M. David Hornbuckle

Tag: writing

  • Postmortem 3

    Continued recap of the PopCanon reunion show

    Photo by Clay Wells

    Here are some other highlights from the June 19 PopCanon reunion show.

    We played 25 songs, a solid hour and a half. We tried for a balance of fan favorites and songs we just like to play, so it was very similar to the setlist from the last reunion ten years ago with a few modifications.

    My guitar stopped making sounds seconds into my guitar solo on “Arthole,” and Harry and Steve from Squeaky immediately jumped onstage to triage the situation. It turned out that the volume knob on one of my pedals was turned down so low that our rocking nudged it down to zero, but I didn’t figure that out until later. In the moment, we just reconfigured the cables to bypass everything except my Rat pedal and kept going.

    We did a cover of the Squeaky song “Sticks and Twigs” with Ned playing the hook on bass. Then Adam Guthrie (guitarist from ’90s Tuscaloosa band Pain) joined us on stage for a cover of Pain’s anthem “In a Band.” Since we didn’t have the horn section with us, I covered the horn line on keytar. Adam stayed on stage for a “cover” of the song “Compartments” by my current band, David Hornbuckle and the Compartments, which Adam is also in. For that song, I handed the keytar off to Ned.

    Sam Jones jumped on stage to join us for the big chorus of “Astral Projection.” We ended the show with a Semantics medley of “Little Green Men,” “Applying for Your Job,” and “Onion Man,” followed by the Clang cover “Thank You God” and finally “I Stole a Mantra,” which included a tribute to the Whoreculture song “Gootis.”

    The show was filmed in its entirety by Jason Sadler, who is putting together a high quality DVD of the event. I hope to share videos from Jason’s footage at a later time. Look for it on the PopCanon YouTube channel.

    Footage was also captured by Clay Wells who used the ocassion to kick off filming for a documentary on 30 years of Gainesville underground music.

    Clay’s kickstarter is here. Please donate.

  • Postmortem 2

    Photo by Clay Wells

    It’s been three weeks since the PopCanon reunion show at Loosey’s, and I haven’t written anything about it because it doesn’t quite feel finished yet.

    Don and Alyson couldn’t make it, so it was an old-school guitar rock show, the way we started out. However, we did a lot of songs that we have before this NEVER performed without the horn section. Ned covered some horn parts on guitar, but mainly we just turned up the guitar noise.

    The show started with a short set by Pechoa, the latest project from our old friend Samantha Jones. It’s always a pleasure to see Sam play, and this new band did not disappoint. I have always admired Sam. She’s been in a million bands, but she never repeats herself, never looks back. She just keeps moving like a shark.

    Then our brothers in rock Squeaky took the stage, cranking out all the noise rock hits. From the first notes of “Number One for Takeoff,” I was jumping up and down like I was 30 years younger. Squeaky has a few obvious influences (Sonic Youth, Helmet, Superchunk), but they don’t sound like anybody else. Harry Monkhorst’s vocals always punch you right in the face. At the same time, there’s incredible poetry and vulnerability in the lyrics. They will always be my favorite Gainesville band, and one of my favorite bands ever.

    We took the stage with the most recent edit of the PopCanon fight song. The 2026 lyrics:

    PopCanon Fight Song 2026

    Hi there, we’re PopCanon
    We’re getting too fucking old for this
    Though we still spell our name
    P-O-P-C-A-N-O-N

    Man, we love to rock
    Sometimes, somewhere, some of us might be there
    We like to play long
    And then we hibernate
    Mike – he has low B
    Ned plays flat 5, gotta keep himself alive
    Dave likes to make noise
    Robby’s a nice guy — Robby’s gonna cry — Robby cannot fly — Robby’s probably high (Rob, *are* you high?)

    And we’re sad to say the horn section won’t play
    Alyson’s in Illinois, lawyering and being coy
    Donny’s up in Canaday, unable to get away … eh?

  • We’re So Freaking Post-Mortem

    It’s the morning before the PopCanon 2026 reunion. I’ll write more after the show tonight. The week of rehearsals and visiting with old friends has already given me many things to think about.

