Rivers to Cross (cover of a Jimmy Cliff song) (River crossing scene)
- Dave Van Ronk: He was a Friend of Mine
- The Band: Atlantic City (Cover of the Springsteen song)
- Ramones: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
- Van Morrison: Who Was That Masked Man?
- Gillian Welch: Time the Revelator (In motel when he’s reading newspaper)
- Grant Lee Phillips: Dark End of the Night
- Bonnie Prince Billie: I See a Darkness (Johnny Cash cover) (Scene with brother)
- Dwight Yoakam: Population Me
- Richard Haley: Sometimes I Feel
- Miles Davis: Blue in Green
- The War on Drugs: Eyes to the Wind (When Frank is driving south)
- Alice in Chains: Brother (You’ve Killed Your Brother Chapter)
- Frank Sinatra: Dream (Written by Johnny Mercer)
- Leonard Cohen: Like a Bird on a Wire
- Big Star: The Ballad of El Goodo
- Robyn Hitchcock: Rainy Twilight Coast
- Elliot Smith: Between the Bars
- Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet
- Pearl Jam: Off He Goes (Chapter with brother)
- Velvet Underground: Sunday Morning
- Robyn Hitchcock: Trying To Get To Heaven Before They Close the Door (Cover of the Bob Dylan song)
- Bruce Springsteen: Beautiful Reward
Wes Blake’s novella-in-flash, Pineville Trace, won the Etchings Press Book Prize and will be published in September 2024 by Etchings Press (at the University of Indianapolis). Lee Martin, author of Pulitzer Prize Finalist The Bright Forever, described him as “a writer to watch”. His fiction and essays have appeared in Louisiana Literature Journal, Blood & Bourbon, Book of Matches, Jelly Bucket, White Wall Review, and elsewhere. Wes’ novel, Antenna, was a semifinalist for the UNO Press Lab Prize. He holds an MFA from the Bluegrass Writers Studio and lives in Kentucky.