June 18, 2025 • 37 mins
What did you think of this episode?
The Ballad of Falling Rock is one of the best novels I've read this year, so I was fortunate to be able to interview its author, Jordan Dotson. Listen in as we talk about his inspiration for the novel (which began with a snow day and no electricity) and the family stories that helped form the historical context for the novel. From the real tuberculosis sanatorium in Roanoke to the churches of the fictional town called Trinity, we'll explore the musical story that begins with Saul Crabtree and extends through the haunted generations who follow.
Get your copy of the novel and learn more about Jordan at Home - Jordan Dotson
Ivy Attic CoJewelry from coal, river glass, and discarded books handcrafted in the central Appalachian Mountains
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Amy Clark (00:00):
This is Amy, and you're listening to the Talkin'
Appalachian Podcast.
Hello and welcome back toSeason 3 of the Talkin'
Appalachian Podcast.
This is turning out to be sucha Exciting season and I'm so
(00:23):
thrilled about the guests thatI'm bringing on the show and I
hope that you are too.
And I just want to say thankyou.
Thank you so much forlistening.
I also want to give a shout outto new subscribers over on
Patreon.
Charlotte, Amy, Kathy, Ross andSarah, I just want to say thank
(00:43):
you to all of you for signingup for a paid subscription.
And I'm excited about thecontent that you're going to
have access to.
So if you'd like more of theTalking Appalachian podcast,
bonus content, early access toepisodes.
This week's guest is JordanDotson.
Jordan is an author.
He wrote The Ballad of FallingRock.
(01:04):
It's a beautifully writtennovel.
He is originally from WiseCounty.
He lives up north now and isabout to relocate down south.
He came by during the Gatheringin the Gap Music Festival to
talk about his book, and I wasjust so excited to have him
here.
And it was just the perfecttime to do an author reading
because the music festival was agood backdrop for what this
(01:28):
book is about.
Jordan is an award-winningauthor, musician and literary
translator whose work has beenfeatured in numerous
publications and anthologiesthroughout the United States and
Asia.
Born in Wise County, he movedto China and that's Wise County,
Virginia.
He moved to China in 2005 tostudy classical poetry and folk
(01:51):
music.
Over 14 years in Asia, heworked as a journalist,
musician, writing teacher, andcollege admissions counselor,
and he eventually earned his MFAin fiction from City University
of Hong Kong.
His lone co-written screenplaywon the jury award in narrative
shorts and more than 30 filmfestivals worldwide, and though
(02:14):
now he resides in Boston, hestill still considers Southwest
Virginia home and like I said Hewrote this novel called The
Ballad of Falling Rock.
He's got a very cool storyabout how he was inspired to
write the book.
He and I share similarinterests when it comes to the
musical history and the historyof the Catawba Sanitarium and
(02:35):
Roanoke and the tuberculosisepidemic.
I'm really looking forward tosharing this episode with you.
So I hope you enjoy.
Go to the show notes to see howto order Jordan's book.
You can get it from anindependent bookseller.
You can order it straight fromhis website in So we're here
with Jordan Dotson, author ofThe Ballad of Falling Rock and
(02:55):
Big Stone Gap, the Gathering inthe Gap Music Festival, which
those of us who asked you tocome thought that would be the
perfect backdrop for yourlyrical novel, The Ballad of
Falling Rock.
Jordan Dotson (03:07):
Thank you so much, by the way.
Amy Clark (03:09):
We're sitting in a house that was built in the same
time period that your novelbegins in the 1930s.
And so we're just going to jumpright in because my first
question that I have for you is,what does it mean to be here in
Wise County at a music festivaltalking about this novel?
What does that mean for you?
Jordan Dotson (03:29):
Everything.
As I've said to you before, theultimate litmus test for me
whether I succeeded with thisbook or whether the book itself
succeeds, every opinion ofpeople here, specifically in
this part of Virginia.
The reactions I've had of thisbook from people back here tend
to be very emotional.
And people in small townselsewhere in the country are
(03:52):
somewhat similar, maybe toneddown a little bit.
Urban people don't quite getit.
They expect somethingdifferent.
Maybe they want people aroundhere to be something different.
But that's why I'm so happy Tobe here with you guys, it means
everything for me to see peopleenjoying this book, to say that
it's real, to say that they findauthenticity in it.
(04:12):
I spent close to a decade onthis book, and that's really all
that matters to me.
It's not the number of readers,but the feeling of those
readers that matter.
And people here in Wise County,specifically, are the ones I
care about.
Amy Clark (04:26):
Yeah.
So when you say they'reemotional about it, do you mean
that they have an emotionalconnection to it because it's
grounded?
in places and song and thingsthat are familiar to them?
Jordan Dotson (04:38):
Yeah, it's not so much a place that's not on a
fictional county.
If one were to say that it's afictional version of Wise
County, I wouldn't say they'rewrong.
Maybe that's not exactly what Ihad in my head, but the places
should be recognizable to peoplearound here, even if they're
not named.
They don't have the same names.
(05:00):
But more than that is the waythat the characters who live in
these places interact with eachother and the world, the way
they talk to one another.
I'll give you an example.
When we were editing the book,my publisher, the editor, had a
big problem with something I dothat the book does continuously.
People are referred to as aCollins or a Sturgill or a
(05:21):
Wilson.
And they kept, they wanted toedit that out.
And I said, no, you can't editthat out.
That's correct.
They say it should be theSturgill.
Collins or this Collins.
You don't understand.
If you're in southwestVirginia, eastern Kentucky, and
someone says, who is thatperson?
He's a Collins.
That means their whole family.
They're good people or maybenot good people.
(05:41):
But just saying a family namethat way, it seems to be a
linguistic feature.
Stuff like that is important.
I can't even explain how manyhundreds of hours I spent trying
to get this stuff right in anauthentic way.
For example, Suzanne from theHistorical Society reached out
and said how much she and Had alot of good things to say about
those little elements.
That's what I mean.
Like the authenticity of speechand language and the way that
(06:03):
people love, hey, interact withone another around here.
It's different.
Amy Clark (06:07):
Yeah.
It's
Jordan Dotson (06:08):
different.
And it's just a matter ofgetting that right.
Amy Clark (06:10):
That doesn't surprise me because I've talked to so
many writers who have similarexperiences with editors or with
directors when they'rerecording an audio book and they
don't like the way they'resaying a word or something like
that.
And it's just not understandingthe vernacular language.
Jordan Dotson (06:27):
And that's a tough, that's really a tough
artistic issue because you haveto understand that readers come
from everywhere and you needthem to understand.
It's not about me as a writer.
It's not even necessarily aboutthe characters in the book.
It's about the audience.
It's about the reader.
They have to understand.
And if you don't make themunderstand, you failed as a
(06:48):
writer, in my opinion.
And that's really tough.
How do you manage that languagein text?
It's music, poetry.
It's tough.
I hope we got it right.
Amy Clark (06:57):
Yeah, I think you did.
Absolutely.
Would you like it if somebodysaid this is a literary novel?
Jordan Dotson (07:02):
I would smile.
Amy Clark (07:04):
Because you pay attention to language.
And the language is, I knoweverybody keeps saying that.
It's so poetic.
And you studied classicalpoetry, right?
Jordan Dotson (07:14):
I did.
I studied poetry writing,creative writing in college.
And I had intended to be a poetwhen I was younger.
But it's like music.
You discover really quicklywhether or not you have it.
Amy Clark (07:23):
You can tell that in the way that you write prose
that gets in there.
And it's, for me as a reader,and it makes me think of Ron
Rash.
Do you read Ron Rash?
Yeah.
And he's a poet.
Jordan Dotson (07:35):
He is.
Amy Clark (07:37):
When I read his stuff, I want to be somewhere
where I am not going to beinterrupted.
There's nothing around methat's going to get my attention
because I want to savor thelanguage.
And that, to me, is a literarynovel.
Jordan Dotson (07:49):
Poetry has to be spoken out loud.
It's performative.
It is music.
Like song.
It is.
It absolutely is.
Staffo was a wedding singer.
We read these clips of theseold Greek poems from 2,500 years
ago.
Those were wedding songs.
She was a singer-songwriter.
Yeah.
The thing that did it for mewas when I was an undergraduate
at the University of Virginia,there was a poet by the name of
(08:11):
Charles Wright.
You may not know
Amy Clark (08:13):
him.
Yes, I know who
Jordan Dotson (08:15):
he is.
I feel like a lot of peoplearound here don't know him as
well as they should.
He was a poet laureate in theUnited States.
He's from Kingford.
I never had him in class.
I wasn't that lucky, but Iwould stop by his office hours.
One day, I stopped in and askedhim for an opinion on a poem.
He took a look at it and said,this isn't a poem.
He said, it's a country song.
(08:36):
He had already complimented mycowboy boots, which was so, I
was already, he was greasing meup a little bit.
But at first I was heartbroken.
But then he said, that's not aninsult.
He said, it's musical.
And he said, he gave me a pieceof advice.
He said, if you want to writepoetry, I suggest you spend the
next three years only writing inpoetic meter.
