In celebration of Charlie Hailey’s new release, The Porch: Meditations on the Edge of Nature, we have something special to start off the weekend.

To help us tune into the atmosphere of his book, Hailey made a playlist that will musically transport you to his porch on Florida’s Homosassa River on a hazy, lazy summer’s day. Listen below or on Spotify.

Come with us for a moment out onto the porch and enter another world without leaving home. . . .

He also shared his liner notes for ‘The Porch Playlist’:

1. Alabama Shakes, “Sound & Color.” Mood and patina. Brittany Howard has collaborated with fellow musicians writing and singing on the porch.
2. Roscoe Holcomb, “Boat’s Up the River,” The High Lonesome Sound. I hear the river’s swirl and flow in Holcomb’s voice and banjo.
3. Joy Williams, “Front Porch.” Williams writes of coming home and feeling welcome—a retreat that is also a beginning.
4. John Prine, “Knockin’ on Your Screen Door.” From Williams’ front porch to the back porch with John Prine and the images and stories he conjures. In “Summer’s End,“ he also sang: “You never know what you’re feeling until you watch the shadows cross the ceiling.”
5. Jean Roché and Jean Thévenet with Frémeaux and Associés, “Marecages d’Irian Jaya.” Field recordings from a marsh on the other side of the world remind me of the sounds that drift through the screens here on the cabin porch.
6. Albert Marquès, “Bulería Brooklyniana.” Like so many artists during the pandemic, Marquès stepped out on his Brooklyn porch, where he played music with Roy Nathanson.
7. . Cage wrote about “listening to nature,” and his inspiration included Charles Ives and a passage Ives wrote about “listening to your own symphony” from your backyard. Cage remembered it as listening from a porch.
8. Guy Clark, “L.A. Freeway,” Old No. 1. This song plays out in Al Clayton’s 1972 photograph of Guy with his wife Susannah, Townes Van Zandt, and Daniel Antopolsky on an East Nashville porch.
9. John Jackson, “Midnight Hour Blues.” Jackson was known for his Piedmont style of blues; his compilation album is titled Front Porch Blues.
10. Vivaldi, “Violin Concerto in E Major, La Primavera.” Writing on the porch, I listened to the Four Seasons over and over. I love how it begins with Spring.
11. Robert Earl Keen with Lyle Lovett, “This Old Porch.” The story of this song centers on a porch where Keen and Lovett first met and started playing. “This old porch is like…”

The Porch is out now! Available from our website, your favorite indie bookstore, or wherever books are sold.