'A Month of Sundays' with Derek Lamson
Judy Maurer and Derek Lamson met on Zoom earlier this month to discuss Derek’s new Album.
Reading, Music, Book Signing & a Celebration
Mark V and A Month of Sundays by Derek Lamson
(buy one, get one free)
Friday, November 4th, 5:00 p.m.
Chapters Books and Coffee, 701 E 1st St, Newberg
Sunday, November 20th, 12:30 p.m.
West Hills Friends Church, 7425 SW 52nd Ave, Portland
Saturday, December 10th, 4:00 p.m.
New Zone Gallery, 110 E 11th Ave, Eugene
Derek texted me that his new graphic novel, Mark V "is a little magic realism; it's a series of related shaggy dog stories; it's a memoir; it’s a bit of a love-letter to Eugene; and in three or four different bits it’s Mark 5:1-20."
Intrigued, I asked to interview him about the novel and his new album, A Month of Sundays. Here's our conversation, lightly edited.
Judy Maurer
I loved how you described in the text you sent me. What should I write about who you are?
Derek Lamson
I'm a child of the Northwest. I was a cowboy kid, out in the desert. I was a rancher’s grandson and I was a great horseman by the time I was 12 years old.
Judy Maurer
I grew up like that, too. Where was all this?
Derek Lamson
Oh, that was the Lewiston Valley - four important years of my life. That's a little part of my origin story. I tell my kids in school as a substitute teacher, I tell them, ‘I got to do the fun stuff.’ And they say, ‘Tell us, Mr. Lamson, what do you mean, you got to do the fun stuff?’ I say, ‘Well, I got to be a cowboy when I was a little kid. I got to log and fish when I was a young man. I got to do business and be a dad and be a homeowner. And in my middle aged years, I got to have several opportunities to do creative work.’
Derek playing and singing during worship at Sierra-Cascades annual sessions, June 2022. Photo by Erin Zysett
Judy Maurer
And what were they - the creative opportunities?
Derek Lamson
Oh, when I was in my 20s, I spent about 12 years, just flat out trying to be the best poet I knew how to be. And so I read and I wrote and I read and I wrote. I was not academic, I was out of school, I was working jobs. But my focus, my whole focus was poetry.
It's fun for me, in this later season of my life duty, because in 2017, it's like the technology caught up to me. Amazon said, 'We want your content. We want your content, we're not going to charge you we're gonna pay you. We want your content.' And I published a young adult novella I'd had in the drawer, and that was a lot of fun. I published the poetry book, and that was a lot of fun.
So I got that, and then, you know, I just ran out of gas on the poetry in my mid 30s. Maybe it was raising kids, doing business. I was kind of struggling with alcoholism. We were trying to make a marriage work. It was a lot of work.
Judy Maurer
Especially when you're - I mean, I speak for myself - especially when you're drinking.
Derek Lamson
Yeah, I wanted to quit at three every day. My feet hurt. I thought, 'three o’clock sounds like a good time to get a drink.' But I was trying to start a business. Yeah, It was rough.
Is the question, ‘How did you get here?’
Judy Maurer
Ya, that's right.
Derek Lamson
I'm as old as dirt, Judy. I've had so many different stories and been so many different places. A common thread in my life has been doing creative work. I did group poetry when I was younger. I actually did advertising for 14 years, and I will swear up and down that it's the same toolkit. It's just different motivation and goals. I sharpened my tools in advertising. And when I came back as a songwriter, I found I could work faster and smoother. I had a better grasp of projects. And I think a lot of it was for working in advertising for all those years. I made 100 TV commercials.
Judy Maurer
Really?
Derek Lamson
Yep. Yes, I did. So it was interesting. I didn't love it. I never loved it. I finally got out of it. And I tried to start my own ad business and crashed it and then I said, you know you don't love this; get out of it. So I worked for a paycheck for a while and eventually I went back to school and that was a smart thing to do. And I retooled myself and got an MBE and got certified to teach.
Judy Maurer
What's an MBE?
Derek Lamson
Master of Education, and that was a good thing.
The thing was, I got to do the poetry when I was younger. And when it was over, I thought, well, that's over then. You know, that's just something a young man would do. But then when I had the West Hills Friends experience, and my life decidedly changed, and I became a follower of Jesus, it happened again. I started writing songs. It didn't take long, Judy, it took maybe six or eight months and people I respected started saying, ‘that's really good, and you need to do more of it, and you need to do it for us in meeting.’ And I said, ‘really?’ And they said, ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Okay, let's do some more.’
