Last of the Better Days Ahead

Last of the Better Days Ahead is a collection of short stories that are all tangentially related to the songs on the album of the same name. The songs contain these stories, sometimes hidden and other times merely implied. The record was put out by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings in 2021. from Introduction by Abraham Smith: Charlie's a national treasure: a philosopher-poet with crossroads-esque guitar skills and he brings the same dew-stew compote to his fictions. The sentences are the guitar: haunting and jabbing and unfurling like ferns fueled by dinosaur knee-dust and purpling thunderstorms: rumbling greased, repealing the first patent for the ox harness, toppling jostle wild, domino river spider side-to-side, endless as southern MN soy field summer sunsets with a quick backwards hitching yard train twitch toward the moonwalking Mississippi Charley Patton sang, then darting on through longjumps elliptical like hummingbirds playing fast with hectoring honey hives.