Lay Down Your Weary Tune

October 5, 2015
Belcher’s debut novel is an adeptly written, richly textured novel about folk music. Thirty-year-old Jack Wyeth, a part-time folk singer and freelance music journalist, needs work. So he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of Eli Page, a legendary folksinger and contemporary of Bob Dylan. Working as a stagehand, Jack first met Eli in 2001, when he gave a performance and advised the young Jack to “make sure what you’re doin’ means somethin.” Jack drives to Eli’s farm in Galesville, a rustic village on the New York–Vermont border, where the curmudgeonly recluse Eli lives with his dog, Tig. Jack soon learns that his music idol won’t be an easy or accommodating subject. In the meantime, he strikes up a romance with local artist Jenny Lee Flynn. While staying at Eli’s farm, Jack does some sleuthing and uncovers mysterious figures from Eli’s checkered past, including someone known only as H.M., with whom he had a doomed love affair. Some brushes with the law make matters all the messier. Belcher brings the folk music scene to life, but best of all is his ability to craft a cast of memorable characters.

November 1, 2015
Musicians can be a handful. Even folk musicians. That's not news--but it's news you can use, courtesy of Belcher's modest debut. "What the hell happened to Eli Page?" You might as well have a T-shirt made with the question emblazoned on both sides, for Eli Page, the dark heart of the story, is a bibulous, cantankerous, but beguiling troubadour whose soap-operatic life includes spells of Dylan-esque disappearance and Morrison-ian mayhem. Enter "John Wyeth of nowhere special," as Eli dubs the young man who stage-manages him through what could have been a disastrous performance. It's not exactly My Favorite Year, but if you've seen that wonderful film in a double feature with Inside Llewyn Davis, you'll have some idea of the setup. Belcher enriches what in turn could have been an overly broad yarn with a more specific narrowing of the stage as Jack moves to Eli's small town to help him work through his archives and memory banks in a "ghostwriting gig," with some mentoring in the fine art of how to be a folkie on the side. Jack's no schmo, but he's a little hapless, and as he lands square into Eli's messes he makes some of his own; as Eli grumbles, midway through the book, "You move to town, live with me, and start up with [the town cop's] fiancee. That's three strikes." One wishes Belcher had a slightly more seasoned view of small-town life of the sort that Richard Russo and the late Kent Haruf so ably drew from; there's not much that sets his leafy town apart from any other. And while a musician as nice and even-keeled as, say, Donovan probably wouldn't fuel a good old conflict-driven story, and there's plenty of conflict here, Eli rather too neatly checks all the boxes of what a dissolute, world-weary musician--and is there any other kind?--is supposed to be like. A little more variation from expectation would have been welcome. Still, a well-intended and welcome first effort.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2015

In this appealing debut, the agent of Sixties folkie Eli Page contacts 30-year-old musician and freelance writer Jack Wyeth out of the blue and asks him to ghostwrite the memoirs of the legendary folk singer. Jack joins Page in the small upstate New York town of Galesville, where the enigmatic and now ailing singer has retreated. As Jack glimpses the person behind the myth, he discovers clues to the carefully guarded secret that has led Page to this odd location--a place where his radical reputation doesn't endear him to many of the locals--and seeks to solve the mystery before the singer's memory totally fades. Jack also falls for Jenny, a local artist with her own secrets and her own ties to Page, all the while confronting the failures and fears of his past. VERDICT Mingling elements from both literature and the blues, Belcher has crafted a memorable tale about how the masks and myths we create can become prisons that ultimately disconnect us from ourselves. Renewed interest in the Greenwich Village folk scene (following the film Inside Llewyn Davis) should help this novel to find an audience--hopefully one beyond just music aficionados.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2015
An aspiring music journalist, Jack Wyeth (nicknamed Bird as a child) accepts the challenge of serving as a live-in ghostwriter for eccentric folk musician Eli Page, one of Jack's idols and a notorious figure in the town of Galesville. He comes to realize that Eliwith his disappearing acts, deteriorating mind, and drunken indignationis not the most compliant subject. Sifting through artifacts of Eli's life history, Jack must discern fact from fiction while reluctantly reflecting on his own troubled times. He befriends Jenny Flynn, a local artist who paints an unintentionally controversial mural. The pair swap secrets to reveal similar backgrounds: growing up in broken families, calling off engagements, not forgiving themselves for personal tragedies. They become forever linked through knowing the real Eli Page. Belcher's first novel delves into the conflicts of truth versus myth, how the past influences the present, and how public identity differs from private identity. Like a pop-music album, this story, with relatable characters who have genuine backstories, will pluck countless heartstrings.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)