We thought it would be fun to get you guys involved in making a simple slideshow-style video for Twenty Thousand Roads. All we need is a photo of your favourite road – could be the one you live on, a stretch of black top you just really like, anything really – and we’ll edit them all together into a montage of vanishing points from (hopefully) all corners of the world. Don’t worry if you’re not much of a photographer; the one above (of Pontcanna Fields in Cardiff) was taken on a smartphone and spruced up in Instagram with the Lo-fi filter. Hipstamatic is also pretty good – using one of these photo-sharing apps will help give a uniformity of tone and aspect ratio to the final piece.

When you’ve taken your photo – ideally a symmetrical ‘vanishing point’-style one like the Pontcanna Fields snap above (but please don’t get run over, will you?) – either post it to the Missing Parsons Facebook page by clicking Photo above the ‘Write something …’ box, or email it to us using the Contact Us link in the sidebar over there. Tell us who you are and where you took the photo. Send several if you like – who knows, we might even get the full complement of 20,000! – and we’ll do the rest. Thanks for getting involved, and please share this post with your photo-blogging friends! MPx

Also, with the 14th Annual Gram Parsons Guitar Pull coming up in Waycross, GA on Sept 23rd, it’s time once again to invite all you lovely folks down to say hello. Jay Farrar is headlining a fabulous line-up of acts, including our favorites Honey Blue and Abby Owens. There’s no band performance from us this year, but Chris will be joining Nate Nash and Marc Andress from Honey Blue for some Louvin Brothers action during the tribute set for Charlie Louvin, who passed this year. We’ll post a firm time when we have one.

And if you see anyone wearing a Missing Parsons t-shirt, please stop and say hi – we love to meet you lovely people in person when we can! Or drop us a line by email or on Facebook, Twitter etc. – the links are all over there in the sidebar to the right – and let us know if you’re planning on coming down.

MPx

Normal service will resume next post.

MPx

U2 broke America by touring relentlessly. We plan to do it with a little help from our friends.

Here at Missing Parsons HQ we receive a lot of mail from readers in the US who have enjoyed Live Fast, Die Young. It literally warms our cockles to know that anyone has taken pleasure in reading our words, but it’s doubly pleasing to get feedback from American readers, as we know they’ve had to go that extra mile – maybe even pay a few extra dollars – in order to get hold of their copy. Three-quarters of our website traffic, Facebook friends and Twitter followers come from the US, and yet to date it’s not possible, sadly, for them to walk into Barnes & Noble and pick up a copy of the book.

So it’s time, this 4th of July weekend, to raise our game in the US of Stateside, to make Mr. Barnes and Mr. Noble sit up and take NOTICE, goddamnit! We are inviting our American friends to join a CRACK TEAM of advocates who, in return for a *FREE* Missing Parsons t-shirt (pay postage and packing only), will help us break America by sharing our content with their Facebook friends, Twitter followers and anyone else who will listen. All we ask is that each time we post a new blog, video or self-congratulatory news item on Facebook or Twitter, you Share or Re-tweet it to your friends. In return you get a Missing Parsons t-shirt (one per person) and entry into an exclusive club: MISSING PARSONS TEAM AMERICA. We’re thinking about asking this team of superusers to contribute in other ways too, like suggesting cool stuff to post on Facebook, writing guest blogs etc. Go on, it’ll be fun.

Who’s in? OK then, just visit the Missing Parsons shop, select your size, and complete your ‘purchase’ via Paypal by clicking ‘Buy Now’. (It’s also helpful if you can give a thumbs up to this posting on Facebook if you use it, so we know who’s on the team.) While stocks last, the cost of the t-shirt is ZERO DOLLARS. When we run out of t-shirts, the deal is up. PayPal is a completely safe way to order goods online – if your order cannot be fulfilled, you won’t be charged a penny. (And if your shipping address is outside the US, sadly we can’t send out to you either, so your order will be ignored.)

Thanks for your Parsonage – and Happy Independence Day America!

MPx

Postscript: apparently Paypal won’t let us sell stuff for zero dollars. So we’re charging a penny and taking a penny off the postage. That’s FREE!

After last night’s phenomenal Lyle Lovett show at the Charleston Performing Arts Center, and with a new adventure Down Under just days away, Chris finds himself lacing up an old and familiar pair of shoes. Today felt like the right time to shuffle the deck and bring this Townes & Lyle mini blog back to the top of the pack.

Today is a Townes day. The flat is rented, tickets bought. Soon I’ll be heading to Australia for whatever rock and roll misadventure might present itself Down Under. There just remains the now customary and symbolic purchase of a new pair of Converse to mark the occasion. Time, then, to be tyin’ on my flyin’ shoes.

Music and travel are inextricably linked in my brain, and nothing captures the space in between – the inescapable urge to push on, musically and physically – than Townes Van Zandt’s Flyin’ Shoes. If you haven’t heard Lyle Lovett’s version of this song before, I recommend headphones, a quiet corner and an economy-size box of Kleenex as you do:

Being the discerning music lover that you are, I’m sure you and Townes are already well acquainted. But in the tragic and unlikely event you’ve never come across his music before, start with the stunning documentary Be Here To Love Me (which readers in America can watch on Hulu), then pop yourself out to a record store, buy some music and make up for lost time by not leaving the house for three weeks while you get to know each other.

