When you write a book about music, the big, end dream—my big, end dream, at least—is that somebody’ll come to you and say, oh hey, please make me a playlist. Or make me seven. Tell me way too much about why you put these particular tracks on there and in that order; find me the lyric that’ll take out my knees. Give me a melody—or some warble, or a slide and a swing—that says what you spent hundreds of pages trying to say, but does it way better, and in three and a half minutes.
And then of course it turns out that making the playlist book feels harder than writing the goddamn book. Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine is a novel about the Austin music scene in the ‘70s, about dark bars filled to the ceiling with sound, and about how, if you really want to, you can hear some sort of God in the pick-ups of an old Gibson. The book is named after a song and built around songs.
So just know that every decision I made about this list was fraught, opened doors to a thousand other possible tracks, and should be taken both uncomfortably seriously and with a whole block of nice salt. Cringe if you gotta. But I hope one of these gets you. If you happen to get chills when you listen to more than one of these and wanna talk about it, drop me a line. If every single one of these gives you a little hiccup in your chest, well, I’m a little afraid of you, but Austin’s always, always here. It’s 80 degrees and sunny. Turn it up real loud.
For Doug:
“Cocaine Country Dancing” — Paul Cauthen
Pull up to the club, baby. Let’s go. Burn it down with this guy named Paul; he’s from East Texas.
“Fingernails” — Joe Ely
I have some friends who have a sort of misophonia-like response when they listen to this song but that’s part of the charm. Joe is the only musician in the book who kept his real name. Because he’s a national treasure, and his name is good too.
“Life I Used to Live” — Lightnin’ Hopkins
Dougie plays this song one night at the bar, acoustic, but it’s the amp that makes this recording. And how Lightnin’s voice drops a rung further down into the well of the register than you expect. Low.
“Cooler-N-Hell” — Ray Wylie Hubbard
“/and a pentatonic scale.”
“John Henry Split My Heart” — Songs: Ohia
I live with a severe Jason Molina affliction and have for a long time, but you certainly don’t have to develop a problem in order to find yourself standing on the mountain.
“You Can’t Hold the Hand of a Rock and Roll Man” — Okkervil River
“Gassed/and trashed/and smashed young cads—”
For Deanna:
“Tourist Trap” — Bright Eyes
Listen, living in your hometown can be really hard work.
“Corralling the Blues” — Colter Wall
Keep your hands working, hold off the hurting? Probably not, no. But everything sounds good when this kid sings it.
“Troubled Times” — Tim Easton
“For someone who doesn’t know a lot about maps/you sure know your way around this town”
“That Kind of Lonely” — Patty Griffin
The way Patty Griffin sings “what kind of man you really are” let me see Deanna’s eyes for the first time.
“Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” — Texas Tornados
Wasted Days and Wasted Nights was the original title of the book, back when I hadn’t pulled Doug Moser far enough away from Doug Sahm. I’ve seen it referred to as “swamp pop,” which—the music industry’s obsession with labels notwithstanding—is an oddly gorgeous combination of words.
“Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” — Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys
There’s a cover by the Kentucky Headhunters that gets closer to stomp, but this is the original banjoed truth.
For Steven:
“The Saint of Lost Causes” — Justin Townes Earle
“You know most folks are more afraid of the wolf/but if you really stop and think/throughout time, between a wolf/and a shepherd/who you think has killed more sheep?”
“Amazing Grace” — Cat Power, Dirty Delta Blues
I could give you a trickier hymn, but why? When this voice is right here?
“Lungs” — Townes Van Zandt
“Salvation sat and crossed herself/and called the Devil partner”
“Devil Town” — Daniel Johnston
There are certain contractual obligations to growing up in Austin; the inclusion of this song meets several of them.
“I Thought About You, Lord” — Willie Nelson
And this is why you sign the contract in the first place.
“Dry River” — James McMurtry
I think a lot about resolve, about how a chord progression can satisfy our innate need for closure or absolutely refuse to, and sure, sometimes you want a song in 5/4 or some weird fade-out on a minor seventh or whatever, but come on. It’s not just theoretical or mathematical. You feel it in your feet. Plus, those harmonics. Sometimes you have to just come on home.