Frank Hudson
frankhudson.bsky.social
Frank Hudson
@frankhudson.bsky.social
Founder of the Parlando Project — “Where Music and Words Meet.” Composes, records, researches, writes, & those things feedback into each other.
Mostly writers writing about typefaces in this thread. The long-running Parlando Project only has one piece about typography—this one with a hidden sadness & an indulgent guitar solo: frankhudson.org/2017/06/04/f...
December 10, 2025 at 4:19 PM
#mspcyclecast Yup, snow. Sidestreets are a mess. Took a main snow emergency street for most of my ride to breakfast this morning. Had to “portage” over some intersections with irregular deep snow ruts. The one bikeway i passed wasn’t plowed yet. Still got there.
December 10, 2025 at 2:29 PM
#MusicSky #poetry What’d I do with some studio space time yesterday? Worked out some music & a performance of a song I made from a poem written by my great-great grandma Susan Partain about falling in love during the American Civil War.
December 9, 2025 at 1:20 PM
#music #poetry Just listened to the 1st episode of this new podcast “Really, The Doors.” The commonly used format here: “a couple of folks talking informally” cloys some for me—but likely better here that it’s majority female. Worthwhile insights in it, like this conversation at the end:
December 8, 2025 at 4:51 PM
The week Kurt Vonnegut died the LYL Band did a little tribute to him by performing portions from his novels, including this one: frankhudson.org/2021/11/10/t...
December 8, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Reposted by Frank Hudson
Some days nothing works better to soothe 21st century pains than music that’s a thousand years old. Haunting, strange, utterly remote - and yet because of that sounding at times hypermodern - the music from the 11th century manuscripts of the Winchester Troper is presented beautifully on this album👇
Alleluia (Versets: Pascha nostrum - Epulemur)
YouTube video by Discantus - Topic
m.youtube.com
December 6, 2025 at 7:24 PM
#PoemsAbout #Imps @alanparrywriter.co.uk #music #poetry
When I saw this week's subject I thought of this poem by Leigh Hunt (something of the Zelig/Forrest Gump of the English Romantic movement). I wrote music for the poem & recorded a performance of it here: frankhudson.org/2025/10/26/r...
December 5, 2025 at 1:32 PM
A series of cars driving in a line on 33rd street in south Minneapolis with horns honking. Immigration raid?
December 4, 2025 at 9:18 PM
The name of the poetic form the sonnet means “little song.” This long in the cask sonnet set in late autumn has been made into just that. frankhudson.org/2025/12/03/b...
Before the Snow
Long time readers know that the Parlando Project is largely about our encounters with other people’s words – usually their literary poetry. Poetry, even impersonal or hermetic poetry, is a rich way…
frankhudson.org
December 4, 2025 at 12:16 PM
I love seeing folks visiting older examples of the more than 850 recordings combining literary poetry & original music by the Parlando Project. Early 20th c. Chicago poet Fenton Johnson is a poet I've loved exploring/performing, and today I see a couple dozen are hitting this harrowing piece:
Fenton Johnson’s “Tired” for National Poetry Month
As we continue into the last week of National Poetry Month I’m going to remind casual readers here that poetry is not only beauty or amazement, even if during this month we often emphasize those qu…
frankhudson.org
December 3, 2025 at 11:11 PM
The featured song in this clip, “Dance Me To the End of Love” is adapted from a Spanish poem of Lorca’s by Leonard Cohen. Cohen’s dry wit on display in the interview. Cohen mentions Lorca & guitar—so here’s my performance & adaptation of Lorca: frankhudson.org/2024/07/09/t...
December 2, 2025 at 12:35 PM
This is a possibility to take 5 minutes of your Monday time to appreciate 5 minutes of some others’—a poet, the composer, & the musicians—time.
@andrewmale.bsky.social Have you heard the musical version by Bryce Dessner and Bang on a Can All-Stars? Somehow, it's even more -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aECE...
No-one read poems like Olson: youtu.be/gAYxpSjkyAg?...
December 1, 2025 at 1:25 PM
#MSPCyclecast What can I say—snow. Side streets are fat tire only at my skill level. Snow Emergency main roads not too bad, but there are plow banks at times & the bump outs are snow banked & not plowed. Didn’t ride any dedicated bikeways this morning—so no info there alas.
