This is a book that includes all the music reviews I wrote in the last ten years. From obscure singer songwrites like Mike Elosh, through well known names like Guy Clark, this is an overview of what happened to the modern troubadours on the threshold of the 21st century. This edition now includes a long interview with David Munyon.

'A must have for Dylan enthusiasts, lovers of London, and anyone with even a passing interest in the history of music. I devoured it in two sittings - and I loved it!' Conor McPherson, playwright, Girl from the North Country This is both a guide and history on the impact of London on Dylan, and the lasting legacy of Bob Dylan on the London music scene. Bob Dylan in London celebrates this journey, and allows readers to experience his London and follow in his footsteps to places such as the King and Queen pub (the first venue that Dylan performed at in London), the Savoy hotel and Camden Town. This book explores the key London places and times that helped to create one of the greatest of all popular musicians, Bob Dylan.

"A handbook for compassion... a Must-Read Music Book.” —Rolling Stone Country "Generous and big-hearted, Gauthier has stories to tell and worthwhile advice to share." —Wally Lamb, author of I Know This Much Is True "Gauthier has an uncanny ability to combine songwriting craft with a seeker’s vulnerability and a sage’s wisdom.” —Amy Ray, Indigo Girls From the Grammy nominated folk singer and songwriter, an inspiring exploration of creativity and the redemptive power of song Mary Gauthier was twelve years old when she was given her Aunt Jenny’s old guitar and taught herself to play with a Mel Bay basic guitar workbook. Music offered her a window to a world where others felt the way she did. Songs became lifelines to her, and she longed to write her own, one day. Then, for a decade, while struggling with addiction, Gauthier put her dream away and her call to songwriting faded. It wasn’t until she got sober and went to an open mic with a friend did she realize that she not only still wanted to write songs, she needed to. Today, Gauthier is a decorated musical artist, with numerous awards and recognition for her songwriting, including a Grammy nomination. In Saved by a Song, Mary Gauthier pulls the curtain back on the artistry of songwriting. Part memoir, part philosophy of art, part nuts and bolts of songwriting, her book celebrates the redemptive power of song to inspire and bring seemingly different kinds of people together.

Written as an artistic, business, and technical guide for singer-songwriters, this book is full of advice and encouragement for aspiring troubadours looking to polish their craft. The book offers tidbits on performing, recording, booking, and working with managers, agents, lawyers, and record executives. The guide is rounded out by excerpts from interviews with seasoned artists such as Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Jewel, and Ani DiFranco. At times the book's advice only skims the surface such as its coverage of choosing, maintaining, and insuring gear, but the tips on songwriting and performing should be taken to heart by writers and performers at every level. Rogers is an author and freelance writer who has written for Mojo and Acoustic Guitar magazines. Of all the paths available to today's musicians, the life of the singer-songwriter remains one of the most alluring and popular. From songwriting and solo performing to recording and promotion, singer-songwriters wear many hats, and with all the challenges they face come extravagant creative rewards. The Complete Singer-Songwriter is the ultimate guide for the modern singer-songwriter, full of real-world advice and encouragement for both aspiring and accomplished troubadours. Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers draws on his own experiences as a performing songwriter and interviews with artists such as Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco, and Paul Simon to offer an invaluable companion for the journey from idea to song to stage and studio.

A candid and colorful memoir by the singer, songwriter, and “Duchess of Coolsville” (Time). This troubadour life is only for the fiercest hearts, only for those vessels that can be broken to smithereens and still keep beating out the rhythm for a new song . . . Last Chance Texaco is the first-ever no-holds-barred account of the life of two-time Grammy Award-winner and Rickie Lee Jones in her own words (Hilton Als). It is a tale of desperate chances and impossible triumphs, an adventure story of a girl who beat the odds and grew up to become one of the most legendary artists of her time, turning adversity and hopelessness into timeless music. With candor and lyricism, she takes us on a singular journey through her nomadic childhood, her years as a teenage runaway, her legendary love affair with Tom Waits, and ultimately her longevity as the hardest working woman in rock and roll. Rickie Lee’s stories are rich with the infamous characters of her early songs—“Chuck E’s in Love,” “Weasel and the White Boys Cool,” “Danny’s All-Star Joint,” and “Easy Money”—but long before her notoriety in show business, there was a vaudevillian cast of hitchhikers, bank robbers, jail breaks, drug mules, and a pimp with a heart of gold, and tales of her fabled ancestors. This intimate memoir by one of the most trailblazing and tenacious women in music is filled with never-before-told stories of the girl in the raspberry beret, whose songs defied categorization and inspired American pop culture for decades. “A striking, distinctive self-portrait.” —The New York Times “Terrific . . . Jones is as fearless in prose as she is on stage.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Men leave, fame fizzles, family breaks your heart . . . but Jones knows a good story and how to tell it.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “[The] premiere song-stylist and songwriter of her generation.” —Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize–winner and author of White Girls