Only writing in pentameter,hectameter, stuff like that.
(08:58):
And I did.
I listened to him and listened.
It was at the end of thosethree years that I realized I'm
never going to be a poet.
It's hard work.
But it gave me a kind of earfor music and sound and language
that I've never lost.
And in some ways it's a cursebecause you can really get in
the weeds.
And when you're dealing with apoem musically, if you're going
(09:22):
to be reading it out loud, itmight be five minutes.
But a novel, to try to sustainthat through a novel is really
difficult.
And also you risk Like I wassaying earlier, you risk putting
the reader off.
If they have to be as immersedin the language as you said,
that's hard work.
That's a cognitive load.
Ron Rash is a great example ofsomeone who balances it
(09:43):
perfectly.
It has that depth, that almostsensuousness to the language
when he wants it, when he wantsyou to be.
But then he can segue out alittle bit, make it a bit easier
on you at times and keep thestory, the narrative moving
along with the major.
Amy Clark (09:59):
So this is a novel about...
a musical family, lots offather-son relationships.
But music is a central theme,and it starts with Sawcraftry,
and it moves its way down thegenerations.
What does music mean to you,and why did that become the
(10:19):
central focus of this story?
Jordan Dotson (10:21):
That's hard to explain.
I didn't play music as a kid.
I always wanted to.
But for some reason or another,I never fully took to it until
I was a teenager.
But I did grow up singing inchurch.
And my dad was always singingin church two or three days a
week.
And that itself is its ownlanguage that you grow up in.
It shapes the way we interactwith the world in ways that we
(10:44):
don't understand.
One of the big things for mewhen I started approaching this
novel, I was working on allthese old hymns that appear in
the book.
And I never once in my lifehave been fully aware of how I
knew the lyrics to every singleone of these hymns front to
back.
And I didn't quite know howbecause I spent most of my
(11:07):
childhood going to a Pentecostalchurch that sang more modern
stuff.
But then my cousins and myuncle's churches were more
traditional Southern Baptist,Free World Baptist, stuff like
that.
And I spent a lot of time therehaving my family preacher.
It's like you don't understandhow you have all this music
within you and then Threedecades later, it can just come
out crystal clear.
(11:27):
And that, I think, was maybewhere the impulse came from to
unpack that, figure out wherethat music comes from and how it
becomes a part of your life,how certain songs and memories
can be milestones for certaintimes in your life, emotions
that you felt.
That's really the big theme ofit all.
And then, of course, later inlife, I came to music and
(11:48):
performed for a long time.
And when I gave up poetry, Iattempted to be a songwriter for
a while.
And that was an education initself.
For example, you come from amusical family.
Your son and your brother, Ithink you
Amy Clark (12:00):
said they're incredible
Jordan Dotson (12:00):
musicians.
They're incredible musicians,lifelong musicians.
I've never been a lifelongmusician.
And yet music is, it's likeblood.
It's like our emotionalcurrency.
Why is that?
It's not just me, it's foreverybody.
Amy Clark (12:15):
I think my opinion is in Appalachia especially.
We had music before we hadanything else.
When people came here from theold country, they didn't have
anything but they had theirinstrument and they had their
song.
And those songs could be passeddown like heirlooms.
And before people could read,they could sing and they could
teach through singing and theycould teach.
So I really think it is in ourblood.
(12:36):
I think that's when so much ofwhat...
Country music, for example, somuch of what that is today
started here, started inBristol.
And you talk about, that wasgoing to be one of my questions
too, is about your research.
You talk about Ralph Peer, whofirst recorded the Carter
family.
(12:56):
And I actually pulled out of myVictrola some Carter family
records.
These are all the Carter familyrecords that I had in a talking
machine that I inherited fromAnd
Jordan Dotson (13:10):
those
Amy Clark (13:10):
are, yes, these are the shellac 75 in the original
sleeves.
I just thought you'd think thatwas
Jordan Dotson (13:16):
neat,
Amy Clark (13:17):
but yeah, I thought you might get a kick out of
seeing some of that.
Jordan Dotson (13:21):
Wildwood flower right there on top.
Amy Clark (13:22):
Wildwood flower.
That's the
Jordan Dotson (13:24):
song that did it all.
Yeah.
That's the song that if you, Ithink you want to trace.
Country music is the mostpopular musical genre in America
today.
You want to trace it all backto this song, Mother Mabel
Carter, the way she playedguitar, essentially inventing a
new style of guitar.
That is the language.
Everyone who's recording thiskind of pop country stuff today,
they don't even understand thatit's born out of Morocco.
Amy Clark (13:47):
I remember my granddad playing the Victor
talking machine.
He would wind it up and he'dput the record on it and he'd On
snow days, that's what we didfor fun, especially if we didn't
have electricity.
He'd say, let's play.
You don't realize when you'reyounger, you just don't know
what that means.
You don't realize it untilyou're older.
It's like traveling with mydad.
He was in a gospel quartet andI've been in so many churches.
(14:10):
And I grew up in a Free WorldBaptist church.
And so I know all the hymns,all the old hymns.
And again, didn't know whatthat would mean until so much
later and how much that affectedme.
until I started writing aboutAppalachia.
It's
Jordan Dotson (14:26):
funny you mention a snow day.
It reminds me to talk aboutthat later.
I don't know if I ever sentthat to you, but that's how this
whole book got started.
Amy Clark (14:33):
Let's talk about how the book got started.
It got started on a snow day.
Jordan Dotson (14:37):
I lived in China for a very long time.
After college, I moved to Asiaand had all kinds of
swashbuckling adventures.
I came home every year forChristmas, maybe two or three
times a year sometimes.
I've always found it impossibleto stay away from why it's
called that.
And actually, my very firstyear, I didn't come home for
Christmas.
And it was the most depressingday of my life.
Waking up in an industrial parkin southern China on Christmas
(14:58):
morning.
It was a learning experience.
I had to be a better, strongerperson.
But after that, I said, I'mgoing home every year.
And I'm going to spend twoweeks with my parents.
And you may remember, it was, Ithink, 2011.
There was a snowstorm that shutoff power to pretty much the
whole county.
And that happened right at thebeginning of my trip home.
And we, of course, we had nopower in my parents' home.
(15:18):
a little bit smaller, similarto this one, old, 1920 at some
point, my great-grandfather'shome.
And we sat there around a gasstove for seven days with no
power, snow piling up outsidethe windows, and we're all
shivering.
And what do you do when you'rewith your family in the middle
of a dark Appalachian blizzard?
Amy Clark (15:38):
Tell stories.
Jordan Dotson (15:39):
Tell stories.
And the first day wasmiserable.
The second was okay.
We're dealing with it.
The third day, stories startedcoming out of my parents.
that we'd never heard before.
They, it was some of the mostfun I've ever had in my life.
Stuff that you don't even knowabout your parents.
Things that clarify things fromyouth.
(15:59):
Wild stories, crazy stories.
Some of the stories that appearin this book are versions of
these things that I learned.
And it was incredible.
And probably one of the mostimportant weeks of my life.
One year later, I came homeagain for Christmas.
And I was back in my childhoodhouse.
And that very first night, Iwoke up in the middle of the
night and basically had thisstory fully formed in my head.
(16:23):
I dreamed it.
Woke up and rolled over andstarted writing, putting the
notes down.
And that's how the whole, ittook me 10 years to write that
book.
But it was, it's like God givesyou the story.
And then through a verystaticky speaker, you've got to
figure it out.
I had no idea at that pointthat my grandfather, my mom's,
father who died when she was ateenager he'd been a singer he'd
(16:46):
done a really good singer hesang on the radio country gospel
stuff and so there are somethings about your family that
don't get talked about whenyou're young things that are and
it took that silence of threedays in a snowstorm to let some
of those things work out thegrandson in this book he's
trying to figure out who hisgranddad was and maybe i'm
certain that's what i was doingtrying to figure out who
Amy Clark (17:07):
Is that who you identify with the most?
Or do you identify with any ofthe characters that you created?
I know that's a dangerousquestion because people are
like, how much of this is realand how much of this is fiction?
Jordan Dotson (17:19):
There are certainly elements of me in all
of them.
And elements of everyone inyour life.
Mind, reality, for that stuff.
I think perhaps I could saythat any emotions that the
characters feel are emotionsthat I've felt.
It's...
You're trying to make thoseclear and right and honest and
(17:41):
true of the task, and you haveto pull that from inside.
Yeah.
I don't think I was ever ascharismatic as Saul was supposed
to be, maybe more sensitivelike Eli, the grandson.
I did that quieter, moreintroverted.
I went out with more like that.
Fairly
Amy Clark (18:00):
early in the novel, speaking of search and history
and story, Saul...
And I don't want to give toomuch away, but this is early in
the book.
Saul has tuberculosis, whichthey call consumption.
And he is sent to the CatawbaSanitarium in Roanoke, which was
a real place.
Jordan Dotson (18:20):
Real place.
Amy Clark (18:20):
So talk to me about why you chose to include that
element of the story.
