A Novel Brought To Musical Life
Jim Fusilli’s A Song For Katy Shayne novel came out last year. The author, born in Hoboken 72 years ago, wrote about a music critic who gets involved in the possible murder of a singer. Now Kirk Pasich’s Blue Elan Records has released The Lost Songs Of Katy Shayne by Suzanna Spring & The Black Canyon City Band, as produced by Pasich and Colin Devlin.
As Pasich says, “A fair number of years ago, I co-owned The Mystery Bookstore in Los Angeles. During that time, I discovered and became a fan of the novels by Jim Fusilli. Fast forward to April 2025. I picked up Jim’s new novel, A Song for Katy Shayne, and was instantly captivated. It’s a haunting blend of mystery and music.”
Albums of songs by fictional characters are rare. Snatches of lyrics that Katy Shayne wrote in the novel are, in reality, words that Fusilli himself wrote during his days as a Greenwich Village songwriter. To hear them in such a new context, as reconceptualized by Pasich and Suzanna Spring, was a wonderment for the author, who says, “Until I listened to the playback of what became the album The Songs of Katy Shayne, I’d never heard the compositions you’ll discover here sung by anyone but me. Two of the songs were written when I was in college 50 years ago. Another was inspired by my then-infant daughter when she was learning to walk. [The band] found new colors and possibilities in the music. I’d included these compositions in my novel to bring me closer to my character… In that way, when I wrote about her, I was writing about me.”