From the acclaimed musician comes a tender, surprising, and often uproarious memoir about his dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood.The only child of a hard-drinking father and a Holy Roller mother, Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast from an early age, whether knock-down-drag-outs at a local dive bar or fire-and-brimstone sermons at Pentecostal tent revivals. He was an expert at reading his father’s mercurial moods and gauging exactly when his mother was likely to erupt, and eve...

From growing up in Texas, to living in his car, to landing his first publishing deal, to writing fifteen #1 songs, Word for Word is a lavishly illustrated look at the lyrics of an icon among songwriting giants. Emmylou Harris—who once employed Rodney Crowell as the guitarist, harmony singer, and arranger in her legendary Hot Band—introduced many listeners to his finely-crafted songs, including “Til I Gain Control Again,” “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight,” “I Ain’t Living Long Like ...

From the acclaimed musician comes a tender, surprising, and often uproarious memoir about his dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood.The only child of a hard-drinking father and a Holy Roller mother, Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast from an early age, whether knock-down-drag-outs at a local dive bar or fire-and-brimstone sermons at Pentecostal tent revivals. He was an expert at reading his father’s mercurial moods and gauging exactly when his mother was likely to erupt, and eve...

For years the legendary John Seigenthaler hosted A Word on Words on Nashville's public television station, WNPT. During the show’s four-decade run (1972 to 2013), he interviewed some of the most interesting and most important writers of our time. These in-depth exchanges revealed much about the writers who appeared on his show and gave a glimpse into their creative processes. Seigenthaler was a deeply engaged reader and a generous interviewer, a true craftsman. Frye Gaillard and P...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS AWARD FOR POETRYThe Flame is a stunning collection of Leonard Cohen’s last poems and writings, selected and ordered by Cohen in the final months of his life. The book contains an extensive selection from Cohen’s notebooks, featuring lyrics, prose pieces and illustrations, which he kept in poetic form throughout his life, and offers an unprecedentedly intima...

**This program is read by Margaret Atwood, Rodney Crowell, John Doe, Jim Fletcher, Ari Fliakos, Maggie Hoffman, Ross Marquand, Will Patton, Seth Rogen, Michael Shannon, and Neela Vaswani.The Flame is the final collection of the seminal musician and poet, which he was determined to complete before his death.**Just weeks before his death in late 2016, Leonard Cohen told The New Yorker that he was ready for the end to come. He just wanted enough time to put h...

"This book's combination of interviews and history makes for an entertaining study of the heart of American roots music." — Library JournalIn industry circles, musicians from Kentucky are known to possess an enviable pedigree—a lineage as prized as the bloodline of any bluegrass-raised Thoroughbred. With native sons and daughters like Naomi and Wynonna Judd, Loretta Lynn, the Everly Brothers, Joan Osborne, and Merle Travis, it's no wonder that the state is...

Part prose, part album, and part photographic essay, Western Skies is singer-songwriter Darden Smith's stunning homage to the mythologies of Texas and companion to his music release of the same name.Amid a series of road trips across West Texas, Darden Smith-Austin-based musician, author, and creative-found himself writing songs at the wheel and taking Polaroid photographs of the stark and ghostly terrain. Inspired by the spirit of the landscape, Smith scr...