"Full of humor and humility . . . Since Benson started Asleep at the Wheel as a working-class country band, it's one helluva ride worth telling." — The Austin ChronicleA six-foot-seven-inch Jewish hippie from Philadelphia starts a Western swing band in 1970. It sounds like a joke but—more than forty years, twenty-five albums, and nine Grammy Awards later—Asleep at the Wheel is still drawing crowds around the world. The roster of musicians...

A chronicle of Adams's rise from alt-country to rock stardom, featuring stories about the making of the albums Strangers Almanac and Heartbreaker.Before he achieved his dream of being an internationally known rock personality, Ryan Adams had a band in Raleigh, North Carolina. Whiskeytown led the wave of insurgent-country bands that came of age with No Depression magazine in the mid-1990s, and for many people it defined the era. Adams was ...

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina’s extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state’s music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina’s Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and t...

What is American roots music? Any definition must account for a kaleidoscope of genres from bluegrass to blues, western swing to jazz, soul and gospel to rock and reggae, Cajun to Celtic. It must encompass the work of artists as diverse as Alice Gerard and Alison Krauss, George Thorogood and Sun Ra, Béla Fleck and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, the Blake Babies and Billy Strings. What do all these artists and music styles have in common? The answer is a record label born in the wake of the Am...

Take a volatile rock band, a kingmaking concert promoter, a downtrodden clubowner and a rock critic with questionable journalistic ethics, add one hit record, a drug problem, a couple of riots and shake well. There you have the essence of this book, the very unauthorized account of the rise and fall of the Tommy Aguilar Band. Off The Record will confirm your worst suspicions about the music business, an industry in which musicians are like the infantry -- the first to die, and the last to ...

In the vein of the classic Johnny Cash: The Life, this groundbreaking work explores the wild life and extraordinary musical career of "the definitive country singer of the last half century" ( New York Times), who influenced, among others, Bob Dylan, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, John Fogerty, George Strait, Alan Jackson, and Garth Brooks.In a masterful biography laden with new revelations, veteran country music journalist/historian Rich Kienzle offers a definitive,...

The national bestseller celebrated as "the ultimate Johnny Cash biography . . . Rock writer great Robert Hilburn goes deep." -- Rolling StoneIn this, the definitive biography of an American legend, Robert Hilburn conveys the unvarnished truth about a musical superstar. Johnny Cash's extraordinary career stretched from his days at Sun Records with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to the remarkable creative last hurrah, at age 69, that resulted in the brave...

Acclaimed music writer Robert Hilburn’s “epic” and “definitive” (Rolling Stone) biography of music icon Paul Simon, written with Simon’s full participation—but without his editorial control—that “reminds us how titanic this musician is” (The Washington Post).For more than fifty years, Paul Simon has spoken to us in songs about alienation, doubt, resilience, and empathy in ways that have established him as one of the most beloved artists in America...

**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNew York Times** bestselling author Alan Paul's in-depth narrative look at the Allman Brothers' most successful album, and a portrait of an era in rock and roll and American history.The Allman Brothers Band’s Brothers and Sisters was not only the band’s bestselling album, at over seven million copies sold, but it was also a powerfully influential release, both musically and culturally, one wh...

The first major rock music festival and the precursor to Woodstock, the Monterey International Pop Festival was an unprecedented gathering of pop, soul, jazz, and folk artists who took the stage one luminous weekend during the Summer of Love.” On the 16th, 17th, and 18th of June, 1967, the sleepy California coastal community of Monterey played host to the now-legendary concert. In its aftermath, the world of popular culture was transformed forever. The ’60s were now upon us with a soundtr...

A musical genre forever outside the linesWith a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward’s Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories that are at the heart of Americana. At base a hybrid of rock and country, Americana is also infused with folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and other types of roots music. Performers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash,...

Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, Billie Holiday, Howlin’ Wolf, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters—say their names out loud and you can just hear the blues. Now, acclaimed artist William Stout visualizes these artists and their music with 100 stunning portraits. This graphically powerful collection includes profiles of classic musicians drawn by a master illustrator. Stout beautifully captures the signature style of each blues legend and then adds authoritative biographical text with personal and humorou...