Roots Rock

Peter Cetera’s voice is one of the most recognizable in popular music, a tenor that carried Chicago from their ambitious jazz-rock beginnings into global superstardom and later defined the romantic ballads of the 1980s. Peter Cetera is the definitive biography of a musician who helped reshape the sound of modern pop, balancing horn-driven experimentation with melodic sincerity and emotional power. Born in 1944 on Chicago’s South Side, Cetera grew up in a Polish-American household where polka, doo-wop, and Elvis Presley stirred his earliest musical curiosity. By the 1960s, he had ...

Roots is a groundbreaking story of history and family that spanned continents and touched generations. One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold more than one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd helped usher in a new kind of southern music from Jacksonville, Florida. Together, they and fellow bands like Blackfoot, 38 Special, and Molly Hatchet would reset the course of '70s rock. Yet Jacksonville seemed an unlikely hotbed for a new musical movement. Michael FitzGerald blends eyewitness detail with in-depth history to tell the story of how the River City bred this generation of legendary musicians.

Alex Lifeson has always stood in the shadows of rock’s spotlight—quietly, deliberately, and architecturally shaping one of the most inventive catalogs in music history. As the guitarist and co-founder of Rush, Lifeson built the sonic frameworks that carried Geddy Lee’s soaring melodies and Neil Peart’s intricate drumming, crafting a career defined by resilience, experimentation, and understated brilliance. Alex Lifeson: The Quiet Architect of Rush traces his journey from the son of Yugoslav immigrants in suburban Toronto to the world’s biggest stages. It explores the teenage ...

The Allman Brothers Band’s Brothers and Sisters was not only the band’s best-selling album at over seven million copies sold, it was also a powerfully influential release, both musically and culturally, one whose influence continues to be profoundly felt.

Ruby has no money, not a single friend, and a shocking 1925 felony conviction for larceny. Though she encounters betrayal, she embarks on a journey to re-enter her children’s lives that will test the core of her being as obstacles chip away at everything but her resilient spirit. Deceived by men, caught between survival, career opportunities, and providing for her children, Ruby’s enduring love and determination to rise above her mistakes resonates with anyone who has yearned for a second chance.

Sex. Drugs. Loud music. Wild costumes. Dazzling light shows. These words can all describe a great rock concert or a hot dance club, but they were also part and parcel of the ancient cultural phenomenon known as the "Mystery religions". In this book, author Christopher Knowles shows how the long-dead Mystery religions got a secular reincarnation when a new musical form called rock 'n' roll burst onto the scene.

Boz Scaggs has always resisted easy labels. From his earliest days in Dallas, where late-night rhythm-and-blues broadcasts captivated his imagination, to his emergence as a polished yet soulful voice in American rock, Scaggs built a career on balancing grit with elegance. This biography tells his story in full, tracing a life in music that spanned adolescent dance bands, a pivotal partnership with Steve Miller, years of travel across Europe, and the crucible of San Francisco’s late-1960s music scene. With uncommon detail, it follows his break from the Steve Miller Band to record his 1969 ...

Tommy Thayer’s journey from Portland garages to the world’s largest stadiums is one of resilience, discipline, and quiet transformation. Tommy Thayer: Modern Day Spaceman is the definitive biography of the guitarist who stepped into one of the most iconic roles in rock history and kept the Kiss empire alive when instability threatened to tear it apart. Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1960, Thayer came of age in the Pacific Northwest’s gritty club circuit, learning the hard truths of bar-band economies while shaping his disciplined approach to guitar. His early immersion in Beatles ...

Life is hard for Ruby growing up in poverty on the wrong side of the mountain on her grandfather's farm where literally the sun didn’t shine. The Appalachian setting isn’t her friend as she searches for an easy life at the "tippy-top" with contentment and security. Ruby makes a series of bad decisions, causing her life to tumble into an unexpected outcome.

From the smoky clubs of Boston to the world’s largest festival stages, Susan Tedeschi: Blueswoman of Modern Rock charts the remarkable life of one of America’s most enduring and honest musicians. Drawing from decades of performance, collaboration, and reinvention, this definitive biography follows Tedeschi’s evolution from a Berklee-trained singer and guitarist to a Grammy-winning leader whose artistry reshaped modern roots music. Born in 1970 and raised in a culture of both academia and art, Tedeschi discovered early that her voice carried both history and hope. Her years on the New ...

