Paul Burch discusses his novel Meridian Rising based on the life of Jimmie Rodgers

Paul Burch recently sat down to discuss his new novel Meridian Rising with Peter Guralnick. 

Nashville singer/songwriter Paul Burch recently wrote a historical novel, Meridian Rising, based on his research into the life of legendary country music wellspring Jimmie Rodgers, who inspired Robert Johnson, Mississippi Sheiks, Hank Williams, Howlin' Wolf, Ernest Tubb, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Bob Dylan. 

Although Rodgers died of tuberculosis at the age of 35 on May 26, 1933, he remains to this day, the only artist ever voted into the country, blues, songwriters and rock 'n' roll halls of fame. The crafty Burch skillfully weaves together known fact and plausible fiction – blurring the line between myth and reality – to convincingly bring the reader into Rodgers' dangerous world of the travelling musician during the depression era. If you're not careful, you just might get lost in it.      

“What if all the stories about Jimmie Rodgers were true and someone could make you believe them? The result—from days at Coney Island to Rodgers asking Delta blues king Charley Patton to preach his funeral–is ‘Meridian Rising,’ a book of wonders.” — Greil Marcus, “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music”

If I was expecting anything from this mad, mad book, it was a straightforward rendering of Jimmie Rodgers' short, familiar life—not an action-packed noir, complete with gangsters and gun battles, a traveling nurse​ with a satchel of narcotics, the thoughtful voices of sadly forgotten bluesmen, beautiful automobiles, an indictment of the recording industry, lost, grieving children, and a meditation on family. All in 247 pages. The result is a crazy-in-the-best way, long-overdue corrective: it saves Jimmie Rodgers from his own legend. --Tony Early, author of Jim the Boy

We'll never know what it was really like inside Jimmie Rodgers's rambling mind, but now that I've read Paul Burch's take on it in Meridian Rising,, I can't hobo my way back to reality. See ya 'round the watertank. – Robert Gordon, author of Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

Jimmie Rodgers comes a-yodelin' out of Paul Burch's novel as if he were with us today. This is a tour de force of musical imagination. - Roy Blount Jr, author of Save Room for Pie

Paul Burch has made up the truth of Jimmie Rodgers's life better than any mere "facts" could ever convey—even though you'd have to be in possession of a million biographical facts to pull off this kind of vernacular Huck Finn sleight-of-hand prose magic. I suspect the sleight-of-hand has something to do with the fact that Burch is a musician himself. He played his tune in the key of rollicky, mixed in with all the sadness. From start to end, I didn't hear a false note on the page. From start to end, this felt like such an authentic American story, in sore need of a new telling -- Paul Hendrickson, National Book Award finalist and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 

Grab a copy of Paul Burch's novel Meridian Rising from University Of Georgia Press right here. Listen to a music companion to the book via Spotify right here. Check out Paul Burch's chat with Peter Guralnick followed by a couple of tunes from Paul Burch's 2016 song-cycle Meridian Rising (Plowboy Records).