This book is a story about my life and several of the struggles and hardships that I have had to face. Everyone has a journey through life that takes them to different places, and everyone struggles with different issues unique to their own life. Every person could have a more blessed life if they would recognize what God is doing and could do for them in their everyday life to help smooth their pathway. It took me years to start seeing the full impact of how God was helping me along the way without me even being aware of it. My life’s journey has allowed me to become more aware and very thankful for the little everyday blessings that most people take for granted.
In sunbaked Terlingua, Texas (pop., a few hundred), residents joke that there is a musician under every rock. Located ten miles from Mexico in one of the remotest corners of the United States, the town had a recording studio before it had a school, a well-stocked grocery store, or even a water utility. Open jam sessions are a daily ritual, and some songwriters make a living from their craft despite being thousands of miles from New York or Nashville. Why does such a tiny and isolated place ring with singing and guitars? Based on more than two years of on-the-ground research, On the Porch tells the story of this small but remarkable community. Chase Peeler invites us into the music, introducing us to a cast of characters as unique as the town itself. He reveals how novices and experts perform together—a rarity in contemporary America. He recounts the devastation brought on by a border closure and describes how music is once again uniting people across the Rio Grande. He considers the impact of gentrification in an off-the-grid paradise, and how this threatens to transform a precarious musical ecosystem. On the Porch is a celebration of human musicality, of the role that music plays and can play in our lives, both in Terlingua and beyond.
A gorgeously illustrated and hugely entertaining story of America's most popular music and the singers and songwriters who captivated, entertained, and consoled listeners throughout the twentieth century—based on the eight-part film series. This fascinating history begins where country music itself emerged: the American South, where people sang to themselves and to their families at home and in church, and where they danced to fiddle tunes on Saturday nights. With the birth of radio in the 1920s, the songs moved from small towns, mountain hollers, and the wide-open West to become the music of an entire nation--a diverse range of sounds and styles from honky tonk to gospel to bluegrass to rockabilly, leading up through the decades to the music's massive commercial success today. But above all, Country Music is the story of the musicians. Here is Hank Williams's tragic honky tonk life, Dolly Parton rising to fame from a dirt-poor childhood, and Loretta Lynn turning her experiences into songs that spoke to women everywhere. Here too are interviews with the genre's biggest stars, including the likes of Merle Haggard to Garth Brooks to Rosanne Cash. Rife with rare photographs and endlessly fascinating anecdotes, the stories in this sweeping yet intimate history will captivate longtime country fans and introduce new listeners to an extraordinary body of music that lies at the very center of the American experience.
Isolated brings together two inventive, disturbing plays by one of Canada's most intriguing dramatic voices. In Recovery, people around the world are addicted to a mysterious substance. Large recovery centres are set up, promising refuge, treatment and healing to millions of addicts. But all is not what it seems. Following three residents of a facility in Antarctica, McArthur delivers a quirky and unsettling play that reveals the fear and isolation of the oppressed individual, and the consequences of a medicalized society. In Get Away, David finds two beautiful teenagers when he escapes to an isolated cabin where he hopes to cure his unusually persistent listlessness. Sensing that they might need protecting - and may be crucial to his survival - he invites them in, but the roles of predator and prey become unclear as the three become dangerously intertwined. Both fantastical and horrifying, Get Away provides a resonating look at the destructive nature of longing and our desperate need for love. '[MacArthur] has a beautiful voice and his analysis of the unpredictability of our sexuality, at once nurturing and predatory, is shrewd.' - The Globe and Mail (about Get Away)
These stories were created during the pandemic when telling stories in person was not possible. The postal service delivered my stories daily to the grandchildren, which gave them something to look forward to while they were required to stay at home. These fictional tales generated phone calls and conversations with the kids about the various characters. Hopefully others will enjoy these stories and share their impressions with family and friends. Stimulating young readers is a great end result for any short story. Thank you!