Jordan Dotson (18:27):
Because that's how my grandparents met.
My grandfather, my father'sparents met.
My granddad is Dotson fromSouthwestern Eastern, Kentucky.
They've been here for hundredsof years.
He got tuberculosis at work inWise and was sent off to Apollo
Sanatorium.
My grandmother was a daughterof Italian immigrants in
(18:47):
Philadelphia.
She grew up in Philadelphia.
And she ran away from home at15.
She had an aunt in NewportNews.
And she ran off, lived with herfor a while, got a job in a
department store.
Got tuberculosis and was sent,because she's now a virgin, she
was sent to Catawba.
And one day she was looking outthe porch there and she saw a
(19:09):
young man with red hair and shefell in love at first sight.
My grandfather actually got asettlement because it was at
work that they did a lawsuit orsomething like that.
And he used the money, thesmall amount of money he got to
buy a ring for my grandmother.
She came home with him, neverwent back to Philadelphia and
(19:29):
lived here.
to the day she died in 2020, 80years.
She's buried three mile thatway.
It's my family's life.
And it was something that Iguess I had to work out in
fiction to truly understand it.
But I think the really, themost important thing was that
idea of tuberculosis.
My grandfather had his, thiswas before penicillin.
(19:53):
Penicillin was like
Amy Clark (19:55):
in the 40s.
Jordan Dotson (19:55):
And this was in the early, mid 40s that they
were there.
And they had all kinds of crazytreatments.
One of them was my grandfatherhad a lung removed.
So they cut out two ribs, tookthem out, and cut out one of his
whole lungs.
And in my research, Idiscovered, I can't remember who
it was at the time, but there'sa great, a classic country
singer.
I can't remember who it was.
(20:16):
Same thing happened.
Had a lung removed duringtuberculosis treatment and had
to relearn how to sing.
Amy Clark (20:25):
Really?
Jordan Dotson (20:26):
Yeah.
I wish I'd looked it up.
I can't remember who it wasnow.
I've got so much of this stuffin my head.
And that was the big thing.
The characters in this novelare singers who've lost their
voices and have to recover them.
And that's just a powerfulidea.
Yeah.
So the kind of visceral aspectof falling in love.
through the disease and yetlosing your ability to express
(20:46):
love in art and having to learnhow to do that again.
That was the dynamic that spoketo me.
Amy Clark (20:52):
He meets his love there and they come back
together and the blood is sodramatic.
When I was reading some of thescenes, and again I don't want
to give away the plot for peoplethat haven't read it yet, but I
just thought, oh my, I couldsee that.
I could frame that out in mymind.
But you're writing in a way,the blood becomes poetic,
coughing up blood.
And it's as horrible as it is,it still becomes part of the
(21:16):
scene in a way that, I don'tknow.
I would have to work out how Iwant to say that, but it's very
visual.
Jordan Dotson (21:25):
Yeah.
I'll take that.
That's a great metaphor forsinging right there, coughing up
blood.
Amy Clark (21:29):
Yeah.
Yeah.
All
Jordan Dotson (21:30):
right.
Yeah.
The kind that matters, atleast.
The kind of singing that makespeople cry.
Amy Clark (21:35):
I found letters from, I had a relative at Catawba.
I
Jordan Dotson (21:39):
remember.
Amy Clark (21:39):
And I wanted to show you the letters that I found in
a sewing machine.
Jordan Dotson (21:43):
You read these?
Amy Clark (21:44):
I read them and I've transcribed them.
Yeah.
But she was just so incrediblylonely.
She'd never been away fromhome.
And that was in the 50s.
That was at the end of TB.
But it's so interesting to me.
Jordan Dotson (21:56):
I remember listening to this when you were
out there doing it.
I remember...
I was being surprised becausethat wasn't the Vic youth.
That was after penicillinduring tuberculosis by then, but
apparently it hadn't made itdown to Catawba yet.
Yeah.
Amy Clark (22:09):
Did you go any...
Catawba doesn't exist anymore.
I think there are pieces ofthings left from the original
space, but did you just rely onfamily stories or did you have
to go anywhere to find out moreabout Catawba?
Jordan Dotson (22:22):
I was living in Asia at
Amy Clark (22:24):
the time.
Oh, so you couldn't.
This
Jordan Dotson (22:25):
was one of the great difficulties.
I did have, I spent a lot oftime talking to my grandmother
about it.
And there wasn't a ton ofinformation about it back.
I remember when I first starteddoing all this research, I
started, I did see Googlesearches again recently.
And there's so much aboutCatawba on the internet now.
There's photos, there's allkinds of stuff.
It wasn't there 10 years ago.
Yeah.
And it was hard.
(22:46):
You could find like lettersjust like this.
There was a few scraps andthings and you piece it together
as best you can.
And use those interviews,really, to win the authenticity,
to find the things that reallymatter.
There are details that mygrandmother would tell me that
were like, I think she mighthave had more fun there than
most people there.
But there's a lot of littledetails like that.
And you just need one detail.
(23:07):
You need the right detail atjust the right place.
There was one moment in thestory where one of the
characters talks about somethingcalled pig pot.
Amy Clark (23:15):
I remember that.
I wrote that word down becauseI meant to look more into it.
A pig pot.
Jordan Dotson (23:21):
I don't even think it's a real word.
I think they just had this hotwater bottle at the feet of the
patients that my grandmothersaid was shaped like a pig.
So they called it
Amy Clark (23:28):
a
Jordan Dotson (23:29):
pig pot with their own slang word for it.
Amy Clark (23:31):
Oh,
Jordan Dotson (23:32):
neat.
Stuff like that.
Amy Clark (23:33):
Yeah.
So I'm going to pause here andask if there is a section of
your novel that you'd like toread on the podcast.
Jordan Dotson (23:41):
It doesn't give away too much of the plot.
Only two paragraphs.
Amy Clark (23:44):
Okay.
Okay.
Jordan Dotson (23:45):
Should I explain what's happening here?
Amy Clark (23:47):
Sir.
Jordan Dotson (23:48):
Okay.
This scene takes place afterSaul has come home.
He's relearned how to sing.
He's on the verge of musicalfame and success.
His voice is resonating withpeople now, but difficulties
arise within his family.
In the month after his father'spassing, Saul sang like a man
(24:15):
possessed.
He accepted every invitation.
In Kingsport, Keokie,everywhere about, Honky Tonks in
Johnson City, the Pentecostalhollows of Kentucky, and
wherever he traveled, he sang asthough he'd abandoned his very
soul.
His voice baptized the crowdsthat came, and there was no
healing for his tremblinglyrics.
(24:35):
For the smoky notes of anexcised lung that fell in
insoluble tears Even to Trinity,they came in droves.
Dozens of fresh younghousewives appeared, their angry
husbands, dozens of womenclaiming to be widows, and
occasionally their husbands too.
The Trinity Inn filled to thebrim when there were Ratliffs
(24:58):
and Thackers, Van Dykes andMedes, teenagers crumpling
flowers in their hands, chantingCatholics from railway towns,
hot little gospeling childrenwho carried their hats and spoke
like wizened bards.
No matter who, wall-eyedsoldiers conscripted in Bristol,
coal miners blessed onBenzedrine, Saul sang to them
(25:22):
all, individually, as thoughfulfilling a mission from God.
He sang in a way that spookedchildren.
He sang to make brick masonscry.
He sang in a way that made itseem like the world no longer
existed, that there was onlylife in the heart of the song.
(25:42):
And nothing on the other side.
Amy Clark (25:47):
How do you come up with all of the different ways
of describing things?
Just the sensory detail?
It's just image after image.
And I'm thinking, does he havea list where it evolves from?
Or does it come to you?
Or do you have to go take awalk and be inspired?
Or all of the different...
Jordan Dotson (26:08):
It makes me wonder if there's too much.
Amy Clark (26:10):
No.
Literary novels do that.
They take time to show you andto help you see, smell, taste,
touch things.
Not too much, but enough that Ithink, wow, there's something
that's inspiring that amount ofdetail.
Jordan Dotson (26:29):
I think I've always had a kind of synesthesia
about that with language.
Maybe a wire crossed in mybrain somewhere.
But yeah, you know, a lot of itis walking around and just
paying attention.
A writer's real job is to see,to see the things that we don't
pay attention to because we seethem so often.
And every writer steals.
Every writer minds theirinspirations.
(26:51):
And one thing, to go back topoetry, that was something that
was deeply important for me.
I have notebooks, likesketchbooks, full of poets, and
even novelists that I've read inthe past where when something
they've written jumps out at me,I don't know why.
(27:12):
Usually it's because I knowthey're seeing the world in a
way that I've never seen theworld.
I've got notebooks full whereI've handwritten those things
down, stacks up and grown backin years and years and years.
And eventually you absorb thosethings.
So it's an autodidacticeducation in the way that other
people use language and the waythat they see.
That has happened to me as areader.
(27:32):
Throughout my life, I rememberthe biggest one was about a
Colombian author, Gabriel GarciaMarquez.
It was 100 Years of Solitude.
