In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Kevin Powers’ novel Children of the Wild is a profound exploration of friendship and love.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“The author, himself a Virginian and a combat veteran, skillfully weaves threads of love, friendship, and senseless death into a compelling and often emotional tale where the price of love is paid with sorrow. A deeply affecting novel.”
In his own words, here is Kevin Powers’ Book Notes music playlist for his novel Children of the Wild:
If I’m honest, I probably started writing around the same time I accepted that I couldn’t sing and would never be more than a noodler on the guitar. What I couldn’t accept was that I’d never get to chase that strange feeling the perfect key change or lyric could produce, so when I found a copy of The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas in a used bookstore as a thirteen-year-old, I told myself, Well, this’ll have to do. The other benefit of moving toward the written word is that I don’t have to worry about stage fright: I’m able to strive for those same moments of intense connection with another human being without having to be there when they happen.
My new book, Children of the Wild, is set in the first part of the twentieth century, a period I have no special expertise or attachment to musically, so except for the two songs that bookend this playlist and appear in the book, the songs in between reflect a thematic alignment even if they are anachronistic, which is to say they are mostly about love or loss or both, and when I hear them I think, If I can just get the reader to feel that, I’ll be happy. If you’re interested in checking out the book and listening to these songs, I hope I was able to get somewhere in that neighborhood.
David’s Lamentation – William Billings (Performed by Paul Hillier & His Majestie’s Clerkes)
This is an example of early American choral music that felt right for the book, performed in it by Samantha Hatton and her church choir at the novel’s outset. She’s one point of something like a love triangle, and as she sings this song, Roy Young, another character in this triangle, is overwhelmed by the intensity of all those disparate voices coming together in the sacred harp tradition, with Sam’s at the center, in the little country church in the Virginia valley where they live. It’s a feeling I’ve often had listening to the song. Its evocation of mourning is as direct as anything I’ve ever heard, and the song in the novel prefigures a feeling each of my characters will have to wrestle with before their stories end.
Hammer Down – Magnolia Electric Company (Jason Molina)
This is just Jason Molina’s voice and an acoustic guitar. The song itself feels timeless, and the imperfect qualities of Molina’s voice never fail to evoke a deep sadness in me, especially now that he’s gone. The lyrics speak to that relentless and inevitable rush toward whatever fate has in store for us, and the strange sensation that accompanies us when we realize that’s the nature of the journey we’re all on.
Bamboo – Robert Ellis
Robert Ellis is one of my favorite singers, and this might be my favorite of his many wonderful songs. When I wrote the scenes where my characters Roy Young and Ennis Duke fight in France during the First World War, I probably listened to this song a hundred times. The lyrics powerfully capture everything we lose when our childhood finally passes without ever being merely nostalgic. And there’s a moment toward the end where the song moves from its dominant mournful register, then suddenly changes, opening up and finishing with an almost miraculous brightness. I’m not knowledgeable enough to comment on how it’s accomplished on a technical level, but that transition from darkness to light is one of the most intensely rewarding listening experiences I’ve had in a long time.
Scarlet Town – Gillian Welch
While the boys are fighting in France, Samantha is home in my fictional Virginia valley, facing down the reality of the Spanish Flu. This song feels of the era, and in the dead center of the mood I was trying to create as she finds her strength in the face of impossible hardship. Gillian Welch’s voice over these lyrics felt like a guide as I tried to bring these trials to life.
The Curse – Josh Ritter
This is an all-timer for me, and Ritter is one of my favorite writers regardless of form. If my book has a thesis, it’s that real love always comes at a cost and is always worth it. The story this song tells is so extraordinary that I’d hate to spoil any element of it, but I’ll just say it’s as powerful as any love song I’ve ever heard.
anything – Adrianne Lenker
Here’s another song from which I tried to steal a mood. There’s such fragility in Lenker’s voice, and the lyrics are heartbreakingly direct in their longing. There’s a line about wanting to kiss her lover’s eyes that struck me so powerfully that, when trying to find the appropriate image for one of my characters leaning over the open coffin of another, I listened to this song as I wrote and rewrote the scene.
I Won’t Let You Down – Graham Lindsey
Give me a pedal steel and a pledge to be there when it counts, and I’ll listen. Lindsey knows it won’t be easy when he makes it, and knows it’s probably going to hurt like hell when it comes time to keep that promise, but he makes it anyway. This isn’t terribly complex thematically, but neither is my book. Sometimes all I want to do as a writer is remind myself that the simple things often matter the most, like knowing that your word has to be worth keeping if you want it to be worth anything at all.
Anyhow, I Love You – Guy Clark
Favorite songs have typically been transient in my life, but this one’s had some staying power. It opens with my favorite lyric of all time:
I wish I had a dime
For every bad time
But the bad times always seem to keep the change…
It goes on to acknowledge that the singer isn’t his lover’s “first man.” But he doesn’t care. It’s not a song about new love. It’s about love that’s survived everything that life could cram into that “anyhow.” And I’m a sucker for the moment when Waylon joins Guy and Emmylou Harris in the chorus. It felt appropriate for the complex relationship between my characters Roy, Ennis, and Samantha.
If I had the World to Give – Grateful Dead (Performed by Bonnie Prince Billy)
A great song about how you can give someone everything you have, even if everything you have is barely more than nothing. I love the original from the Dead’s disco flirtation phase of Shakedown Street, but when sung by Bonnie Prince Billy, accompanied only by his own piano, it becomes something completely new, and its simplicity fits the book perfectly.
Bright Morning Stars – Traditional, Arranged and Performed by Bonny Light Horseman
Ennis Duke, one of the three main characters in my book, has had to fend for himself most of his life, half feral among a herd of wild cattle on a mountain above the valley where Roy and Sam live. When he comes down, he becomes close to them both, but especially to Samantha. He sings this song in the book while out with Sam and her father, much to their surprise. It felt like a perfect way to evoke the lonely suffering he’s endured, and the possibility that something could be changing, that day just might be breaking in his soul after all.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Kevin Powers’ playlist for his novel A Shout in the Ruins
Kevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. Since publishing his first novel in 2012, his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the Prix littéraire du Monde prix étranger, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, among other recognitions. He was a James A. Michener Fellow in Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin from 2009-2012 and later held a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. A U.S. Army veteran of the war in Iraq, Kevin now lives on Florida’s First Coast with his family.