According to at least one former music magazine editor’s recent collection of interviews and public conversations, rock and roll is the province of aging white men. Jann Wenner even titles his collection The Masters, as if the seven artists on […]
When John Prine died on April 7, 2020, he left behind a sumptuous banquet of lyrically ingenious songs that captured the vagaries of the lives of individuals whom society had consigned to its margins. Prine was better than any other […]
Every fall brings another crop of big music memoirs and biographies, and I mean that both literally and metaphorically; Michael Azerrad’s “annotated” version of his 1993 Nirvana bio, The Amplified Come as You Are, totes up almost 700 pages, for example. […]
Like Marty Stuart’s rockabilly guitar licks and Ricky Skaggs’ lightning-fast mandolin runs, music historian and critic Michael Streissguth’s tour-de-force music history, Highways and Heartaches: How Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, and Children of the New South Saved the Soul of Country […]
In the introduction to his often hilarious and poignant new memoir, Bang Bang Crash, novelist and drummer Nic Brown gets off a resounding rim shot at his own expense, revealing a glimpse of his own journey from drums to pen […]
Alan Paul has done it again. In 2014, he published a definitive oral history of the Allman Brothers, One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. While that book covered much of the history of the band, […]
Ever since he took that first ride down Highway 61, Bob Dylan has had hellhounds — well, biographers and critics — on his trail. The countless volumes devoted to Dylan look under every stone for clues to the meanings of […]
When he is shooting photos of musicians and other artists, Jeff Fasano is looking through his lens for that decisive moment — “a moment I feel in my heart and soul,” he says. Fasano’s exquisite first book of photography, Americana […]
Tammy Wynette sang some of the saddest songs in country music: “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” “Apartment No. 9,” “I Don’t Wanna Play House.” Wynette’s vocals waver on the edge of breaking as they wring deep emotions from listeners. When Wynette modulates her vocal […]
Describing Chicago, Saul Bellow once wrote, “Provinciality is not altogether a curse, we gain from our backwardness.” Chicago wears the mantle of the Second City, taking a back seat to New York in almost every category including theater, cuisine, and […]
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