American Dreams Records presents Movie House | Sala de Cine, a book of poems from Bill MacKay. MacKay has built a reputation in Chicago as a daring experimental guitarist, songwriter and razor-sharp accompanist, releasing a slew of records on Drag City and collaborating with Bill Callahan, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Ryley Walker, Nathan Bowles, Cooper Crain and Katinka Kleijn, among others. Movie House | Sala de Cine collects poems that move in and around a slippery frontier both interior and Western-tinged. MacKay wrote the poems in English and then translated them into Spanish, receiving editorial assistance in the editing process from acclaimed writer Luis Jorge Boone. Like his guitar work that darts between clear melodies and abstraction, these poems move between direct narrative and taut lyricism, unfolding into a tapestry of — as MacKay describes — "implied stories, invented histories, myths, true tales, and the resulting mixtures." Movie House | Sala de Cine both extends MacKay's practice into the written word and marks the first literary publication from Chicago label American Dreams Records.
"The manuscript of Movie House | Sala de Cine was written over a few years. It concerns human character, and psychological struggle in and outside our era, transplanted partially to a landscape evoking a frontier that is an interior one, as much as a western-tinged landscape.
Poems seeming to exist independently of each other often reveal involvement in subtle narratives and cross-fertilization with each other.
A good example of this linkage occurs between a poem that presents the vignette of an outlaw, and his retreat into the hills of his escape, encountering both psycho-social dislocation and metamorphosis, and the poem that treats the guest at a hotel, a figure who may be this same character.
In my view, the currents that underlay the work as a whole begin to come into focus via these implied stories, invented histories, myths, true tales, and the resulting mixtures.
It is my hope as the reader makes their way through the writing that glimmers of what I call micro legends will appear." - Bill MacKay
"This book is the shattered detritus of a legendary epic, a long, bloody rope leading into a wasteland of graceful monsters and unexpected heroes. It is beautiful and heart stopping, everything I've come to expect from the artist Bill MacKay." - Daniel Kraus
Fountain Fire – LP
$24 USD
"Movie House | Sala De Cine," A Book Of Poetry (2nd Edition)
$20 USD
Locust Land – Cassette Tape
$13 USD
Locust Land – LP
$26 USD
Keys –
Compact Disc
Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles
$13 USD
Fountain Fire – Cassette
Sold Out
Foreign Smokes –
Cassette Tape
BCMC
$12 USD
Foreign Smokes –
LP
BCMC
$26 USD
SpiderBeetleBee –
LP
Bill MacKay and Ryley Walker
Sold Out
Keys –
LP
Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles
$26 USD
SpiderBeetleBee –
Compact Disc
Bill MacKay and Ryley Walker
$13 USD
Fountain Fire – Compact Disc
$13 USD
STIR –
Compact Disc
Bill MacKay and Katinka Kleijn
$13 USD
Esker – LP
$24 USD
STIR –
LP
Bill MacKay and Katinka Kleijn
$25 USD
Esker – Compact Disc
$13 USD
Altamira –
Limited Edition Digipak CD
Darts & Arrows
$12 USD
Bill MacKay Chicago, Illinois
Bill MacKay is a musician and a musician’s friend — a genial guitarist/composer/improviser based in Chicago who has
energized the experimental folk, rock and avant scenes
around town with his polyglot approach to the guitar, combining the folk of Appalachia,
the blues and gospel with rock, jazz, western-country and an array of eastern modes.
... more
