I Am Here to Represent a Piece of Wood

by D. A. Meeks

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
A beautiful phonograph record of song music recorded inside of a cave in Kentucky.

Jackets hand-printed by Patrick Masterson, featuring tipped-on photograph of a riddle.

Includes unlimited streaming of I Am Here to Represent a Piece of Wood via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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	1.	Kentucky Locust 02:32
	2.	Blackcurrant Blood Brother Thief 02:18
	3.	A Temple 02:55
	4.	Natural Child 03:06
	5.	Brazen Retriever 01:44
	6.	Brother Thomas 03:10
	7.	A Miracle Alone 03:18
	8.	The Last Parrot in Carolina 03:26
	9.	New World Red Wood 01:36
	10.	High King 03:00
	11.	Black Rock and Crucible 01:26
	12.	O Nests 03:02
	13.	Where Wheat Comes From 02:28
	14.	Armstrong Aldrin and Collins 03:17

about

When I was a younger man, I came upon a massively dense book bound in leather. It smelled of must, and silverfish had dined upon the pages closest to the worn covers. Front and back. I know it was silverfish (Zygentoma sp.) because a few had died and were entombed within. The book was a formulary from two centuries ago. At heart, a formulary is a compendium of concoctions that are intended to make you better. Address what ails you. Heal you. I’m listening to D. A. Meeks’s I Am Here to Represent a Piece of Wood for the first time just now, and I am reminded of that formulary which now dwells somewhere in my basement getting mustier.

D. A. reminds us that words matter. Specific words. Old words. Precise words. Words that slowly make their way to the end of the stalactite we call our backstory. They slowly build, then solidify and become a lengthening of us, an extension of old meanings mixed with the atmosphere of new context.

blood    honey                 cast out sandcastle
half-moon       vixen       forgiven
      stone eggshell work
         locust       land foraging
            goose-month
               currant

                  drip

I know something that may or may not come across to the listener—that is, this music was recorded in a cave. The stalactite analogy works for both the writing and the recording. Damp underground space captured magnetically on tape.

This work is meditative. Narratives weave together to provide a warp for the weft of your own storytelling. A precise matrix open to imprecise interpretation. I like lyrics that leave some of the heavy lifting to me.

This music seems crafted with a plumb bob—a weighted line that, when hung from the rafter, establishes a perfectly vertical data set. Gravity driven. It points to the center of the earth. I admit to the bias of thinking of D. A. as first a drummer and only then as a player of any other object. That this album is guitar music doesn’t shift that for me. It is steady, but not steady like a clock or one of the watches that he might tune up in his other profession as a horologist. It's steady like a train on a pair of hot rails. Steady like the migration of red efts (Notophthalmus viridescens). I think of this music in biological terms for that is exactly what it is. The start of a migration. Territorial thumping. Instruction to the tribe. So, I’m sticking with it.

I’m done.

—Crow Hollister

credits

released September 23, 2023

Electrically recorded by Nick Roeder under Irish Hill in Louisville, Kentucky, with continuous support from the generous spirit of Tusi, our Tin Pan Ally.

Mastered by Greg Dawson.

Title received by Susanna Fournier.

Cover photograph by Lucia Fields Meeks.

Typeset and printed by Patrick Masterson.

Voices of snakes summoned by Lacey Guthrie.

With enduring love and gratitude to the beautiful bromeliads of the Ohio River Valley

~

I Am Here to Represent a Piece of Wood

Largely for a Bell, impossible without the same.

~

2023 Deceitful Ear Recordings, a division of Quality Co.

“Dangerous Goods in Limited Quantities”

Catalog Nos. DEAR003 / QTY21

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D. A. Meeks Louisville, Kentucky

Spells songs and word visions.

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