Includes unlimited streaming of UNPLUGGED: A Survivor's Story in Scenes & Songs
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
Purchasable with gift card
$12USDor more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Read UNPLUGGED the novel + listen to UNPLUGGED the musical! This bundle gives you both.
Includes unlimited streaming of UNPLUGGED: A Survivor's Story in Scenes & Songs
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 3 days
Purchasable with gift card
$27USDor more
UNPLUGGED is a tale of depression, recovery and self-reinvention. It’s also the story of how a young woman is taught and healed by nature — by the very land beneath her feet.
This expanded 15th Anniversary edition of Paul McComas' award-winning novel includes sheet music for 12 "Dayna Clay" songs. Softcover, 364 pages, published 2017, John Daniel & Co.
* * *
Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. Each rocketed to the top of the rock ’n’ roll pantheon — then died at age 27, a casualty of drugs, despair or both. More recently, when Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain took his own life at the same age, his mother lamented, “I told him not to join that stupid club.”
UNPLUGGED imagines someone whose membership in that club is denied — barely.
Dayna Clay struggles through the final concert of a wildly successful tour. Tormented by an ever-deepening depression, the 27-year-old rocker hands her guitar to a fan and beats a retreat. Forfeiting her career, she sets out incognito for parts unknown and winds up in the Badlands of South Dakota, where her growing connection to the land and to the people she meets there begins to heal the wounds of an abusive childhood.
Meanwhile, Dayna’s disappearance only serves to boost public interest in her — and to fuel her skyrocketing record sales. Laboring to choose between her musical ambitions and the new life she has made, she finds herself stranded in a far-flung corner of the wilderness she has come to love. Saved from a suicide attempt earlier by nature, she now may perish by the very same hand.
Includes unlimited streaming of Symmetry [from UNPLUGGED]
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
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Purchasable with gift card
$19USDor more
lyrics
Early this morning, while I was passing underneath a prairie cottonwood, I glimpsed a flash of crimson fluttering down from above.
Reaching up, Dayna surprised herself by actually catching the leaf in mid-fall.
Studying my prize, I fell into a kind of reverie, and I found myself pondering, at length, the symmetry of nature:
The leaf’s intricate network of veins mirrored, in miniature, the branches from which it had dropped—not to mention the other, unseen tributaries anchoring the trunk to the earth below.
The realization made me gasp—and it moved me in a way I couldn’t quite fathom. For, all at once, it hit me: The veins are the branches are the roots.
From high in the air to deep underground, the cottonwood tree—
and every tree—
emphatically asserts its “treeness” throughout.
They can have their Bible, 'cause here it is in the palm of my hand: the divine plan.
And now, perched atop a towering land formation with a nasty north wind in her face, Dayna finds herself taking this line of thought further.
I've seen it out here dozens of times in dozens of ways: the land sustains not just flora but fauna as well.
And in so doing, that land embraces male and female in equal measure, engaging and enriching both of those sexes—
and everything and everyone in between—
with an unerring and unerringly even-handed devotion.
And what, finally, is “God” if not the seed-sowing, life-growing spirit flowing through that land:
through bison and bighorn,
pine tree and prairie grass,
mountain
and canyon
and...and Dayna herself?
My own nature mirrors Nature.
Throughout her adult life—and even earlier, in her teens—there have been those who've told her how wrong her feelings are,
from the boyfriend who labeled my attraction to other women “a phase,”
to the leader of a women's “support” group who provided anything but,
accusing me of “coming halfway out” and deriding my professed feelings for men as a cover.
At times, under the weight of such criticism, she's wondered whether her detractors on one “side” or the other might be right.
Yet the land itself seems to suggest otherwise—and to do so by example.
Looking out, Dayna views the vista before her as if for the first time.
Do I really believe in a higher power? Well, maybe. But I think I do know what it means, at least for me—
for her, who loves female and male,
women and men—
for her to have been made in a higher power’s image.
Any lingering trace of guilt connected to who I am and whom I have loved—
that trace of guilt, at long last, has...
...vanished. For now, I know that my Creator feels the very same way.
credits
from UNPLUGGED: A Survivor's Story in Scenes & Songs,
track released August 4, 2017
Maya Kuper: narration
Paul McComas: drums, narration
Mike Holden: guitars
Written by Paul McComas
Produced by Maya Kuper & Paul McComas
Recorded by Joe Dilillo with Maya Kuper
Mixed by Joe Dilillo at Solid Sound Recording in Hoffman Estates, IL
"Dayna Clay" is a fictional 27-year-old rocker, battling depression and PTSD in the wake of childhood sexual abuse. Maya
Kuper & Paul McComas’ alt-rock musical "UNPLUGGED: A Survivor’s Story in Scenes & Songs" chronicles Dayna’s bumpy journey through the South Dakota Badlands, and into self-discovery, healing, full embrace of her bisexuality, and love. Proceeds support The Kennedy Forum....more
Set your ears to "stun." Paul and Maya collaborated with the late, great Richard LaValliere (Oil Tasters, The Haskels) on the soundtrack for Paul's quirky Star Trek parody film, TIME TREK. The Dayna Clay Project
In this collection that ranges from soul to pop to country to folk, 13 talented young women raise their voices against disrespect and mistreatment -- spreading a messaging of healing and hope. The Dayna Clay Project
Earnest tribute to Mr. Franco? Stoner anthem? Who knows? Either way, it's the psychedelic jam of the year, it has a lot of pretty guitars, and it was produced by "Second Storm" remixer Seth Johnson. The Dayna Clay Project
The new LP from this Antwerp group pays tribute to obscure Italian ’70s film soundtracks, krautrock, and psychedelic grooves. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 29, 2022
Never mind The Ventures; CJ Mirra dreams up a new sound of surf, built from moody, expansive electronics and soft, organic textures. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 7, 2018
