TOMS RIVER – Join writer/performer Alex Dawson and folk singer Arlan Feiles as they perform spoken word and ballads from their Room to Swing an Ax song cycle from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday, July 27 at the Toms River Branch of the Ocean County Library.

Like Waylon Jennings’s Man Called Hoss, Dawson and Feiles use spoken word and half a dozen biographical ballads to pull you through the mud and blood of a flinty, magical life on a haunted horse farm in rural Alabama.

Room to Swing an Ax begins the morning Dawson’s stepdad, a rancher named Doc, hit him in the head with a five-pound Fireside Friend. It ends with the old man dead, buried by bucket loader, among his horses. There are witches in the woods, snakes in the lake, ghosts in the barn, and trapped in every bent tree is the soul of someone who died wrong.

Stylistically, Room to Swing an Ax is Big Fish meets Blaze Foley, and Daivd Allan Coe meets Edgar Allan Poe.

Registration is required for this free program. To register, visit tinyurl.com/DawsonOCL, call 732-349-6200, or stop by the branch at 101 Washington Street.