The Boss has spent most of today in a visibly irritated state after discovering that Chip Martini apparently attended the Southern Writers Guild grand opening before the rest of us. This, I should clarify immediately, is not a real event anyone from Good Boy Records physically attended. The Southern Writers Guild exists in its own corner of the world, where Hank Cotton, Beau, Grace, assorted wandering musicians, ghost-tour tourists, and mysterious peacocks appear to operate under an entirely separate set of emotional laws from the United Kingdom.
Yesterday evening, shortly after his interview for the Southern Writers Guild with Mr Polk staggered to its conclusion through heat damage, collapsing technology and the general sensation that Britain itself was beginning to simmer gently under the afternoon sun, the Southern Writers Guild published a new piece titled Grand Opening. The Boss read it once in complete silence, then immediately read it again, and somewhere around the second appearance of bourbon, porch guitars, and smoke drifting through Savannah, the atmosphere of the thing appears to have entered his bloodstream permanently.
The problem was not merely that the story worked. Plenty of stories work. The problem was that the place itself felt real in the way certain pieces of writing occasionally do when they stop behaving like fiction and begin behaving more like memory. Not literally real, obviously. No sane person genuinely believes Savannah currently contains a Victorian literary headquarters populated by gospel singers, retired professors, mariachi Elvis musicians and mysterious peacocks occupying velvet furniture with the quiet authority of Tennessee Williams characters. The Boss, however, has never allowed sanity to interfere too heavily with creative work when he’s on a roll.
By midnight, he had become completely fixated on one specific detail. Chip Martini had somehow made it into the Southern Writers Guild story before he had. Not the Boss. Not me. Not even Good Boy Records itself. Chip. The chimpanzee lounge singer in the leopard-print robe had apparently wandered into the warmest, strangest gathering in Georgia while the rest of us remained trapped in West London listening to aircraft thunder over Hounslow in thirty-five degree heat.
“How the hell did Chip get invited to this?” the Boss asked eventually, with what I can only describe as genuine emotional injury.
I considered several possible answers before deciding compassion was probably the wiser route.
The situation deteriorated quietly after that. The Boss kept returning to the piece throughout the evening, not analysing it so much as hovering around it like a man standing outside a house where excellent music is drifting through the windows. Certain details clearly lodged themselves deep inside the machinery. Hank Cotton tending the grill like a sacred duty. Beau somewhere in the background with a guitar, and Grace moving calmly through the whole affair with the confidence of somebody who already knows everybody belongs there before they arrive.
Mostly, though, it was the feeling of the thing that got him. That strange warmth certain stories generate when they capture the sensation of people drifting naturally in and out of songs, conversations and memories, and nobody particularly wants the night to end.
At around one in the morning, the Boss wandered back into the studio muttering fragments about porch lights, Georgia air and smoke drifting through the square. By two, phrases had started appearing in notebooks. By three, the whole thing had very clearly crossed the line from literary admiration into what we at Good Boy Records technically classify as a developing incident.
And so, for reasons nobody entirely understands, one Southern Writers Guild story somehow drifted across the Atlantic, entered an overheated London studio through the open windows, and produced a Southern Writers Guild record. Honestly, at this point, the entire situation is becoming increasingly difficult to explain to insurers.
Be sure to click the download button if you would like to save a copy. You’re welcome.
Southern Writers Guild
Below are the lyrics, included for the crowd who come for the story as much as the sound. This is a one-time indulgence; we normally keep our lyric sheets under heavier lock and key than most government records. But since this week is about the Southern Writers Guild, the doors are open.
The Ugly Ducklin’ say y’all come on in
Hank Cotton got smoke in the sky
Live oaks swayin’ as the cars roll by
Grace on the porch with the lights turned low
Beau in the back let the old songs go
Pecan smoke driftin’ over the square
Cold beer sweatin’ in the Georgia air
Screen door swing and the glasses sing
Whole porch hummin’ like it got six strings
Southern Writers Guild
Porch light burnin’ bright
Southern Writers Guild
Come on in and stay awhile
Southern Writers Guild
Come on in and stay all night
Some folks came just to see the house
Some stayed quiet when the music rolled out
Grace movin’ easy from room to room
Like she’d known that place her whole life through
Beau hit a chord and the whole thing swayed
Hank yelled “Lord, y’all grab a plate!”
Smoke rolled slow through the twilight air
Like the whole damn town had wandered there
Southern Writers Guild
Porch light burnin’ bright
Southern Writers Guild
Come on in and stay awhile
Southern Writers Guild
Come on in and stay all night
Nobody ask where you come from
Nobody care what road you been on
House full of stories and Georgia pine
One more bottle of homemade wine
Grace in the doorway laughin’ low
Beau on the guitar playin’ nice and slow
Hank out back by the firelight glow
Smoke rollin’ soft through the live oak rows
Southern Writers Guild
Porch light burnin’ bright
Southern Writers Guild
Come on in and stay awhile
Southern Writers Guild
Come on in and stay all night
Southern Writers Guild
Whole porch hummin’ like it got six strings
Southern Writers Guild
Porch light burnin’ bright
Codsworth C. Gleason Esq.
Assistant to the Boss,
Head of Everything Else,
Unofficially banned from asking further questions about the peacocks.
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Whoo hoo! What an awesome theme song! Thanks so much Colin!
I feel your pain brother, somehow I missed out on the Grand Opening too🙃
Polk, Gillman and West were spotted in the back alley sharing some unidentifiable object.