    The rehearsals have been fun and productive and illuminating. There are songs that one or more members of the band have played “wrong” for 30 years, and not just a little bit wrong. Like in a key that isn’t even compatible. I guess that can happen when you have six people simultaneously making screeching noises at 120 mph all the time. We just couldn’t even hear each other a lot of the time. Now with this stripped down 4-piece version, these anomalies are more glaring. But more importantly, we STILL LOVE TO ROCK, and it shows.

    Ned Davis is the funniest person on the planet, and he makes me much funnier than I would naturally be otherwise. We’re a deadly combo and always have been. Our group text threads are so baroque that often key information gets buried in a 60-car pile-up of riffing jokes. 

    Last night we watched a rough cut of the long awaited documentary about our “last show ever” 26 years ago, and there’s a lot to unpack there. I’ll save my commentary on the actual movie for another occasion, but watching us as we were then, and hearing us in rehearsal now, illuminates how unique PopCanon was and is as a band.

    When I moved to Gainesville in 1994, I wanted to start a band. I didn’t know what kind of band, but I knew I wanted it to be unusual, perhaps one might say experimental. And when I met Ned, and we started contriving the bones for what would be PopCanon, I got “unusual” in spades. What has occurred to me this week is that I haven’t changed much as a songwriter, but no band I’ve been in since then has captured that spirit of experimentation that we had. 

    The Dixieland Space Orchestra, my big horn-based band in New York, leaned into free-jazz improvisation around a skeleton of song-songs (many of which were former PC songs), but in many ways that was still less experimental than PopCanon because all the songs pretty much got the same treatment. There was little to no discussion of “wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?” or “this might be insane, but let’s try…” Same with my other New York band The M-Word – some former PC songs and some new songs, interpreted for acoustic guitar, bari sax, and trash can. I guess you could say with those bands the experimentation was in the format of the songs, not in the formation of the songs. 

    And then most of the other bands I’ve had, including the current David Hornbuckle and the Compartments, have been fairly straightforward indie rock bands. I think I still write pretty good songs, perhaps more cohesive and lyrically sophisticated songs than I wrote 30 years ago. But I don’t know that I’m pushing any boundaries, and this is honestly a kind of heavy revelation, and I don’t know how I feel about it.

  • Toot Toot

    Today was my last day tutoring at Woodlawn High School for the semester. I really only got three sessions in because the program started only this month, I was going twice a week, and one week it was canceled due to testing. Next semester I hope to be able to commit to more days. I’m only barely starting to break the ice with these kids. But today I made some noticeable progress with them.

    I have four students, a girl and three boys, all tenth graders. Even though I was told what to expect, it’s kind of shocking how poor their basic spelling and grammar skills are in general. Between the handwriting and the spelling, I can’t even read what they write a lot of the time, and I have to have them read it aloud to me (I’ve also caught them more than once “reading” something they hadn’t actually written down). But three of them seem to have a genuine interest in bettering their situations and improving their chances of one day going to college. The fourth one, one of the boys, is kind of a trouble maker and so far hasn’t written a single word. We’ll call this one Bradley. On the day of our second session, I found him hiding between stacks in the library trying to avoid me. Then he “accidentally” threw his pen in the trash along with a piece of paper (on which he had written nothing but his name), and he refused to go through the trash can and retrieve it.

    Sigh.

    I’m trying to get them to focus on a simple expository essay about how to do a task. One boy is writing about how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Another is writing about how to cook an egg. The girl is writing about cleaning her room. I’m trying to get them to add more details each week, to describe even the most obvious steps in the process, explain the importance of the task. Have an introduction and a conclusion.

    Bradley spends each session either bothering the girl sitting next to him (I will not have them sitting next to each other next semester) and claiming he can’t think of anything he knows how to do.

    Me: You don’t have to do any chores at home?

    Bradley: No, I got people to do that.

    Me: Do you know how to cook anything, make anything, fix anything?

    Bradley: No.

    Me: Is there a video game you are good at?

    Bradley: I don’t play games.

    Me: Do you dress yourself everyday?

    Bradley: My mama does that for me.

    Me: Now I know you’re just being goofy. Think of something.

