motel void

Reagan M. Sova is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and author of two books, most notably the 80,000-word epic narrative poem, Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light (First to Knock, 2022).

MOTEL VOID: In your bio it reads: “In early adulthood, he developed an idiosyncratic gambling method, employed to great effect in the casinos of northern Michigan. These bets financed a flight to Paris, where at 20, he first discovered the power of literature.” Sorry for asking, but is this for real? ))

REAGAN M. SOVA: Oh yes, the real deal, true as my birth. I was relying heavily upon “the Martingale system,” a French betting strategy that will burn you in the end, but I added some customized elements, mystical modifications that scorched a hot streak. At 20, I had scarcely left my home state of Michigan, so I wanted to go somewhere. My older sister who had been on a school trip to Paris suggested the French capital, and I went with my guitar and a beat-up family copy of stories by Guy de Maupassant. Until then, books had been few in my life. I did not learn to read until I was about 10. But with four friends I made, we lit up some candles and read a Maupassant short story over the author’s resting place in the Montparnasse graveyard. What I felt that night, I haven’t been the same since.

MOTEL VOID: Your debut novel, Tiger Island, received praise from notable figures in the music industry (Silver Jews, Pavement). How did this recognition impact your writing career and your confidence as an author?

REAGAN M. SOVA: I can’t overstate how kind and generous David Berman (Silver Jews) and Bob Nastanovich (Silver Jews, Pavement) have been to me through the years. Their encouragement has been to me more significant than literary awards, mainstream recognition. With Bob’s blurb upon my book, and following David’s poetry advice, it made me feel like I could attempt something on the level of Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light, an 80,000-word, globe-spanning incantatory epic.

MOTEL VOID: Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light has been well received as well. What inspired you to write such a lengthy and ambitious piece, and what themes do you explore in it?

REAGAN M. SOVA: As the first lockdown was announced, I set off upon a quest to honor the dead, the two poets whose work I have seen in my dreams, David Berman and Frank Stanford. A couple months prior to Covid, I got called out of the crowd randomly by some Russian clowns to do a bit part in the circus in Brussels, but I hammed it with the hoola hoops and kind of ended up out-clowning the clowns. That’s when I knew this tale would involve circus life, then through some signs I picked up on, the poem encompasses the birth of cinema, the horrors of World War I, labor struggles, Romani mysticism, Jewish lore, much more.

For themes, this poem conjures our relationship to death and the dead, how some people and animals outlive their deaths, dwelling across “the natural bridge,” (the title of a beloved Silver Jews album, a phrase which appears in my book in what I hope are interesting ways), how the dead speak to us in dreams, signs, while in trances, while doing regular things; how honoring the dead brings meaning to the living. When I read about the only dead man ever to win a horse race, and found that his name was Frank, that lit the spark, and I was punching keys upon the typewriter like hooves galloping.

MOTEL VOID: You’ve just released your first song from your upcoming album ‘Shagbark after Dark’. What was the writing and recording process behind this record?

REAGAN M. SOVA: Three of the album’s songs also appear upon the pages of Wildcat, and the rest I wrote over the past two years, the most recent one being a week before recording the album, “For the No Eyed Tiger and Her Whiskers of Magic.” Kind of picking up from the themes of Wildcat Dreams, this song honors my eyeless cat Babou who passed away this past spring. She was 20, had lived a good life, but she was my best friend, flat out. She inspired a central character in Wildcat, and the whole of Shagbark is dedicated to her, and this is a great honor for me to be bonded to this legendary beast for all time.

The recording process was done the analogue way, tape to tape, with a bevy of talented musicians kind enough to contribute – Dog, Junglefish, Mike Murray, Tucker Zimmerman, and Rafael Valles Hilario of Tuff Guac. Rafael recorded, mixed, mastered, produced Shagbark at Tooth Mountain in Antwerp, Belgium, all made possible with the monumentally appreciated support of a man named Elmore, who runs the obscure Brooklyn, NY label, Fleet Foragers.

MOTEL VOID: In August you’re playing 8 shows in support of your new album. Where will you play and will there be any special guests with you?

REAGAN M. SOVA: I’ll be performing at seven events across my home state of Michigan and one in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I would invite anyone in those environs to check out the dates here. This Mitten State tour is a collaboration with my good friend and fellow poet-musician Ronnie Ferguson, who will be reading and performing in support of his fantastic, moving new book of poetry, When I Was a Fire. We’ll be joined at each stop by majorly talented special guests. I’m very much looking forward to it.

MOTEL VOID: Who and what is your biggest inspiration at the moment?

REAGAN M. SOVA: Always Frank, David. Also at the moment, books by the historian Carlo Ginzburg, and the teachings of the Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. I just visited his grave last week, pretty close to JFK airport. I wrote a letter, read it over his resting place, and tore it up over the stones. That’s what people do there. A man was singing a Hebrew incantation in an undertone, the sun was just right. It was a powerful experience.

MOTEL VOID: …and one bonus question, what is your favorite track by Silver Jews/Purple Mountains?

REAGAN M. SOVA: I would have to say, “Wild Kindness,” and not just because that’s the song where he says, “motel void.” (Great name, by the way.) I have loved that song for many, many years, and when I was in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris once, I was examining, meditating upon Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe by Manet, which has the naked woman upon the picnic blanket, the nude lady swimmer. In the big headphones over my ears, right then, Berman crooned, “Oil paintings of X-rated picnics…”

Reagan’s online HQ is on Substack.

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