The Thomas Pynchon Fake Book

In graduate school, I rounded off a class schedule with a one credit Topics in Literature course on Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, a novel interlarded with song lyrics that disrupt the narrative as often as they propel it forward. After finishing the book, I commented to a classmate, “Someone should set these songs to music.” By the end of the day, I had successfully talked myself into being that someone.

I was in a new city and without a band for the first time in six years, yet in a post-Postal Service world, it seemed newly possible to pull in anyone at all to collaborate on music remotely. Thus began the Thomas Pynchon Fake Book. That’s my mother in-law singing a duet with a friend from high school on “A Pig is A Jolly Companion.” That’s my wife playing violin on “Pavlovia,” a lovely, lonely power ballad about the romantic lives of lab mice. The first friend I ever made (he was three; I was four) raps on “So Contagious.” My old roommate joined me on “The Sanjack of Novi Pazar” and my sister joined him on “Superhighways of July.”

With a final roster of 39 human contributors, one cat, one dog, and a pig, we managed to record 28 songs in just over three months. I silk-screened some shirts in my kitchen, and we gave away most of a short run of CDs at a one-off show in Portland. Then, as quickly as it had occurred to me to start the project, it had run its course. There aren’t any more CDs to be had, but if you’re interested, feel free to download the songs on Bandcamp.