“Friend, asshole, angel, mutant,” singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt “came along and made us gross and broken people seem . . . I dunno, cooler, I guess.” A quadriplegic who could play …
DJ Screw, a.k.a. Robert Earl Davis Jr., changed rap and hip-hop forever. In the 1990s, in a spare room of his Houston home, he developed a revolutionary mixing technique known as …
In 1996, Patterson Hood recruited friends and fellow musicians in Athens, Georgia, to form his dream band: a group with no set lineup that specialized in rowdy rock and roll. The …
Merle Haggard has enjoyed artistic and professional triumphs few can match. He’s charted more than a hundred country hits, including thirty-eight number ones. He’s released dozens …
Los Lobos leaped into the national spotlight in 1987, when their cover of “La Bamba” became a No. 1 hit. But what looked like an overnight achievement to the band’s new fans was …
This first critical appreciation of T Bone Burnett reveals how the proponent of Americana music and producer of artists ranging from Robert Plant and Alison Krauss to B. B. King …
Mary J. Blige is an icon who represents the political consciousness of hip hop and the historical promise of soul. She is an everywoman, celebrated by Oprah Winfrey and beloved by …
2022 Belmont Award for the Best Book on Country Music, International Country Music Conference/Belmont University New and expanded biography of one of country music’s most …
From his formative years playing pure, hardcore honky-tonk for mid-’80s Los Angeles punk rockers through his subsequent surge to the top of the country charts, Dwight Yoakam has …
A moving and essential exploration of what it takes to find your voice as a woman, a survivor, an artist, and an icon. The first time Lynn Melnick listened to a Dolly Parton song …
