Books
More Praise for
Elisa Grajeda-Urmston
A siren's tantalizing whisper about road rage and romance; the lure and lilt of it, the need and necessity to create and devour the musical mystery, thrills and throbs on these pages...read it and eat it with a greasy spooning a neon diner at 3 AM in the afterglow of a boisterous gig somewhere in the middle of America. I dare you.
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--Pamela Des Barres, author of I'm With the Band and Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up
The subtitle for the crackling, lightning imminent Sound Check by Elisa Grajeda-Urmston (poet) and Tamara Adams (visual artist) is "A Musician's Journey in song and Verse." Yes this book is that...and so much more. Grajeda-Urmston's taut, tight lines gather to show us the tails of Sirenas, the gutted curves of guitars, the unapologetic deeply feeling warrior flesh of women everywhere--women all guts and glory, who just--might--finally and for all, put mudflap silhouettes where they belong...in a different universe, away from the enchanted exhausting midnight roads that have always been ours. This book, beyond its incredible versification, its erudite and inspired poetry, its deeply moving lyrics and its almost unique ability to fathom that "Sadness bigger than a song,"is indispensable for anyone living west of the Great Divide, for anyone who calls herself (despite it all) American. You've not known the backroads and the service entrances to the grimy, yet glamorous performance of stages from Tuba City to Laurel Canyon to Vegas and Doheny...until you've read this, a great poetic epic on the order of Kerouac's Mexico City Blues or Rulfo's Pedro Paramo. Part sleep-deprived hallucination, part dream, all Sirena, this book beckons, lets you ride shotgun, and even Drive...but when it leaves you, you'll never be the same. Read With Caution.
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--Julie Sophia Paegle, author of Twelve Clocks
In words and images as gritty and earthbound as they are iridescent and immutable, Elisa Grajeda-Urmston and Tamara Adams lay bare the reality at the heart of the making-art dream. This is what hitting the road and creating for a living tastes and smells and feels like. this is what doing that costs. This is why--if the magic is in you--you'll probably do it anyway.
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--Glen Hirshberg, author of Good Girls, Motherless Child, and Snowman's Children
Tire's a bit of a walk from lyrics to poetry and back. It's a rare gift to be able to infuse the beats, rhythm, and meter of music--the pure yet somehow alchemical math of it all--from the instrument to the written page, yet have it read like a song. Elisa Grajeda-Urmston has managed to do this with passion, focus, and a big heart. We need more of this, now more than ever.
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--Rick Elias, Nashville singer/songwriter
I find myself living in many sentences of these poems. They are reminders of where I've been, what I've felt and where I'm going, and what I'm going to feel. Nowadays, the rocking of the bus wheels and the roar of the engine has been replaced by a high-speed ceiling fan to help me sleep. The tour bus has been replaced with an RV, and my band has been exchanged for five dogs and a bird. I have no itinerary, just a lot of blue highways and a husband who's a rocking' guitarist. Elisa Grajeda-Urmston has written this book for the sisterhood of gypsies who rock
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--Jann Browne, American Country Singer
