In 1982, playwright-actor Sam Shepard published Motel Chronicles, a dusty pastiche of road memoirs, poems, and black and white photography. Scenes from the book were used in the desolate film "Paris, Texas" as well as Shepard's play "Superstitions". 

And now the book has an unofficial soundtrack. 

Nashville-based Jeff Finlin has just released "Highway Diaries," a deeply spiritual road trip on Little Dog Records, the Los Angeles-based label started by Dwight Yoakam producer-guitarist Pete Anderson. 

Finlin writes with the minimalist grit of Shepard and Raymond Carver.  He sings in a gnarl reminiscent of Graham Parker.   A songwriter with a literary bent, Finlin appropriately is appearing at several Borders bookstores during his Chicago debut weekend before performing solo Sunday night at the Beat Kitchen. Songwriter extraordinaire Robbie Fulks opens. 

"I like the simplicity of someone like Carver, how he created beauty out of something like smoking a cigarette," Finlin said from Nashville.   "He's totally unpretentious.   And Motel Chronicles is great.   I love little blurby things, little moments, which is kind of what songs are.   Every time you try to write a novel in a song, it comes off stupid. It's hard to keep it simple.   Those guys write literary songs." 

Finlin's compositions, such as the anthemic "Napoleon, Josephine and Me" and "West of Rome" (flavored with pleading wah-wah guitar), blend loopy rhythms with economical wordplay. 

Taking a break from rehearsals with Yoakam, Anderson said, "When I heard Jeff's tape, it had the kind of lyrical story development within the songs I couldn't turn my back on.   His ability to tell the story of `everyman' is powerful.   I simply fell in love with his songs.   His songwriting is akin to the work of Irish poets." 

Finlin, who like Yoakam grew up in Columbus, Ohio, began performing in Los Angeles after realizing the confines of Music City. "Nashville is so limited, it's basically a country music town," said Finlin, who has lived in Nashville for 10 years. "No one here can do anything with what I do (roots folk-rock).   A friend of mine was working with Dusty Wakeman (Anderson's engineer).   Eventually, Wakeman came out to a show and one thing led to another."

Finlin has received the obligatory Bob Dylan-Bruce Springsteen comparisons, but he subscribes more to Dylan's early finger-picking rhythm schemes than to his lyrical imagery. Finlin began his career as a drummer.   He played with the Thieves, a Nashville-based outfit that released one album for Capitol Records in the late 1980s. 

"I'm a simple, Charlie Watts-style drummer", Finlin said. "It's helped in the knowledge of where the beat sits, to pick up a guitar and put the shoe on the other foot. Sometimes it helps me with song arrangements, but I write songs mainly because I have something to say." 

Anderson took a hands-off approach in producing the new record, according to Finlin. He already liked what he heard of Finlin's self-produced "Highway Diaries." But Finlin said he hopes that Anderson, who produces Yoakam and has worked with Michelle Shocked and the Meat Puppets, might produce his next project. 

Anderson said he doesn't have a big agenda for Little Dog, which he started three years ago. He just wants to release high-quality albums that appeal to his peer group, which he thinks is being ignored. 

"Little Dog was born out of my frustration for making records I felt were much better than the promotion and marketing they received", Anderson said.   "L.A. does not service my age group because they figure we're just a bunch of old people and we don't want to buy records.   I wanted to have more of a hand in what happened to these records after they left my hands as a producer." 

In Motel Chronicles, Shepard recalled a guitar player who called the radio "friendly", someone who understood the medium more than the music.   The guitarist loved the ability of radio "to transmit the illusion of people at a great distance", Shepard wrote. "He believed he'd been banned from the Radio Land and was doomed to prowl the airwaves forever, seeking some magic channel that would reinstate him to his long-lost heritage."    Tune into "Highway Diaries" and you will hear an elusive magic. 

David Hoekstra
Chicago Sun-Times
February 2 1996