“Step It Up and Go”: Publication day

Today is Monday, Oct. 19, which makes it official: It’s “Publication Day” for “Step It Up and Go,” which is now formally released to make its way into the world. That actually seems a bit anticlimactic, as the book has already been available in most stores for the better of a part of a month now. But anyway, it’s no longer “upcoming” or “impending,” but “released.” Yay! Fly, little book, be free! And lookee here, it’s even Amazon’s No. 1 best-seller in the category of Ethnomusicology (ahead of David Byrne, no less). All right, then.

Had all gone according to the original plan, right now I would be in the midst of a bunch of in-person events all over the state, many of them involving live performances. Unfortunately, the virus pandemic put the kibosh on all of that Oh well, so it goes. We are pressing on with virtual/online events instead — and the silver lining of these days of miracle and wonder is that people can tune in from anywhere with ease. My guests at this week’s events are worth tuning in for, too.

We’ll mark today’s publication day with my hometown independent bookstore, Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books, which is sponsoring a virtual event at 7 p.m. Eastern Time tonight. My guest will be my fellow Piedmont Laureate alumnus Scott Huler, an amazing raconteur and noted author himself. Also my best friend, y’all.

Scott Avett from The Avett Brothers will lend some star power to a virtual event on Tuesday, sponsored by Park Road Books in Charlotte. I expect that Chapter 13 of the book, which covers the Avetts, will be the focus of our discussion. Please join us at 7 p.m. Eastern Time Tuesday (Oct. 20).

The late great Doc Watson’s longtime accompanist David Holt will join me for a “UNC Press Presents” virtual event at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday (Oct. 21), sponsored by Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville. David is a four-time Grammy winner, host of “David Holt’s State of Music” and renowned keeper of the flame.

Closing out the week on Friday (Oct. 23), my fellow scribe Eddie Huffman will be my guest at 7 p.m. Eastern Time that evening for a virtual event through Greensboro’s Scuppernong Books. I was honored to edit Eddie’s first book, the excellent 2015 John Prine biography “In Spite of Himself.” I eagerly await his next book, a Doc Watson biography coming next year on University of North Carolina Press. So yeah, you can expect some talk about Doc, which is always a good thing in my book.

The silly season: Amazon

Officially, “Step It Up and Go” won’t be published until Oct. 19, which is more than a month away. But it should start turning up in bookstores well before that, within a few weeks. The book business is weird that way, with “publication date” specifying the date by which it should be in every store where it’s going to wind up.

Anyway, it’s already listed on that South American river that controls everything, of course, with “sales rankings” for various categories including “Ethnomusicology” — which is a new one for me. I have no idea how they determined the order here or if it means anything; probably not, given that my book’s overall sales ranking is #237,017. But it’s always nice to see one’s book at #1, no matter how obscure the category.

All your base are belong to us

On the one hand, yes, it’s always nice whenever a five-star review turns up on amazon, because one can never have too many of those. But on the other hand…well, the review below is so obviously not about the purported subject that I have difficulty believing it was written by an actual person. What on earth is Abel Tobias on about here? It’s a mystery, wrapped in an enigma (and very possibly a Seinfeld reference).

So anyway, yes, I am happy to know that this reviewer found “Losering” to be perfectly sized and spectacular-looking — I agree! But truly, amazon works in mysterious ways…

UPDATE (6/15/2017): Sometime in the past week, that review disappeared. Fortunately, however, the screengrab will live on here.

Hey 19 — and 18

Near as I can tell, “Losering” and “Comin’ Right at Ya” have never been in the top-10 of amazon’s country book chart at the same time — although it’s almost happened a few times over the past year. But it’s nice that, more than a year after “Comin’ Right at Ya” was published (and four-plus years on for “Losering”), they’re both still bouncing around enough to briefly come to rest within one space of each other in the top-20.

As I keep telling myself: Slow and steady wins the race.

 

So close!

