Sweet Mary Jane understood.

In my novel, Wally Wilson’s runaway hippie mother made the holy music pilgrimage to the West Coast, digging all the 60s psychedelic bands whose music she shared with her voodoo child baby when they settled down in Santa Barbara.

As a result, Wally knew all the tunes that set the stage and led to 21st Century heavy metal jams, old school hardware like “Voodoo Child,” Jimi Hendrix’ 1968 anthem and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” the almost 18-minute 1969 Iron Butterfly opus that charged ahead through wide open cracks in the sticky cotton candy clouds forming in Wally’s head.

“Blood Red Syrah” is a heavy metal horror story that blends fantasy and reality into a powerful brew. If you listen closely, metal music plays on every page. If you tune in, turn on and drop in, you’ll recognize lyrics, melodies and beats that go on and on and on. If you’re lucky like me, loud, dark, morbid symphonies of letters and words will play non-stop in your brain.

If that happens, you are absolutely far-out, ready to blow your mind. Unless your mind explodes, of course. Blowing your mind with creativity and hard-charging emotion is different from losing your mind in a quagmire of fear, uncertainty, mayhem and abuse.

Poor Wally lost his mind, turning over the controls to Syrah who ran amok, capable of anything, including murder.

Wally’s sick. Wally never wanted to hurt anybody. All Wally wanted was to seek and find truth amid pounding surf guitar strains and bongo riffs (California metal forerunners) that pulsate like blood flowing through a fresh open wound. Wally wanted to get better, go to San Francisco, wear flowers in his hair. Wally wanted to be happy.

When you finish the book you’ll know whether Wally achieved these simple, yet so very complex, goals.

Maybe he did.

Maybe he didn’t.

Those mysteries lie at the center of why so many people are as partial to metal music as I am to pinot. That’s why I wrote a song to go with the book, a tune simply called “Blood Red Syrah,” or “The Ballad of Wally Wilson.”

That’s also why I approached members of the Scranton metal band Prosody to ask if they might be interested in adding music and their own twisted genius before unleashing our tune onstage.

Lead singer and master poet Ken Ebersole looked at guitar shaman Chris Rosenko and said, hell, yes.

With these words, they took off.

    “No peace of mind exists in Wally’s head amid the wrecked debris. Drunken vineyard demons wait along the coastal sea. Corkscrewed eyeballs pop like Champagne corks at night. Wally sticks another one – far out, out of sight.

    Sadness stalks a lonely road along the western edge. Coastal losers walk along a raw wine country ledge. Seeking truth in tortured lives left scattered on the way, Wally’s got just one way out – it’s much too late to pray.

    Blood red syrah leaks tears hot from my eye, blinding me to happiness and many reasons why Wally Wilson laughed then chose me to die. Blood red syrah leaks tears hot from my eye, blinding me to mercy and many reasons why Wally Wilson laughed and then chose me to die.

    Psychedelic sickness decants a killer Cali whine. Syrah screaming in his head while soaring to cloud nine. Cosmic coded wisdom will one day stop his cold tirade. Once he sits and gives his life – a mad Zen renegade.

    Tongues of flame lick red hot coals and turn his mind to ash. Igniting fast in Wally’s head so sad they had to clash. Wally Wilson found his peace beneath a redwood tree, enlightened by the lives he took that finally set him free.

    Blood red syrah leaks tears hot from my eye, blinding me to happiness and all the reasons why Wally Wilson laughed and then chose me to die. Blood red syrah leaks tears hot from my eye, blinding me to mercy and all the reasons why Wally Wilson laughed and then chose me to die.”

And without telling anybody, including me, the band debuted their version of the song Jan. 11 at the V-Spot in Scranton just to see what would happen. When the mind smoke cleared, countless eyeballs stared at the stage. Ebersole took the audience to another land. Rosenko disappeared into the mist of fried chords and mad refrains heard only on lost roads to dark places.

Wally smiled from the distance.

Prosody will tell Wally’s story again on March 16 at the Irish Wolf Pub in downtown Scranton. I’m hoping to introduce the song onstage. If all goes well, we’ll learn something serious about the lives we lead and the obstacles we try to overcome together.

That’s the lesson of “Blood Red Syrah.”

Sometimes we win.

Sometimes we lose.

It’s how we face the devils that matters.