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZERoots, Radicals & Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is the first book to explore this phenomenon in depth - a meticulously researched and joyous account that explains how skiffle sparked a revolution that shaped pop music as we have come to know it. It's a story of jazz pilgrims and blues blowers, Teddy Boys and beatnik girls, coffee-bar bohemians and refugees from the McCarthyite witch-hunts. Billy traces how the guitar came to the forefront of music in the UK and led directly to the British Invasion of the US charts in the 1960s.Emerging from the trad-jazz clubs of the early '50s, skiffle was adopted by kids who growing up during the dreary, post-war rationing years. These were Britain's first teenagers, looking for a music of their own in a pop culture dominated by crooners and mediated by a stuffy BBC. Lonnie Donegan hit the charts in 1956 with a version of 'Rock Island Line' and soon sales of guitars rocketed from 5,000 to 250,000 a year. Like punk rock that would flourish two decades later, skiffle was a do-it-yourself music. All you needed were three guitar chords and you could form a group, with mates playing tea-chest bass and washboard as a rhythm section.

By the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become “white”? Just around Midnight reveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans. Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic—and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of “authenticity” have blinded us to rock’s inextricably interracial artistic enterprise. According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive.

This Companion explores the historical and theoretical contexts of the singer-songwriter tradition, and includes case studies of singer-songwriters from Thomas d'Urfey through to Kanye West.

A legendary record producer and performer takes readers on an alphabetical journey of insights into the music of the Beatles and individual reminiscences of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Peter Asher met the Beatles in the spring of 1963, the start of a lifelong association with the band and its members. He had a front-row seat as they elevated pop music into an art form, and he was present at the creation of some of the most iconic music of our times. Asher is also a talented musician in his own right, with a great ear for what was new and fresh. Once, when Paul McCartney wrote a song that John Lennon didn’t think was right for the Beatles, Asher asked if he could record it. “A World Without Love” became a global No. 1 hit for his duo, Peter & Gordon. A few years later Asher was asked by Paul McCartney to help start Apple Records; the first artist Asher discovered and signed up was a young American singer-songwriter named James Taylor. Before long he would be not only managing and producing Taylor but also (having left Apple and moved to Los Angeles) working with Linda Ronstadt, Neil Diamond, Robin Williams, Joni Mitchell, and Cher, among others. The Beatles from A to Zed grows out of his popular radio program “From Me to You” on SiriusXM's The Beatles Channel, where he shares memories and insights about the Fab Four and their music. Here he weaves his reflections into a whimsical alphabetical journey that focuses not only on songs whose titles start with each letter, but also on recurrent themes in the Beatles’ music, the instruments they played, the innovations they pioneered, the artists who influenced them, the key people in their lives, and the cultural events of the time. Few can match Peter Asher for his fresh and personal perspective on the Beatles. And no one is a more congenial and entertaining guide to their music.

As Bing Crosby once put it, Tiny Tim represents 'one of the most phenomenal success stories in show business'. In 1968, after years of playing dive bars and lesbian cabarets on the Greenwich Village scene, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce, the forty-something falsetto-voiced, ukulele-playing Tiny Tim landed a recording contract with Sinatra's Reprise label and an appearance on NBC's Laugh-In. The resulting album, God Bless Tiny Tim, and its single, 'Tip-toe Thru' The Tulips With Me', catapulted him to the highest levels of fame. Soon, Tiny was playing to huge audiences in the USA and Europe, while his marriage to the seventeen-year-old 'Miss' Vicki was broadcast on The Tonight Show in front of an audience of fifty million. Before long, however, his star began to fade. Miss Vicki left him, his earnings evaporated, and the mainstream turned its back on him. He would spend the rest of his life trying to revive his career, with many of those attempts taking a turn toward the absurd. But while he is often characterized as an oddball curio, Tiny Tim was a master interpreter and student of early American popular song, and his story is one of Shakespearean tragedy framed around a bizarre yet loveable public persona. Here, drawing on dozens of new interviews, never-before-seen diaries, and years of original research, author Justin Martell brings that story to life with the first serious biography of one of the most fascinating yet misunderstood figures in popular music.