Our previous update was largely about audio versions of M.A.C. titles, particularly how great a job Dan John Miller does on Nate Heller and will soon be doing for Mike Hammer, now that Stacy Keach has stepped down.

Last year, for the first time, one of our Trash ‘n’ Treasures mysteries under the joint “Barbara Allan” byline was released on audio – Antiques Fate. It was a professional job, and Barb and I were happy to have it out there, but we felt our protagonists – Brandy and Vivian Borne – needed to be more distinctly different in performance. We also felt the audio had given our book a typical cheery cozy mystery feel, whereas the Antiques books are rather subversive send-ups of the genre, with Brandy a put-upon, wry narrator, and Vivian an off-the-wall local theatrical diva. We made our feelings known, and the publisher responded by assigning the very talented, skillful Amy McFadden to the just-released-on-audio, Antiques Frame.

Amy McFadden

We are about half-way through the audio, and are delighted with what Amy is doing. She has captured both our main characters, and their narrative voices (we have first-person narration from both Brandy and Mother) beautifully. As her web site notes, “Amy McFadden has narrated over 250 titles in many different genres with a focus on Comedic Fiction, Romance, and not-super-violent Thrillers. She is an Earphones Award winner, and a four-time Audie Award finalist in Humor, Mystery/Thriller and Literary Fiction.”

Read more about her here.

Speaking of the Antiques series, we recently completed Antiques Wanted. I interrupted work on the Eliot Ness/Al Capone joint bio to work on it, when Barb delivered me her rough draft. I also have been working on a Spillane book for next year’s centenary of his birth, completing an early ‘50s novella, A Bullet for Satisfaction, and editing his last solo novel, The Last Stand, for joint publication by Hard Case Crime. Should be a very special book – Mickey finished The Last Stand a few weeks before he passed.

Gregg Allman died at home last week at age 69.

I admit to not being an enthusiast of Southern Rock, but Allman’s talent is inescapable. I did not know him, but we intersect in an interesting way.

In 1967, as some of you know, my band the Daybreakers went to Nashville to record. My father had been a high school music teacher and one of his students became a successful country western artist – Jack Barlow. Barlow’s producer was Buddy Killen, the top music publisher in Nashville – his Tree Music was where Ms. Tree’s name came from, by the way. Killen, a very nice, sophisticated man, was also a major Nashville producer. He agreed, as a favor to Barlow, to record and produce a session with the Daybreakers. We figured we’d go home with something professional to release locally.

Killen had some top country artists on his roster, including Barlow. But he also had a major r & b artist, Joe Tex, who was released by Atlantic’s subsidiary, Dial. The Atlantic execs had told Killen he needed to round out his roster with a rock act, so he was on the lookout. After our session, he signed us to five-year contracts and, in early ‘68, “Psychedelic Siren” was released. It became a regional hit, and has since become oddly famous, covered any number of times by other groups, and included on various compilations of Sixties garage band rock. To some, it is my major claim to fame.

But back in 1967, times changed in a short time span, with our Paul Revere & the Raiders/Turtles approach dating almost immediately – we heard “Purple Haze” and “Light My Fire” on the radio, driving back to Iowa, and exchanged a collective, “Uh oh.” We learned those two songs at our next practice.

Where does Gregg Allman come in?

Well, Killen signed one other rock act – a group called, at the time, the Allman Joys.

“They were really way ahead of their times, I realize now,” Killen said, talking about the Allman Brothers, not the Daybreakers.

Our one Dial single was DIAL #45-4066. The Allman Joys’ “Spoonful” was DIAL #45-4046. A recent E-bay auction brought $89 for the Allman Joys single. But “Psychedelic Siren” went for $199.99.

Either way, Killen dropped us both.

Here’s a nice article on why the Road to Perdition film is an overlooked masterpiece (they left out that I created the story, though).

M.A.C.