Steve Earle once said that “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that”. Apart from the bit about cowboy boots, I couldn’t have put it better myself. So it’s a brave a rare talent that can pull off a cover which does justice to and – dare I say – improves upon the Townes original. Ignoring for a second our own forays into the TVZ oeuvre, I’ll say now that Lyle Lovett is probably the only one who can pull it off.

Some of you will have seen yesterday’s Facebook post asking friends of Missing Parsons to vote for a charity called CALM, in a poll to win the proceeds of the Cage Against The Machine campaign this Christmas. Some of you – especially friends in America – might need a little extra information on both. We’ll to make this as short and painless as possible, in the hope that you’ll do one *tiny* thing for CALM at the end of it.

First, some background. In the UK, the coveted ‘Christmas number one’ – that is, the pop single which sits proudly atop the hit parade on Christmas Day – is a very big deal. We Brits get tremendously – you might even say uncharacteristically – excited about pop songs with festive lyrics concerning mistletoe, reindeers or famine in Africa, especially if they have jingle bells jingling all the way through. When the Christmas chart is announced on the Sunday before Santa arrives, we settle in by the radio with a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine, and wait with baited breath to find out what this year’s number-one-of-number-ones will be. We don’t even care if it’s Fairytale of New York every year – it’s just part of what makes Christmas Christmas.

Or rather it used to be, until one day a few sorry years ago when Christmas was taken away from us, apparently forever, by an evil dictator by the name of Simon Cowell (you might have heard of him). Simon stole Christmas and refused to give it back. He was laughing while he did it. Yes, LAUGHING.

Every year, as the Machiavellian mastermind behind The X Factor and Pop Idol (yes, I’m afraid it’s us – actually no, it’s Simon – you have to blame for American Idol), he releases a single by the winner of his tawdry little talent show and, entranced by his evil eye and shiny teeth, the British public goes out in droves to buy it. No mistletoe, no reindeers, nothing.

Then last year we fought back. A dedicated band of refuseniks stood up and said: ‘Fuck you Simon, we won’t do what you tell us‘. With the help of a well coordinated Facebook campaign, these brave insurgents pushed Rage Against The Machine‘s Killing In The Name to the Christmas number one slot, halting X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s The Climb just short of the summit. No jingle bells admittedly, just the clanging chimes of doom for the Idol monopoly. This year’s campaign – Cage Against The Machine – aims once more to deliver a decisive and festive fist to that smug face of his, with the help of John Cage’s silent masterpiece 4.33.

Now for the serious bit. CALM, a charity very close to our hearts (you’ll see their website printed in the back of the book), stands for the Campaign Against Living Miserably. It is a unique organisation aimed at reducing the suicide rate among young men, created in response to the disturbing and little known statistic – reflected around the world – that if you are male and aged 15 to 35, you are more likely to die by taking your own life than by any other means. That’s right, if you’re young and male you are more likely to die from suicide than from a road accident, drugs, disease, violent crime, anything. Take a moment for that fact to detonate in your brain, and while you do, watch this powerful poem by Mat Lloyd which says everything about why this problem exists:

Men don’t talk about their problems. They should. CALM helps them to do this. So here’s what we’re asking you to do. CALM is one of five charities in the running to receive the proceeds from this year’s Christmas number one campaign. Please, please, please would you go to the Cage Against The Machine site, select CALM on the left-hand side and then click ‘vote’. That’s it. (All five charities are doing excellent work, we just happen to know because we work with them that CALM are fine people working for next to nothing with next to no funding, tackling a hugely important but little known issue. Hope you agree.)

One last thing. If you think this is something worth shouting about, please click Like or Tweet (or both) underneath this post to share it with your friends. Many thanks.

Chris & Joe
Missing Parsons

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Not so with the newly opened Missing Parsons shop! There ARE no shops. Okay there are no Segways either, and it’s really just online retail, but we’d love you to pop in and browse ALL THREE of our products.

That’s right. No more must you find yourself confused and immobile in the aisles, incapacitated by the bewildering array of options when all you want is to sweeten your coffee. In the Missing Parsons shop it’s just T-SHIRT, BOOK, CD. That’s it. What could be simpler?

Put another way, we’ve made some excellent loot available in the US especially for our esteemed American friends. (Specifically it’s about making the book available at an affordable price in the US – if you’re shopping from the UK it’s still cheaper to buy from Amazon.) We would love for you to stop in and have a browse. We use Paypal to process your transactions – it’s completely secure and trusted by squillions around the world to buy stuff online.

Thanks!

Missing Parsons

After two days in the studio laying down a version of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘If I Needed You’ (below), Chris and Simon were sitting in the dining room of Simon’s house reviewing their hard work and trying figure out what was missing from the recording. Spying a large piece of poster board behind the radiator (normally used to display Mrs. Simon’s wonderful jewelry), it dawned on us that the missing link was a wobbling board. Can YOU wobble a board? If so – join us!

Some huge thank you’s are due. The first and most important goes to the always incomparable Courtney ‘Annie Rich’ Connor (whom readers of Live Fast, Die Young have met) for making the gig happen in the first place. That there Ms. Rich is an amazing lady and we’d be nowhere without her. The second thank you goes to our stylist, web designer and friend Thomas Eagle for the wonderful shirt designs. We absolutely LOVE them. What do you think?

Leave us a message here in the comments box below or, if Facebook is your preferred social medium, pop by and say hello. Join the team if you haven’t already – it’s the easiest way of staying in touch with you all and we’d love to have you along.