Music and literature are two beloved art forms that are cut from the same cloth, with Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last year highlighting how the two frequently blend and meld. On May 4th, a new project called Waywords and Meansigns will be released that further illustrate this crossover. This project taps musicians, readers, and artists to help set James Joyce’s classic Finnegans Wake to music, and thus far, over a hundred contributors have signed onto the project, representing fifteen different countries from across the globe.
The avant-garde and experimental novel is renowned in the literary world as one of the most challenging books in the English cannon. As project director Derek Pyle explained, “James Joyce basically invented his own language when writing Finnegans Wake. . . . It’s the kind of thing that demands creative approaches — from jazz and punk musicians to sound artists and modern composers, each person hears and performs the text in a way that’s totally unique and endlessly exciting.”
Many of us will be familiar with one of the contributors on the project, Tim Carbone of Railroad Earth. Carbone has teamed up with Lou Rogai (Lewis & Clark) under the name Cedar Sparks and recorded an eight-minute recording for the Finnegans Wake project, constituting page 27, line 22, through page 29, line 36, of the book. In 2015, Carbone independently recorded an entire chapter of the book, creating a masterful hour-long solo piece. The 2015 contribution includes cameos by Railroad Earth’s Andy Goessling on zither and The Contribution’s Phil Ferlino on piano and showcases Carbone’s talents as a multi-instrumentalist, with him playing fiddle, guitar, drone, tan, and keyboards at different points of piece.
Before the Finnegans Wake project, historically, Carbone has shown an interest in translating literature to sound. He’s volunteered recording audiobooks for the blind, and in the 1990’s, he hosted a public radio show during which he’d read short science fiction stories over avant-garde and experimental classical music. As the expansive Waywords and Meansigns project comes to a close, his work with the project reminds us of the breadth and often eclectic nature of Carbone’s work outside of Railroad. One often overlooked side project is his role in Phil Void’s Dharma Bums before the formation of Railroad in 2001. The group eventually traveled to Dharmsala and performed for The Dalai Lama, who later wrote a letter in support of the group and their role as stewards and emissaries of Buddhism.
However, Carbone is not the only literary-minded musician beloved on the jam band scene. Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead has always been vocal about his love of Finnegans Wake, the James Joyce book now being musically interpreted by Carbone and dozens of other artists for the Waywords and Meansigns project. Lesh studied under experimental composer Luciano Berio, one of the first classically-trained musicians to set Finnegans Wake to music, which later inspired Lesh’s own 1959 big band composition, “Finnegan’s Awake.” Lesh has also told the Chicago Tribune that Finnegans Wake is his preferred bathroom reading, and when meeting David Nelson for the first time, the two bonded over the novel and can both recite lines from it from memory.
Clearly, we’re not going to doubt the literary tastes of Carbone and Lesh, and we trust that Waywords and Meansigns is going to be cool when it’s released on May 4th. All audio from the project will be available to listen to for free on the project’s website here, and you can see the full list of artists involved here. Plus, the project will continue to release new recordings in the future on an ongoing basis, so interested individuals are encouraged to get involved and play a role in making the text more accessible to 21st century audiences. You can listen to Tim Carbone’s Cedar Sparks and solo pieces below, along with a bonus track of David Nelson and Phil Lesh meeting and speaking about Finnegans Wake.