November 30, 2025 at 2:48 PM
With today’s snow & post-Thanksgiving mood I recall this longer (8 minute) piece from early in the Parlando Project where I performed Longfellow as if he was a Beat poet in a Jazz coffee house. #poetry #music “This is the poem of the air.” frankhudson.org/2018/12/27/l...
Longfellow Goes Beat
I live in one of the northernmost states in the U.S., a place where winter cannot be denied, and so we must make our treaty with cold and snow. Some will even claim it makes us better persons—hardi…
frankhudson.org
November 29, 2025 at 6:14 PM
#MSPcyclecast As promised, it was fluffy snow at dawn for my ride to breakfast. Just a light coating so far on the roads, & kind of pretty.
November 29, 2025 at 2:30 PM
I’ve always loved this song, and yes what a lovely, knowing, version.
Watching Jane Pollard & Iain Forsyth's forthcoming Marianne Faithfull doc, Broken English and I love that they choose this as the first track to represent early Marianne. It's such a perfect cover. Donovan is the observer but MP is completely inside the song. youtu.be/3fp0wo3qA1c?...
Marianne Faithfull - Sunny Goodge Street
YouTube video by I♥MarianneFaithfull
youtu.be
November 27, 2025 at 12:01 PM
#poetry #music Burning the midnight lamp to finish a modest little song made from part of a John Greenleaf Whittier poem about pumpkin pie. frankhudson.org/2025/11/26/t...
The Pumpkin
Last time I was musically blasting your ears with twin electric guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards as I commemorated the snark of the early Internet’s “flame wars.” Today’s piece combines – just i…
frankhudson.org
November 27, 2025 at 4:54 AM
#MSPCyclecast Windy but the streets are not that bad. My morning ride was side streets. I ride with studded 2” tires & even though the streets were technically ice covered it wasn’t slick ice, even when I tested it with my shoes.
November 26, 2025 at 2:04 PM
It’s a blustery morning where I live—44 mph wind gusts & spitty snow. Good weather for this loud musical piece that has lyrics extracted from online flame wars? frankhudson.org/2025/11/25/f...
Forum, or we learned how to insult strangers on the Internet
Around a decade ago I was looking at how to launch this Project, trying to figure out what service to carry the audio and where to host this blog. I knew I had some things I’d already recorded that…
frankhudson.org
November 26, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Thanksgiving-related content inspired by this wonderful midcentury photo in my reply to Gary’s posting of it: I made some music & wrote 6 minute piece about the picture at the link in my reply.
November 24, 2025 at 2:19 AM
It started with that Fender Jazzmaster. Then he got a Mesa Boogie Mark V. But Gary still thought “Not Enough Knobs…”
November 22, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Sharp work from Elizabeth Nelson—which one should expect by now.
Thanks so much to GQ for publishing my liner notes for the new Replacements 'Let It Be' boxset, out on Friday. Extra special thanks to Jessica Hopper, Patterson Hood and Brian Paulson for their extraordinary insights. What an absolute joy this project has been to work on. www.gq.com/story/when-t...
When The Replacements' Courage Was at its Peak
On their 1984 album ‘Let It Be,’ the Minneapolis indie-rock wastrels spewed a message of working-class passion and outsider solidarity into the world's answering machine.
www.gq.com
November 21, 2025 at 10:50 PM
I performed the short Langston Hughes poem “Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret” with original music this month & I wanted listeners to understand some things about the context of this early piece of Jazz Poetry.
November 19, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Lana Turner. I recognized the picture from a clip of it in a scrapbook connected to a mid-century Jazz musician found in a Minneapolis house in the 70s.

I wrote about that scrapbook last winter. The link includes a caption with the photo that tells us what Lana was listening to.
November 19, 2025 at 3:24 AM
#poetry #music First I had to perform Langston Hughes' "Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret," then I had to write about it. I found there was a lot of context for this pioneering piece of Jazz Poetry, so much that it took me two days to write this post presenting it. frankhudson.org/2025/11/18/l...
Langston Hughes Chooses Jazz Poetry: “Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret”
I’m going to write about 20th century poet Langston Hughes’ pioneering Jazz poetry. I’m hoping to condense a lot, trying to make this short – but we’ll see. Like someone commencing a Jazz improvisa…
frankhudson.org
November 18, 2025 at 11:02 PM