If you’re in the Seattle area and looking for something cool to do on the evening of August 19th (that would be the Friday after next), Fremont Abbey Arts Center is hosting Songs About Books, a project in which five local songwriters will be performing original songs inspired by books assigned to them by The Stranger‘s Paul Constant. My own Set This House in Order is one of the books, and the artist who’ll be making it sing is Johanna Kunin (Bright Archer).
The other artists who’ll be performing are Alex Guy (Led to Sea), singing songs inspired by Vladamir Nabakov’s Pale Fire; Ryan Barrett (The Pica Beats), singing about Michael Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island; Joshua Morrison, singing about Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai; and Levi Fuller, singing about Maggie Nelson’s Bluets.
Tickets, available online, are $12 in advance and $15 at the door. Everybody gets a free limited-edition Songs About Books CD at the door; I’ll be in the audience with a pen, so if you’d like me to forge Nabakov’s signature on the liner notes, just give a yell.
If you can’t attend the concert but still want to hear the music, you can listen to sample song tracks and buy copies of the CD on the Ball of Wax blog’s Bandcamp page.