RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : ‘Austin Noir’ with Musician and Author Jesse Sublett

Musician and author Jesse Sublett, on right, with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer, in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, Friday, February 1, 2013. Photo by Charlie Martin / KOOP.
Rag Radio podcast:
‘Austin Noir‘ with musician and writer 
Jesse Sublett, author of ‘Grave Digger Blues‘

By Rag Radio | The Rag Blog | February 7, 2013

Austin-based musician and author Jesse Sublett was Thorne Dreyer’s guest Friday, February 1, 2013, on Rag Radio, a syndicated radio show produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. The show includes live musical performance by Sublett, and spoken-word performance by Sublett and host Dreyer.

Jesse Sublett is a historical figure in the Austin music scene; his influence dates to the late 1970s, when he founded the seminal punk band, The Skunks, and continues today. His published books include three crime novels set in the Austin music scene, a critically-acclaimed memoir, and the new eBook, Grave Digger Blues, a post-apocalyptic detective story.

Listen to Thorne Dreyer’s interview with Jesse Sublett, here:

Jesse Sublett’s Austin-noir novels, Rock Critic Murders, Tough Baby, and Boiled In Concrete — which were written in the late ’80s and early ’90s — featured bass-playing sleuth Martin Fender, a character based loosely on Jesse himself. His memoir, Never the Same Again, in which Sublett dealt with his personal bout with throat cancer and with his investigation into the murder of his girlfriend, was hailed by artists like James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, and Rick Linklater.

Jesse has been experimenting with combining music and pulp fiction since the mid-1980s, and his blog, Jesse Sublett’s Little Black Book, combines crime fiction, film, art, and liberal politics. Recently he has been active in social media and ePublishing, where he has channeled the old punk/DIY spirit into the new digital age.

His latest eBook, Grave Digger Blues — available on Kindle, iPad, and in a bare-bones version at Smashwords — “is a wild joy ride that Jesse’s longtime fans will recognize for its relentless lyrical drive, dark humor, bright splashes of violence and absurdity.” The iPad version includes more than an hour of audio, with an original blues soundtrack and audio chapters produced by Jesse and the Fort Worth jazz musician, Johnny Reno.

Jesse performs three songs live on the Rag Radio show, which also features a snippet of audio from the eBook and a live reading of a chapter from Grave Digger Blues, performed by Sublett and host Dreyer.

Also, go here to listen to an earlier Rag Radio interview with Jesse Sublett — featuring more about the Skunks and Jesse’s musical career — originally recorded on April 8, 2011, at the KOOP studios.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, February 8, 2013: Marjorie Heins, author of Priests of our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge.

The Rag Blog