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in on “Losering”‘s sales ranking on Amazon, mostly because I quit checking regularly when it got to be too depressing. So I took a look today and saw that it’s up to 39 reviews, which is nice; and even nicer, that it’s currently the closest it’s ever come to the summit of Amazon’s Country Books, at least in America. It did get all the way up to No. 1 in the same category up in Canada, but never in the U.S.

Anyway, fun to see “Losering” at No. 2, right behind the noted song scribe Whisperin’ Bill Anderson and just ahead of bluegrass deity Ricky Skaggs.

 

Madonna and Mary J. Blige: Lots more drama, coming right up

The American Music Series I co-edit for University of Texas Press marches on with our newest releases, a pair of titles due out on the first of March — and they’ll definitely break us out well beyond anything like Americana. So keep an eye out for two books I’m proud to have been involved with, “Madonnaland And Other Detours into Fame and Fandom” by the fabulous Alina Simone; and “Real Love, No Drama: The Music of Mary J. Blige” by Kansas City-based author Danny Alexander. Now I’ve got two more reasons to obsessively check amazon every day.

Meantime, next up on the American Music Series docket will be T Bone Burnett, coming this fall.

ADDENDA: An actual New York Times review of “Madonnaland,” plus an excerpt on LitHub and a most-excellent PopMatters review. Also from PopMatters, a Blige review.

 

Faraway, so close!

This isn’t the first time that both “Comin’ Right at Ya” and “Losering” have crept into the top-20 of amazon’s country-music books chart at the same time — but it’s so, so close to both of them being in the top-10 together. One of these days…

DRA 1989: off the charts, but onto tape

This week, DRA 1989 completes its chart run (or at least the initial leg of it) by disappearing, falling from last week’s No. 138 ranking all the way off the Dec. 5 Billboard 200 after eight weeks. It had a solid No. 7 debut in late September but then dropped every week thereafter — except for a brief one-week sales spike when the physical version came out a few weeks back. Except for that, it pretty much mirrored the chart performance of 2014’s Ryan Adams, which debuted at No. 4 and was gone after seven weeks.

But who knows, maybe DRA 1989 will get another bump up when it’s released next month on…cassette. Yes, that’s right, DRA 1989 really is being released on that outdated hair-metal-era artifact, the humble audiocassette tape, which is fitting given Ryan’s ongoing run of ’80s–centric tributes.

Anyway, the DRA 1989 cassette is priced at $12.98 (which also includes an MP3 digital download) and will be available Dec. 11, according to Amazon. Sounds like a nice Christmas gift for Ryan completists, and it would even go well with this!

 

November brings another first: A two-for-one bonus

October has given way to November, but I’m still regularly checking in on the foursome that I call The Books of October. And while none of them are hitting the toppermost of the poppermost just yet (still waiting, world!), there are some encouraging signs along the amazon.

“Los Lobos: Dream in Blue” is up to 14 reviews on amazon, all of them perfect five-star scores. Enough favorable reviews have amassed for “MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson” to pull its overall amazon average above four stars. And “Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt” is still getting great reviews on and off amazon (even, ye Gods, from Pitchfork — a truly unexpected pleasure).

As for yours truly, Team Benson/Menconi’s “Comin’ Right at Ya” has a half-dozen amazon reviews now, all of them five-star, which is a nice start. And in the process of checking up on it the other day, I noticed a brief interlude when I had not one but two entries in the top-20 of amazon’s country-books chart. It came to pass that “Losering” pulled within a couple of spots of “CRAY” — also in the vicinity of yet another friend, Barry Mazor’s Ralph Peer book (which I wrote about in the paper earlier this year).

As you can see below, screen-grabs of such moments are the stuff of cheap-thrill dreams.

PopMatters reviews “Comin’ Right at Ya”

Along with amazon reader reviews (two so far, both five-star), editorial reviews of “Comin’ Right at Ya” are starting to turn up — you can find some of them at the CRAY page above, in fact. And add to that a very nice one that came out today on PopMatters, which also had some very kind things to say about “Losering” a few years back. I particularly like the way this review closes:

It’s a tidy ending for the book, but far from the final chapter for a man who keeps chugging along and following his muse and vows to keep “riding that wave”.

Check that out here.