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Sign up todayGigmentia
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Learn moreGig, a slang word coined in the 1920s by jazz musicians, short for engagement or live musical performance, combined with the latin based suffix -mentia, meaning, condition of the mind, the invented word gigmentia might be defined as engagement of the mind. Or, perhaps, that confusing state of too many shows, too many late nights, too many repetitions to remember accurately—the struggle to recount the long performance that is our life.
Gigmentia is a reflection on the raw, challenging, and gritty vocation of a blue-collar musician living in the Pacific Northwest, and the varied adventures of a hard working, day-in day-out rock band. Introspective, insightful, and eloquently observed, Koep chronicles a summer season of fifty rock shows performed in small clubs, huge bars, and on outdoor festival stages, in barns, backyards, and the middle of the woods. Between gigs, Koep writes of sword fights on the lawn with his young son, the challenges of building a household, of world travel, pop music, poetry, and of the fascinating pursuit of the writer’s craft as he works toward completing his third novel. As the summer wanes and he balances the rigors and joys of live performance, promoting his books, and being a father and partner, his mother descends into dementia and forgets the world around her, including her son.
Gigmentia is an intimate tableau of an artist’s life; a love song to drums, fatherhood, writing, and to the passing of a beloved mom.
Michael B. Koep has been called an Inland Northwest Renaissance Man. He is the author of the award-winning Newirth Mythology: The Invasion of Heaven (2013), Leaves of Fire (2015), and The Shape of Rain (2018). An avid world traveler, educator, accomplished visual artist, and touring rock musician, Michael’s spirit is imbued in the arts. He is a co-founder of a North Idaho fencing consortium, but he is best known as a drummer and lyricist for the progressive rock group KITE, as well as the percussionist for the variety power trio The RUB. He is a winner of a Costello Poetry Prize.
Michael B. Koep has been called an Inland Northwest Renaissance Man. He is the author of the award-winning Newirth Mythology: The Invasion of Heaven (2013), Leaves of Fire (2015), and The Shape of Rain (2018). An avid world traveler, educator, accomplished visual artist, and touring rock musician, Michael’s spirit is imbued in the arts. He is a co-founder of a North Idaho fencing consortium, but he is best known as a drummer and lyricist for the progressive rock group KITE, as well as the percussionist for the variety power trio The RUB. He is a winner of a Costello Poetry Prize.
Reviews
“By turns wistful, instructive, funny, and unabashedly candid…always revealing…Gigmentia is a call to understanding the creative life, and ought to serve as an inspiration to anyone seeking to live fully and mindfully.”
“Gigmentia is a heart-felt view of life from behind the drum kit and the writer’s desk, a winning story of art, music, and, especially, life.”
“I love this book! [Gigmentia] needs to be required reading for anyone who is willing to take on the life of a drummer.”
“As an accomplished musician, poet, and novelist, Michael B. Koep is a modern day renaissance man, whose writing echoes his musical vocation: he writes with lyrical intensity in the pulsing rhythm of a drumbeat. In his new memoir, Gigmentia, this literary gift flourishes. Gigmentia takes the reader on a riveting journey through band and musician life, fathering and marriage, caring for a mother who has acute dementia, and ultimately saying goodbye. I highly recommend this book.”
“This is a thoroughly original and deeply engaging exploration of the sometimes bizarre, often touching, but always fascinating public and private experience of working musicians—and a moving depiction of friendship, parenthood, biological and created families, and the losses and gains that constitute life lived intentionally and well.”
“Fall under the spell of Michael Koep’s Gigmentia. This is a uniquely powerful depiction of a lifestyle that few understand. Koep skillfully weaves the threads of his life across one watershed summer, creating a hilarious, touching and frequently surprising story. Do I suffer from Gigmentia? Hell no, I enjoy every second of it!”
“Koep captivates with spellbinding, lyrical prose. Gigmentia is a moving exploration of artistic process, of friendship and family, of memory, of grief and loss—joyful, nuanced, and heartbreaking.”
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