It's one of the greatest novelsof the 20th century and set in
South America.
But to me, it was Appalachia.
It was people and familiesaround here.
But I remember reading it andjust realizing there's a depth
(27:52):
to what that writer sees in theworld.
And just like music, you don'tpractice it.
You got to get in there.
And the sign out, that's whatyou're going to do as a writer.
Show things to people that theymight not.
Or even as a poet, I thinktheir job is to articulate the
things that are hidden behindour vision.
Something like
Amy Clark (28:09):
that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
It does.
So one of the things I loveabout the book, because I love
reading it, is there's a...
Would you call it magicalrealism, what you're doing in
there with the ghosts and thehaunting?
It seems to be that the familyis a little bit cursed.
And there's some darknessaround this family.
(28:32):
And there's that element ofotherworldliness happening.
And I think in Appalachia, Isuspected that your background
coming from here may haveinspired that because...
I've got a bottle tree righthere.
Bottle tree.
The superstition is it capturesspirits, but I think it's
(28:52):
pretty.
But I love that it's got thatelement of superstition around
it.
So talk to me about thatthread, what she was through the
breath.
Jordan Dotson (29:00):
A hundred percent.
You know, if other people wereto call it magical realism, I'm
like, yeah, sure, fine.
That's great.
That's what academics do.
Amy Clark (29:06):
Yeah, that's a technical term.
Jordan Dotson (29:08):
Right.
They look at art and put labelson it so they can understand it
and categorize it.
For me, just the way peopletalk.
Just the way people talk here.
Like we live in a place whereWe're growing up in a place
where it's deeply religious.
People are deeply religious,but everyone also believes in
ghosts.
These things are not mutuallyexclusive.
It coexists within the cultureand the language that we use.
(29:31):
So when the moon turned blue orsomething in this book, to me,
I don't need to explain Thereader doesn't need to worry
about being explained why that'shappened, as they might in a
realist book or fantasy orsci-fi or something.
You want to know those things.
They have their own rules.
Here, we don't need thoserules.
You just need to understandthat this is people talking to
each other, and this is the waywe talk.
(29:52):
Really, it's the ghosts.
Appalachia has great ghosts.
Amy Clark (29:55):
Oh, yeah.
We do.
The best.
We do.
Jordan Dotson (29:58):
And everybody has their own personal ghost
stories.
Like
Amy Clark (30:01):
every
Jordan Dotson (30:01):
teenager around here knows all the haunted
orphanages and stuff like that.
And it's just part of life.
It's part of the fabric of youryouth.
And the house I grew up in ishaunted, deeply haunted.
Still today, my nieces andnephews don't sleep upstairs.
Wow.
Amy Clark (30:15):
What happens?
What do they hear?
Footsteps or voices knocking?
Jordan Dotson (30:19):
Doors opening and closing and stuff like that.
And you don't need to explainthat.
It's really boring, not fun totry to explain that.
It's better to grow up in afamily that doesn't go stories.
Yeah.
So in fiction, we can do that.
You can let ghost stories bereal.
And they are real for us.
Amy Clark (30:35):
So that was part of creating the place.
That was part of play streetand putting that in the fabric
of the background andeverything.
the Native American story.
Let's talk about that becauseFalling Rock is the name of
someone in this story that iscarefully woven throughout the
book and maybe echoes what'shappening in Saul's family too.
(30:56):
I had never heard of FallingRock.
Now I've heard of Chief Benjiand all of that.
Talk to me about how that madeits way into the work.
Jordan Dotson (31:05):
That's tricky business actually because I'm
not Cherokee.
And you can do a ton ofresearch.
But that's not really what Iwas going for in this.
What I was going for, thatFalling Rock story is one.
If you get on the internet andlook it up, you'll find that it
appears all around the region inlittle different ways.
It's a story that a lot ofpeople's parents tell them
growing up.
But over the course of thenovel, the story gets told and
(31:28):
retold in different ways bydifferent people and different
times.
And that is what wasinteresting to me, how stories
can travel through time.
how they reflect the peopletelling them as much as the
story itself.
Now, like a lot of peoplearound here, you grow up being
told that you have Cherokeeancestry.
And a lot of people do.
And very few people understandit.
(31:49):
Very few people understand thehistory.
But it doesn't change the factthat it is part of the story of
your life growing up.
And so once again, it was areflection of just the way that
families talk to one anotheraround here.
The stories they tell to makesense of who they are and where
they come came from.
And this is a remarkablynon-homogenous place.
(32:13):
People came from all over.
And it makes sense that peopleare grasping for history and
trying to figure out where theycame from, trying to find honor
in their history because theymight not know.
I've noticed there were so manyimmigrants.
It's complex.
To me, it's not so much aboutThe very specific Cherokee
history, as much as the waypeople in this region talk about
(32:34):
it and integrate that intotheir own histories.
Amy Clark (32:37):
It's interesting that now people want that to be part
of their heritage, but not solong ago.
No.
That was not something thatpeople would have.
Jordan Dotson (32:48):
I remember when people started talking about
Melungeons a lot in the 90s.
It just came out of nowhere.
And there was a lot of back andforth about it.
A lot of people didn't want totalk about that.
Amy Clark (32:57):
Oh, no.
I remember going and talking toBrent Kennedy.
Jordan Dotson (33:00):
And
Amy Clark (33:01):
he said he got hate mail, dead threat.
Jordan Dotson (33:03):
Yeah, I believe it.
Amy Clark (33:04):
Because he was writing about that.
Jordan Dotson (33:06):
And nowadays, it's such a stereo cop in
Appalachian fiction.
It's like, you can't have anAppalachian novel if you don't
have Malungans.
Amy Clark (33:11):
You don't have Malungans in it.
Handling preachers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jordan Dotson (33:14):
Probably have in this novel.
Amy Clark (33:15):
Yeah.
So what's your next literaryadventure going to be?
Where's writing taking younext?
Jordan Dotson (33:22):
That's a big question.
Probably in the next threeyears planned out, actually.
I've already got a completecollection of short stories
that's located in China, where Ilived for many years, studying
and teaching.
I'm nearing the end of thecompletion of a new novel.
This one is set in SouthAmerica, on a small island.
(33:43):
In many ways, it resembles thetype of isolated community that
is all in rock.
Then, I have some ideas toreturn to Red Pine County, the
location of this novel I've had.
It usually takes me about 10years to work an idea out.
I would like to do a collectionof short stories, ghost
(34:03):
stories, I think.
And then I've got an idea for abig novel about a family of
brothers who have inherited apiece of land.
I don't want to say too muchabout it.
That will take me a long timeto work out.
Maybe 20 years before thatone's done.
But that's the one that'sreally...
Working on my subconsciousright now.
Amy Clark (34:23):
That's great that you have all of that planned out.
Wonderful.
It might not work out.
Jordan Dotson (34:28):
But
Amy Clark (34:29):
you have the ideas.
That's half the battle rightthere is having the ideas.
Wonderful.
What made you want to go toChina?
I'm just curious.
Jordan Dotson (34:37):
When I was studying poetry as an
undergraduate my senior year, Itook a seminar called Poetics of
Ecstasy.
And for one assignment, I hadto read all these different
translations from around theworld.
And I read, the book was editedby a poet named Sam Hamill.
And the poem, but I discovereda poem in it that translates to
(35:00):
Bamboo Mat by a Tong Dynastypoet named Yuan Zhen.
20 characters, like a veryshort little poem.
And I read it, and I remembersitting in Alderman Library and
thinking, being knocked out ofmy seat because it was a
thousand year old poem and itwas a country song it was a
(35:21):
story about a guy an old manwhose wife has died and he's
staring at the place where sheslept and he's unwilling to put
away the mattress that she slepton and there's this silence in
it that to me was it was purehank william i used to always
say that The great Chinese poetsof the past, Li Baidu, they
could walk into a bar, sit downnext to Hank Williams, and
(35:43):
stumble out three hours later,best friends.
I loved it.
And to make a long story short,I changed my direction.
I thought I would go to gradschool and study this stuff.
But in order to do that, Iwould have to learn a Chinese
language.
So I took a year off to go havea little adventure in China and
(36:03):
start learning the language.
Quickly, I realized two things.
One, I would never learn thelanguage well enough to be able
to mine old poetry that way.
But I also, it was, that was2006, 2005, 2006.
And Southern China was like theepicenter of the universe.
There was, I remember sitting,being in a hotel, looking out
the window in the city andseeing, counting 82 cranes on
(36:27):
the horizon, putting buildingsup.
And it was like, man, somethingis going on here.
And I accidentally fell into acareer teaching and writing over
there.
And I stayed.
It was fun.
And it just became life after awhile.
Amy Clark (36:41):
Wow.
What a rich experience.
Jordan Dotson (36:43):
It was something.
Amy Clark (36:43):
Yeah.
Jordan Dotson (36:44):
It was something.
Amy Clark (36:45):
Jordan Dotson, thank you for being on the podcast and
for writing this beautifulbook.
And again, for listeners, it'scalled The Ballad of Falling
Rock.
