Madison Smartt Bell was just another guy around 40 who couldn't quite give up that old dream of playing guitar and singing rock songs.
But Bell had some unusual options available to him. He also happens to be an accomplished novelist. As he was working on his latest novel, Anything Goes (Pantheon), he came up with the idea of writing actual songs, with the help of a songwriter friend, to include in the book.
"I've been an amateur musician since I was in my teens," Bell said by phone from his father's place in Tennessee. "I've never really done a long road swing like what's talked about in the book, but it was always a fantasy, so writing the book was a way to work that out a little."
The idea of writing real songs worked out well enough that Bell and writing partner Wyn Cooper tried to talk the publishers into including a CD along with the hardcover version of the novel. Instead, they settled for making the songs available at Bell's website.
That might have sounded to some like a mere vanity project, or just an attempt to drum up interest in the book -- the way Bell has been doing by bringing his guitar to book readings, strumming and crooning. As it turns out, the songs have enough merit that Bell and Cooper recently landed a record deal and expect to have a CD out by next April.
"I've been a fan of Madison's work for years," said Scott Beal, head of a new label called Gaff Music. "About two years ago he sent me a tape and said, 'Take a listen.' At the time I didn't have a record label. I liked it. But I kind of forgot about it, until I stumbled onto it again two months ago."
Beal says that when Bell goes into the studio this winter, he'll be playing lead guitar and singing and getting some quality help. "Don Dixon, who produced the first three R.E.M. albums, will be playing bass on this," he said.
Cooper, a decade-long friend of Bell's, nearly won a Grammy Award with his poem Fun.
"I wrote Fun in 1984 and published it in my first book, The Country of Here Below, which came out in 1987," he said. "It only sold about 500 copies, but one of them happened to be in Cliff's Book Store in Pasadena, which was around the corner from the studio where Bill Bottrell was producing Sheryl Crow's first album.
"None of the guys in the band liked her words, so they took a break and Bill went around the corner and started thumbing through poetry books and found mine and found Fun, and they liked it. They went back to the studio and asked Sheryl to try just singing this poem with the music they already had."
That worked out pretty well for everyone involved. Still, Cooper was surprised when he got a call from Bell when he was still working on Anything Goes.
The book features a young narrator, named Jesse, who is part of a touring bar band that does a lot of blues and rock covers in a lot of different dive bars, always called the "Black Cat."
Gradually, Jesse starts writing his own songs, almost against his will, and the songs -- collaborations between Bell and Cooper -- figure prominently in the story. Cooper was stunned when his old friend suggested they work together on this.
"Madison was maybe halfway through with the novel, and this was absolutely unheard of for Madison to show a manuscript to anyone," he said.
"We've been friends for a long, long time, and he usually won't even tell me what he's writing about. He sent me the manuscript and asked me to take a look and see if I could write some lyrics to work into the novel. I was thrilled to do it."
Cooper had no doubt that the music was more important to Bell than the novel.
The two have collaborated on a dozen songs now, and expect to have more ready before they go into the studio in December. Unlike Jesse, Bell's young narrator, they at least ought to have plenty of material.
"It wasn't the guitar's fault. I just couldn't think of anything I wanted to play," Jesse says in Anything Goes. "If it was going to be like that, why bother? I knew plenty of guys who played in bands that from the way they talked and acted had just as soon be swinging a nine-pound hammer. Easy enough for it to turn into any old kind of a job."
