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Michael Perry & the Long Beds

Perry began writing songs in the early 1990s during long nights when he was struggling to survive on prose (he is the author of numerous books including: Population 485, Truck, The Scavengers,and the New York Times bestseller Visiting Tom). With no arts background (he has a nursing degree) he found himself drawn especially to the work of poets and singer/songwriters. (In interviews Perry tends to list his greatest literary influences as Dylan Thomas and Steve Earle and not necessarily in that order.) I remember writing late one night and hearing a Kevin Welch song with the line, I whiskeyd up my coffee cup sittin here tryin not to call you up, says Perry, and I was floored by the rhythm and the story in that single line He began writing songs as a way to break up all-night typing sessions, and eventually he had enough of them that a musician friend invited him to play a coffee shop. Im not saying I was nervous, but I ripped out a sixty-minute set list in thirty-two minutes flat, says Perry. By 2004, he had begun recruiting Long Beds. In 2006, he released his first album, Headwinded.