Or the time when I met with April Vanderwal. She was 19 years old. And she was helping me rehearse for my first Sunday sharing music. I was going to help back her on guitar and sing with her. And I said, ‘Hey, can I play this song that I just made up for you right now?’ And she said, Yeah, let's hear it. So I played this little Jesus thing. And she said, ‘You should play that in meeting.’ And I said, Oh, I'd be afraid to and she said, ‘I'll sing it with you.’ I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ We made four albums together, Judy!
Judy Maurer
Really? I didn't know that!
Derek Lamson
We did. I'll show you. You'll laugh. We made this in 1991. (Holds up a cassette tape)
Judy Maurer
Wow.
Derek Lamson
Yep. She's on it. Jill Townley is on it. Melanie Weidner. Isn't that fun?
Judy Maurer
It is!
Derek Lamson
There's nice material on there. So one of the songs on that little cassette from ‘91, went into our repertory for 20 years. But we never did a good job of recording it till 2017.
Judy Maurer
What was the name of it?
Derek Lamson
Come to the Table. Although we had sung it, and it had been asked for at memorials, we hadn't done a good job of recording it. So we came back in 2017 and did it. It was wonderful closure. I mentioned it because there's tremendous closure.
So anyway, I got to do the poetry when I was a kid and then amazingly, I got to do the songwriting in the 90s and I did that for about 15 years. I'm like, this is luxury. This is so deluxe, to be able to get to do this. I continued getting encouragement from my community. And I realized something in 1998. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I'm in the most enviable position possible for a working artist.’ I've got a small community at West Hills that’s paying attention to what I do. They're smart, articulate people. I'm totally in the catbird seat. They would talk to me about it, they would tell me how it affected them and they would say ‘this is important.’ It was great to have that.
That's kind of a little history of creativity in my life. I did lots of things to stay alive and then I went back, got my education, became a teacher.
But the story of the creative person starts with the poetry and goes through advertising - of all places. It comes back out in singing and songwriting and guitar playing. That happened right through about 2005. In 2005 we cut the last collection. We're all doing different things. I was in graduate school, I was traveling, I was getting divorced. I was getting sober. I was going through all sorts of changes. And then I came back after school and, here we are.
Fifteen years later, I thought, I really should do one last thing, I should curate the last 15 years worth of good songwriting. I should go back over the last 15 years, and I should pull out the best and I should say, are these really keepers or not? If they're keepers, we're going to do a nice, respectful due diligence and will do a nice job of documenting them. That seemed ambitious enough.
What I did not expect doing this project was what a deluxe human experience it was going to be. I connected with people who I had last worked with 15 years before. And what they all had done is grow and get stronger, and get more textured. So I worked with Jill Townley for this cassette 30 years ago, and I worked with her this last winter. She sang one of my songs solo as a featured performer.
The way we wanted to do the anthology was that, really, I was only going to sing on part of it. So we got chill, and we've got a lot of talented people who jumped in to do that. It turns out that that's the big bonus for the whole project.
Sure, the music is sometimes so beautiful, especially in somebody else's hands. It's very nice. But the people are astonishing me, Judy. The richness of the character of Nate Macy - who's co producing with me - a very patient man. Three years on this project!
Judy Maurer
Three years! Oh, I didn't realize Nate was co-producing.
Derek Lamson
There’s Melissa Thomas who I remember as Missy Bullock when I met her. We went out to have a bagel and a coffee and talk about this project. And I said, ‘you know, Missy out of that whole cohort, that whole year at George Fox with Aaron Pruitt and Jill Townley, and all those folks, you're one of the ones that could have made a very handsome living off of music. You could have made a career out of that.’ And she said, ‘Well, yeah, and I have done some, she said. She talked about this guy that flies her down to LA to sing on his albums. And I thought, I understand that. And I said, ‘Well, I can't fly you anywhere. But I really, really want you to sing on this.’ And she said, ‘I am really, really honored that you asked me to. I want to be on this. So that's what I'm getting from these people. It's humbling. It's beautiful. And they're saying, ‘We just were waiting for you to ask. Let's let this right, let's do this one last job really right. So, at this point, there's dozens of people that have contributed as vocalist or instrumentalists. That makes it a month of Sundays, Judy!
Judy Maurer
Oh, that's what the month is! That's amazing. It's beautiful.
Derek Lamson
We just just got another mix, and the guy said, ‘Yo, how did we do? Do you like the bass? You know, is it right? Shall we turn up the… ‘ And it's this big piece with the West Hills choir!
Judy Maurer
Wow. So is it out already? Or how does one get it?
