All we can hope for is that you’ll read these stories with the same curiosity as Donald Trump looking over Obama’s newly-released birth certificate. Question them if you like, but we can tell you right now: we got ‘em all from reputable sources.

Hasta pronto, amigos.

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Privacy fences look wrong to me: cheap, half-assed, sitting around waiting for the rot. They cordon off my yard. As I toss the ball for the dog, I begin to wonder what is going on over there and over there and over there. Sam Harris is back, but he is not wondering about the unseen. Steve Earle is ready to fictionalize Hank Williams, Sr. Did you know that David Foster Wallace wrote a book about us all? Willy Vlautin wins the Ken Kesey Award. Let’s hope Lean on Pete doesn’t have any advertisements in it – a Bush cohort is introducing commercials to an e-book near you.  Also, please be careful about calling your book a memoir. Maybe privacy fences are a good thing after all.

Today we have a conversation with a different sort of artist. Ramsay Midwood is a Texas-based musician whose style and lyric-making ability will excite and confuse you in the way that good poetry can. His music is bright with surprise, sultry beat, and innovative comparative operators. One can liken his sound and style to a potpourri of incense and smoky vapors complicated by the thick heat of a swamp and spiced with healthy dashes of salt, sandpaper, and beer foam. A strong sense of plain-stated, Southern Gothic surrealism helps buoy the themes of loss and redemption infused throughout his work. You’ve not heard another musician like him. Two albums are out now: Shootout at the OK Chinese Restaurant and Popular Delusions & the Madness of Cows. A third album is due soon. The best intro to Ramsay Midwood is one he wrote himself though: “I was always an admirer of Woody Guthrie’s seemingly heroic undertakings. I vowed to fight his same righteous fight. I immediately broke this vow by chasing an actress to Hollywood and many songs later I chased a stripper from Wisconsin to LA, realizing that I was a simply a make-believe cowboy unconsciously herding women of questionable virtue into a corral in my head, where I could engage in long periods of self-loathing. This was when I decided to start my own space program. The initial fund-raising has been difficult, but I’m certain once I get my driver’s license things will pick up.”

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We had our fun. And now you can have yours. The winners of the Brian Allen Carr SHORT BUS book giveaway are:

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