Eric Singer’s story is the untold saga of modern rock endurance—a drummer who transformed from a Cleveland basement prodigy into the backbone of Kiss, one of the most theatrical bands in music history. Eric Singer: Beyond the Catman traces his journey with documentary precision, following him from early childhood shaped by Motown grooves and British rock radio to his relentless practice routines that forged stamina capable of powering stadiums. Singer’s career arc mirrors the evolution of rock itself. From smoky Cleveland clubs and his first national break with Lita Ford, to the ...

Robbie Robertson’s journey from Toronto’s Yonge Street clubs to the world’s grandest stages is one of the most remarkable sagas in modern music. Born Jaime Royal Robertson in 1943 to a Mohawk mother and Jewish father, he grew up surrounded by traditions of storytelling, resilience, and rhythm. That cultural inheritance shaped the way he approached guitar and songwriting, giving rise to one of the most distinctive voices in twentieth-century rock. This definitive biography follows Robertson year by year, tracing how a boy entranced by blues records became the architect of The Band’s ...

Derek Trucks has been hailed as one of the greatest guitarists of his generation, a player whose slide phrasing channels both the ache of Delta blues and the transcendence of Indian raga. Slide into Spirit: Derek Trucks traces his extraordinary journey from Jacksonville prodigy to co-leader of the Tedeschi Trucks Band, one of the most powerful live ensembles in American music today. Born into Southern rock lineage in 1979, Trucks was performing in Florida clubs by the age of eleven, astonishing veteran musicians with fluid phrasing and uncanny maturity. As a teenager, he toured with blues ...

Malcolm Young was never the flashiest member of AC/DC, yet he was the engine that drove one of the most successful rock bands in history. Malcolm Young — For Those About To is the first definitive, documentary-grade biography of the man whose right hand defined rock rhythm. From his birth in postwar Glasgow in 1953, through the family’s “Ten Pound Passage” to Australia, to the formative years spent in suburban sheds where he hammered downstrokes into unyielding precision, Malcolm’s story is told with archival rigor and narrative force. The book chronicles the founding of AC/DC in ...

Levon Helm’s voice and drumming defined an era of American music. From his beginnings in the cotton fields of Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, to the global stages he commanded as a founding member of The Band, Helm’s life traced the turbulent evolution of rock, roots, and Americana. Levon Helm: The Band’s Southern Soul offers the definitive portrait of a man who carried the cadences of the South into the national imagination. This biography follows Helm’s journey year by year, uncovering the communal rhythms of his Arkansas childhood, his apprenticeship on the Southern roadhouse circuit, ...

Peter Wolf’s story is one of relentless energy, cultural fusion, and uncompromising devotion to performance. From Bronx street corners filled with doo-wop harmonies to Boston’s smoky clubs where the J. Geils Band first ignited their “houseparty sound,” Wolf emerged as one of the most distinctive frontmen in American rock. Peter Wolf: Centerfold traces his journey with detail, context, and vibrancy, showing how a boy with sketchbooks and radios grew into a singer who turned concerts into communal celebrations. Wolf’s years as a DJ at Boston University’s WBUR—when he christened ...

Steve Smith is not just the drummer who powered Journey’s biggest anthems—he is one of the most versatile rhythm architects of the last half century. Steve Smith — Separate Ways of Rhythm traces his story from a Massachusetts childhood in Whitman through the corps discipline of the 1970s, the crucible of Berklee College of Music, and the club circuits of Boston, into a career that spanned Jean-Luc Ponty’s fusion laboratories, the global stages of Journey, and the boundary-pushing ensembles of Vital Information. This definitive biography follows Smith’s evolution across every era: ...

Lowell George was one of the most inventive and least understood musicians of the 1970s—a guitarist, songwriter, and producer who built Little Feat into one of rock’s most admired yet enigmatic bands. Drawing on archival depth and cultural context, this biography traces George’s full life arc—from Hollywood childhood and early bands through the creation of Little Feat’s genre-defying sound and his tragic death on tour in 1979. Through vivid storytelling and rigorous documentation, it captures how George fused swamp funk, country lyricism, and studio precision into a sound that was...

Caleb Followill’s journey is one of the most improbable and compelling in modern rock. Born in Oklahoma City in 1982, raised amid Pentecostal revival tents and shifting parsonages, he absorbed rhythm from sermons, tambourines, and hymnals before finding himself fronting Kings of Leon, a band that would storm festival stages from Glastonbury to Coachella. This definitive biography traces the path from fragile beginnings to Grammy-winning dominance, reconstructing the volatility, discipline, and survival that define Caleb’s career. With a historian’s authority and a critic’s ear, ...