Go first to your independentlittle bookstore and see if they
can get it for you.
Jordan Dotson (37:00):
Thank you so much.
Amy Clark (37:00):
Thank you for being on the podcast, and I look
forward to seeing what else youwrite.
Jordan Dotson (37:05):
Thank you so much, Annie.
It's my pleasure and my honorto be here.
Amy Clark (37:12):
Thank you.
This is Amy, and you're listening to the Talkin'
Appalachian Podcast.
Hello and welcome back toSeason 3 of the Talkin'
Appalachian Podcast.
This is turning out to be sucha Exciting season and I'm so
(00:23):
thrilled about the guests thatI'm bringing on the show and I
hope that you are too.
And I just want to say thankyou.
Thank you so much forlistening.
I also want to give a shout outto new subscribers over on
Patreon.
Charlotte, Amy, Kathy, Ross andSarah, I just want to say thank
(00:43):
you to all of you for signingup for a paid subscription.
And I'm excited about thecontent that you're going to
have access to.
So if you'd like more of theTalking Appalachian podcast,
bonus content, early access toepisodes.
This week's guest is JordanDotson.
Jordan is an author.
He wrote The Ballad of FallingRock.
(01:04):
It's a beautifully writtennovel.
He is originally from WiseCounty.
He lives up north now and isabout to relocate down south.
He came by during the Gatheringin the Gap Music Festival to
talk about his book, and I wasjust so excited to have him
here.
And it was just the perfecttime to do an author reading
because the music festival was agood backdrop for what this
(01:28):
book is about.
Jordan is an award-winningauthor, musician and literary
translator whose work has beenfeatured in numerous
publications and anthologiesthroughout the United States and
Asia.
Born in Wise County, he movedto China and that's Wise County,
Virginia.
He moved to China in 2005 tostudy classical poetry and folk
(01:51):
music.
Over 14 years in Asia, heworked as a journalist,
musician, writing teacher, andcollege admissions counselor,
and he eventually earned his MFAin fiction from City University
of Hong Kong.
His lone co-written screenplaywon the jury award in narrative
shorts and more than 30 filmfestivals worldwide, and though
(02:14):
now he resides in Boston, hestill still considers Southwest
Virginia home and like I said Hewrote this novel called The
Ballad of Falling Rock.
He's got a very cool storyabout how he was inspired to
write the book.
He and I share similarinterests when it comes to the
musical history and the historyof the Catawba Sanitarium and
(02:35):
Roanoke and the tuberculosisepidemic.
I'm really looking forward tosharing this episode with you.
So I hope you enjoy.
Go to the show notes to see howto order Jordan's book.
You can get it from anindependent bookseller.
You can order it straight fromhis website in So we're here
with Jordan Dotson, author ofThe Ballad of Falling Rock and
(02:55):
Big Stone Gap, the Gathering inthe Gap Music Festival, which
those of us who asked you tocome thought that would be the
perfect backdrop for yourlyrical novel, The Ballad of
Falling Rock.
Jordan Dotson (03:07):
Thank you so much, by the way.
Amy Clark (03:09):
We're sitting in a house that was built in the same
time period that your novelbegins in the 1930s.
And so we're just going to jumpright in because my first
question that I have for you is,what does it mean to be here in
Wise County at a music festivaltalking about this novel?
What does that mean for you?
Jordan Dotson (03:29):
Everything.
As I've said to you before, theultimate litmus test for me
whether I succeeded with thisbook or whether the book itself
succeeds, every opinion ofpeople here, specifically in
this part of Virginia.
The reactions I've had of thisbook from people back here tend
to be very emotional.
And people in small townselsewhere in the country are
(03:52):
somewhat similar, maybe toneddown a little bit.
Urban people don't quite getit.
They expect somethingdifferent.
Maybe they want people aroundhere to be something different.
But that's why I'm so happy Tobe here with you guys, it means
everything for me to see peopleenjoying this book, to say that
it's real, to say that they findauthenticity in it.
(04:12):
I spent close to a decade onthis book, and that's really all
that matters to me.
It's not the number of readers,but the feeling of those
readers that matter.
And people here in Wise County,specifically, are the ones I
care about.
Amy Clark (04:26):
Yeah.
So when you say they'reemotional about it, do you mean
that they have an emotionalconnection to it because it's
grounded?
in places and song and thingsthat are familiar to them?
Jordan Dotson (04:38):
Yeah, it's not so much a place that's not on a
fictional county.
If one were to say that it's afictional version of Wise
County, I wouldn't say they'rewrong.
Maybe that's not exactly what Ihad in my head, but the places
should be recognizable to peoplearound here, even if they're
not named.
They don't have the same names.
(05:00):
But more than that is the waythat the characters who live in
these places interact with eachother and the world, the way
they talk to one another.
I'll give you an example.
When we were editing the book,my publisher, the editor, had a
big problem with something I dothat the book does continuously.
People are referred to as aCollins or a Sturgill or a
(05:21):
Wilson.
And they kept, they wanted toedit that out.
And I said, no, you can't editthat out.
That's correct.
They say it should be theSturgill.
Collins or this Collins.
You don't understand.
If you're in southwestVirginia, eastern Kentucky, and
someone says, who is thatperson?
He's a Collins.
That means their whole family.
They're good people or maybenot good people.
(05:41):
But just saying a family namethat way, it seems to be a
linguistic feature.
Stuff like that is important.
I can't even explain how manyhundreds of hours I spent trying
to get this stuff right in anauthentic way.
For example, Suzanne from theHistorical Society reached out
and said how much she and Had alot of good things to say about
those little elements.
That's what I mean.
Like the authenticity of speechand language and the way that
(06:03):
people love, hey, interact withone another around here.
It's different.
Amy Clark (06:07):
Yeah.
It's
Jordan Dotson (06:08):
different.
And it's just a matter ofgetting that right.
Amy Clark (06:10):
That doesn't surprise me because I've talked to so
many writers who have similarexperiences with editors or with
directors when they'rerecording an audio book and they
don't like the way they'resaying a word or something like
that.
And it's just not understandingthe vernacular language.
Jordan Dotson (06:27):
And that's a tough, that's really a tough
artistic issue because you haveto understand that readers come
from everywhere and you needthem to understand.
It's not about me as a writer.
It's not even necessarily aboutthe characters in the book.
It's about the audience.
It's about the reader.
They have to understand.
And if you don't make themunderstand, you failed as a
(06:48):
writer, in my opinion.
And that's really tough.
How do you manage that languagein text?
It's music, poetry.
It's tough.
I hope we got it right.
Amy Clark (06:57):
Yeah, I think you did.
Absolutely.
Would you like it if somebodysaid this is a literary novel?
Jordan Dotson (07:02):
I would smile.
Amy Clark (07:04):
Because you pay attention to language.
And the language is, I knoweverybody keeps saying that.
It's so poetic.
And you studied classicalpoetry, right?
Jordan Dotson (07:14):
I did.
I studied poetry writing,creative writing in college.
And I had intended to be a poetwhen I was younger.
But it's like music.
You discover really quicklywhether or not you have it.
Amy Clark (07:23):
You can tell that in the way that you write prose
that gets in there.
And it's, for me as a reader,and it makes me think of Ron
Rash.
Do you read Ron Rash?
Yeah.
And he's a poet.
Jordan Dotson (07:35):
He is.
Amy Clark (07:37):
When I read his stuff, I want to be somewhere
where I am not going to beinterrupted.
There's nothing around methat's going to get my attention
because I want to savor thelanguage.
And that, to me, is a literarynovel.
Jordan Dotson (07:49):
Poetry has to be spoken out loud.
It's performative.
It is music.
Like song.
It is.
It absolutely is.
Staffo was a wedding singer.
We read these clips of theseold Greek poems from 2,500 years
ago.
Those were wedding songs.
She was a singer-songwriter.
Yeah.
The thing that did it for mewas when I was an undergraduate
at the University of Virginia,there was a poet by the name of
(08:11):
Charles Wright.
You may not know
Amy Clark (08:13):
him.
Yes, I know who
Jordan Dotson (08:15):
he is.
I feel like a lot of peoplearound here don't know him as
well as they should.
He was a poet laureate in theUnited States.
He's from Kingford.
I never had him in class.
I wasn't that lucky, but Iwould stop by his office hours.
One day, I stopped in and askedhim for an opinion on a poem.
He took a look at it and said,this isn't a poem.
He said, it's a country song.
(08:36):
He had already complimented mycowboy boots, which was so, I
was already, he was greasing meup a little bit.
But at first I was heartbroken.
But then he said, that's not aninsult.
He said, it's musical.
And he said, he gave me a pieceof advice.
He said, if you want to writepoetry, I suggest you spend the
next three years only writing inpoetic meter.
Only writing in pentameter,hectameter, stuff like that.
(08:58):
And I did.
I listened to him and listened.
It was at the end of thosethree years that I realized I'm
never going to be a poet.
It's hard work.
But it gave me a kind of earfor music and sound and language
that I've never lost.
And in some ways it's a cursebecause you can really get in
the weeds.
