For Alabama musician and poet Lee Bains, these stories are worth telling.
In his new poetry collection, Work Lunch, Bains explores the South through the food people eat, the work they do, and the traditions they pass from one generation to the next. On Friday, October 16, he will bring those stories to The Fuzzy Needle in Wilmington for an evening of poetry, music, and conversation moderated by author and journalist John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Sullivan says Bains is difficult to categorize.
“He's a hybrid artist in the sense that he's one of those rare people who are as good at the music as they are at the poetry,” Sullivan said. “I don't think there are too many people like him in that regard.”
He compares Bains to musicians and writers such as David Berman of the Silver Jews and John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. But what especially interests Sullivan is how Bains finds meaning in the smallest details of Southern life.
The history behind what's on the plate
Southern food is often celebrated for its flavors and comforting family traditions. Bains looks beyond the meal itself, asking where ingredients came from, who prepared them, and what circumstances shaped the recipes.
In Work Lunch, a meal eaten on a job site can become a story about working-class life. A family recipe can open a window into generations of history. Even fast food can reveal something about the culture surrounding it.
“But you also find a lot, you learn a lot about how Southern food brings people together and unites different cultures,” Sullivan said.
He says Bains often begins with a particular dish before tracing its ingredients, cooking methods and social history. Family is also central to the collection, including memories of Bains' grandmother teaching him to garden and cook.
Those stories are inseparable from hardship. For generations, families with limited resources found ways to stretch ingredients and feed their households.
“A lot of times a particular meal, a particular dish, you realize, okay, this evolved because, you know, it was developed by people who were experiencing real poverty,” Sullivan said.
Reading Bains' poems also sent Sullivan back to his own childhood in central Kentucky, where holiday tables featured spoon bread, corn pudding, dressing balls, and an especially salty country ham his family called “old ham.” Foods he once took for granted now seem like clues to a larger story.
“I've always thought it would be fun to go back, you know, to do a road trip in Kentucky and maybe take my mother with me and really get into the history of these foods and what their origin stories are,” Sullivan said.
Bains' book, he says, inspired him to consider making that trip.
The people behind the work
Labor is just as important as food in Bains' writing. Sullivan says Bains has spent years working in construction, contracting and home repair, and his poems draw on those experiences rather than observing them from a distance.
“For Lee, I think they're very, they're deeply autobiographical in that sense,” Sullivan said.
The collection follows relationships formed on job sites, conversations between coworkers and the different cultural traditions workers bring with them. A lunch shared on the job can expose differences in background, but it can also create common ground.
Sullivan sees the same attention to social history in Bains' songs. His music has been described as “Southern gospel punk,” an unlikely-sounding combination of intensity, religious imagery and narrative songwriting.
“There's definitely, you know, a punk aspect to it just stylistically,” Sullivan said.
He also points to author Flannery O'Connor's description of the South as “Christ haunted,” a phrase he believes captures something about the religious undercurrents in Bains' work. Yet the music's greatest strength, he says, is its ability to hold a listener's attention through story.
“It's also just very, very literate. There's a lot of storytelling in the songs,” Sullivan said.
During Friday's conversation, Sullivan hopes to explore how Bains moves between poems and lyrics, whether one form influences the other, and how his family history shapes both.
A different kind of literary evening
Sullivan has attended and moderated events at The Fuzzy Needle before. He says its combination of live music, readings and conversation feels different from a formal author appearance.
“There's something special happening in that space and people in Wilmington who are interested in the arts and haven't experienced it yet should really give it a shot,” Sullivan said.
The evening will let audiences hear Bains discuss his book, read his poetry and perform music, making the relationship between the two art forms something they can experience rather than simply hear described.
Sullivan says the room is large enough to feel lively but intimate enough to keep attention on the performers. Some gatherings have drawn crowds of 60 or 70 people, he recalled, and still felt personal.
“People talk about them afterward like, wow, something happened in that room,” he said.
As moderator, Sullivan plans to prepare thoroughly, then set much of that preparation aside so the discussion can unfold naturally.
“I try to put myself in the same position or situation that the audience is in so that I just ask the kind of natural questions that any person would want to know about the artist,” he said.
Wilmington's literary connections
The event also offers a link to the city's broader literary community. Work Lunch was published by Hub City Press, an independent publisher Sullivan says has ties to Wilmington and the University of North Carolina Wilmington's creative writing program. Publisher Meg Reid is an alum of both UNCW’s publishing program and Lookout Books, a teaching press run under the auspices of the university.
He believes the connections between people who have spent time in Wilmington and the independent publishing world deserve more recognition.
“So it's a really cool Wilmington story that we ought to be proud of and support and I think very few people know about it,” Sullivan said.
For Sullivan, the appeal of Bains' work is not simply nostalgia for Southern traditions. The poems examine the past while speaking to the present, with observations about work, identity and the way people live together.
“There's so much social observation and social critique in it and his language is really beautiful,” he said.
From family kitchens to construction sites, Bains finds stories in places that are easy to overlook. Friday's gathering will bring those stories off the page and into a room where poetry, music and conversation can meet.
The Fuzzy Review featuring Lee Bains takes place Friday, October 16, at The Fuzzy Needle in Wilmington. Tickets and more information are available at thefuzzyneedle.com.
Arts reporting for WHQR is made possible in part by a grant from the Arts Council of Wilmington and The Endowment.
