Veteran Canadian Radio Host Holger
Petersen Set for SXSW Book Signing on Friday March
17th from 4:00 - 4:30 PM at On-Site Barnes & Noble Book Store Inside Austin
Convention Centre (for SXSW registrants)
Talking Music 2: Blues and Roots
Music Mavericks Is Second Book of Musical Conversations
Published by Insomniac Press
EDMONTON, AB - Holger Petersen, the
amiable host of CBC Radio’s “Saturday Night Blues” in Canada for 30 years
(which also airs on SiriusXM channel
169 in the U.S.), will be on-hand for a special SXSW book signing event
on Friday, March 17 from 4:00-4:30 PM at the Austin Convention Centre.
Petersen will be signing copies of his latest book of interviews published by
Insomniac Press, Talking Music 2: Blues and Roots Music Mavericks.
The signing will take place at the Barnes & Noble SXSW on-site book store
and is open for SXSW registrants only.
QUICK
FACTS
What: Talking
Music 2: Blues and Roots Music Mavericks, a second
collection of conversations with musicians, published by Insomniac Press.
Who: Radio host and
record company head Holger Petersen talks music and life with more than 25
musicians, singers, songwriters and guitar heroes.
More: Available in
bookstores and at Amazon; $19.95 in Canada and U.S., £9.95
in the UK.
466
pps, soft cover, illustrated.
Talking
Music 2:
Blues and Roots Music Mavericks — includes 25 in-depth conversations
with a variety of roots music artists who have made significant impacts on
popular music, ranging from American artists B.B. King to Steve Miller, Wanda
Jackson, Solomon Burke, Townes Van Zandt, Dan Hicks, Charlie Musselwhite,
Ronnie Earl and Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers.
Canadian
artists are certainly not ignored — larger-than-life personalities David
Clayton-Thomas and Ronnie Hawkins describe the early days of Toronto’s pop
music scene, and influential guitarists David Wilcox and Amos Garrett
(together) offer insights from their lengthy careers.
THE
BACK STORY
While
Holger Petersen’s best known for his blues-based radio programs, he’s just as
interested in artists who work in other roots music genres — Cajun musicians
Zachary Richard and Bobby Charles, Allen Toussaint, Sam The Sham, Van Dyke
Parks, Rory Block, Mose Allison, Billy Boy Arnold, UK singers Maggie Bell and
Maddy Prior (together), guitarists James Burton and Albert Lee (together) and
songwriters Chip Taylor, Dan Penn/Spooner Oldham (together) and Tony Joe White
are among those whose interviews are included.
Each
of the conversations is introduced by Petersen’s personal recollections of the
artists he’s meeting, and the book’s foreword is contributed by Grammy-winning
musicologist Rob Bowman.
As Bowman
explains, “Talking Music 2 is an important
collection, as interviews with the majority of the artists included are not
common and certainly do not get included in question- and-answer format
interview anthologies such as this.
“The strength of these interviews is Petersen’s conversational tone and the
ease he has with the artists he is talking to.”
In addition to his ongoing 30-year run at CBC, Petersen has hosted “Natch’l
Blues” on the Alberta radio network CKUA since 1969. He estimates that he’s
done well over 3,000 interviews — and the conversations in Talking Music
2 were originally recorded for his radio programs, or at side-stages at
folk festivals.
QUICK FACTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Holger Petersen heads up Stony Plain Records, Canada’s longest running
independent record label, which is celebrating over 40 years of continuous
operation. He’s a member of the Order of Canada and the recipient of two
honorary Doctor of Letters degrees for his contributions to music. In addition,
Petersen was a founder of the world-renowned Edmonton Folk Festival and
recipient of the Keeping the Blues Alive Award from The Blues Foundation.
“Many of the artists I’ve talked to are no longer with us,” he says, “but
they seem to come to life again in these conversations. Some of them may not be
well known to a wide public, but every one of them has made significant
contributions to roots music. And this book — like Talking Music 1
— honors the music they’ve given to the world.”
