Skin & Bones is the first-ever collection of lyrics by songwriter /
artist Jeff Mellin. Named for a lyric from his "tour de force"* album
Jeff Mellin Saves the World (Stereorrific, 1999), the book covers songs
from Mellin's bare-bones coffeehouse days to his later, more fleshed-out
power-pop material. "While it's often difficult to gauge the worth of
pop lyrics printed on the page without musical accompaniment, it's
remarkable how well Skin and Bones reads, as lyrics in the poetic
sense," says critic and poet Garrett Caples. "Jeff's lyrics considered
as poetry at their best evoke the only-just stylistically-belated, yet
entirely individual and intense poems of Weldon Kees; even at their
least effective, they have the readable lightness of Edward Arlington
Robinson, and everyone knows Paul Simon made 'Richard Corey' a better
song than it ever was a poem, which illustrates my point nicely." Also
features photographs by the award-winning photographer John Soares.