And when you're dealing with apoem musically, if you're going
(09:22):
to be reading it out loud, itmight be five minutes.
But a novel, to try to sustainthat through a novel is really
difficult.
And also you risk Like I wassaying earlier, you risk putting
the reader off.
If they have to be as immersedin the language as you said,
that's hard work.
That's a cognitive load.
Ron Rash is a great example ofsomeone who balances it
(09:43):
perfectly.
It has that depth, that almostsensuousness to the language
when he wants it, when he wantsyou to be.
But then he can segue out alittle bit, make it a bit easier
on you at times and keep thestory, the narrative moving
along with the major.
Amy Clark (09:59):
So this is a novel about...
a musical family, lots offather-son relationships.
But music is a central theme,and it starts with Sawcraftry,
and it moves its way down thegenerations.
What does music mean to you,and why did that become the
(10:19):
central focus of this story?
Jordan Dotson (10:21):
That's hard to explain.
I didn't play music as a kid.
I always wanted to.
But for some reason or another,I never fully took to it until
I was a teenager.
But I did grow up singing inchurch.
And my dad was always singingin church two or three days a
week.
And that itself is its ownlanguage that you grow up in.
It shapes the way we interactwith the world in ways that we
(10:44):
don't understand.
One of the big things for mewhen I started approaching this
novel, I was working on allthese old hymns that appear in
the book.
And I never once in my lifehave been fully aware of how I
knew the lyrics to every singleone of these hymns front to
back.
And I didn't quite know howbecause I spent most of my
(11:07):
childhood going to a Pentecostalchurch that sang more modern
stuff.
But then my cousins and myuncle's churches were more
traditional Southern Baptist,Free World Baptist, stuff like
that.
And I spent a lot of time therehaving my family preacher.
It's like you don't understandhow you have all this music
within you and then Threedecades later, it can just come
out crystal clear.
(11:27):
And that, I think, was maybewhere the impulse came from to
unpack that, figure out wherethat music comes from and how it
becomes a part of your life,how certain songs and memories
can be milestones for certaintimes in your life, emotions
that you felt.
That's really the big theme ofit all.
And then, of course, later inlife, I came to music and
(11:48):
performed for a long time.
And when I gave up poetry, Iattempted to be a songwriter for
a while.
And that was an education initself.
For example, you come from amusical family.
Your son and your brother, Ithink you
Amy Clark (12:00):
said they're incredible
Jordan Dotson (12:00):
musicians.
They're incredible musicians,lifelong musicians.
I've never been a lifelongmusician.
And yet music is, it's likeblood.
It's like our emotionalcurrency.
Why is that?
It's not just me, it's foreverybody.
Amy Clark (12:15):
I think my opinion is in Appalachia especially.
We had music before we hadanything else.
When people came here from theold country, they didn't have
anything but they had theirinstrument and they had their
song.
And those songs could be passeddown like heirlooms.
And before people could read,they could sing and they could
teach through singing and theycould teach.
So I really think it is in ourblood.
(12:36):
I think that's when so much ofwhat...
Country music, for example, somuch of what that is today
started here, started inBristol.
And you talk about, that wasgoing to be one of my questions
too, is about your research.
You talk about Ralph Peer, whofirst recorded the Carter
family.
(12:56):
And I actually pulled out of myVictrola some Carter family
records.
These are all the Carter familyrecords that I had in a talking
machine that I inherited fromAnd
Jordan Dotson (13:10):
those
Amy Clark (13:10):
are, yes, these are the shellac 75 in the original
sleeves.
I just thought you'd think thatwas
Jordan Dotson (13:16):
neat,
Amy Clark (13:17):
but yeah, I thought you might get a kick out of
seeing some of that.
Jordan Dotson (13:21):
Wildwood flower right there on top.
Amy Clark (13:22):
Wildwood flower.
That's the
Jordan Dotson (13:24):
song that did it all.
Yeah.
That's the song that if you, Ithink you want to trace.
Country music is the mostpopular musical genre in America
today.
You want to trace it all backto this song, Mother Mabel
Carter, the way she playedguitar, essentially inventing a
new style of guitar.
That is the language.
Everyone who's recording thiskind of pop country stuff today,
they don't even understand thatit's born out of Morocco.
Amy Clark (13:47):
I remember my granddad playing the Victor
talking machine.
He would wind it up and he'dput the record on it and he'd On
snow days, that's what we didfor fun, especially if we didn't
have electricity.
He'd say, let's play.
You don't realize when you'reyounger, you just don't know
what that means.
You don't realize it untilyou're older.
It's like traveling with mydad.
He was in a gospel quartet andI've been in so many churches.
(14:10):
And I grew up in a Free WorldBaptist church.
And so I know all the hymns,all the old hymns.
And again, didn't know whatthat would mean until so much
later and how much that affectedme.
until I started writing aboutAppalachia.
It's
Jordan Dotson (14:26):
funny you mention a snow day.
It reminds me to talk aboutthat later.
I don't know if I ever sentthat to you, but that's how this
whole book got started.
Amy Clark (14:33):
Let's talk about how the book got started.
It got started on a snow day.
Jordan Dotson (14:37):
I lived in China for a very long time.
After college, I moved to Asiaand had all kinds of
swashbuckling adventures.
I came home every year forChristmas, maybe two or three
times a year sometimes.
I've always found it impossibleto stay away from why it's
called that.
And actually, my very firstyear, I didn't come home for
Christmas.
And it was the most depressingday of my life.
Waking up in an industrial parkin southern China on Christmas
(14:58):
morning.
It was a learning experience.
I had to be a better, strongerperson.
But after that, I said, I'mgoing home every year.
And I'm going to spend twoweeks with my parents.
And you may remember, it was, Ithink, 2011.
There was a snowstorm that shutoff power to pretty much the
whole county.
And that happened right at thebeginning of my trip home.
And we, of course, we had nopower in my parents' home.
(15:18):
a little bit smaller, similarto this one, old, 1920 at some
point, my great-grandfather'shome.
And we sat there around a gasstove for seven days with no
power, snow piling up outsidethe windows, and we're all
shivering.
And what do you do when you'rewith your family in the middle
of a dark Appalachian blizzard?
Amy Clark (15:38):
Tell stories.
Jordan Dotson (15:39):
Tell stories.
And the first day wasmiserable.
The second was okay.
We're dealing with it.
The third day, stories startedcoming out of my parents.
that we'd never heard before.
They, it was some of the mostfun I've ever had in my life.
Stuff that you don't even knowabout your parents.
Things that clarify things fromyouth.
(15:59):
Wild stories, crazy stories.
Some of the stories that appearin this book are versions of
these things that I learned.
And it was incredible.
And probably one of the mostimportant weeks of my life.
One year later, I came homeagain for Christmas.
And I was back in my childhoodhouse.
And that very first night, Iwoke up in the middle of the
night and basically had thisstory fully formed in my head.
(16:23):
I dreamed it.
Woke up and rolled over andstarted writing, putting the
notes down.
And that's how the whole, ittook me 10 years to write that
book.
But it was, it's like God givesyou the story.
And then through a verystaticky speaker, you've got to
figure it out.
I had no idea at that pointthat my grandfather, my mom's,
father who died when she was ateenager he'd been a singer he'd
(16:46):
done a really good singer hesang on the radio country gospel
stuff and so there are somethings about your family that
don't get talked about whenyou're young things that are and
it took that silence of threedays in a snowstorm to let some
of those things work out thegrandson in this book he's
trying to figure out who hisgranddad was and maybe i'm
certain that's what i was doingtrying to figure out who
Amy Clark (17:07):
Is that who you identify with the most?
Or do you identify with any ofthe characters that you created?
I know that's a dangerousquestion because people are
like, how much of this is realand how much of this is fiction?
Jordan Dotson (17:19):
There are certainly elements of me in all
of them.
And elements of everyone inyour life.
Mind, reality, for that stuff.
I think perhaps I could saythat any emotions that the
characters feel are emotionsthat I've felt.
It's...
You're trying to make thoseclear and right and honest and
(17:41):
true of the task, and you haveto pull that from inside.
Yeah.
I don't think I was ever ascharismatic as Saul was supposed
to be, maybe more sensitivelike Eli, the grandson.
I did that quieter, moreintroverted.
I went out with more like that.
Fairly
Amy Clark (18:00):
early in the novel, speaking of search and history
and story, Saul...
And I don't want to give toomuch away, but this is early in
the book.
Saul has tuberculosis, whichthey call consumption.
And he is sent to the CatawbaSanitarium in Roanoke, which was
a real place.
Jordan Dotson (18:20):
Real place.
Amy Clark (18:20):
So talk to me about why you chose to include that
element of the story.
Jordan Dotson (18:27):
Because that's how my grandparents met.
My grandfather, my father'sparents met.
My granddad is Dotson fromSouthwestern Eastern, Kentucky.
They've been here for hundredsof years.
He got tuberculosis at work inWise and was sent off to Apollo
Sanatorium.
My grandmother was a daughterof Italian immigrants in
(18:47):
Philadelphia.
