Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Paul Simon-these familiar figures have written road music for half a century and continue to remain highly-regarded artists. But there is so much more to say about road music. This book fills a glaring hole in scholarship about the road and music. In a collection of 13 essays, Music and the Road explores the origins of road music in the blues, country-western, and rock 'n' roll; the themes of adventure, freedom, mobility, camaraderie, and love, and much more in this music; the mystique and reality of touring as an important part of getting away from home, creating community among performers, and building audiences across the country from the 1930s to the present; and the contribution of music to popular road films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, and On the Road.

Third Day guitarist Mark Lee is no stranger to heartache and hopes deferred; the road to success is never traveled without missteps along the way. Life is messy and uncertain and full of surprises. And one of the best things he's ever done is let go of his expectations about how life should be in order to embrace life as it is: a moment-by-moment walk with God. Hurt Road is the engaging true story of a man who, as a teen, found in music a refuge from the uncertainties of life. Who set out to discover a better way to live than constantly struggling to make sure life turned out the way he planned it. Who stopped substituting what's next for what's now and learned the truth--that coming or going, God's got us. Poignant, funny, and thoughtful, Hurt Road dares anyone feeling knocked down or run over by their circumstances to give up control to the One who already has the road all mapped out. Includes black and white photos.

The Music Road: A Journey in Music Reading presents an exciting, effective way for beginning music readers to experience the joy of reading and playing music at the keyboard. In the three volumes of The Music Road, a comfortable sequence of steps is presented. Each unit is divided into three parts: "Stop Look Learn " presents new material with follow-up written assignments, "Stop Look Play " presents new material in simple playing experiences, short mini-melodies, and one measure musical examples, and "Destination" uses folk songs and original music to offer many opportunities to "see and play" what has been presented in the learning part of the unit. Each unit has a corresponding "Stop Listen " appendix in which the ear is trained to "hear" what has been "seen" on the printed page. Listening to "high - low," keyboard location, quarter, half, whole notes, 3/4 - 4/4 time, and intervals are a few of the beginning focuses in Book 1. Relating the eye and ear in this way is excellent sensory reinforcement and makes sense, too, of music theory for the young student. An additional appendix contains a teacher's guide, and general and specific practice points to help the teacher and parent use The Music Road successfully. The slow progression throughout the books ensures the mastery of concepts, and the extensive use of those concepts at the keyboard gives the student a wonderful sense of accomplishment. The philosophical and psychological basis for the Music Road books is a natural extension of the Suzuki approach, yet teachers with traditional approaches find the books equally successful with their students.

Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous - Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 1994, rejuvenated ambient music for the Internet Age that was just dawning. In the United States, it was Richard D. James's first full length on Sire Records (home to Madonna and Depeche Mode) under the moniker Aphex Twin; Sire helped usher him in as a major force in music, electronic or otherwise. Faithful to Brian Eno's definition of ambient music, Selected Ambient Works Volume II was intentionally functional: it furnished chill out rooms, the sanctuaries amid intense raves. Choreographers and film directors began to employ it to their own ends, and in the intervening decades this background music came to the fore, adapted by classical composers who reverse-engineered its fragile textures for performance on acoustic instruments. Simultaneously, “ambient” has moved from esoteric sound art to central tenet of online culture. This book contends that despite a reputation for being beatless, the album exudes percussive curiosity, providing a sonic metaphor for our technologically mediated era of countless synchronized nanosecond metronomes.

Speed Bumps on a Dirt Roadis a living document of country music's founding fathers and mothers. John Cohen photographed musicians, at home, backstage at public events, from the wings at fiddlers' conventions, out in country music parks, and in the studio for live radio show performances and recording sessions. Back in 1961 it was still possible to know a few of America's original country musicians from the '20s and '30s. Renowned and celebrated musician and artist John Cohen came of age at the confluence of old time and early bluegrass music, the historic intersection of traditional and folk music. Cohen traveled the country playing music, recording, and documenting what was to be a generation of musicians who would influence American music and culture for decades to come. Traveling between the Union Grove fiddlers' convention to the Grand Ole Opry to a coal celebration in Hazard, Kentucky, Cohen made historic photographs of performers like Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, the country's very first all-bluegrass show, and a bluegrass bar in Baltimore, among much more.Speed Bumps on a Dirt Roadpresents old time music as the root of country music. Includes photographs of: Flatt & Scruggs, fiddler "Eck" Robertsonin Amarillo, Texas, Doc Watson, bluegrass fiddler "Tex" Logan, the Stanley Brothers at Sunset Park, Sara and Maybelle of the Carter Family, and Cousin Emmy, Alice & Hazel, and a dulcimer in a parking lot.

In addition to providing a vivid account of life on the road and imparting new insight into the daily existence of working musicians, this book illustrates how the fundamental issue of race influenced Albert's life, as well as the music of the era."

The Music Road contains contributions on musical cultures from the Mediterranean to India which brings together historical research, philology, and ethnographic fieldwork to revive the differentiated voices of this world region. It is here referred to as "the Music Road", to emphasize the musical traditions in this western half of the "Silk Road", and the transitional nature of its cultural migrations and coherences. Mobility in space, transmission in time and "the East-West imagination" are demonstrated in the following historical cultures: Ancient Gandhar? (N.W. India, first centuries CE) and the tradition of Alexander's conquest; sections on "Intercultural Islam" from medieval Persia to modern Turkey; "Indian encounters" with the West - and vice versa - in music and dance (18th-20th centuries); Greek music and theatre as a bridge between East and West; and Gypsy musical styles in European nationalist music.

Music and Tourism is the first book to comprehensively examine the links between travel and music. It combines contemporary and historical analysis of the economic and social impact of music tourism, with discussions of the cultural politics of authenticity and identity. Music tourism evokes nostalgia and meaning, and celebrates both heritage and hedonism. It is a product of commercialisation that can create community, but that also often demands artistic compromise. Diverse case studies, from the USA and UK to Australia, Jamaica and Vanuatu, illustrate the global extent of music tourism, its contradictions and pleasures.

“I love the way Dessa puts words together. In her songs, in her poetry, in her short stories, and now in this beautiful and candid memoir. Wanna be an artist? Get this book.” --Lin-Manuel Miranda "Dessa writes beautifully about a wide range of topics, including science, music, and the pain that comes with being in love; it's a surprising and generous memoir by a singular voice." --NPR, Best Books of 2018 Dessa defies category--she is an intellectual with an international rap career and an inhaler in her backpack; a creative writer fascinated by philosophy and behavioral science; and a funny, charismatic performer dogged by blue moods and heartache. She's ferocious on stage and endearingly neurotic in the tour van. Her stunning literary debut memoir stitches together poignant insights on love, science, and language--a demonstration of just how far the mind can travel while the body is on a six-hour ride to the next gig. In "The Fool That Bets Against Me," Dessa writes to Geico to request a commercial insurance policy for the broken heart that's helped her write so many sad songs. "A Ringing in the Ears" tells the story of her father building a wooden airplane in their backyard garage. In "'Congratulations,'" she describes the challenge of recording a song for The Hamilton Mixtape in a Minneapolis basement, straining for a high note and hoping for a break. "Call Off Your Ghost" chronicles the fascinating project she undertook with a team of neuroscientists to try to clinically excise romantic feelings for an old flame. Her writing is infused with scientific research, dry wit, a philosophical perspective, and an abiding tenderness for the people she tours with and the people she leaves behind to be on the road. My Own Devices is an uncompromising and candid account of a life in motion, in music, and in love. Dessa is as compelling on the page as she is onstage, making My Own Devices the debut of a unique and deft literary voice.