About this project
I am a journalist, musician and three time published author, living in New Orleans, Louisiana for the last nine years. In the year after Katrina I wrote TRANSPORT INSTINCT, about evacuating with my pet pygmy goat, Chauncey, and living on an odd goat farm in Houston, TX (those stories linked, below). TRANSPORT INSTINCT is also about living in New Orleans during that first horrible post-flood year, working strange jobs (teaching rap music to public school kids), gutting houses, and participating in New Orleans' wacky underground music scene. The book's last third documents my heartbreaking struggle to, after a very stressful evacuation, hold onto my girlfriend "Mizzy," who ended up proposing to me in front of 800 people at the biggest concert I ever played. Although TRANSPORT INSTINCT focuses on our family, it is also a document of the actual struggles and triumphs of many of New Orleans' stranger, more vibrant modern artists.
TRANSPORT INSTINCT has been excerpted in roughly a dozen great venues including NEWSWEEK, The New Orleans Review, and several VILLAGE VOICE publications (URLs to many excerpts below). I won two writer's residencies -- in California, then Spain -- on the strength of TRANSPORT INSTINCT. Yet despite, all the gushing love-letters the book has received from big publishers have all ended by telling me they are afraid to publish "another Katrina book," or that people aren't interested in the topic anymore. Which is a shame, given TRANSPORT INSTINCT is worlds different from any other book published about Katrina.
So I am publishing it myself.
1) (Houston Press & Kitchen Sink) about escaping with my goat:
- pt. 1: http://www.houstonpress.com/2005-09-22/news/between-is-and-was
- pt. 2: http://kitchensinkmag.com/sectionlayout.php
- pt. 3: http://www.houstonpress.com/2005-10-06/news/goat-tales
- pt. 4: http://www.houstonpress.com/2005-11-03/news/au-revoir-chauncey
2) (GAMBIT) about teaching rap music to New Orleans kids: http://gambitweekly.com/dispatch/2006-09-12/mus_feat.php
3) (NEWSWEEK) about painting flooded Mardi Gras floats: http://www.newsweek.com/id/56895
4) about one-man-band Quintron and the drowning of Spellcaster Lodge: http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2005-11-09/music/music2.html
5) (Dallas Observer) about New Orleans music in Houston: http://www.dallasobserver.com/2005-09-15/music/come-marching-in/
6) About 9th Ward rock band, Morning 40 Federation: http://www.houstonpress.com/Issues/2006-07-20/music/music.html
FAQ
Have a question? If the info above doesn't help, you can ask the project creator directly.
19
Backers
$473
pledged of $2,500 goal
0
seconds to go
Funding Unsuccessful
This project reached the deadline without achieving its funding goal on May 28, 2010.
Pledge $5 or more
I will email anyone who pledges anything, a Word copy of the manuscript for Transport Instinct, along with a sincere thank you.
Pledge $20 or more
$20 - $40 = a copy of the book, with a handwritten thank you inside
Pledge $50 or more
$50 - $80 = all of the above, plus an official thank you to the donor printed within the book, plus a copy of the CD of ORIGINAL SONGS written and recorded by the New Orleans public school kids I teach (as featured in the book. See video on this page, or visit: myspace.com/mrmichaelsclass)
Pledge $90 or more
$90 - $200 = all of the above, PLUS a cute shirt, screenprinted by the author, and featuring Chauncey, my goat, as drawn by Swedish artist Marcus Bjernerup.
Pledge $200 or more
$200 - $400 = all of the above, plus a copy of my book "New Orleans: The Underground Guide," (UNO Press).
Pledge $500 or more
$500 and up = all of the above, plus a rare copy of my out-of-print New Orleans cult classic novel, The Donkey Show (only one case left in the world; 2,000 sold)
Project By
Has not connected their Facebook account.
36-year-old Michael Patrick Welch is the author of the memoir 'Commonplace' (Screw Music Forever Press), and the cult-classic New Orleans novel 'The Donkey Show' (Equator Books; excerpted at McSweeneys.net). Welch's forthcoming guidebook, 'New Orleans: The Underground Guide' (UNO Press), attempts to wrestle the city's cultural image from the past's oppressive grip, by cataloging hundreds of non-traditional, new-millennium New Orleans musicians, artists, venues, and traditions.
Welch began as an editorial assistant and staff writer for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. Since moving to New Orleans in 2001, he's written cover stories for Gambit Weekly and AntiGravity, and penned a long-running column in New Orleans longest running music magazine, OffBeat. Welch has also published freelance journalism in Newsweek, Spin, and Village Voice publications including The Houston Press where, for two months following Katrina, Welch worked as a staff writer, serializing his evacuation with his pet pygmy goat, Chauncey.
For six years now, Welch has also worked for Young Audiences arts for education program, teaching a "Music Writing" class he pioneered, wherein elementary and middle school kids learn to compose hilarious album reviews, to be published in Gambit, AntiGravity and OffBeat (who pay the kids for their work!). "Mr. Michael's Music Writing Class" also writes and records original songs, which can be heard at myspace.com/mrmichaelsclass, or else on the students' forthcoming official CD, YA! Young Audiences Raps!
With whatever time is left, Welch participates in New Orleans' music scene as one-man-electro-rock-n-R&B act (recently turned full band with horn section), The White Bitch: a Prince-ly musical mashup that annually plays VooDoo Fest among other big local shows, and has twice been nominated at Gambit's Big Easy Awards.
