Songbook: It's Okay Honey / Glittering Forest

Author: Julian Talamantez Brolaski

Publisher: Wave Books (2023)

The Songbook is a risograph booklet of lyrics, guitar chord sheets, and musical notations of beloved poet and singer-songwriter Julian Talamantez Brolaski’s albums, It’s Okay Honey and Glittering Forest.

These songs combine the language of classic country with lyrical innovation and pacing.  Brolaski, a mixed-race transgender poet, makes traditional, inventive Americana music, adding poetic lyricism to melodies inspired by some of country and western music’s original recording stars and most beloved sounds. Classical piano lessons, the poetry and queer country music scenes on both coasts, and years spent studying languages gave Brolaski the foundation to create “sweet, cutting, and melancholy” (Country Queer) music with various bands and now as a solo artist.

Songbook is enjoyable alongside, and also independent from, its albums’ counterparts, reminding us of the ways great lyric poetry is grounded in sound.