Killers, Open Country, and Gun Smoke: Robert Dean’s The Red Seven Playlist

Farce the Music contributor Robert Dean is not only our resident gonzo reviewer of all things punk, hardcore, and Americana, he's also an author. His novel The Red Seven (which I'm about to start reading) is a "Southern Gothic western" full of violence, revenge, and intrigue. Here, he provides a soundtrack (and a Spotify playlist!) for his book. -Trailer

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When you write a book, you’re alone, like all the time. You spend so many hours locked away; it’s just you, your thoughts and many times, the music. Music is central to my creative process. It means the world to me. I’m always thinking about music, about what a song means, how it feels, the texture of the song to the moment.

When I wrote The Red Seven, I tried to capture a spirit. I wanted the main hombre, The Ghost to be ruthless, but I wanted to give him gravitas – a sense that he thrived in chaos. I listened to music that had guts, soul – stuff that held weight in its hands.

The Ghost, along with the villains of the book aren’t paper tigers, they’re layered characters. Music helped visualize and give flaws to some of them. Maybe it was a nod to Keith Richards, or a twang of Otis Rush – all of it’s in there, in the words. 

The Red Seven isn’t just about revenge and killing; it’s about the human experience and what loss does to someone. It’s about how losing someone you love in senseless was changes how you function, how you feel. That’s at the heart of The Red Seven. Is it a fast paced page turner? Hell yeah, it is. But, it’s all got moments of reality that even though they’re from back in the day, those moments never change – they’re everlasting because we’re human, and the animalistic spirit never leaves us. Whether fucking or fighting, we revert; it’s in our DNA. That’s a symbolic way to look at The Ghost – stalking with purpose. 

This playlist I’ve created reflects my moods when creating the book when creating this world. I’m not wild about contemporary music invading a time and place in the past. But, this playlist represents what the book feels like. What the scenes feel like. What bars, what sex, what violence sounds like. I wanted to take a musical journey and take the readers of the book along for the ride. So, if you’ve got an ache for a new book to read, pick up a copy of The Red Seven and pop on this playlist. Maybe you’ll see some shades you’d never imagined while driving deep into a vicious world.

Please check out my Spotify playlist. I spent a shitload of time on this.

~Robert Dean

Vengeance Gonna Be My Name – Slackeye Slim
Wayfaring Stranger - Jack White
Can the Circle be Unbroken – The Carter Family
Lungs - Townes Van Zandt
I Saw The Light- Hank Williams
Sins Of My Father – Tom Waits
Sleepwalk - Santo and Johnny
To be Treated Right - Terry Reid
A Whiter Shade Of Pale - Procol Harum
Midnight Rider – The Allman Brothers
Death Letter Blues -Son House
Loving Cup – Rolling Stones
‪I Can’t Quit you Baby - Otis Rush

‪It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels – Kitty Wells
Nights in White Satin – The Moody Blues
Loan Me A Dime - Boz Scaggs & Duane Allman
Rollin’ and Tumblin’ - Elmore James
First Time I Met The Blues – Buddy Guy
Machine Gun - Jimi Hendrix
Angel Flying Too Close to The Ground – Willie Nelson
Life By The Drop - Doyle Bramhall