    I tried to get them to ask and answer questions like why you would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (because your mom isn’t home, the ingredients are in the house, it’s easy to do, and you are hungry). And the steps involved are more than just (1) get the bread (2) get the peanut butter and jelly (3) eat the sandwich. You have to open the peanut butter, spread it on the bread with a knife, etc. I said to explain it as if you are explaining it to someone from outer space who has no idea why or how this is done.

    It’s hard to get them to recognize these concepts, but today I outlined it all on a dry erase board. I really felt like a teacher for the first time, and they all copied down what I wrote, even Bradley.

    Technically, I should go there again on Thursday, but the kids already told me not to bother. All their classes are having end of the semester parties. They will be there, but they won’t be there. So I said fine, I’ll see them all in January.

    Despite the difficulties, this feels very much like the sort of thing I’m meant to be doing right now. I’ll get more involved in the program in 2011.

  • On Sale!

    Get it while it’s hot. I don’t know how long these sales will last, but I see this morning that my novel Zen, Mississippi is 28% off at Amazon and 10% off on Barnes & Noble’s website. In case you are wondering, these low prices do not affect my royalties. The discount comes from the bookseller’s cut. So if you haven’t bought your copy already and were planning to, there’s no better time than right now to do so.

    If you prefer to buy the book from your local bookstore, they should be able to order it for you. It will help if they have the ISBN number, which is 0615343112.

  • Zen, Mississippi is Now on Amazon

    My new novel finally showed up on Amazon this morning.

    http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mississippi-M-David-Hornbuckle/dp/0615343112/

    This means it should be available for general distribution now, so you should be able to walk into any bookstore in the world and ask them to order it. Please do so.

    Also, if you have already read the book, please please please post a review on Amazon. I would very much appreciate it and will buy you a drink next time I see you in return.

    So it’s officially a book now. Woohoo!

  • Zen, Mississippi is Available for Pre-Sale on Lulu.com

    You can buy Zen, Mississippi right now on lulu.com and have a copy in a week or so.

    Buy it here: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/zen-mississippi/8076267

    I’m calling this a “pre-sale” because it will be another 6-8 weeks before it will be available for general distribution. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll find it on the shelf in your local bookstore, though I’ll do what I can. What it DOES mean is that you will be able to go in your local bookstore and ask them to order it, and they should be able to easily get it for you. It will also be listed on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com and possibly other websites where books are sold.

    Even then, I make a couple of dollars more if you buy it directly from lulu.com, but I’m not concerned about how much money I make. I’m concerned about the easiest way to get this book in peoples’ hands, and if ordering it from Amazon is what’s easiest for you, then that is just fine with me.

  • Save the Date: Book Release Party May 13 at Lolita Bar

    I’m planning to have a book release party at Lolita Bar (266 Broome Street) on May 13 at 7pm.

    I will read a little from the book, play a little music, and have some friends play a little music. Of course, copies of my book(s) will be available for sale and signing. But mostly I just want to have a party and hang out.

    Lolita Bar has happy hour specials until 8, so get there early. I’ll post more information about this event as the date gets closer.

  • The Cover

    The cover of Zen, Mississippi, as well as all the interior design, was done by the multi-talented Marie Mundaca. She also designed my first book, as well as some books by famous people like David Foster Wallace.

  • New Book Will Be Out Soon

    My new book, a novel titled Zen, Mississippi, should be on sale on or around May 15. Mark your calendars, if you’re the sort of person who marks a calendar when a book comes out. You will be able to pre-order copies from lulu.com even sooner than that, probably within a week or two from now. I’ll keep you posted, of course.

    This is my first full-length novel, one that I’ve been working on for, oh, about 20 years now, off and on. I hope that you will buy it, read it, and enjoy it.

    Summary:

    Patrick Alexander thinks he’s going crazy. At age 30, he’s frustrated with his life in the small Mississippi town where he grew up, stifled by his unhappy marriage and his soul-crushing pizza-delivery job. But when he drinks, his world becomes populated with the hallucinatory characters he invented as a child, including a Martian and a talking monkey. In the midst of an existential crisis, Patrick leaves his wife and the only home he’s ever known to embark on a spiritual quest where he will find new loves, face his long-missing father, and confront the demigods of his personal mythology.