On the 100th anniversary of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, Merge is reissuing the epic it inspired: Richard Buckner’s The Hill. Pre-order the album now on CD and LP in the Merge store. Also, Buckner has announced another round of Living Room dates. See a list of cities below and visit UndertowMusic.com for more information.

Each page of Spoon River Anthology reads as a final, postmortem dictum of a different deceased resident—more than 250 of them now passed—in the fictional Midwestern town of Spoon River. The epitaphs are important for Buckner because, in death, these people strip the breathing city of its dishonesty. Each one, from Reuben Pantier to Elizabeth Childers to Oscar Hummel, is no longer concerned with whispers and pointed fingers that are often the consequence of a life laid bare for all to see. They’re unleashing themselves, without fallacy or attachment.

Buckner chooses 18 of these confessions, each given a unique rendering. Backed by Calexico’s Joey Burns and John Convertino and surveyed with Buckner’s unflagging vocal desperation, Spoon River’s residents come back to life. Like so much of his career, Buckner disappeared into Spoon River and returns to us with its story.

The Hill started in 1996 in an old garage that had been converted to The Ranch Olancha Motel, a dusty place near the mouth of Death Valley, between Lone Pine and Dunmovin, California. Buckner, who was en route to Tucson, Arizona, to record what would become Devotion & Doubt, stayed a week in a room with no phone, no television, carrying his guitar, a four-track recorder, and a copy of Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. He tinkered with a few of the book’s poems, put them on a cassette, and forgot about it until an acquaintance discovered it in his truck four years later. Beset with writer’s block and looking for a distraction, Buckner would find in the tape the spur he needed.

Recorded in Edmonton, Alberta, and Tucson, The Hill converts Spoon River poems to music. You’d wonder why a poet in his own right would feel the need to sample another’s work. But Masters’ book of poetry tells much the same story Buckner is accustomed to, the kind of story that makes him distinct among storytellers.

Richard Buckner Living Room Shows
Jun 03 Framingham, MA
Jun 05 Union City, NJ
Jun 07 Asbury Park, NJ
Jun 08 Washington, DC
Jun 10 Cleveland, OH
Jun 11 Ann Arbor, MI
Jun 12 Urbana, IL
Jun 13 Madison, WI
Jun 14 Winona, MN
Jun 15 Omaha, NE
Jun 16 Lincoln, NE
Jun 17 Boulder, CO
Jun 18 Denver, CO
Jun 20 Oklahoma City, OK
Jun 21 Fort Worth, TX
Jun 22 Austin, TX
Jun 23 Houston, TX (SOLD OUT)
Jun 24 Shreveport, LA
Jun 26 Waverly, AL
Jun 28 Louisville, KY
Jun 30 Fort Wayne, IN
Jul 01 Columbus, OH
Jul 02 Arlington, VA