Whew. The pace has picked up. I’m writing this at my friend Tim’s desk in suburban Washington, D.C., where I came to a gathering to celebrate the book. My old Dead Head cronies Tim Scully, Diane Blagman, and Dave Moran (who manages, among other things, a cool new music venue and restaurant/bar complex called The Hamilton) got together and threw a book event at The Loft Bar at The Hamilton…a seriously good time, with the bonus of seeing my cousins Barry, Joan, Tom and Erin. And we sold a whole bunch of books courtesy of Politics and Prose, an excellent DC book store.
And while I was here I got to see Madison Bumgarner go from being a superb pitcher to something not entirely of this universe as the Giants won the World Series. Now that was fun, too.
The reception of the book has simply been amazing. The outstanding review comes from John Swenson at Offbeat, a cultural magazine in New Orleans: DENNIS MCNALLY, On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom.
The folks at Counterpoint placed an op-ed piece I wrote and also a sample from the book in the big news website The Daily Beast: Kerouac Biographer Gets Back on the Road and How Rock and Roll Killed Jim Crow and another fragment of the book at another website, Cultural Weekly, America’s Duet of Music and Race.
There was a review in the Chico (California) News and Review: On Highway 61, Dennis McNally, Counterpoint, By Alan Sheckter.
The timing is because I’m going to be on the Chico community station KZFR on Monday (November 3) and also signing books at The Bookstore there that evening at 6:30. The paper also made it an Editor’s Pick on their weekly calendar: On the Blues Highway.
Finally, the newswire Reuters brought out a Q and A with me: Book Talk: Black music, white culture and a legendary U.S. highway.
Can I take a nap now?