In his essay “The Mechanical Muse,” T.R. Hummer writes, “[T]he poet is considered the musician of writers — which means that, however inexpressible the relation may be, the poet’s job is to reassemble what so often presents itself as a broken primal unity.” Music is an indelible through-line in Hummer’s poetry and prose, so it is no surprise that he ended up recording an actual album — under the project moniker “AmeriCamera” — with Billy Cioffi, a touring guitarist and musical director for rock legends like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Del Shannon. I spoke with Hummer on the phone about the nexus of poetry and music as well as his personal musical history and the process and impulse behind AmeriCamera. As he writes in “The Mechanical Muse”: “Music and language are as distinct, and as linked, as the lobes of the brain. Talk about it for a while, and shortly you will begin to sound mystical.”
Author: Mike Mattison
Mike Mattison is a native of Minneapolis and a graduate of Harvard University. As a touring blues singer and songwriter with the Derek Trucks Band and Tedeschi Trucks Band he has won two Grammy Awards for Best Blues Album, eight Blues Music Awards from the Blues Music Foundation, and four Canadian Maple Blues Awards. He also is a founding member of the duo Scrapomatic. Mattison has published essays of creative non-fiction, and he is the co-author, with Ernest Suarez, of Poetic Song Verse: Blues-based Popular Music and Poetry. He has recorded and shared the stage with B.B. King, Carlos Santana, the Allman Brothers Band, Solomon Burke and Herbie Hancock, and performed on five continents and in every state, except Alaska. He and Suarez currently are working on a book tentatively titled Ralph Ellison, Robert Penn Warren, and the American Century. He serves on the Council of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers.