Parishioners
Parishioners, my first short story collection, chronicles the lives of a dozen citizens living in the fictional town of Nazareth, Indiana, all of whom are parishioners at the great Our Lady of the Plains parish.
Opening with the town priest to set the stage, Parishioners then examines the lives of twelve different parishioners, each coming from different vocational and social backgrounds. There is a mechanic, the town baker, the mayor, the librarian, the HVAC man, the florist, and a holy housewife, just to name a few. It is my hope through such an examination to show both the universality of holiness (along with the universal call to holiness), as well as the unique manifestations of sanctity as expressed through specific individuals living particular vocations. Further, I wished to explore how God’s extraordinary graces could operate in the lives of ordinary and imperfect people.
Operating as a short story cycle, each story, although it could be read in isolation and still be complete in itself, is related to the others through a shared setting. Many characters will also cross-over into other stories, as Nazareth is a small town, and all the parishioners know each other.
Lastly, this collection operates as a response and countertext to James Joyce’s famous Dubliners. In Dubliners which is also a short story cycle with a shared setting, Joyce explored the themes of human paralysis, powerlessness, and incompetence as witnessed in the modern Irish metropolis. Joyce, who was an ex-Catholic, also explored some of these themes in relationship to the Catholic characters populating the pages of Dubliners. And although a criticism of churchmen within literature can serve a good purpose in some instances, my desire through Parishioners was to look at a city with a large Catholic population and show what the other end of the spectrum can look like. Instead of characters who are living in situations of powerlessness from which they cannot recover, my stories showcase characters whose lives are marred by powerlessness, but who are renewed and changed by God’s grace, something which seemed to be utterly lacking in Joyce’s Dubliners. Furthermore, in each of Joyce’s stories, the characters undergo a kind of ‘epiphany’ in which they wake up to the ugly reality of their situation; yet this realization produces no positive change within the characters. Think of these epiphanies as ‘anti-conversions’: insights based on hopelessness that produce no positive moral change. In responding to Joyce’s use of the epiphany, I have taken the concept back, and placed it within a Catholic setting (which, by the way, is where Joyce took the idea from: the Feast of the Epiphany) by having characters whose paralysis is solved by hearing God’s word as preached through a parish homily.
However, for those who have not read Joyce and do not plan on it, there is nothing to fear here. This collection stands on its own two feet and can be read with ease and understanding without any knowledge of outside sources. And if the concepts introduced here sound a little too high or contrived for you, I assure you, the characters who live in Nazareth, Indiana will not be. Happy reading!
This EP is set to release with my upcoming book “Parishioners”, a short story collection coming out in 2027. Most specifically, it is linked to the story “Nazareth Blues”, which features a character named Xavier Monasses who is a blues guitarist, among other things. On this EP, Xavier plays some of his ‘original tunes’.
Learn More About Kitchen Table Recordings
Xavier Monasses: The Kitchen Table Recordings is the companion EP to my short story collection Parishioners set to be released in 2027; most specifically it is drawn from the story “Nazareth Blues”. It features the music of the beloved character Xavier Monasses, the man who started the annual Blues and Barbeque Festival and Fundraiser in Nazareth, Indiana.
Side A (Tracks 1-4) are all originals written and performed by Xavier Monasses, three of which were played at his famous first concert at the Nazareth Blues and Barbeque Festival, which is chronicled in the story “Nazareth Blues”. “Cheerwine Float” was written after this performance, having tasting his first one at that selfsame festival.
Side B (Track 5) consists of only one tune: “The Buttered Coffee Blues”. When he was getting on in age, and he had to pass on the baton to a new group of Nazareth musicians to take over the Blues and Barbeque Festival act, Xavier begin to mentor the new, local bluegrass band The Alms Pickers as his successors, even though they were of a different musical genre. For the last three years of his life, he played some with the boys as he matured in age and as they eventually took over. But from hearing and practicing with them, something of their style wore off on him, and he wrote and recorded “The Buttered Coffee Blues” with Jason Pittman of The Alms Pickers. Of course, much earlier in his life, Xavier had also learned quite few T-Bone Walker licks (not to mention some BB licks), which is where his flatpicking skills came from. “The Buttered Coffee Boogie” was played as a guest encore at the Nazareth Blues and Barbeque Festival during Xavier’s last year headlining the festival, with Jason playing rhythm and Xaiver playing lead. The recording found on this tape was a rehearsal that Jason recorded in Xaiver’s kitchen in preparation for Xavier’s final show, before the Alms Pickers officially took over as the house band of the festival the next year.
As for the rest of this album, it was recorded in the last year of his life, at his kitchen table with simple equipment lent to him by Jason Pittman who wished to preserve his original tunes. Xavier could amazingly play in top form up until three months before his death.
Strangely, all of Xavier’s original tunes were written and played in standard tuning (in the Delta Blues fingerstyle idiom), even though his specialty was in the open tuning-style of Skip James. (However, rumor has it that the reason for this is that Mr. Jolley never learned the Bentonia style himself, and had to write Mr. Monasses tunes in standard tuning.)
Tracks:
Side A:
1) “Goin’ Home to Indiana”
2) “Cheerwine Float”
3) “Cross-Shaped, Wooden Box Blues”
4) “Blues For Thea Bowman”
Side B:
5) “The Buttered Coffee Boogie”
*All songs on Xavier Monasses: The Kitchen Table Recordings were written and performed by F.G. Jolley Jr. Songs 1-4 are solo acoustic performances. On track 5, both the rhythm and lead parts were also performed by F.G. Jolley Jr. This album was recorded and mixed by Leonard Rogers, produced by David Coffey, and mastered by Grigory Reshunov. Stylistic influences range from Delta and Country Blues to Jump Blues and other early electric blues guitar styles, although played acoustically here.