Derek Lamson
It's sort of black magic. It's all on my website or will be - as we finish it. We wanted to try some things. We wanted to try and build some interest and some momentum. So, while we were recording, we started to mix and while we were mixing, we started to release. So we're releasing a song a month and we have since July. There are now five out on the website that are available. Every month I come on Facebook and say, "Okay, boys and girls, here's a new one coming’ and give them a little sample and talk about it." And people peruse it - we're selling a few. II just got them in the mail. I've just gotten it from UPS as the album cover. Oh, wow. Oh, excellent. That's the album cover and that lovely. [holds up the CD cover of “A Month of Sundays”]
Judy Maurer
It is! Yes.
Derek Lamson
You know what? I haven't got a CD player. Neither does Nate.
Judy Maurer
I would have to rustle one up. I think there's one somewhere here…
Derek Lamson
So what I'm gonna do is drop in a flash drive. It will have all the music that we've got done - seven songs. And it will have a little file that will say 'read me' and you'll open it and it will be a link back to the website and it will say, Now you can pick up the other eight when they're done. For free. If you bought this, you’ve paid for the new ones. Just go back to the website, pick up for free the other eight songs when they're done.
Judy Maurer
That's terrific. So you're, you're packing these things up on your own? People just go to your website?
Derek Lamson
It's easy to download the stuff digitally. Nate and I agree that our best marketing tool, absolute bar none best marketing tool, is in person. And when we see people and talk about the book and have little events, the music and stuff, like we're going to do in Newberg, you want to have something to hand people. They're ready to give you their money, right? ‘Please, can I walk away with the music? You'd say 'Yes, you can! Here it is.'
That explains all the very involved effort. But the truth is, nobody has a CD player. They're just not using them. They're not even in their cars. So why make a CD? Nate was the first one who says - it was very funny. He said, ‘I want to do this project.’ Then he said, ‘Derek, I don't own a CD player. What are we going to do with the music?’
Judy Maurer
But it's a nice thing to have. You're right. And the graphic novel, how did that come about? Mark V?
Derek Lamson
It's been apparent to me, for decades that Mark V was my story. It's a story of being released from bondage and hysteria and despair and hopelessness into light and life and completely undeserved.
Derek Lamson
Mark V, a graphic novel that Lamson wrote with two other creators.
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Note: Derek speaks of the Gerasene demoniac. He is referring to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 5 verses 1- 20. A man who everyone in the town is afraid of runs up to Jesus, yelling. He tells Jesus his name is Legion because there are many demons within him. Jesus heals him by sending the unclean spirits into a large herd of pigs who then run out over a cliff and drown.
There's a moment in the Gerasene demoniac story that Mark doesn't tell us about - there's several, but one of them is where the Gerasene demoniac spends hours looking out over the Sea of Galilee, and finally, he sees that little boat. Promptly runs down, scares everybody to death, except for Jesus, who rolls up his sleeve and gets to work, right? It’s a tremendous story. We love everything about it. There's so many good jokes in it, and it's so vivid.
So for years, for decades, I've thought this would make a great one act opera. This would make a glorious little one act opera. It's so simple. So black and white. It's so vital and vivid, you know? Jesus and the boys are all in white and blue. The Sea of Galilee is all in white and blue. The guy in the tombs is all in black and purple and green and gray and horrible stuff.
Judy Maurer
Why that story of despair? There are other stories of despair and being released from despair in the gospels. Why does that story get you?
Derek Lamson
This story is bondage. They try to chain him and they can't, but he wears manacles in our minds' eye. I know that my struggles with alcohol started to really get some traction in the late 90s. This story became very meaningful to me. I would read it and it would make me very, very emotional, particularly that last part. I mean, after Jesus heals him, the guy says, and he's so human, 'Let me go with you.' Jesus says, 'Nope, not today. Today - today - you're gonna go back to your community, and you're gonna tell them what God has done in your life.' And it's a really beautiful moment and it knocks me out every time.
But we also get chilled right to our backbone by the demon's reply. When he says ‘Legion’ you can hear his voice. It's a baritone that comes right out of his toenails. It's an incredible bass voice. And in fact, there's many voices in there. We can hear them all. It's terrible. It's frightening. It's a little horror show.
And Jesus is all just white light and just takes care of business. Very nice, very gratifying! And the townspeople who are so normal, and say ‘Our pigs! Oh, my, what is this? Our pigs have gone! Just take all this crazy back with you and go away!’
Judy Maurer
Yes, they say 'go away!' I always end up yelling, 'No, don't say it!'
