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, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Ariel Delgado Dixon’s novel Sourland is an immersive literary thriller, brilliantly original and atmospheric.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“[A] gritty neo-Western, complete with double crosses, shootouts, rattletrap pickup trucks, a herd of cattle, and a dog named Pistol . . . Dixon’s wealth of knowledge about both legal and illegal farming practices and her feel for the texture of rural queer living infuse this sweaty, smoky thriller with vibrant realism . . . Skunky, in the best possible way.”
In her own words, here is Ariel Delgado Dixon’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Sourland:
Sourland is a novel about being sticky-stuck in the thrall of weed: growing it, making money off it, and hacking out a life beyond the law. It’s also a novel about love.
While getting stoned is pretty fun, reading about it is usually a bore. I may or may not have spent my fair share of time inside the underground world of weed, but in writing Sourland, I was less interested in the psychedelic than in the foot soldiers of old-school marijuana: the growers, trimmers, and unsung middlemen. I love their stories. Farmers get up to some crazy shit. There are a dozen ways to die on a farm, and when your cash crop happens to be illegal, off-grid, and potentially worth millions, these dangers only multiply.
Growing marijuana attracts a certain kind of freedom-loving freak—replete with their own customs and codes of honor. At the novel’s heart, that’s what Sourland is all about. I wanted to preserve this slice of subculture, and also prod at a foundational question. How do you build a meaningful life, and who gets to say what that looks like?
Here are thirteen tracks, set to Sourland’s ebbs and flows of love, loss, redemption, and weed.
SIDE A – In which the players meet, fall in love, out of love, hate each other, want each other, and decide whether or not to blow everything up.
“Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin
Would a novel set in the deep woods of Northern California be complete without a throwback track like this? Humboldt County remains the U.S. epicenter for growing primo weed. It’s outlaw country up there, through and through. A gnarled guitar riff as opener feels spiritually correct.
“No More ‘I Love You’s’” by Annie Lennox
One of my favorite chapters in Sourland follows two characters as they begin an elaborate adventure following their one-night stand. Sapphire, the matriarch of an illegal weed farm, encounters Frankie, a disgraced ballerina searching for something big to sink her teeth into. However different Sapphire and Frankie are, they somehow fit together, these two circlers of the void. The absurdist sweep of what is perhaps Annie Lennox’s most famous song feels like getting carried away, “outside words” as the song goes. Isn’t that like falling in love?
“Total Control” by The Motels
The languid heartbeat thump of this track is positively delicious. I always imagined it overlaying an early chapter in the book in which we see Frankie and Sapphire tumble headlong into fresh passion, all those early days of obsession. I’d sell my soul for / total control is such a brilliant turn of lyrical irony. Did I mention this song contains a lengthy sax solo?
“Wrecking Ball” by Gillian Welch
With respect to Miley Cyrus, this is the superior “Wrecking Ball.” It doesn’t hurt that Sourland, in my humble hope, could read like an expansion of this Northern California odyssey of love, farming, misty mornings, and a girl who showed me colors I’d never seen.
“Fruits of My Labor” Lucinda Williams
Nobody does it like Lucinda. Is this one of the greatest love songs of all time? I’ve been tryin’ to enjoy / all the fruits of my labor/ I been cryin’ for you boy / but truth is my savior. The truth is also a killer. In Sourland, so much consternation comes from loving someone even when you know their love is no good for you anymore.
“Transcendental Blues” by Steve Earle
Sure, Sourland is a novel is full of sex and heartache—all the fecundity of love—but it’s also about hustling. Farming exacts its tolls, but on the best days, it can also feel like sun-bleached bliss. Back roads never carry you where you want ‘em to, Steve Earle delivers in his delightful snarl, but the up-and-down electric riff that climbs throughout this track feels like persistence.
“What About Me” by The Exceptional Three
At the center of Sourland is a toxic-ish love triangle. There’s Sapphire and Frankie in their love nest, but there is also Fizz—a former college ballplayer turned regional kingpin, who has failed at both endeavors. When Fizz arrives on the farm, romantic allegiances quickly go fuzzy. Soon, three is a crowd. I love the shiftiness of a love triangle. Maybe it’s unevolved to say so, but I think a little jealousy is good for a love affair.
SIDE B – In which the players do, in fact, decide to blow everything up.
“Fistful of Love” by Antony and the Johnsons
I first heard this track play at a friend’s homestead in deep northern Maine, the horns echoing out of the house and into the pine woods. This song is a haunt. Maybe it’s about domination, or violence, or the pleasures of possession—or a mix of all the above. Love is illogical. I imagine this track kicking off the SIDE B of this playlist, the second half of the novel. In the margins of love and the extralegal, we learn what we’re truly capable of.
“Kool Thing” by Sonic Youth
There is a standalone chapter of Sourland that functions like a kind of bottle episode. The reader gets a blast from the past transport to northern Idaho and learns the inner workings of illegal weed. Even in our modern era of tap-to-pay and online banking, there is the thriving underbelly of the cash world and its deadly rules. Some of my favorite bits of writing Sourland were bringing those details to life, like the boobytraps around illicit grows, made by dangling fish hooks from trees; or the real-life pizza delivery drug ring that tried to deliver an eighth and a pizza in thirty minutes or less. I
“Bloody Motherfucking Asshole” by Martha Wainwright
You can’t top this track title, and the song is surprisingly yearning and earnest. It’s all smoke, there’s no more fire / only desire/ for you, whoever you are. Even when characters do bad, I want to believe they are good, or at least, that they want to be good. The novel has no shortage of people behaving badly, taking deadly chances, exacting pain—but there is also a code, always, even among outlaws.
“Emergency Blimp” by King Krule
I’ve been a King Krule head for a long time. I like seeing this puny looking redhead rip like a badass. I picture this track backing one of the final chapters of the novel, wherein our main characters give and receive their comeuppance.
“At Last” by Neko Case
Short, sweet, unstructured. This track feels like an epilogue. Neko Case is a master lyricist and nothing kills me more than that last line: I own every bell that tolls me. Without giving too much away, the final chapter of the Sourland takes a hard left to some uncharted territory. I remember writing it in one go, perched at the edge of my seat, my fingers trying to keep up with the words in my head.
“All the World is Green” by Tom Waits
Is any playlist complete without a little Tom Waits? A poet with the croon of a lifelong smoker. No one can better deliver the killer, Sourland-defining lines: The face forgives the mirror / the worm forgives the plow / the questions begs the answer / can you forgive me somehow / maybe when our story’s over / we’ll go where it’s always spring / the band is playing our song again / all the world is green. For a book about love, weed, and loss it doesn’t get more dead-on than this.
Ariel Delgado Dixon was born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey. She is the author of the novels Sourland and Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You. She lives in Western Massachusetts where she works in farming and teaches writing.