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A book that spans many worlds, Bridger is both the story of one man's artistic journey in creating a new art form and a revelatory overview of American popular culture since the 1950s.
Musical magic hit Austin, Texas, in the early 1970s. At now-legendary venues such as Threadgill's, Vulcan Gas Company, and the Armadillo World Headquarters, a host of country, rock-and-roll, blues, and folk musicians came together and created a sound and a scene that Jan Reid vividly detailed in his 1974 book, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock. The breadth of talent still astounds—Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin, Jerry Jeff Walker, Doug Sahm, Delbert McClinton, Michael Martin Murphey, Willis Alan Ramsey, Kinky Friedman, Steve Fromholz, Bobby Bridger, Billy Joe Shaver, Marcia Ball, and Townes Van Zandt. Reid's book even inspired the nationally popular and long-running PBS series Austin City L...
Army scout, buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, and impresario of the world-renowned "Wild West Show," William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody lived the real American West and also helped create the "West of the imagination." Born in 1846, he took part in the great westward migration, hunted the buffalo, and made friends among the Plains Indians, who gave him the name Pahaska (long hair). But as the frontier closed and his role in "winning the West" passed into legend, Buffalo Bill found himself becoming the symbol of the destruction of the buffalo and the American Indian. Deeply dismayed, he spent the rest of his life working to save the remaining buffalo and to preserve Plains Indian culture through hi...
Author of more than thirty books of poetry, Western history, stories, fiction, biography, criticism, and Native studies, John G. Neihardt (1881?1973) was born in Illinois, taught for many years at the University of Missouri, and was named by act of legislature Poet Laureate of Nebraska and the Prairies. Neihardt was devoted to his ideals of art, spirit, humanity, and understanding. This volume brings together fourteen lifelong admirers, who each contribute a portrait or an appreciation of this American original. ø Best known for his 1932 classic Black Elk Speaks, done in collaboration with the Lakota holy man Nicholas Black Elk, Neihardt is also justly regarded as an epic poet, travel writer, newspaperman, teacher, mystic, and spokesman for the beauty of the Great Plains and the drama of ordinary and exceptional lives.
Published for devotees of the cowboy and the West, American Cowboy covers all aspects of the Western lifestyle, delivering the best in entertainment, personalities, travel, rodeo action, human interest, art, poetry, fashion, food, horsemanship, history, and every other facet of Western culture. With stunning photography and you-are-there reportage, American Cowboy immerses readers in the cowboy life and the magic that is the great American West.
Music of the bars and clubs of Austin, Texas has long been recognized as defining one of a dozen or more musical "scenes" across the country. In Dissonant Identities, Barry Shank, himself a musician who played and lived in the Texas capital, studies the history of its popular music, its cultural and economic context, and also the broader ramifications of that music as a signifying practice capable of transforming identities. While his focus is primarily on progressive country and rock, Shank also writes about traditional country, blues, rock, disco, ethnic, and folk musics. Using empirical detail and an expansive theoretical framework, he shows how Austin became the site for "a productive contestation between two forces: the fierce desire to remake oneself through musical practice, and the equally powerful struggle to affirm the value of that practice in the complexly structured late-capitalist marketplace."
Personal and historical meditations explore the human and natural history of the large expanse of land the Navajos once named the Horizontal Yellow.
From Hallingdal to Houston -- Hollywood on the Colorado -- Breaking away -- Highway to the danger zone -- Hollywood gothic -- One hit after another -- Batmania -- The man Hollywood trusts -- Conclusion
David Amram-composer, jazz artist, conductor, and world music pioneer-has been described by the Boston Globe as "the Renaissance man of American music." From early collaborations with Kerouac and Sinatra, chosen by Leonard Bernstein as the New York Philharmonic's first composer in residence, Amram's artistry has taken him from concerts with Willie Nelson to jamming with the Massai tribe of Kenya. In Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat, Amram recounts his extraordinary adventures in the many worlds of music he calls home, all told in a rollicking anecdotal style that makes you feel that you are at home around the world. He writes, "Everywhere I have been in the world, music transcends politics. As musicians, we were able to go beyond all that and just be fellow human beings." Threading through Amram's tale of music, hard work, respect, and friendship are unforgettable stories of fellow great artists-Dizzie Gillespie, Hunter S. Thompson, Janet Gaynor, George Plimpton, Lyle Lovett, Zoe Caldwell, Willie Nelson, and many more.
Hatcher and his people welcome newfound survivors into their fold as an infected threat rears its ugly head. Even with their increase in numbers, can they overcome a force of Biblical proportions? CDC researchers flee for their lives as their own government threatens to weaponize the virus. In a nearly dead world, can they escape from a force that still has modern surveillance capabilities? Jedidiah and his Holy Army position themselves to enact God’s wrath and cleanse the Earth of mankind. With the largest collection of Throwbacks and ravenous hunger as his weapons, will he fulfill his destiny and see the end of His greatest creation?