Derek Lamson
And they do. They say, ‘Go away! And Jesus looks at Peter. And Peter looks at John and they shrug their shoulders and they go back to the boat.
So I thought it would make a lovely short opera. I thought that that was just the kind of a fantasy to think about and or maybe turn into some writing. I played with some sketches of it and stuff. I played with the idea that maybe the Gerasene demoniac was growing up in the Decapolis, while Jesus was growing up in Nazareth, and switch back and forth. That would be fun, that would be interesting. But I was busy and it would obviously take a lot of work and time. And I didn't have it. I was a dad and I was working full time. I was busy at West Hills Friends and I just didn't have the time to develop it. The years went by and the years went by.
So here we were newly moved back to Eugene, Oregon, and Ruba Byrd is newly the pastor at EFC, and I have to drive across the metro area to go to church and I want to go to church. I want to support the pastor, who I was married to at the time. So I have every intention of spending a lot of time there and I have to pass five or six people, begging, to get to EFC on a Sunday morning.
This starts to make me want to bite the skin off my arm. This is starting to pull on me. It's starting to mess me up. And I'm not doing a good job in my encounters with folks because I'm really unhappy. So I'm kind of turning away. I'm not looking at people, because just to look at it makes me really unhappy. And I get to church and as often as not I'm mad. I don't like to get to church mad! It doesn't do me any good. I'd be mad at myself and I'd be mad at my society and I'd be mad at God and I'd be mad at those damn people out there on those damn street corners. And I'd be pissed off.
Also, it was a true factor for me that I didn't do a very good job of rustling up summer work. As a substitute teacher, you got to do that. You got to cover three months. You don't get paid all year like contract people. So I had my own money anxiety. Sure I was married at the time but I wanted to hold up my end of the stick. I wasn't going to ask my wife to support me over the summer, just because I hadn't figured out a job, for heaven's sake. So there was some anxiety. I ended up working for one of her people who do yard work labor, and I was grateful to get it, you know.
Then, when COVID came, all those things boil together in my mind and I started the first part of the story. I figured out that what I needed to write the story was just to follow the blood in the water - probably the emotional through line was gonna get me through the story better than the plotting was. But I did plot it, of course. There is a narrative. It's a man's day and a night. And it's memoir, and it's magical realism. It's perfectly recognizable 2020 Eugene, Oregon. And there are landmarks and there are businesses. The characters in it reference Eugene, so Eugene is another character. Because I have history here. I go way back, my family goes back to the 1850s here.
Judy Maurer
Really? The Oregon Trail and all that?
Derek Lamson
We stole it from the Kalapuya. The Elliott Cuttoff wagon train of 1853 almost got lost in the Cascades, but they finally made it down, and my people were with them. They then dug in around Alvador and Fern Ridge. Took donation land claims, dug in - that's all my mother's side. She's wagon-train on both sides.
So my protagonist is struggling with all the homeless people in his life. He keeps running into homeless people that are messing with his head. So he goes to the Pioneer Cemetery in the middle of the night. He goes to have a little talk with his ancestors. And that's a very strange thing. He learns about them and they learn about him. And then he walks home. That's pretty much act two.
Judy Maurer
This is terrific.
Derek Lamson
John Williams’ done a lovely job. He's a really gifted illustrator. Not only does wonderful work with reading my script, but reading between the lines.
Judy Maurer
Oh, excellent.
Derek Lamson
He's very insightful into the themes that come out. You know, and one last theme that's developed for me as we've taken this thing from idea to script. One of the things that I start to think about is who gets to do this kind of art? A theme in this graphic novel is, who gets to do opera?
Judy Maurer
Oh, really?
Derek Lamson
Yeah, cuz the narrator knows that. Whether he can imagine it or not, he doesn't have the resources or the access to do it. It becomes sort of a meta theme for me as I put this together as an indie DIY guy. I asked you in my last text, ‘Judy, do you believe in luck?
Judy Maurer
I've wondered about that.
Derek Lamson
Yeah. This I mean, take your pick - six of one, half a dozen or the other. Either it’s had immense angel power or immense good luck.
Judy Maurer How so?
Derek Lamson
Perhaps a little of both. It's a beautiful, fragile bicycle. You know that if it falls over, it probably breaks. But everything went right. I got the right consulting and encouragement early on. We found the most compatible talent to execute the script.
Judy Maurer
What do you mean “to execute the script?” What's that?
Derek Lamson
Well, so, every one of the pages in this thing is three or four panels - it’s a comic. Every panel has got some action or picture. It uses the vocabulary of the American comics - it’s what makes it a graphic novel. It owes some to Archie and Jughead and little Lulu as much as to Little Nemo or to some really sophisticated stuff.
