Next up: Rounder Records

Now that I’ve caught my breath a bit from “Step It Up and Go,” it’s time to look forward, and I have some news about my next project. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve signed a contract with University of North Carolina Press to write another book, this one a history of Rounder Records.

“Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music” is the working title, and the book will trace the story of the legendary folk label that marked its 50-year anniversary in 2020. Initially based in Massachusetts, Rounder has been label home for everybody from Alison Krauss to George Thorogood and even Rush over the years, earning platinum records in addition to Grammy Awards.

UNC Press is a logical imprint for this book, since Rounder founders Ken Irwin, Marian Leighton Levy and Bill Nowlin have their archive housed at UNC’s Southern Folklife Collection. And I’d like to think that I’m the logical author for it, since I’ve always had folk/Americana leanings as well as a perverse fascination for the music business. “Step It Up and Go” even has a chapter about North Carolina record companies, after all.

So if everything goes well and the schedule holds up, I’ll be turning in the manuscript about a year from now and it will come out sometime in 2022. Here’s hoping.

Meanwhile, the “official” publication date for “Step It Up and Go” isn’t until Oct. 19, but the book is already pretty much out in the wild. It’s picking up a nice response so far, people are posting pictures of it, I’m getting requests for signed copies — this stage of the process is always very pleasant, even if it’s not possible to do in-person bookstore readings this fall here on Planet Pandemic.

Nevertheless, we are carrying on with some cool online events featuring notable guests including Scott Avett, drummer-to-the-stars Jon Wurster and even North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, among others. Hope to virtually cross paths with some of you folks out there in the coming weeks.

Next up: “The Big Book of North Carolina Music”

Not quite a year ago, I found myself at an industry convention gathering with some of my rock-writing peers, doing what we all do at these things — swapping stories, telling lies and catching up about projects we had in the works, real as well as imaginary. Talking to another writer I knew, I mentioned that I was working on a book proposal for a history of North Carolina music. His reaction was…surprising.

“Yeah,” he scoffed, “that’ll be a short book.”

Words were exchanged, some of them unpleasant; no, it didn’t go especially well. But almost a year later, I am pleased to report that this “short book” has taken a major step from abstraction to reality. I’ve come to terms and shaken hands with University of North Carolina Press for a book with the working title “The Big Book of North Carolina Music,” which will have a format similar to UNC Press’ 2008 best-seller “Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue.”

While this won’t be an encyclopedic A-to-Z history of North Carolina music, my “Big Book” will cover a lot of ground in its 16 chapters — from Charlie Poole in the 1920s to “American Idol” nearly a century later, with Blind Boy Fuller and Rev. Gary Davis, Arthur Smith, “5” Royales, Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs, the dB’s and Let’s Active, Superchunk and Squirrel Nut Zippers and Ben Folds Five, Nantucket and Corrosion of Conformity, beach music, 9th Wonder and J. Cole and more in between. It should come in at close to double the heft of my Ryan Adams book “Losering”; and while that still isn’t nearly as long as it could be, it’s nevertheless the most ambitious book project I’ve ever taken on.

But the beauty part is I’ve already been working on this book, piecemeal, for more than a quarter-century. I moved to Raleigh in 1991 to take the News & Observer music-critic job, and my first day was Jan. 15 — two days before Operation Desert Storm started in Kuwait. That was a time when the Worldwide Web wasn’t much more than a gleam in Paul Jones’ eye, back when most people still got their news by reading it on paper or watching the 6 o’clock news.

I must confess that I didn’t come here thinking the News & Observer would be a long-term destination, but it just worked out that way. Back when newspapers were still prosperous, the desired career trajectory was to spend five years or so at a mid-sized paper like the N&O before trying to move up to the New York Times or some other prestige publication. For a variety of reasons, that never happened. Most of the opportunities that came my way over the years felt like they would have been lateral moves rather than upward ones, although I did get a call from the Washington Post in 1999. But that was right after the birth of my twins, Edward and Claudia. At that moment, starting over in a big city was just not in the cards.

So I stayed in Raleigh and I’ve never regretted it, in large part because North Carolina music turned out to be fascinating and beguiling in ways I never imagined before I lived here. When I arrived, I was fairly well-versed in the North Carolina music I’d heard from afar on college radio — Connells, Let’s Active, Flat Duo Jets and such — without knowing much of anything about the history from farther back. So I’ve spent my years here filling in the history, bit by bit, learning as much as I could about North Carolina’s wildly varied music.

Despite the many variations of this state’s music, I do see all of it as of a piece and part of the same continuum — and “The Big Book of North Carolina Music” will, I hope, tie it all together as one story. I’ve spent the past few months going through my archive of stuff to get it organized (see below), and now begins the real work. TBBoNCM will be my side-project for the next two years, the thing keeping me up late nights and weekends and days off. If all goes according to plan, it will be done and dusted by the end of 2018, with publication to follow in 2019. Fingers crossed!

And yeah, whenever it’s done: I’ll be sending an autographed copy to that colleague.