Books in the American Music Series series

From the East Los Angeles barrio to international stardom, Los Lobos traces the musical evolution of a platinum-selling, Grammy Award-winning band that has ranged through virtually the entire breadth of American vernacular music, from traditional Mexican

Spotlighting three legends of American music-Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock, The Flatlanders recounts the band's epic forty-year journey from a living room in Lubbock, Texas, to the release of their extraordinary long-lost demo, The Odess

Tracing the whole sweep of Mary J. Blige's career through the critically acclaimed 2014 album, The London Sessions, this is the first serious look at the music and cultural impact of one of the most important musical artists to emerge in the past quarter

In the spirit of Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love, Madonnaland takes us on a revelatory road trip through the quirky hinterlands of celebrity and fandom and the quest to make music that matters in the face of relentless commercialism.

An illuminating cultural study arguing that, in the late 1980s, the reality TV of Cops and the reality rap of "Fuck tha Police" were two sides of the same coin, redefining popular entertainment as a truth-telling medium.

In this collection of personal essays, a diverse group of women music writers pay tribute to the female country artists who have inspired them, including Brenda Lee, June Carter Cash, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, and Taylor Swift.

A cofounder of the dB's, Chris Stamey re-creates the music scene in late 1970s New York City, recalling the birth of punk and other new streams of electric music as well as the making of the cult albums Stands for deciBels and Repercussion.

How Black musicians have changed the country music landscape and brought light to Black creativity and innovation.

';[A] compulsively readable biography... Essential for fans of Yoakam and lovers of good music writing.' Library Journal 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 enjoyed a singular career. An electrifying live performer, superb writer, and virtuosic vocalist, he's successfully bridged two musical worlds that usually have little use for each other: commercial country and its alternative/Americana/roots-rocking counterpart. Defying the label ';too country for rock, too rock for country,' Yoakam has triumphed while many of his peers have had to settle for cult acceptance. Four decades into his career, he's sold more than twenty-five million records and continues to tour regularly. Now award-winning music journalist Don McLeese offers the first musical biography of this acclaimed artist. Tracing the seemingly disparate influences in Yoakam's music, McLeese shows how he's combined rock and roll, rockabilly, country, blues, and gospel into a seamless whole. In particular, McLeese explores the essential issue of ';authenticity' and how it applies to Yoakam, as well as to country music and popular culture in general. Drawing on wide-ranging interviews with Yoakam and his management, while also benefiting from the perspectives of others closely associated with his success (including producer-guitarist Pete Anderson, partner throughout Yoakam's most popular and creative decades), Dwight Yoakam pays tribute to the musician who has established himself as a visionary beyond time, an artist who could title an album Tomorrow's Sounds Today and deliver it.

A chronicle of Adams's rise from alt-country to rock stardom, featuring stories about the making of the albums Strangers Almanac and Heartbreaker.Before he achieved his dream of being an internationally known rock personality, Ryan Adams had a band in Raleigh, North Carolina. Whiskeytown led the wave of insurgent-country bands that came of age with No Depression magazine in the mid-1990s, and for many people it defined the era. Adams was an irrepressible character, one of the signature personalities of his generation, and as a singer-songwriter he blew people away with a mature talent that belied his youth. David Menconi witnessed most of Whiskeytown's rocket ride to fame as the music critic for theRaleigh News & Observer, and in Ryan Adams, he tells the inside story of the singer's remarkable rise from hardscrabble origins to success with Whiskeytown, as well as Adams's post-Whiskeytown self-reinvention as a solo act.Menconi draws on early interviews with Adams, conversations with people close to him, and Adams's extensive online postings to capture the creative ferment that produced some of Adams's best music, including the albums Strangers Almanac and Heartbreaker. He reveals that, from the start, Ryan Adams had a determined sense of purpose and unshakable confidence in his own worth. At the same time, his inability to hold anything back, whether emotions or torrents of songs, often made Adams his own worst enemy, and Menconi recalls the excesses that almost, but never quite, derailed his career. Ryan Adams is a fascinating, multifaceted portrait of the artist as a young man, almost famous and still inventing himself, writing songs in a blaze of passion.';Menconi, a veteran music critic based in Raleigh, North Carolina, had a front row seat for alt-country wunderkind Ryan Adams' rise to prominencefrom an array of local bands, to Whiskeytown, and on to a successful and prolific solo career. Here, Menconi enthusiastically revisits those heady days when the mercurial Adams' performances were either transcendent or tantrum-filledthe author was there for most of them, and he packs his book with tales of magical performances and utterly desperate train wrecks.... This interview- and anecdote-laden expose of the artists early career will doubtless find a happy home with Adams fans.' Publishers Weekly