SOUNDTRACK: BUCK MEEK-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #185 (March 25, 2021).
Buck Meek is the guitarist for Big Thief. I loved the first Big Thief album, but have found the newer ones to be a little too soft for my liking.
Initially I would have thought that Buck Meek would be a harder guitarist. But I don’t really know that much about his contributions to the band, so it should probably come as no surprise that he writes folky songs. Although even Bob Boilen seems a bit surprised.
The back of a van on a sunny day holding an acoustic guitar is a far cry from the usual setting where I’d see Buck Meek. More likely, I’d be in a dark club; Buck’s intense electric guitar and backing vocals are a part of what makes up my favorite rock band these days, Big Thief. But here, home is Buck’s Toyota Land Cruiser in Topanga Canyon, Calif.
Buck plays a pretty acoustic guitar and his voice is soft and gentle. He reminds me a lot of Nick Drake. He plays three songs from his 2021 album, Two Saviors.
“Pareidolia” is, as Buck Meek explains, “this human instinct to put symbol to stimulus.” He says, “I’ve been spending this time of solitude in the canyon here spending a lot of time observing the clouds and things” — in other words, finding shapes and objects in clouds and objects where none intended to exist and perhaps turning them into stories or songs or just letting your mind wander.
He follows that with the title track “Two Saviors” and “Halo Light,” two more songs that continue the soft and gentle style.
The Texas native has a tender voice with a bit of a yodel and a resplendent way with words. After three songs from Two Saviors, Buck treats us to a new song written in quarantine titled “The Undae Dunes,” once again drawing pictures in the sky, this time of rockets and perhaps an astronaut and a love, all from the back of a Cruiser.
He says that “The Undae Dunes,” is dedicated to the woman he loves who may be an astronaut. She’s applying to the space program. That’s pretty fascinating in and of itself.
I enjoyed this chill Tiny Desk/Van set.
[READ: April 10, 2021] Pobby and Dingan
I had never heard of Ben Rice or this story until one of his other stories was in a New Yorker issue from 2001. I enjoyed that story and when I looked him up, I saw that he had written this story. And nothing else!
Which is weird because this story
was joint winner of the 2001 Somerset Maugham Award and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It has been made into the 2006 film Opal Dream, a 2010 play for children by Catherine Wheels Theatre Company and a 2012 play The Mysterious Vanishment Of Pobby & Dingan for Bristol theatre company Travelling Light.
Perhaps he decided to leave on a high note.
The book is a novella (about 90 easy-to-read pages) set in the opal mining community of Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. That’s over 400 miles from the nearest big city (Brisbane). So while I don’t know if it’s in “the bush,” it’s certainly not suburban.
Lightning Ridge is apparently the opal capital of Australia. Much like during the American gold rush, prospectors flocked to Lighting Ridge to try to get rich. This story is about one such family. The dad, Rex, is the prospector, the mom has followed him here from England. She clearly misses her old life (they refer to her as Pom and her mother as Granny Pom).
The narrator is Ashmol Williamson, a ten or so year old boy. But the story is about his sister Kellyanne.
He thinks that his sister is a fruit loop. Because she is old enough to be going to school but she refuses to admit that her imaginary friends Pobby and Dingan are imaginary. She talks to them constantly. It drives Ashmol mental. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 