Dwight Yoakam has long been known to country music fans as a musiciam who is as much artist as he is superstar. Over the course of his fifteen-year career, he has received fourteen Grammy nominations. One reviewer described his work this way: "Yoakam's lyrics--Leonard Cohen meets Ernest Tubb--work so well because they're literary without being high-minded. The artfulness of the words . . . doesn't always hit you until you read them on the lyric sheet."Newsweek called Yoakam's most recent record--titled, like his book, A Long Way Home--"a daring departure. It's lush and languid, more introspective than hit-driven. He's looking for subtle emotions, melodic evocations of the distances between people, and he draws on sources as varied as Bobby Darin, Chet Baker, and Buck Owens to get there."A Long Way Home is the first collection of Yoakam's lyrics in book form. It spans his career, from such early albums as Hillbilly Deluxe and Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room to the recently released, critically acclaimed A Long Way Home. Yoakam's songwriting is really storytelling--he poetically writes of subjects ranging from God to drinking to love--and proves him to be as fine a writer as he is a musician.

As a co-founder of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, Chris Hillman is arguably the primary architect of what's come to be known as country rock. He went on to record and perform in various configurations, including as a member of Stephen Stills's Manassas and as a co-founder of The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. In the 1980s he formed The Desert Rose Band, scoring eight Top 10 Billboard country hits. He's released a number of solo efforts, including 2017's highly acclaimed Bidin' My Time - the final album produced by the late Tom Petty. In Time Between, Hillman shares his quintessentially Southern Californian experience, from an idyllic, rural 1950s childhood; to achieving worldwide fame thanks to hits such as "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and "Eight Miles High"; to becoming the first musician to move to Laurel Canyon. Featuring behind-the-scenes insights on his time in The Byrds, his productive but sometimes complicated relationship with Gram Parsons, his role in launching the careers of Buffalo Springfield and Emmylou Harris, and the ups and downs of life in various bands, music is only part of his story. Within the pages of Time Between, Hillman reveals the details of his personal life with candor and vulnerability, writing honestly about the shocking tragedy that struck his family when he was a teenager, his subsequent struggles with anger, and how his spiritual journey led him to a place of deep faith that allowed him to extend forgiveness and experience wholeness. Chris Hillman is much more than a rock star. He is truly a founding father of American music and a man who has faced down the challenges of life to discover what really matters.

(Book). Nestled at the southern end of California's San Joaquin Valley, the city of Bakersfield is best known for farming, oil fields, and a unique brand of country music called the "Bakersfield Sound." The term is generally used to describe a hard-edged honkytonk sensibility characterized by sharp, twanging Fender Telecaster guitars, crying pedal steel, and straight-ahead country vocals a sound that thrived in Bakersfield clubs in the 1950s and '60s. The music emanating from these venues was by no means homogeneous. One need only compare Buck Owens's razor-sharp honky-tonk attack with Merle Haggard's western swing and blues-inflected recordings to recognize that there is no single Bakersfield Sound. The label is best understood as an umbrella term encompassing a number of strains developed by Haggard, Owens, and their West Coast contemporaries. The Bakersfield Sound is a full-color exploration of what social and economic factors led to this country music hotbed, as well as a look at the many stars who rose to fame with roots in Bakersfield. Country luminaries with ties to the area include Bob Willis, Leon Payne, Jean Shepherd, Dallas Frazier, Bonnie Owens, Barbara Mandrell, and Ferlin Husky. Written by the experts at the Country Music Hall of Fame, The Bakersfield Sound describes with rich words and classic photos how the deep roots of the Bakersfield Sound are so much more than just a reaction to the pop-oriented Nashville Sound.