Americanaland: Where Country & Western Met Rock 'n' Roll Volume 1 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780252043918)

A musical genre forever outside the lines

With a claim on artists from Jimmie Rodgers to Jason Isbell, Americana can be hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. John Milward's Americanaland is filled with the enduring performers and vivid stories that are at the heart of Americana. At base a hybrid of rock and country, Americana is also infused with folk, blues, R&B, bluegrass, and other types of roots music. Performers like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Gram Parsons used these ingredients to create influential music that took well-established genres down exciting new roads. The name Americana was coined in the 1990s to describe similarly inclined artists like Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and Wilco. Today, Brandi Carlile and I'm With Her are among the musicians carrying the genre into the twenty-first century.

Essential and engaging, Americanaland chronicles the evolution and resonance of this ever-changing amalgam of American music. Margie Greve's hand-embroidered color portraits offer a portfolio of the pioneers and contemporary practitioners of Americana.

Author: John Milward
ISBN-10: 025204391X
ISBN-13: 9780252043918
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Language: English
Published: 08/03/2021
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.68lbs
Size: 9.37h x 6.14w x 1.18d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 05/01/2021 pg. 71
Choice 05/01/2022