She grew up in Philadelphia.
And she ran away from home at15.
She had an aunt in NewportNews.
And she ran off, lived with herfor a while, got a job in a
department store.
Got tuberculosis and was sent,because she's now a virgin, she
was sent to Catawba.
And one day she was looking outthe porch there and she saw a
(19:09):
young man with red hair and shefell in love at first sight.
My grandfather actually got asettlement because it was at
work that they did a lawsuit orsomething like that.
And he used the money, thesmall amount of money he got to
buy a ring for my grandmother.
She came home with him, neverwent back to Philadelphia and
(19:29):
lived here.
to the day she died in 2020, 80years.
She's buried three mile thatway.
It's my family's life.
And it was something that Iguess I had to work out in
fiction to truly understand it.
But I think the really, themost important thing was that
idea of tuberculosis.
My grandfather had his, thiswas before penicillin.
(19:53):
Penicillin was like
Amy Clark (19:55):
in the 40s.
Jordan Dotson (19:55):
And this was in the early, mid 40s that they
were there.
And they had all kinds of crazytreatments.
One of them was my grandfatherhad a lung removed.
So they cut out two ribs, tookthem out, and cut out one of his
whole lungs.
And in my research, Idiscovered, I can't remember who
it was at the time, but there'sa great, a classic country
singer.
I can't remember who it was.
(20:16):
Same thing happened.
Had a lung removed duringtuberculosis treatment and had
to relearn how to sing.
Amy Clark (20:25):
Really?
Jordan Dotson (20:26):
Yeah.
I wish I'd looked it up.
I can't remember who it wasnow.
I've got so much of this stuffin my head.
And that was the big thing.
The characters in this novelare singers who've lost their
voices and have to recover them.
And that's just a powerfulidea.
Yeah.
So the kind of visceral aspectof falling in love.
through the disease and yetlosing your ability to express
(20:46):
love in art and having to learnhow to do that again.
That was the dynamic that spoketo me.
Amy Clark (20:52):
He meets his love there and they come back
together and the blood is sodramatic.
When I was reading some of thescenes, and again I don't want
to give away the plot for peoplethat haven't read it yet, but I
just thought, oh my, I couldsee that.
I could frame that out in mymind.
But you're writing in a way,the blood becomes poetic,
coughing up blood.
And it's as horrible as it is,it still becomes part of the
(21:16):
scene in a way that, I don'tknow.
I would have to work out how Iwant to say that, but it's very
visual.
Jordan Dotson (21:25):
Yeah.
I'll take that.
That's a great metaphor forsinging right there, coughing up
blood.
Amy Clark (21:29):
Yeah.
Yeah.
All
Jordan Dotson (21:30):
right.
Yeah.
The kind that matters, atleast.
The kind of singing that makespeople cry.
Amy Clark (21:35):
I found letters from, I had a relative at Catawba.
I
Jordan Dotson (21:39):
remember.
Amy Clark (21:39):
And I wanted to show you the letters that I found in
a sewing machine.
Jordan Dotson (21:43):
You read these?
Amy Clark (21:44):
I read them and I've transcribed them.
Yeah.
But she was just so incrediblylonely.
She'd never been away fromhome.
And that was in the 50s.
That was at the end of TB.
But it's so interesting to me.
Jordan Dotson (21:56):
I remember listening to this when you were
out there doing it.
I remember...
I was being surprised becausethat wasn't the Vic youth.
That was after penicillinduring tuberculosis by then, but
apparently it hadn't made itdown to Catawba yet.
Yeah.
Amy Clark (22:09):
Did you go any...
Catawba doesn't exist anymore.
I think there are pieces ofthings left from the original
space, but did you just rely onfamily stories or did you have
to go anywhere to find out moreabout Catawba?
Jordan Dotson (22:22):
I was living in Asia at
Amy Clark (22:24):
the time.
Oh, so you couldn't.
This
Jordan Dotson (22:25):
was one of the great difficulties.
I did have, I spent a lot oftime talking to my grandmother
about it.
And there wasn't a ton ofinformation about it back.
I remember when I first starteddoing all this research, I
started, I did see Googlesearches again recently.
And there's so much aboutCatawba on the internet now.
There's photos, there's allkinds of stuff.
It wasn't there 10 years ago.
Yeah.
And it was hard.
(22:46):
You could find like lettersjust like this.
There was a few scraps andthings and you piece it together
as best you can.
And use those interviews,really, to win the authenticity,
to find the things that reallymatter.
There are details that mygrandmother would tell me that
were like, I think she mighthave had more fun there than
most people there.
But there's a lot of littledetails like that.
And you just need one detail.
(23:07):
You need the right detail atjust the right place.
There was one moment in thestory where one of the
characters talks about somethingcalled pig pot.
Amy Clark (23:15):
I remember that.
I wrote that word down becauseI meant to look more into it.
A pig pot.
Jordan Dotson (23:21):
I don't even think it's a real word.
I think they just had this hotwater bottle at the feet of the
patients that my grandmothersaid was shaped like a pig.
So they called it
Amy Clark (23:28):
a
Jordan Dotson (23:29):
pig pot with their own slang word for it.
Amy Clark (23:31):
Oh,
Jordan Dotson (23:32):
neat.
Stuff like that.
Amy Clark (23:33):
Yeah.
So I'm going to pause here andask if there is a section of
your novel that you'd like toread on the podcast.
Jordan Dotson (23:41):
It doesn't give away too much of the plot.
Only two paragraphs.
Amy Clark (23:44):
Okay.
Okay.
Jordan Dotson (23:45):
Should I explain what's happening here?
Amy Clark (23:47):
Sir.
Jordan Dotson (23:48):
Okay.
This scene takes place afterSaul has come home.
He's relearned how to sing.
He's on the verge of musicalfame and success.
His voice is resonating withpeople now, but difficulties
arise within his family.
In the month after his father'spassing, Saul sang like a man
(24:15):
possessed.
He accepted every invitation.
In Kingsport, Keokie,everywhere about, Honky Tonks in
Johnson City, the Pentecostalhollows of Kentucky, and
wherever he traveled, he sang asthough he'd abandoned his very
soul.
His voice baptized the crowdsthat came, and there was no
healing for his tremblinglyrics.
(24:35):
For the smoky notes of anexcised lung that fell in
insoluble tears Even to Trinity,they came in droves.
Dozens of fresh younghousewives appeared, their angry
husbands, dozens of womenclaiming to be widows, and
occasionally their husbands too.
The Trinity Inn filled to thebrim when there were Ratliffs
(24:58):
and Thackers, Van Dykes andMedes, teenagers crumpling
flowers in their hands, chantingCatholics from railway towns,
hot little gospeling childrenwho carried their hats and spoke
like wizened bards.
No matter who, wall-eyedsoldiers conscripted in Bristol,
coal miners blessed onBenzedrine, Saul sang to them
(25:22):
all, individually, as thoughfulfilling a mission from God.
He sang in a way that spookedchildren.
He sang to make brick masonscry.
He sang in a way that made itseem like the world no longer
existed, that there was onlylife in the heart of the song.
(25:42):
And nothing on the other side.
Amy Clark (25:47):
How do you come up with all of the different ways
of describing things?
Just the sensory detail?
It's just image after image.
And I'm thinking, does he havea list where it evolves from?
Or does it come to you?
Or do you have to go take awalk and be inspired?
Or all of the different...
Jordan Dotson (26:08):
It makes me wonder if there's too much.
Amy Clark (26:10):
No.
Literary novels do that.
They take time to show you andto help you see, smell, taste,
touch things.
Not too much, but enough that Ithink, wow, there's something
that's inspiring that amount ofdetail.
Jordan Dotson (26:29):
I think I've always had a kind of synesthesia
about that with language.
Maybe a wire crossed in mybrain somewhere.
But yeah, you know, a lot of itis walking around and just
paying attention.
A writer's real job is to see,to see the things that we don't
pay attention to because we seethem so often.
And every writer steals.
Every writer minds theirinspirations.
(26:51):
And one thing, to go back topoetry, that was something that
was deeply important for me.
I have notebooks, likesketchbooks, full of poets, and
even novelists that I've read inthe past where when something
they've written jumps out at me,I don't know why.
(27:12):
Usually it's because I knowthey're seeing the world in a
way that I've never seen theworld.
I've got notebooks full whereI've handwritten those things
down, stacks up and grown backin years and years and years.
And eventually you absorb thosethings.
So it's an autodidacticeducation in the way that other
people use language and the waythat they see.
That has happened to me as areader.
(27:32):
Throughout my life, I rememberthe biggest one was about a
Colombian author, Gabriel GarciaMarquez.
It was 100 Years of Solitude.
It's one of the greatest novelsof the 20th century and set in
South America.
But to me, it was Appalachia.
It was people and familiesaround here.
But I remember reading it andjust realizing there's a depth
(27:52):
to what that writer sees in theworld.
And just like music, you don'tpractice it.
You got to get in there.
And the sign out, that's whatyou're going to do as a writer.
Show things to people that theymight not.
