I possess in my archives two versions of Wes Houp’s “The Big 10 Incher,” a sort of bizarro “Rosalita” that tells the peripatetic life-story of Donnie, a ne’er do well who dies suddenly in his apartment off New Circle Road. There is the original electric track, recorded in 2009 as part of a batch of songs the NoC house-poet wrote while living in Wilmore and finishing a dissertation on literacy, and then there is the version recorded on New Year’s Day, 2017.
As with much of Wes’s writing, “The Big 10 Incher” is saturated with a cosmic realism that borders on absurdity, as so much of life does. Donnie can “praise your lord,” but pills numb him to a sister selling herself on the streets around BYU. He is a tender lad, but also a beater of little old ladies, one whose final remains are destined for “three banker’s boxes and a duffel bag scattered on his momma’s kitchen floor.”
For many reasons, not the least being that Donnie’s ignominious death occurs in his apartment off the Circle 4, I’ve always thought of “The Big Ten Incher” as a Lexington theme song. Cock-touting, nipple-touching, tatted sometimes-evangelists who eat too many pills–while off-MALGA in a way certain to make our artistic and business overlords cringe–checks a lot of boxes for the types of area citizenry I’ve come across in my two decades (many by Wes’s side) of tromping across the greater Fayette Urban County landscape.
The New Year’s Day version posted below was recorded on a single Zoom H4N digital recorder in the kitchen of an empty house on Chestnut Street. The home had recently been purchased by Gary and Sev, as official a consecration of companionship as the unmarried couple could stand to make. I had suggested recording Wes while the house still sat vacant, demos for an album to be produced by Lexington musician Chris Sullivan.
In this New Year’s version, a more considered warmth shines through. As with most of the Chestnut Demos, “The Big 10 Incher” begins and ends with the laughter of living friends. The acoustic guitar and a vacant kitchen quiet the bravado. Wes interacts with his five-person audience. Lyle’s impromptu vocal accompaniment tenderizes the lad hiding beneath the Ten Incher’s blundering, sometimes violent, time on earth.
Take a listen:
As life would have it, the record with Sullivan never happened and Sev was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer some moons after moving into her Chestnut home. As Wes has written, the calculus doesn’t matter. All life’s plans are not ours to design, though I am happy to report that, entering the 2021 calendar year, both Sev and the batch of Chestnut songs taken from her home are still around and kicking, hold-out stooges gearing up for yet another year of play.
To hear more Wes Houp songs, check out his 2018 recording, Person Place or String.
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