Jackblake8

October 22, 2020

Jack Blake: A True Rock and Roll Tale (Part 8)

A few days after the extraordinary revelation in the Coos Bay storage unit, we were hanging out in the campground around a fire and Jack was picking out the chords of an Amy Winehouse song (an artist he loved!). Jack stopped strumming and told me he was pulling out in the morning for the Redwoods. I sort of wanted to accompany him for more material, but he didn’t ask and I knew it was probably time to part company. We talked some more rock and roll and literature and then turned in early.

I got up well before Jack and whipped up a pancake breakfast to fuel us for the road. We ate heartily and then packed up our rigs. Jack was set to pull out first and when he sauntered up to me.

“Thanks for the company. I hope your writing goes well.”

“Thank you Jack. I hope so, too. How will find you if something hits?”

“You’ll know where to find me.”

“I’ll know where to find you.”

We shook hands. Mr. Figgs came up and we shook hands.

A minute later Jack’s rig was lumbering out of the park, and I was standing outside mine, when an ancient megaphone-shaped loudspeaker mounted to the top of the RV crackled like the one in Mash and I heard Jack’s blistering recording of the Stones’ “It’s Only Rock and Roll But I Like It,” at a decibel level that must have been heard for a square mile.

Rock and Roll indeed.

Roll away the stone. Check the palms. Rock does live and its resurrection is Jack Blake. Right now he is in a 27 foot rusting RV, cruising the Pacific Northwest Coast’s back roads with an insane mutt, making music with a little help from his friends, and about ready to change Rock and Roll forever.

I have told the story. The message is delivered. I never really had a choice if I cared about Rock and Roll and I do now. This story is the gospel, the good news. John the Baptist read the prophecies in the Old Testament. He knew what would happen to Jesus if he baptized him by the river that day in the desert.

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Jack Blake. He is yours.

The Salomes are dancing for me now. I hope my head doesn’t end up on a platter.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.