It’s unlikely that punk rock icon Mike Watt will be reciting the work of James Joyce at length when he plays the Brighton Music Hall with the Meat Puppets May 12, but it’s not out of the question. Watt — most famous as the bassist and vocalist of the Minutemen — is one of the more than 100 musicians, actors, poets and other artists who collaborated for “Waywords and Meansigns: Recreating Finnegans Wake,” orchestrated by Hampshire College graduate Derek Pyle.

The project is relatively straightforward: Each artist was assigned a random page of Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” to interpret. The result is a 19-hour-long wild ride, as wildly divergent interpretations of the novel clash to create strange and interesting musical and literary juxtapositions. The whole project can be heard online free at http://www.waywordsandmeansigns.com/listen/opendoor-edition.

“It really came from sort of having a foot in the Western Massachusetts music scene,” says Pyle, “I remember seeing a show, it was like a duo, and there’s this guy on the floor just meditating and eating Twinkies. Stuffing his mouth full of Twinkies. You could do anything. There was just people who were up for whatever.”



At first, Pyle expected the project to be just himself and some friends, but the more he reached out, the more interest he encountered. In addition to Watt, contributors include Greg Nahabedian of the band Derive, Van Kolodin of the Hadley band Wydyde, Boston's John Shakespear of Atlas Lab, the Boston-Irish theater troupe The Here Comes Everybody Players, Jason Russo of Mercury Rev, Seattle psych-rockers Kinski, Los Angeles poet S.A. Griffin, Railroad Earth’s Tim Carbone and Lewis & Clarke’s Lou Rogai.

Pyle says the project took about three years, and that one of the benefits of putting it together was being put in contact with such an eclectic collection of artists, many of whom he would have never encountered if he’d not done the project. He admits that, in a lot of ways, the project was more about putting together an eclectic collaboration, but says that “Finnegans Wake,” with its combination of literary history and boundary-pushing writing, was both an obvious choice to structure the project around, and a draw for many artists.

“What I found out,” says Pyle, “was that there were all these niches and subcultures — dead heads, punk rockers, out-there artists, avant-garde classical musicians, Robert Anton Wilson fans — and within their subcultures ‘Finnegans Wake’ has a lot of importance. … What I think happened was we were able to bring together a bunch of niches, people who were interesting and also supportive — that cult thing, when you’re really into something, you’re really into something. We brought together those people as both audience and contributors."

Each of the artists had their own motivations for joining the project. Watt, a longtime Joyce fan, says, “I dug the connect with Mr. Joyce and also wanna turn people on to this work of his who maybe otherwise wouldn't know about it.” For Nahabedian, “I was interested in this project because it was very unique and unexpected. It was a great opportunity to experiment and grow as an artist."

“What a genius way to utilize the internet and make the world small, like e.e. cummings' rain,” says Griffin, of the project. “What a genius way to utilize such a dynamic creative force waiting to be married to Joyce's stream of literary genius, the staggering math resulting in a fresh creative genius to the nth degree as process unlimited.”

The artists relished the freedom which they were afforded. “I was trying to create musical signposts with my contribution,” says Nahabedian. “I don't want to say what I think any chapter is about, but I want my music to hint at it.” Watt, who collaborated with actor Adam Harvey, says he “wanted to translate what I felt about it abstractly via the bass. I wanted to manifest the ‘rhythm of stuff’ that was profound on me when I read it.”

“I really do believe that this is an historic gathering of creative minds,” says Griffin, “really bringing Joyce into the 21st century for a whole new set of ears and minds without (expletive) up Joyce's work at all. Layers of genius every which way you turn. Can't miss.”

In the end, though, Pyle doesn’t really believe this project was entirely about Joyce. For him, it was about the act of discovery and realizing there’s more to discover than he had realized.

“This is probably heretical,” he says, “but in some ways I’m starting to wonder … through getting to know … so many creative people and what they’ve done, I think it made me question the model that we have as consumers of music, the model that we have of popularity, that we have the idea that you hear of the best music, most creative people, and you don’t hear of the underground. There are just as many things that you can pour yourself into that would be just as rewarding … The whole world is full of magical stuff that’s worth becoming passionate about … we forget that or something.”



Email Victor D. Infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com and follow him on Twitter @ocvictor.