But it uses that vocabulary of comics. You have to tell the guy what to do. So I'll say 'close up, medium close up, long shot. Action is …, color is…. Here's the detail I need.... Show me this… This is the emotion... The detail for each one of those frames needs to be explicit for the artist, so he doesn't have to guess. I could have been a lot looser, but I was working my way through it too, and trying to figure out how to make it work.
Anyway, I would give this to John Williams, the artist, and in 10 days or two weeks, he would send me back pencils [drawings]. I would look at the pencils. And I would say, 'How about we do this a little differently?' or ‘This looks perfect.’
I’d send them back and he would send me inks and I would do the same process. He would take those back and send them to Brandon Buerkle who lettered. The vocabulary of comic books requires dialogue balloons, and narration captions, narration boxes. Brandon did all of that. I mean, I scripted it, he lettered it. So it goes from me to John and from John to Brandon, and from Brandon, back to me. I look at it and I go, ‘Wow, you guys made this look great! Because they did. They really did.
Judy Maurer
This is excellent. So can you buy that through Barclay Press?
Derek Lamson
Yeah, they've got it. But to get it to folks and to support folks who've actually been waiting a while we'll do a bunch of book events, too.
Derek Lamson
Barclay Press says it's available on the 11th of November. But I see it's already in the catalog. So you can do sort of a pre order. But folks should come to Chapters.
Judy Maurer
Yes! They definitely should come to Chapters!
Derek Lamson
Five o'clock, and be prepared to make a little noise!
Judy Maurer Make a little noise? How do you mean?
Derek Lamson
It'll be a celebration of all of us. This was a very collaborative effort. There was a tremendous amount of encouragement from readers. I had four or five readers who stayed with me all the way through. I had a couple of very courageous people who would call me if they thought I was going in the wrong direction.
Ruba Byrd was very helpful as a reader. It's kind of a celebration. It's a win for all of us. Yeah. To get to get to bring a pretty new album and produce a new book.
Judy Maurer
Yes. Yes.
Derek Lamson
Make a little noise.
You know what I want to tell you? I'm in unknown territory. And that is finally what makes it really the most interesting.
Judy Maurer
How do you mean unknown territory?
Derek Lamson
I don't know how this might affect the next part of my life. For example, Judy, I think there might be a second or a third graphic novel
Judy Maurer
Oh, yes. Oh, that would be excellent.
Derek Lamson
I think the next one might be called the sower of seeds. And I think that instead of it being the gathering demoniac story. It's actually the story of the sower. But it starts on a fishing boat off the Oregon coast.I know that much.
Judy Maurer
Excellent.
Derek Lamson
Interesting. If you see I don't have an MFA. I don't have those credentials. You know, so if I wanted to say, 'well, this might be really the right time in my life to do this.' I How would I do that? And one way I would do that, I would say, 'This is my credential.' [holds up Mark V] ‘Listen to me, for I am a serious writer.’ I think it will be interesting because I'm thinking and praying a little bit about is this something I will get to do perhaps?
Judy Maurer
Yes. It sounds excellent.
Derek Lamson
We'll see. If not, I will be satisfied as a substitute teacher for the rest of my days. That's not a problem. That's good, too.
Judy Maurer
Yes, my teacher friends all really long for more substitute teachers.
Derek Lamson
They're happy to see me come in the door.
Judy Maurer
I bet.
Derek Lamson
And they're very welcoming. They don't quite spoil me but right on the ragged edge of it - let me tell ya. They are my heroes. The kids are my heroes too, because they get up and wash their faces and come to school every day and sit in their desks and do their best with substitute teachers.
Judy Maurer
I remember with some guilt, running a few substitute teachers ragged, you know?
Derek Lamson
Well, yes. The suspenders are very helpful. New York Yankees hat doesn't hurt either.
Judy Maurer
The suspenders are great. Well, I am fading. I have a sinus infection that I'm fighting.
Derek Lamson
Judy, you're a mensch.
Judy Maurer
I love that word.
Derek Lamson
I've been living and breathing this stuff for months, obviously trying to get both these projects out.
Judy Maurer
This is terrific. Excellent.
Derek Lamson
I talked your head off!
Judy Maurer
You didn't talk my head off. If I had more brain power at the moment I would let you go on. This is great stuff. This is excellent stuff. So thank you.
Derek Lamson
I think you're excellent stuff. Thank you so much for taking your time with me. Take care of your sinus infection and get well. It's been great. Thank you. Bye now.
Judy Maurer
Thanks, Derek.