Folk-rock/alt-country musician Will Oldham, known by the stage name Bonnie "Prince" Billy, offers his autobiography in interview with longtime friend and associate Alan Licht, offering insight his musicianship, interactions with other musicians, discography and more.

It's Going to be a Bright New Day: Would You Rather, with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is Max Porter asking Will Oldham questions. Will Oldham has to say whether he would rather one thing, or another. Many topics are covered, including music, sex, cuisine, literature and travel. Some people believe that the Would You Rather format is better suited to a long car journey than a pamphlet, but we disagree. It works just fine on the page. More than that, it's very interesting and occasionally profound.

The definitive chronicle of underground music in the 1980s tells the stories of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and other seminal bands whose DIY revolution changed American music forever. Our Band Could Be Your Life is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan Eighties -- when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives re-energized American rock with punk's do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. This sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith is an indie rock classic in its own right. The bands profiled include: Sonic Youth Black Flag The Replacements Minutemen Husker Du Minor Threat Mission of Burma Butthole Surfers Big Black Fugazi Mudhoney Beat Happening Dinosaur Jr.

Joanna Newsom, Will Oldham (a.k.a. 'Bonnie Prince Billy'), and Devendra Banhart are perhaps the best known of a generation of independent artists who use elements of folk music in contexts that are far from traditional. These (and other) so called ’new folk’ artists challenge our notions of 'finished product' through their recordings, intrinsically guided by practices and rhetoric inherited from punk. This book traces a fractured trajectory that includes Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Bob Dylan, psych-folk of the sixties (from Vashti Bunyan to John Fahey), lo-fi and outsider recordings (from Captain Beefheart and The Residents to Jandek, Daniel Johnston and Smog), and recent experimental folk (Animal Collective, Six Organs of Admittance, Charalambides) to contextualise the first substantial consideration of new folk. In the process, Encarnacao reviews the literature on folk and punk to argue that tropes of authenticity, though constructions, carry considerable power in the creation and reception of recorded works. New approaches to music require new analytical tools, and through the analysis of some 50 albums, Encarnacao introduces the categories of labyrinth, immersive and montage forms. This book makes a compelling argument for a reconsideration of popular music history that highlights the eternal compulsion for spontaneous, imperfect and performative recorded artefacts.

With a new foreword by Will Johnson, this book presents a detailed account of the Rust Belt-born prolific and at times cantankerous singer-songwriter Jason Molina. As the first authorized account of this self-mythologizer, the book provides unparalleled insight into Molina's t...

Why has music so often served as an accomplice to transcendent expressions of gender? Why did the query "is he musical?" become code, in the twentieth century, for "is he gay?" Why is music so inherently queer? For Sasha Geffen, the answers lie, in part, in music’s intrinsic quality of subliminal expression, which, through paradox and contradiction, allows rigid gender roles to fall away in a sensual and ambiguous exchange between performer and listener. Glitter Up the Dark traces the history of this gender fluidity in pop music from the early twentieth century to the present day. Starting with early blues and the Beatles and continuing with performers such as David Bowie, Prince, Missy Elliot, and Frank Ocean, Geffen explores how artists have used music, fashion, language, and technology to break out of the confines mandated by gender essentialism and establish the voice as the primary expression of gender transgression. From glam rock and punk to disco, techno, and hip-hop, music helped set the stage for today’s conversations about trans rights and recognition of nonbinary and third-gender identities. Glitter Up the Dark takes a long look back at the path that led here.

For the past thirty years, Alan Licht has been a performer, programmer, and chronicler of New York's art and music scenes. His dry wit, deep erudition, and unique perspective- informed by decades of experience as a touring and recording guitarist in the worlds of experimental music and underground rock-have distinguished him as the go-to writer for profiles of adventurous artists across genres. A precocious scholar and improvisor, by the time he graduatedfrom college in 1990 Licht had already authored important essays on minimalist composers La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, and Charlemagne Palestine, and recorded with luminaries such as Rashied Ali and Thurston Moore. In 1999 he became a regular contributor to the British experimentalmusic magazine the Wire while continuing to publish in a wide array of periodicals, ranging from the artworld glossies to underground fanzines. Common Tones gathers a selection of never-before-published interviews, many conducted during the writing of Licht's groundbreaking articles, alongside extended versions of his celebrated conversations with artists, previously untranscribed public exchanges, and new dialogues held on the occasion of this collection.