Or even as a poet, I thinktheir job is to articulate the
things that are hidden behindour vision.
Something like
Amy Clark (28:09):
that.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
It does.
So one of the things I loveabout the book, because I love
reading it, is there's a...
Would you call it magicalrealism, what you're doing in
there with the ghosts and thehaunting?
It seems to be that the familyis a little bit cursed.
And there's some darknessaround this family.
(28:32):
And there's that element ofotherworldliness happening.
And I think in Appalachia, Isuspected that your background
coming from here may haveinspired that because...
I've got a bottle tree righthere.
Bottle tree.
The superstition is it capturesspirits, but I think it's
(28:52):
pretty.
But I love that it's got thatelement of superstition around
it.
So talk to me about thatthread, what she was through the
breath.
Jordan Dotson (29:00):
A hundred percent.
You know, if other people wereto call it magical realism, I'm
like, yeah, sure, fine.
That's great.
That's what academics do.
Amy Clark (29:06):
Yeah, that's a technical term.
Jordan Dotson (29:08):
Right.
They look at art and put labelson it so they can understand it
and categorize it.
For me, just the way peopletalk.
Just the way people talk here.
Like we live in a place whereWe're growing up in a place
where it's deeply religious.
People are deeply religious,but everyone also believes in
ghosts.
These things are not mutuallyexclusive.
It coexists within the cultureand the language that we use.
(29:31):
So when the moon turned blue orsomething in this book, to me,
I don't need to explain Thereader doesn't need to worry
about being explained why that'shappened, as they might in a
realist book or fantasy orsci-fi or something.
You want to know those things.
They have their own rules.
Here, we don't need thoserules.
You just need to understandthat this is people talking to
each other, and this is the waywe talk.
(29:52):
Really, it's the ghosts.
Appalachia has great ghosts.
Amy Clark (29:55):
Oh, yeah.
We do.
The best.
We do.
Jordan Dotson (29:58):
And everybody has their own personal ghost
stories.
Like
Amy Clark (30:01):
every
Jordan Dotson (30:01):
teenager around here knows all the haunted
orphanages and stuff like that.
And it's just part of life.
It's part of the fabric of youryouth.
And the house I grew up in ishaunted, deeply haunted.
Still today, my nieces andnephews don't sleep upstairs.
Wow.
Amy Clark (30:15):
What happens?
What do they hear?
Footsteps or voices knocking?
Jordan Dotson (30:19):
Doors opening and closing and stuff like that.
And you don't need to explainthat.
It's really boring, not fun totry to explain that.
It's better to grow up in afamily that doesn't go stories.
Yeah.
So in fiction, we can do that.
You can let ghost stories bereal.
And they are real for us.
Amy Clark (30:35):
So that was part of creating the place.
That was part of play streetand putting that in the fabric
of the background andeverything.
the Native American story.
Let's talk about that becauseFalling Rock is the name of
someone in this story that iscarefully woven throughout the
book and maybe echoes what'shappening in Saul's family too.
(30:56):
I had never heard of FallingRock.
Now I've heard of Chief Benjiand all of that.
Talk to me about how that madeits way into the work.
Jordan Dotson (31:05):
That's tricky business actually because I'm
not Cherokee.
And you can do a ton ofresearch.
But that's not really what Iwas going for in this.
What I was going for, thatFalling Rock story is one.
If you get on the internet andlook it up, you'll find that it
appears all around the region inlittle different ways.
It's a story that a lot ofpeople's parents tell them
growing up.
But over the course of thenovel, the story gets told and
(31:28):
retold in different ways bydifferent people and different
times.
And that is what wasinteresting to me, how stories
can travel through time.
how they reflect the peopletelling them as much as the
story itself.
Now, like a lot of peoplearound here, you grow up being
told that you have Cherokeeancestry.
And a lot of people do.
And very few people understandit.
(31:49):
Very few people understand thehistory.
But it doesn't change the factthat it is part of the story of
your life growing up.
And so once again, it was areflection of just the way that
families talk to one anotheraround here.
The stories they tell to makesense of who they are and where
they come came from.
And this is a remarkablynon-homogenous place.
(32:13):
People came from all over.
And it makes sense that peopleare grasping for history and
trying to figure out where theycame from, trying to find honor
in their history because theymight not know.
I've noticed there were so manyimmigrants.
It's complex.
To me, it's not so much aboutThe very specific Cherokee
history, as much as the waypeople in this region talk about
(32:34):
it and integrate that intotheir own histories.
Amy Clark (32:37):
It's interesting that now people want that to be part
of their heritage, but not solong ago.
No.
That was not something thatpeople would have.
Jordan Dotson (32:48):
I remember when people started talking about
Melungeons a lot in the 90s.
It just came out of nowhere.
And there was a lot of back andforth about it.
A lot of people didn't want totalk about that.
Amy Clark (32:57):
Oh, no.
I remember going and talking toBrent Kennedy.
Jordan Dotson (33:00):
And
Amy Clark (33:01):
he said he got hate mail, dead threat.
Jordan Dotson (33:03):
Yeah, I believe it.
Amy Clark (33:04):
Because he was writing about that.
Jordan Dotson (33:06):
And nowadays, it's such a stereo cop in
Appalachian fiction.
It's like, you can't have anAppalachian novel if you don't
have Malungans.
Amy Clark (33:11):
You don't have Malungans in it.
Handling preachers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jordan Dotson (33:14):
Probably have in this novel.
Amy Clark (33:15):
Yeah.
So what's your next literaryadventure going to be?
Where's writing taking younext?
Jordan Dotson (33:22):
That's a big question.
Probably in the next threeyears planned out, actually.
I've already got a completecollection of short stories
that's located in China, where Ilived for many years, studying
and teaching.
I'm nearing the end of thecompletion of a new novel.
This one is set in SouthAmerica, on a small island.
(33:43):
In many ways, it resembles thetype of isolated community that
is all in rock.
Then, I have some ideas toreturn to Red Pine County, the
location of this novel I've had.
It usually takes me about 10years to work an idea out.
I would like to do a collectionof short stories, ghost
(34:03):
stories, I think.
And then I've got an idea for abig novel about a family of
brothers who have inherited apiece of land.
I don't want to say too muchabout it.
That will take me a long timeto work out.
Maybe 20 years before thatone's done.
But that's the one that'sreally...
Working on my subconsciousright now.
Amy Clark (34:23):
That's great that you have all of that planned out.
Wonderful.
It might not work out.
Jordan Dotson (34:28):
But
Amy Clark (34:29):
you have the ideas.
That's half the battle rightthere is having the ideas.
Wonderful.
What made you want to go toChina?
I'm just curious.
Jordan Dotson (34:37):
When I was studying poetry as an
undergraduate my senior year, Itook a seminar called Poetics of
Ecstasy.
And for one assignment, I hadto read all these different
translations from around theworld.
And I read, the book was editedby a poet named Sam Hamill.
And the poem, but I discovereda poem in it that translates to
(35:00):
Bamboo Mat by a Tong Dynastypoet named Yuan Zhen.
20 characters, like a veryshort little poem.
And I read it, and I remembersitting in Alderman Library and
thinking, being knocked out ofmy seat because it was a
thousand year old poem and itwas a country song it was a
(35:21):
story about a guy an old manwhose wife has died and he's
staring at the place where sheslept and he's unwilling to put
away the mattress that she slepton and there's this silence in
it that to me was it was purehank william i used to always
say that The great Chinese poetsof the past, Li Baidu, they
could walk into a bar, sit downnext to Hank Williams, and
(35:43):
stumble out three hours later,best friends.
I loved it.
And to make a long story short,I changed my direction.
I thought I would go to gradschool and study this stuff.
But in order to do that, Iwould have to learn a Chinese
language.
So I took a year off to go havea little adventure in China and
(36:03):
start learning the language.
Quickly, I realized two things.
One, I would never learn thelanguage well enough to be able
to mine old poetry that way.
But I also, it was, that was2006, 2005, 2006.
And Southern China was like theepicenter of the universe.
There was, I remember sitting,being in a hotel, looking out
the window in the city andseeing, counting 82 cranes on
(36:27):
the horizon, putting buildingsup.
And it was like, man, somethingis going on here.
And I accidentally fell into acareer teaching and writing over
there.
And I stayed.
It was fun.
And it just became life after awhile.
Amy Clark (36:41):
Wow.
What a rich experience.
Jordan Dotson (36:43):
It was something.
Amy Clark (36:43):
Yeah.
Jordan Dotson (36:44):
It was something.
Amy Clark (36:45):
Jordan Dotson, thank you for being on the podcast and
for writing this beautifulbook.
And again, for listeners, it'scalled The Ballad of Falling
Rock.
Go first to your independentlittle bookstore and see if they
can get it for you.
Jordan Dotson (37:00):
Thank you so much.
Amy Clark (37:00):
Thank you for being on the podcast, and I look
forward to seeing what else youwrite.
Jordan Dotson (37:05):
Thank you so much, Annie.
It's my pleasure and my honorto be here.
Amy Clark (37:12):
Thank you.
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