Words and music Words and music Words and music

There’s a cliché that songwriters only write about their feelings. You would know that wasn’t true if you stepped into a live event organized by the Bushwick Book Club Seattle.

The organization’s associate director, Wes Weddell, ’02, shapes each season’s programming by helping curate a selection of titles—like “Charlotte’s Web,” “Aesop’s Fables” and “Glory”—from which the musicians draw inspiration for their original pieces. The prompt of immediately responding to a book allows the songwriters to jump in without too much introspection, Weddell says: “The songs become a way to build practice and a process that doesn’t center the self.”

As they turn on their amps and tune their instruments, beloved local artists like Alex Guy, Julia Massey and Del Rey chat from the stage about how they were inspired into the process of writing a particular song. Over the past decade, Bushwick shows have gained a reputation for showcasing local talent and joyfully entertaining a crowd. The experience is unparalleled in a city known for its music scene.

Weddell joined the Bushwick Book Club Seattle in 2010 when he wrote and performed a song inspired by “Slaughterhouse-5” for the inaugural event. He took part in several more shows that first season and later taught and developed lesson plans for Bushwick’s educational arm. With his production skills, Weddell found himself useful behind the scenes, producing Bushwick events. In 2012, as the club sought to add a new feature to its shows, Weddell came up with a live trivia quiz show based loosely on NPR’s show “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” The quiz “Who said it? Ray Bradbury or Mark Zuckerberg?” was a huge hit. While he still takes the stage as Bushwick’s official quizmaster, more recently, Weddell has collaborated with guest curators including DJ Riz Rollins and poet Claudia Castro Luna, plus an advisory team of literary advocates like Grace Rajendran from Seattle Arts & Lectures to select books for upcoming programs.

Weddell’s love for music reaches back to a childhood in Pullman, and his family’s eclectic interests. His mother’s uncle, Barney Josephson, ran Café Society in New York, the club where Billie Holiday first sang “Strange Fruit.” Weddell’s parents nurtured their son’s early interest. When he was five, they signed him up for a Suzuki music class. “I turned the violin sideways and kept plunking out ‘Louie Louie,’” says Weddell. Later, his folks got him an electric guitar. At 13, Weddell started writing songs, growing more serious about music. He put together a band in high school and the group played original material and covers at dances and coffee houses.

From 2003 to 2016, Weddell managed and played mandolin for the folk duo Reilly & Maloney. A multi-instrumentalist, he has more recently played with Mike Votava in the Ding Dongs, with Geoff Larson in the bluegrass group By The Way and in Nick Droz’s band. He also performs regularly with Alicia Healey, Nancy K. Dillon and produced recordings for Nelson Wright and Rob Kneisler. When he’s not on stage, Weddell teaches private lessons and classes and does occasional residencies at places like Roosevelt High School.

In the late 1990s, Weddell came to the UW to study history. With his advisor James Gregory, he came up with a proposal to travel around Washington, gathering stories and writing songs inspired by those tales. Folk singer Woody Guthrie undertook a similar project for the Bonneville Power Administration in 1941, writing 26 songs in 30 days to promote the construction of dams along the Columbia River.

On what would become a 65-day journey, Weddell booked performances at bookstores and coffee shops because he was too young to play in bars. Three weeks into his road trip, he learned that he’d been awarded the inaugural Venture Fellowship from the Mary Gates Endowment for Students to fund his project, which would become the basis of his first album, “My Northwest Home.”

After 20 years of playing the music he enjoys, Weddell is now doing exactly what he wants to do in support of the creative community. “A lot of times, my role is to do things that allow lights to shine on other people,” he says. “It’s going to shine brighter than it shined on me, and that’s okay.”

Through Bushwick, Weddell has commissioned songs from more than 400 artists, including Tomo Nakayama, Debbie Miller, No-No Boy, Whiting Tennis, Carrie Wicks, Cyd Smith and the late Linda Waterfall. But Weddell insists that it’s not about the names. “It’s about the scene and the community and sustaining an environment where people can create and exist in conversation.”

The Bushwick Book Club Seattle is in its 15th season. This year, the focus is on banned books like Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” and Luis Alberto Urrea’s “Devil’s Highway.”

*When she’s not writing stories for University of Washington Magazine, Shin Yu Pai is a poet. Her works have been among the literary inspirations for the Bushwick songwriters.