Mark Childress's novel, Tender, is a little more than just a fine novel; it is a big, all-American, Technicolor dreamboat of a book, as vital and as intense as anything I've read in the last ten years. The legend is familiar to everyone who cares about pop music and rhythm and blues, but Mark Childress has invested it with an eerie mystery-train vitality that is only available to the talented novelist. There's something else as well; this is the first novel I've ever read in my life which is more inside rock and roll than about it; through the eyes of Leroy Kirby, Mark Childress has made the mad early days of rock and roll seem not just comphrensible but inevitable. Beneath the cool prose line of this minimalist epic there is the same raw and feverish drive that propelled the early rockabilly stars as they created a new kind of music. Childress's understanding and love of this new music lends Tender the sort of piney woods authenticity I associate with such American classics as Elmer Gantry and All The King's Men. If you care about rock and roll, Tender is going to knock your socks off. This is a great novel, and as Childress documents the meteoric rise of his talented child-monster-prodigy, Leroy Kirby, he never misses a beat. -- Stephen King
A sexy category romance from Entangled's Brazen imprint... Play. Or be played. The music should be enough. End of story. But Aaron Major is finding out it's not, and now his agent has hired a firm of suits to help launch his debut album, turning his life into a goddamn circus. Smile here. Play there. Be nice. Well, screw that. If Aaron wanted to spend his time shaking hands and kissing babies, he would've gone into politics. Helping launch the career of country singer Aaron Major should be a cakewalk for PR pro Melody Sharp. Aaron is charming, sexy, and oh-so-appealing when he's on stage. Off stage, though, he's her worst nightmare. A stubborn, ornery, reclusive nightmare without a lick of business-or fashion-sense. The only way he's going to make it in music is with a serious makeover-and quite possibly a personality transplant. Soon, they're engaged in a game of give and take, and though it's Melody calling the shots, it's Aaron who holds all control...
While the Goose Island Ramblers are a remarkable group, they are entirely representative of the many bands who, from the 1920s through the 90s, have synthesized an array of "foreign," "American," folk, popular, and hillbilly musical strains to entertain rural, small town, working class audiences throughout the Midwest. Based on more than twenty years of field research, this study of the Goose Island Ramblers alters our perception of what American folk music really is. The music of the Ramblers - decidedly upper Midwest, multicultural, and inescapably American - argues for a most inclusive, fluid notion of American folk music, one that exchanges ethnic hierarchy for egalitarianism, that stresses process over pedigree, and that emphasizes the pluralism of American musical culture. Rootsy, constantly evolving, and wildly eclectic, the polkabilly music of the Ramblers constitutes the American folk music norm, redefining in the process our understanding of American folk traditions.
The banjo has been emblematic of the Southern Appalachian Mountains since the late twentieth century. Making Music: The Banjo in a Southern Appalachian County takes a close look at the instrument and banjo players in Haywood County, North Carolina. Author William C. Allsbrook Jr., MD, presents the oral histories of thirty-two banjo players, all but two of whom were born in Haywood County. These talented musicians recount, in their own words, their earliest memories of music, and of the banjo, as well as the appeal of the banjo. They also discuss learning to play the instrument, including what it “feels like” playing the banjo, many describing occasional “flow states.” In the book, Allsbrook explores an in-home musical folkway that developed along the colonial frontier. By the mid-1800s, frontier expansion had ceased in Haywood County due to geographic barriers, but the in-home musical tradition, including the banjo, survived in largely isolated areas. Vestiges of that tradition remain to this day, although the region has undergone significant changes over the lifetimes of the musicians interviewed. As a result, the survival of the in-home tradition is not guaranteed. Readers are invited into the private lives of the banjo players and asked to consider the future of the banjo in the face of contemporary trends. The future will be shaped by how this remarkable mountain culture continues to adapt to these challenges. Still, this thriving community of banjo players represents the vibrant legacy of the banjo in Haywood County and the persistence of tradition in the twenty-first century.
Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers is what author and compiler Barry Lee Pearson calls a “blues quilt.” These blues stories, collected by Pearson for thirty years, are told in the blues musicians’ own words. The author interviewed over one hundred musicians, recording and transcribing their stories. These are stories from well-known musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Koko Taylor, David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and Little Milton, and from more obscure artists such as Big Luck Carter, Henry Dorsey, Joseph Savage, and J. T. Adams. Pearson provides an introduction to the world of the blues and the genre of blues stories as well as brief biographies of the musicians. Divided into five sections—Blues Talk, Living the Blues, Learning the Blues, Working the Blues, and The Last Word—the book provides an overview of the inner workings of the blues tradition from the artist’s point of view. Wordsmiths by trade, the storytellers bring to their tales qualities also found in blues song performance and philosophical perspectives characteristic of the blues tradition such as improvisation, ironic humor, ambivalence, and a life-affirming sense of hope in the face of adversity. Pitched somewhere between story and song, this remarkable chorus of voices provides concrete illustrations of what it means to live the blues, to feel the blues, and to play the blues. Taken together, these artists provide a collective history of one of America’s most influential art forms. Blues fans and those interested in African American music, folklore, American music history, popular culture, and southern history will want to read Jook Right On: Blues Stories and Blues Storytellers.
