Left of the Dial features interviews by musical journalist, folklorist, educator, and musician David Ensminger with leading figures of the punk underground: Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat/Fugazi), Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Dave Dictor (MDC), and many more. Ensminger probes the legacy of punk’s sometimes fuzzy political ideology, its ongoing DIY traditions, its rupture of cultural and social norms, its progressive media ecology, its transgenerational and transnational appeal, its pu...

Featuring interviews with leading figures of the punk underground, Left of the Dial probes the legacy of punk. It touches on the movement's politics, DIY traditions, rupture of social norms, trans-generational and transnational appeal and much more. Rather than focus on discographies and rehashed gig memories, the interviews aim to unveil the secret history of punk and hardcore ideologies and values, as understood by the performers. Passionate and far-reaching, these conversations illumina...

In a career that took him from the cotton fields of East Texas to the concert stage at Carnegie Hall and beyond, Lightnin’ Hopkins became one of America’s greatest bluesmen, renowned for songs whose topics effortlessly ranged from his African American roots to space exploration, the Vietnam War, and lesbianism, performed in a unique, eccentric, and spontaneous style of guitar playing that inspired a whole generation of rock guitarists. Hopkins’s music directly and indirectly influenced an ...

In Mavericks of Sound: Conversations with the Artists Who Shaped Indie and Roots Music, music scholar David Ensminger offers a collection of vivid and compelling interviews with legendary roots rock and indie artists who bucked mainstream trends and have remained resilient in the face of enormous shifts in the music world. As the success of the concerts at Austin City Limits have revealed, the fan bases and crowds for indie and roots music often blur and overlap. In Mavericks of Sound, Ens...

Small town America built the punk rock revolution; but big city scenes have gotten all the coverage.No longer! Out of the Basement is a bracing, candid, democratic, and cutting edge portrayal of a rust belt city full of rebel kids making DIY music despite the odds. It combines oral history, brutally honest memoir, music history, and a sense of blunt poetics to capture the ethos of life in the 1970s-2000s, long before the Internet made punk accessible to small towners. From dusty used recor...

Punk rock has long been equated with the ever-shifting concepts of dissent, disruption, and counter-cultural activities. As a result, since its 1970s and 1980s incarnations, when bands in Britain—from The Clash and Sex Pistols to Angelic Upstarts, U.K. Subs, and Crass—offered alternative political convictions and subversive lifestyle choices, the media has often deemed punk a threat. Bands like Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion, and Millions of Dead Cops followed suit in America, p...

In this far-reaching anthology, David Ensminger delves underground to explore the oft overlooked community of badass women who shaped the punk scene. There is a common thread of women being excluded and gatekept from the hardcore music scene but this anthology challenges that notion and shows that women have still been able to overcome, kick ass, and shred alongside the best of them. Biographies, interviews, band anecdotes, and never-before-published photos showcase the talent and artistry...

Visual Vitriol: The Street Art and Subcultures of the Punk and Hardcore Generation is a vibrant, in-depth, and visually appealing history of punk, which reveals punk concert flyers as urban folk art. David Ensminger exposes the movement's deeply participatory street art, including flyers, stencils, and graffiti. This discovery leads him to an examination of the often-overlooked presence of African Americans, Latinos, women, and gays and lesbians who have widely impacted the worldv...

Punk rock evokes dissent and disruption, abrasive and anarchic musicality, and a host of countercultural aesthetics. Featuring original interviews and over one hundred images, Roots Punk: A Visual and Oral History by longtime music journalist and author David A. Ensminger focuses on how punk merged with roots music to create a rich style that incorporated honky-tonk, rockabilly, doo-wop, reggae, ska, jazz, folk, blues, and labor ballads. This engagement transformed the notion of p...