MUSICALITY AUTHOR ACKNOWEDGMENTS AND NOTES

While Musicality For Modern Humans was a more self-reliant experience than writing the research-heavy Air Castle of the South, many friends and colleagues have given me feedback and encouragement over the years. 

I am especially grateful to musicians and musicologists Danny Holt and Bruce Dudley for their scrutiny of the technical-leaning chapters. Editor Maria Browning offered vital, global suggestions about the near-final draft. Others read portions of working drafts and provided valuable notes, including Tamara Saviano, J.D. Kleinke, John Heithaus, Rebecca Krafft, and Julie Hullett. I’ve appreciated strategic advice from Margaret Renkl, Karen Hayes, and Laura Baratto. I’ve had enlightening and encouraging conversations for years about the material in this work with Ross Holmes, Steve Fishell, Casey Driessen, Rick Clark, Jeff Coffin, Christian Sedelmyer, Dave Sinko, Mike Bub, Jeremy Darrow, John Walker, Bryan Paul Swenk, Jared Tyler, Steve Keller, Lex Price, Craig Oxford, Tracy Silverman, Chris McMurtry,  Reyna Gordon, Kelly Corcoran, and many others. 

I took a stab (less painful than it sounds) at spreading some of the book’s ideas on YouTube through great musicality conversations with Alan Valentine, Sofia Goodman, and Roy “Futureman” Wooten. They’re still worth a look and I thank them. I’m grateful to Rachel Whitney and the team at TEDx Nashville who invited me to speak in 2012, because my talk there was the first public airing I was able to give to core concepts of this book. I took an expanded version of that talk to Bongo Java’s upstairs theater and then to the City Winery, and I’m thankful to Ken Bernstein and Mike Simon for the opportunities to present and workshop my ideas about listening and musicality.

Many stellar music journalists have become sounding boards, valued colleagues, and friends, notably the late, great Peter Cooper, Chet Flippo, and Wade Jessen. Thanks as well to the gangs from late 1990s - 2020s eras of Country Music magazine, No Depression, Acoustic Guitar, and Premiere Guitar - and to Tom Cole, my great producer at NPR News. Thanks so much to Tim Ghianni and Linda Zoettler, my editors at The Tennessean, where I learned so much. Likewise, I’ve taken a ton of inspiration and sense of direction and proportion from big leaguers Peter Guralnick, Bob Oermann, Michael Tisserand, Geoffrey Himes, Bill Friskics-Warren, Brenda Colladay, Michael Gray, Michael McCall, Kelly McCartney, Jewly Hight, Marissa R. Moss, Anne Powers, Craig Shelburne, and Paul Kingsbury.

Fellow music scribe Michael Tisserand introduced me to publisher Mike Sager, and I’m so pleased to be working with him and his team, including designer Siori Kitajima who blew me away with her cover design. 

The number of people being collaborative and supportive on the Musicality project grows by the day, which is why I wanted this word of appreciation to be online and not fixed in the book. I’m grateful to work with designer Lisa Dunn, marketing pro Madison Casey, and copy editor Lauren Tingle. When I needed help to gather some marketing resources for the journey ahead, 89 of my readers, associates, friends and family came together to fund my Kickstarter project, and I love ‘em for it.

To every recording artist and working musician I’ve ever interviewed, thank you for your time. You’re all in Musicality. All this said, errors of fact and judgement are mine and mine alone!

My debt to and love for Taylor Holliday and Lu Havighurst is, like music, indescribable.